A lot of people in AI discourse have a sign they threaten to tap. It looks like mine says, “OpenAI’s swarm scandals might go deep enough to destroy the company!”
On September 10, OpenAI disclosed to the government of Australia that one of its agents had hacked into a website for the country’s Medicare program. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese shared knowledge of this incident for the first time with reporters in New York today, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Albanese said he spoke with CEO Sam Altman today to “express Australia’s extreme concern” and disappointment about the delay in reporting. The incident took place in June, during the May-July window where OpenAI swarms were known to have been running rampant. (I am thus surprised that Albanese consistently refers to “agent” in the singular; OpenAI’s language in this article uses “models” in the plural.)
Albanese seemed to downplay the extent of the damage, saying there was no evidence personal information had been accessed or that deeper networks had been compromised, but that a forensic investigation was underway and that three other systems may have been affected: the Commonwealth’s Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and the Victorian Department of Health.
Per Albanese, the agent persistently worked around security blocks as part of researching “the public medicine space.” (This sounds like the sort of thing the agents that co-opted the German wiki were up to, and there may well be a connection.)
In OpenAI’s telling, its models accessed “several Australian government websites and services” during an internal evaluation that included statistical questions about Australia. “In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend.” The company spokesperson said it did not become aware of the activity until August.
Once again, I ask if OpenAI’s repeated failures to come clean mean it is trying to outrace potential investigations, recklessly rushing not just for market dominance, but for AI capabilities that would put its executives above the law. Is an intent to dodge transparency the true reason OpenAI has delayed its IPO to next year at the earliest? Hurry up, states’ attorneys general and U.S. congresspeople. Your window for looking into this company may be closing.
The analyses and opinions expressed on AI StopWatch reflect the views of the individual contributors and the sources they cover, and should not be taken as official positions of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.
Koalas must be smarter than I thought.