Australia PM warns of AI’s ‘furious pace’ after agent breached government site

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned that artificial intelligence is evolving at a “furious pace” and has urged other countries to shape its development, after an OpenAI agent breached an Australian government website this year.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Albanese called for international cooperation on emerging technology, adding that AI company leaders themselves have warned about advancing frontier AI too quickly without safeguards.

“Recently, an artificial intelligence agent infiltrated an Australian government website. This is unacceptable,” he told world leaders on Thursday.

The warning came a day after Albanese revealed that an OpenAI agent had breached a Medicare statistics portal in June, accessing public and non-public files.

Albanese said OpenAI did not notify the Australian government until Sept. 10, nearly three months after the incident.

OpenAI told Cointelegraph it became aware of the incident in August and investigated what information had been accessed before notifying Services Australia.