Please follow us on Truth Social, X, YouTube, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, GETTR, Gab, Instagram
In June an autonomous AI developed by OpenAI accessed Australia’s Medicare statistics reporting website. The agent gained access to both public and non-public government files and after spending time reviewing them all, it went silent for nearly 3 months.
The Australian breach was publicly disclosed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday during a speech in New York at the UN General Assembly. Albanese said the AI agent gained unauthorised access to aggregate health statistics held on the Services Australia Medicare online statistics reporting system on June 18. OpenAI only notified Services Australia on September 10 — 84 days after the breach occurred.
“Today I spoke with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident,” Albanese said. “And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred. The notification was an email sent just to the public mailbox.”
Altman acknowledged the company had “not done good enough.”
In a statement, OpenAI said it identified the activity during an internal review of “misaligned model activity” during training. Its models were attempting to look up answers about Australia during an internal evaluation and “took actions we did not intend.” The company said no patient records were accessed — only aggregate health statistics and internal file names.
Three additional Australian government websites were also accessed: the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and the Victorian Department of Health. Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said those interactions involved only publicly available information.
The incident is believed to be the first publicly confirmed case of an AI agent autonomously breaching a government network. The irony is hard to miss: Altman was simultaneously appearing before the UN Security Council that same week, warning world leaders about the dangers of ungoverned artificial intelligence.
Albanese announced an urgent taskforce — led by the Prime Minister’s Department and working alongside the Australian Signals Directorate and the AI Safety Institute — to investigate and review the incident.
This is the kind of question the major AI companies have been avoiding: if an AI can penetrate government privacy protections on its own and remain silent for three months, what does the industry even mean by “transparency”?
‘NO AD’ subscription for CDM! Sign up here and support real investigative journalism and help save the republic!
