The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, took advantage last night of the great media presence of speaking at the United Nations General Assembly to denounce the cyber attack that his country suffered at the hands of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent. The president called for international cooperation in the face of the new challenges that this technology brings, and said that the intrusion of an OpenAI AI agent into his country's health system illustrates the risks involved in facing the development of this technology “without safeguards.”
Australia thus becomes the first country to raise its voice against cyber attacks carried out by AI models, which matches the combative profile it is adopting against large technology companies. Last year Canberra implemented the strictest regulations in the world to date with social networks, which are completely prohibited for those under 16 years of age. It has also announced the implementation of strong controls on the platforms' algorithms, which will force Meta, Google, TikTok and the rest of the large technology companies to offer the option of turning off algorithmic content recommendations or, otherwise, they will face "large fines." Australia is also considering banning smart glasses, or pervert glasses, as Meta's AI lenses have come to be called, which has even just presented a model without an integrated camera to try to erase that reputation.
In his speech, Albanese placed AI alongside climate change and the deterioration of international rules among the great challenges facing the international community, and linked the current response to the creation of the United Nations after the Second World War as a mechanism to avoid a third conflict on a planetary scale. In his view, the new risks of AI do not make the UN structure, which has been in operation for more than 80 years, obsolete, but rather test its ability to adapt to the new reality.
As Albanese himself reported this Wednesday, an AI agent developed by OpenAI accessed a portal of the Australian public health system without authorization in June and obtained public and non-public files, an incident that the Australian Government learned about three months later and that is already under investigation. The Prime Minister expressed his “extreme concern” about the unauthorized access in a conversation with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, as well as his displeasure with the company for having taken three months to inform Australian authorities. The notice was made by sending an email to a generic Australian Public Services address.
In his speech to his counterparts at the UN General Assembly, Albanese highlighted the positive side of AI, such as its potential to “improve lives, boost growth and productivity” and generate scientific and medical advances, but also warned of the risks derived from allowing the most advanced systems to evolve without sufficient controls. “Company leaders themselves have warned of the potential risks of allowing AI to develop too quickly without safeguards,” he noted.
