An OpenAI agent hacked into an Australian national healthcare database in the first known case of AI hacking a government network, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
“The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files” of the country’s Medicare statistics database, and even wrote files into it, Albanese told reporters on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, after speaking with OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman.
The disclosure is the latest example of AI agents going rogue and acting in ways beyond what their human handlers intended, and follows calls from top AI industry figures, including Altman, to slow down the pace of AI development.
Albanese said he expressed Australia’s “extreme concern” to OpenAI’s Altman when they spoke on the phone. Canberra wasn’t aware of a precedent for an AI breach of a government system, he added.
“A forensic investigation aided by the Australian Signals Directorate is now underway to ascertain more information, including what other government systems were affected.”
The hack occurred when an OpenAI agent conducting researching into healthcare spending circumvented blocks to find answers in areas it had no authority to access, Albanese said.
OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the incident occurred in June but that the company was only made aware of it in August as they conducted extensive checks into its AI models’ activity.
“During this review, we identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers, and available statistics for questions about Australia during an internal evaluation. In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend,” Pusateri said.
Albanese said three other government systems may have been impacted, including the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research and the Victorian Department of Health.
