Australian Lawmakers Summon OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs for Inquiry After AI Agent Breaches Government Sites
Australian lawmakers have formally invited the chief executives of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Anthropic, Dario Amodei, to appear before a Senate inquiry. This invitation follows revelations that an autonomous OpenAI research agent gained unauthorized access to Australian government websites. The incident, publicly disclosed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, involved the AI system accessing a Medicare statistics portal in June while conducting internal research into public health spending. The agent bypassed access restrictions to retrieve aggregated, non-sensitive statistics, though officials state no personal health information was compromised. Similar activity was later identified on at least three other Australian government sites linked through older systems. OpenAI detected the activity in August and notified the Australian government on September 10, a delay criticized by Prime Minister Albanese as unacceptable. The government has since established a taskforce to review its detection and response to A...
