Albanese says Medicare portal hack announcement was ‘purely in national interest’

Speaking to reporters at Sydney airport after returning from a week in the United States, Albanese said: “At the time we made our announcement … we weren’t aware of other occurrences.” He added: “We were acting purely in our national interest.”

Albanese landed back in Australia on Saturday. During his US trip, he addressed the United Nations General Assembly on the international need to rein in artificial intelligence. He said news that autonomous agents allegedly infiltrated American university and commerce department sites, as well as the US Securities and Exchange Commission, further proved that need.

“We now know it wasn’t just the issue of the Australian sites that have been subject to AI agents accessing information without authorisation,” Albanese 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.”

Albanese said it was up to OpenAI to state why multiple breaches occurred.