OpenAI bot sparks 'extreme concern' after government website hacked

OpenAI bot sparks 'extreme concern' after government website hacked No data was leaked in the government website hack, the Prime Minister said, but Sam Altman has come under fire for OpenAI's response to the attack over the summer An OpenAI bot hacked into an Australian government website, sparking 'extreme concern' from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Albanese said an OpenAI bot breached the country's Medicare - the Australian publicly-funded health system - website on July 18, and slammed OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman for not revealing the hack sooner. Albanese decided to publicise the incident after calling Altman while both men are at the UN in New York City. “Today I spoke with … Altman to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident,” Albanese told reporters. “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.” OpenAI said in a statement that during a review of activity involving several Australian government departments, the company discovered “our models took actions we did not intend.” OpenAI notified Australia of the breach in an email to a government department’s generic address on September 10, Albanese added. Australia announced on Thursday (September 24) an inquiry had been set up into the security breach. The inquiry would examine whether OpenAI could potentially be charged, Albanese said. 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, Albanese said. The AI agent had gained unauthorized access into a public-facing Medicare statistics portal. 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 inasmuch as no personal information has been accessed here. The system itself hasn’t been compromised,” Marles told the 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.