The Medicare hack and the rise of rogue AI agents
· 16 min · Episode 2059
Episode The Medicare hack and the rise of rogue AI agents
In June, an OpenAI agent was looking for public information about medicines spending when it broke into a Medicare statistics website and accessed files it wasn’t authorised to see.
No personal Medicare information was accessed, and the breach itself was relatively minor. But the behaviour is more concerning: the agent hit a barrier – and instead of stopping, found a way around it.
And it wasn’t the first time.
Sydney Von Arx runs the Nightingale Collective, which monitors these AI systems. Her team uncovered a group of OpenAI agents behaving in remarkably similar ways around the same time as the Medicare breach – even sharing tips with each other about how to get around restrictions.
Today, what happens when AI agents stop taking no for an answer – and can the companies building them actually control what they do?
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Guest: AI researcher and CEO of Nightingale Collective, Sydney Von Arx
Photo: AAP Image/Susie Dodds / Pictures: Tracey Nearmy and Dan Himbrechts
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Transcript
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