They called it "misaligned model activity", when perhaps it's better to just call it what it is - "hacking".

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The language around the hacking by an AI agent into an Australian Medicare data portal earlier this year is the clearest example yet of why Australia needs to get serious about its approach to appropriate safeguards for AI.

If alarm bells haven't been chiming loud enough to wake us all up, the chillingly bureaucratic and unapologetic statement regarding an email that landed in a mid-level public inbox at Services Australia two weeks ago should have them fairly clanging by now.

We now know that an OpenAI agent - that is a clever but fake thing engineered by clever but real people - gained unauthorised access to the Medicare statistics reporting service portal administered by Services Australia, all the way back on June 18.

According to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who revealed the breach to the public on Thursday, the AI agent accessed both public and non-public files, but it doesn't appear anyone's personal Medicare details were accessed.

Mr Albanese, currently in New York, also detailed the "frank" discussion he'd gone on to have with OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman, about the length of time it had taken to notify the Australian government, and the fact this had been done via a public inbox.

It's this last detail that would seem to indicate Australia's standing in the eyes of........

© Canberra Times