AI hack into Australian govt website 'unacceptable'

An artificial intelligence agent hacking into an Australian government healthcare website has fueled calls for greater efforts to combat cyber threats and other major cross-border challenges in the global AI push.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sept 24 gave details of an incident in June when an AI agent of US-based OpenAI "infiltrated" the service portal of Medicare, Australia's universal health insurance scheme.

"No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage, but investigations are ongoing," Albanese said at a news conference in New York, the United States. "Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable," he added.

The Australian leader, who was attending the United Nations General Assembly, also announced the establishment of a task force "to provide an urgent and immediate review into this incident to determine whether existing processes are appropriate to respond to AI-related cyber incidents".

On Saturday in Sydney, Albanese told reporters that there were "dozens of cases" beyond Australia in which AI agents similarly accessed unauthorized information.

In a statement on Tuesday, OpenAI said its chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, will fly from its US headquarters to appear at a joint select committee on AI in Sydney on Oct 6.

"He will answer questions about what we know, how we responded, what steps we have taken, and how we will do better going forward," it said.

The company said it will commit the resources needed to help affected agencies understand what happened and assess the impact, as well as provide funding and support to strengthen cyber defenses.

Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, a nonprofit group that aims to educate and protect Australians in the digital sphere, told China Daily that the good news is that the breaches do not appear to have compromised anyone's personal data.

"But that's because we got lucky. If an OpenAI agent can break into a system, so can a human hacker," Sulston said.

"The only reason we know of the recent OpenAI hack is because they admitted it. There are undoubtedly far more hacks that have happened that we don't know about," he said.

Sulston added that "the Australian public service needs to do a better job of securing its servers, and that OpenAI needs to do a better job of developing and testing its agents".

He said he hoped that would be a wake-up call for governments and regulators.

"AI corporations can't be left to operate in a lawless manner. They need to follow the laws and norms of the societies that they operate in," Sulston said.

He stressed the importance of international cooperation to tackle the challenges of AI development.

"The only way that we will have meaningful regulation of these multinational behemoths is via coalitions of aligned governments building enough strength to withstand any one large power throwing its weight around," Sulston said.

Other experts also weighed in on the breach in Australia, highlighting the significant challenges in the global push of AI technology.

Sabrina Caldwell, a senior lecturer at UNSW Canberra's School of Systems and Computing, said it was easily foreseeable that an AI agent taught to "think" for itself would find solutions to problems that escaped the notice of data custodians.

"Guardrails are not enough; they are voluntary and unlikely to be a deterrent. Governments individually and collectively need to create enforceable regulations for AI use."