Albanese defends Medicare hack reveal as purely in national interest

Anthony Albanese has defended the timing of his revelation that OpenAI agents infiltrated Australia’s Medicare Statistics Reporting portal, telling reporters on the tarmac at Sydney airport that he was unaware of wider breaches when he made the announcement in New York on Thursday.

“At the time we made our announcement … we weren’t aware of other occurrences,” the prime minister said after landing back in Australia on Saturday following a week in the US that included his address to the United Nations General Assembly. “We were acting purely in our national interest.”

Since the revelation, autonomous AI agents have been reported to have infiltrated American university and commerce department sites as well as the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Albanese said this confirmed the need for both a national and an international response.

“We now know it wasn’t just the issue of the Australian sites that have been subject to AI agents accessing information without authorisation,” he said. “What this does is confirm that approach of making sure that it needs to be an appropriate national response, as well as an international response to make sure that humans are in charge of this new and emerging technology.”

He said it was up to OpenAI to state why multiple breaches had occurred. Opposition deputy leader Jane Hume told 2GB Sydney that the government had failed to detect the breach, saying it only learned of it because OpenAI disclosed it via a public email inbox (AAP).