The breach took place on July 18. The OpenAI agent had gained unauthorised access to a public-facing Medicare statistics portal
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday revealed that an artificial intelligence (AI) agent developed by OpenAI infiltrated a website of the government’s health department. The said incident happened in July and OpenAI notified the government of the breach on September 10. Albanese said Australia was extremely concerned and disappointed at the incident, which the AI company took too long to reveal.
The prime minister made the breach public following a telephone conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Both are currently in New York City to address the United Nations.
Speaking to the reporters, Albanese said, “Today I spoke with Altman to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident.”
“I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred and the nature of the way that notification occurred as well was unacceptable,” he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
The breach took place on July 18. The OpenAI agent had gained unauthorised access to a public-facing Medicare statistics portal.
During a review of activity involving several Australian government departments, OpenAI discovered “our models took actions we did not intend”, the company said in a statement.
Inquiry initiated
Albanese said an inquiry into the security breach to examine whether OpenAI could potentially be charged has been set up. The inquiry would also investigate how Australian security agencies failed to detect the breach before OpenAI revealed it.
No personal information was believed to have been accessed, he said.
Albanese said he assumed there were commercial reasons for the AI investigation of how much was being spent on particular medicines and where expenditures were changing.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the incident was the first time that an AI agent was known to have gained unauthorised access to the Australian government’s information technology systems.
“The impact, if you like, of this incident is relatively minor in as much as no personal information has been accessed here. The system itself hasn’t been compromised,” Marles told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“That said, this is a really serious incident. What we’ve got here is an artificial intelligence agent which has, in an unintended way, gained unauthorised access into an Australian government website,” he added.
(With PTI inputs)
