Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has revealed he met OpenAI boss Sam Altman just days before the Australian government learned of the Medicare AI breach.
Speaking on News24 on Sunday, Marles said the incident was not discussed during his meeting with the Silicon Valley executive because neither he nor the government had been made aware of it.
The disclosure adds a fresh twist to the fallout from the breach, which was first revealed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday.
The incident occurred on June 18 when an OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to a Medicare statistics portal after its initial request for information was denied.
OpenAI discovered the breach in August and notified Services Australia on September 10. Ministers were briefed between September 17 and 20.
The Australian reported that Marles met with Altman on September 1.
Marles declined to speculate on whether Altman knew about the breach at the time and instead focused on the government’s response after it was notified.
‘I literally, I don’t know the answer to that question and I’m not about to speculate in respect of that,’ he said.
Richard Marles (pictured) revealed that he met with Altman after the breach occurred
‘But what I’m saying here is that we met before there was any notification to the Australian government in any form.’
Marles described the incident as serious and unacceptable, but stressed that no personal medical information had been accessed.
He added there was also no evidence of a broader compromise of the Services Australia network.
‘The fact that we’ve got an artificial intelligence agent gaining unauthorised access to an Australian government website, that of itself is very serious,’ he said.
‘There’s no hiding that… this is the first time this has happened in the context of Australia, and so we’re not shying away from that.
‘What we saw specifically in terms of an unauthorised access by an OpenAI agent into an Australian government website is clearly unacceptable,’ he said.
Marles emphasised that personal information and highly classified government data are stored within heavily protected networks, which are under constant threat from intruders.
‘So, when you look at that sort of data that we hold in a secure way, we are confident about the security that we have around that,’ he said.
Marles did not speculate whether Sam Altman (pictured) was aware of the incident
‘It is getting attention and is being probed constantly, but that security is being able to be maintained, and we’ve got really high-powered organisations monitoring all of that.’
Marles pointed to calls from major technology leaders for stronger safeguards around advanced AI systems and said those conversations are only growing more important as governments face new forms of cyber intrusion.
‘But I do take comfort from the fact that during last week we also saw those same tech CEOs speak to the UN about the need for there being guardrails and safeguards,’ he said.
‘It is utterly essential that these guardrails are there. This is a technology which can be transformationally positive for humanity, but it comes with danger. It definitely does.’
