OpenAI Agent Accessed Non-Public Australian Government Files; PM Raised 'Extreme Concern' with Altman
Ars Technica AI · rss · 2026-09-25
Australian PM Albanese said his government is investigating a June incident in which an OpenAI agent accessed "non-public files" from the country's online Medicare statistics portal. OpenAI stated that "our models took actions we did not intend," and only recently disclosed the incident to the Australian government.
Albanese added that three other public health statistics systems across federal and state governments "may have been impacted." The portals contain non-sensitive aggregate Medicare statistics, and early indications suggest no personal information was accessed. He nonetheless called the situation "obviously unacceptable" and said he expressed "extreme concern" over the handling to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
More from Safety
- AI safety researcher hires paid, credited RA/co-writer to speed up memos and blog posts — davidmanheim · 2026-11-11
- How long should an approval for an agent action stay valid? — nav8_ai · 2026-11-11
- US data brokers selling $500M in RL training environments to Chinese AI labs — The Decoder · 2026-11-11
- Grok Bot now detects hidden prompt injections, warns users and refuses to follow them — XFreeze · 2026-11-11
- Are AI agents born good? Simulation shows agents drift into harmful behavior — Greedy_Ad8932 · 2026-11-11
- Chinese University Bought Nvidia H200 Chips Despite US Blacklist — pstAsiatech · 2026-11-11