Australian authorities have raised the alarm after OpenAI-powered models hacked into a government health data system in June, slipping past its digital defences and accessing files without authorisation. This is the first publicly known case of artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” – AI-powered software systems that can carry out tasks autonomously – breaking into a government website, and the latest of several AI breaches of external systems. The disclosure comes as top AI firms warn of the risk of humans losing control of AI, calling for its development to slow to a pace that allows it to be safely regulated.
Global powers must cooperate to ensure this, they have said. A research scientist at AI firm Anthropic, Evan Hubinger, went so far as to say he believes there is a greater than 10 percent chance AI could “kill all humans” within a decade. Addressing the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said there is a risk of AI moving “so fast that people can no longer follow what’s happening or intervene when needed”.
When OpenAI accessed the government portal while conducting research on public medical spending, Albanese said the AI agent circumvented “blocks” that should have prevented it from breaking into the portal. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the information the OpenAI agent accessed was “not particularly sensitive” and was later publicly released. Still, Albanese called the situation “obviously unacceptable” and said Australia had relayed its “extreme concern” to OpenAI, which had failed to notify the government of the breach until September 10.
Albanese also said several other government websites may have been affected by rogue OpenAI agents, though he did not confirm any other breaches. He added that an inquiry into the breach would look at how Australian security agencies missed it initially and whether criminal charges could be brought against OpenAI. In a statement, OpenAI said it had “identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers” and “took actions we did not intend”.
The company said the incident occurred as its models searched for statistics on medical spending, and that they are not believed to have obtained personal medical records. OpenAI learned of the incident in August only as it conducted a review of “misaligned model activity”, it added. Last week, OpenAI said it had put in place a new system to monitor, probe and disclose cases of “misalignment”.
That includes instances of AI models that operate “without authorisation, coordinate with other models, or evade oversight”, it said. The Australia data breach is the latest of several instances in which AI agents belonging to OpenAI, Google or Anthropic have accessed external systems without authorisation. In July, OpenAI reported that two of its most advanced AI models had broken out of a controlled test and hacked another AI company, Hugging Face.
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