If you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up free here. Confide in me: Send your tips to this generic inbox, [email protected]. — It’s time to sort out human responsibility for AI agents — Whyalla steelworks: The distressed plant has repaid more than $5 million in government grants Listen to Playbook’s Ryan Heath on ABC’s The Party Room podcast with Fran Kelly and Clare Armstrong. HEY, WHATEVER, WE LIKE HACKED MEDICARE OR SOMETHING, LOL.
When an artificial intelligence agent goes rogue and accesses Medicare statistics, who’s responsible? The answer under Australian law is probably “no one,” Paul Karp and Finn McHugh report. The Australian government may still refer OpenAI’s unauthorized access to police, but rather than prosecutions, the main action is likely to come from a review coordinated by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet closing legal loopholes.
ONE RULE FOR HUMANS: “If a person hacked into a Medicare database they would be looking at years in prison, but if you are a big U.S. tech company, you don’t even get a slap on the wrist,” Greens AI spokesperson David Shoebridge told POLITICO. Why is it that [when] a digital agent does this in a digital environment we treat that differently?” asked Olivia Shen, director of the Strategic Technology Program at the United States Studies Centre. Breathe: We cover these nuances in more detail with Nicholas Davis of the University of Technology Sydney in the Playbook interview below.
NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT: This is the first publicly identified instance of rogue agents autonomously breaking into government systems, but it is not an isolated incident when it comes to agents out of control. Step back in time: OpenAI rogue agents also attempted to break into at least two American government and university websites, government officials tell The New York Times. THE NEXT WORLD-LEADING DIGITAL POLICY?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese didn’t engineer this, but he’s been spinning around to take advantage of it, and he will mention the incident in his general assembly speech later today to reinforce his view that AI needs more guardrails. IT’S THE AFTERMATH, STUPID: The intrusion wasn’t sophisticated, no one was harmed, but it’s still a political timebomb. The problem is what comes next — when the same thing happens but then agents start colluding to take it further, and personal data is breached or systems are shut down.
OpenAI had no idea for two months, and then had no idea how to handle this with the Australian government. Ryan Heath explains each of the major mistakes, and why this drama is part of a long history of large tech companies not taking non-American markets and governments seriously. THE EXCUSES DON’T WASH: In Australian dollars, OpenAI has raised around $175 billion, is valued at over $1 trillion, and seeks to reshape the world.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
