☕️ AI agent hacks Medicare

To everyone except Victorians, who aren't reading this email because they have a public holiday today.

Consider this their out-of-office!

The quote: “It’s led me back to a stage at home in the most iconic venue for the biggest game on the Australian calendar. There’s just so much about this moment that is hard to fully grasp, so I'm filled with awe.”
Kylie Minogue, addressing media ahead of her AFL Grand Final performance at the MCG on Saturday.

The stat: $8 million. The amount of money an employee at the National Gallery of Victoria is alleged to have stolen to spend on phones, which they went on to sell for personal profit. The now-former employee faces court next month.

The big question:

Together with AAP.

Half of 18 to 29-year-olds are still living at home, according to the latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey.

Each year since 2001, researchers have surveyed the same group of 17,000 Australians (and the new additions to their households) about their finances, family and social life, and physical and mental health.

The latest analysis looks at 2024 results. This edition includes the group’s feelings towards social media for the first time.

👶 Childless couples who earned similar incomes felt the happiest

💑 Relationship quality peaks at age 22 for women and 30 for men, before another peak later in life (70+)

💼 Half of workers were overeducated, holding qualifications higher than their job requirements

📱 Younger people felt they had significantly higher levels of “problematic” social media use

🏡 Half of 18 to 29 year-olds are living at home, compared to 39% in 2001. Men were more likely than women to live with parents.

🧠 Mental health has deteriorated since the 2010s, but has slightly improved from pandemic levels

🏚️ Housing stress reached a record high, with more respondents than ever allocating more than 30% of household income to costs including mortgages, rent, insurance, and repairs

Reporting by Emily Donohoe.

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On Thursday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that an AI agent from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, went rogue and hacked Medicare in June.

Albanese informed media of the hack while in NYC for the UN General Assembly (UNGA), where he has been promoting Australia’s tech agenda.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has not publicly commented, but Albanese said he had spoken to him on the phone and expressed “Australia’s extreme concern about this incident.”

What’s an AI agent, and what has actually happened here?

AI agents are different from chatbots many people use.

Popular AI providers, like ChatGPT and Claude, offer both chatbot and agent-style systems.

A chatbot responds to a request or prompt (“How much is a flight to LA?”), while an agent is given a goal and can decide how to achieve it (“Book me the cheapest flight to LA”).

Organisations can give an agent access to tools, set boundaries and assign it tasks, then allow it to act autonomously.

That means an agent can make decisions and take actions without asking a human for permission at every step.

The problem is that an agent may interpret its goal differently from how a human intended it.

If a boundary isn’t clearly defined, the agent may try to work around it rather than simply stop.

That’s the core concern with increasingly autonomous AI systems: what happens when an agent is given a goal, but its instructions don’t account for every possible way it could try to achieve it?

With that context in mind, let’s answer the main questions about what happened earlier this year.

What happened?
Albanese said that back in June, an OpenAI agent gained “unauthorised access into the public-facing Medicare statistics reporting service portal”.

While the portal the agent accessed is public-facing, some of the info it saw was “non-public”.

Albanese said the agent had been tasked with searching the internet for information on how governments spend money on medicines.

He said that in the course of fulfilling this task, the agent met blocks stopping it from accessing data, but eventually “found a way around” them, and “didn’t accept no for an answer”.

This process led the agent to gain “unauthorised access into some other areas”.

Did it access my data?
The Government says there is no evidence that any personal information was accessed or that individuals were impacted.

Albanese said the information accessed by the AI agent was not “personal”, while Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles later said that “the system itself has not been in any way compromised”.

How do we know about this?
So far, the Government is our main source of information about the incident.

OpenAI has told other outlets it doesn’t believe any personal data was accessed.

How did the Government find out?
Albanese said OpenAI did not alert the Australian Government to the hack until 10 September, when the company emailed a public Services Australia inbox.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said Services Australia then took five days to refer the email to Australia’s cybersecurity agency, the Australian Signals Directorate, while it checked whether the message was a hoax.

Albanese said he told OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that notifying the Government this way was not acceptable.

The Government has announced it is setting up a task force to investigate the incident and review the security of its networks.

Marles said OpenAI had been “working with us very cooperatively” to understand what happened.

OpenAI told Reuters its “models took actions we did not intend.”

Listen to this morning’s episode of The Daily Aus podcast for more on what this actually means.

Reporting by Lucy Tassell.

Did you know an Australian student just invented a smart cane that helps blind people detect head-height obstacles?

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The 23-year-old fled Afghanistan in 2021 after the Taliban returned to power, having trained disguised as a man and faced attacks while cycling as a teenager. Hashimi, who now lives and trains in Italy, said the medal “can show a lot of resilience from Afghan women”. In a post to Instagram, Hashimi added: “This achievement is not only personal. I dedicate it to every woman and girl around the world who continues to pursue her dreams despite challenges and obstacles.”

Reporting by Lucy Tassell.

An Argentine soccer player has copped a massive driving ban.

Mauro Icardi won’t be allowed behind the wheel until 2099.

It comes after a video circulated on social media showing Icardi driving while his partner unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned far out the window. Authorities later found out he didn’t have a licence at the time.

Maybe the ban is for the best.

Reporting by Lucy Tassell.