Australian Pm Warns In Un Speech About The ‘furious Pace’ Of Ai After Security Breach

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese urged world leaders Thursday to erect more guardrails on artificial intelligence following a breach of a government services website in his country.

Albanese, speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, warned of the “furious pace” of development of the emerging technology as his country grapples with the first publicly known breach of government systems by AI models. He called the hack of a system that contains Australian Medicare data “unacceptable” as he urged world leaders to commit to stronger regulations.

“We can’t ignore AI or prevent it,” he said. “And it’s why we joined with other nations this week to call for action to shape artificial intelligence development, rather than be passively shaped by it.”

His address to the U.N. comes a day after the Australian leader told reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly about the breach by rogue OpenAI agents in June, which the company only discovered two months later.

The prime minister said he spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday to express his disappointment that the company took months to inform the government of the breach.

“AI can improve lives, boost growth and productivity, provide revolutionary breakthroughs in healthcare and other fields,” Albanese said. “But leaders of AI companies, themselves, have warned of the potential risk to allow frontier AI to develop too fast without guardrails.”

The technology emerged as a major theme at the general assembly, where leaders from America’s leading AI companies, including Altman, spoke about the risks of humans losing control over models and the importance of international cooperation on safety standards.