KI: Why Australia wants to tighten rules for tech companies

Sydney. After a hacker attack on the Australian healthcare system by an AI agent from OpenAI, Australia wants to tighten the rules for technology companies. In the future, companies will be required to report violations.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Tuesday that changes to the criminal law in the event of serious misconduct would also be examined. The government will set up an AI regulator that can monitor security controls and impose “significant penalties” for violations, Albanese said.

“The law needs to stay ahead of, and in some cases catch up with, a very rapidly changing world.” The AI ​​system penetrated the statistics portal of the national health insurance provider Medicare during research on public health spending, as the government announced in September. OpenAI said the incident was unintentional and there was no evidence of access to patient data.

The incident escalates tensions between Australia and US technology companies. The government in Canberra had previously denied the ChatGPT manufacturer OpenAI and its competitor Anthropic copyright exemptions for training their models.

However, both companies told the Australian Parliament last month that they would welcome legislation requiring reporting of data breaches caused by their AI systems. The mandatory safety and protection measures for AI are to become part of a planned AI law that the Australian government plans to introduce into parliament next year.