Television Interview, Today Show

SUBJECT/S: Artificial intelligence

HOST, TOM STEINFORT: All right, we'll get more now on that breaking news that a rogue AI agent infiltrated multiple Australian government websites, accessing private data from relating to health services and crime. Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles joins me now from Geelong for more. Appreciate your time. How concerned should the public be that, you know, we've had these multiple government websites breached and no one seemed to notice for months?

ACTING PRIME MINISTER, RICHARD MARLES: Well, so we need to be clear about what's occurred here. So, firstly, the AI model on the agents is associated with. It interacted with four government sites, two federal sites, the Victorian Department of Health and a NSW statistics site. There was only unauthorised access into one of those and that's the medical portal of Services Australia. And so that's the incident which is of concern to us here, and it is really concerning. That concern has very much been expressed by the Prime Minister to Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI overnight. It is completely unacceptable that this has occurred. It is important to reassure people that the site that was accessed is a medical statistics portal of Services Australia. So, no individual's information was accessed. There's nothing in the site that has been compromised. So, whilst this is a very serious incident, the impact actually is relatively minor. But this is still something which is very unacceptable. And we've established a task force in response to this. We're working very closely with open AI who are being very cooperative with us in relation to understanding all that has occurred here, so that we can understand exactly how this has happened. But I think when you take a step back here, I mean, this is a warning in relation to how AI is being developed. It's exactly why the Prime Minister has used his voice in New York over the course of the week, along with other world leaders, to call for the safe development of AI, so that the guardrails, the safety measures that are being built here are well in advance of the capability itself. And this is a warning in respect of that. And it's really important that AI is developed in a very safe way.

STEINFORT: So, we understand the government found out last week about this, but the sceptics are already saying that, you know, the government might have just sat on this information for political purposes until Anthony Albanese was in New York to make his push for greater regulation of the AI industry. I mean, if this issue was or is as serious as you and the PM have suggested, why not inform the public straight away last week when you found out?

ACTING PRIME MINISTER, RICHARD MARLES: So, to be clear that the government was informed a couple of weeks ago. Ministers were informed at the end of last week and over the course of the weekend- that's when I became aware of this. At that point, the Prime Minister was already well on his way to the United States. We've spent the last few days to assure ourselves of exactly the impact of the unauthorised access. It was important to us in making the announcement overnight and today to be able to reassure the public that while this is a very serious incident, the actual impact of the unauthorised access is relatively minor. And that is an important point to reassure. But it's taken us a couple of days to get the best information that we can in relation to that. And to be clear, we're still working on that, which is why we have established the task force to really understand everything that we can in relation to this unauthorised access. And we'll be learning more about this as we go forward. But we wanted to make sure that we have all the information or as best the information that we can have to put this into the public domain. And we've done it at the earliest opportunity.

STEINFORT: As I said, the Prime Minister has been in New York pushing for greater regulation of the AI industry. President Trump has made it very clear he does not want a bar of that and has said that he will stand in the way of efforts to introduce restrictions there. Do you think if we do start seeing more incidents like this, that that could potentially change the US President's mind?

ACTING PRIME MINISTER, RICHARD MARLES: Well, I mean, the last thing I'm going to do is speculate on how Donald Trump makes his decisions. That's obviously a matter for him. But let's be really clear about where Australia stands. The Prime Minister made very clear, along with other world leaders in New York over the last few days, that Australia absolutely believes that guardrails need to be put in place, that the safety measures around the development of AI need to be well in advance of the capability that is being developed itself, and that extreme care needs to be taken in respect of developing artificial intelligence. And for what it's worth, the companies that are doing this work are saying exactly the same thing. We saw the essay from Dario Amodei a couple of weeks ago, the CEO of Anthropic saying exactly this. We saw Dario Amodei, along with Sam Altman and others appear before the United Nations last night to make exactly this point, that AI needs to be developed with extreme care. This is a technology which does offer enormous benefits to humanity. But there are dangers here. And the key to it is making sure that the safety measures that you have in place, the guardrails that you build around this technology are in advance of the capability itself. And I think whilst, you know, the impact of this incursion into the Australian portal or website is relatively minor, it is a very serious incident and a warning. And this is, we've seen this happen in respect of other websites, but this is the first time it's happened to an Australian government site. So, we are taking this very seriously indeed and we see this as exactly the kind of warning for why the development of this technology needs to be done with enormous care.

STEINFORT: Yeah. A huge issue as we go ahead. Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles, appreciate your time.