AI's War of Words
Oct 16, 2026 · 22 min · 10 segments
- Speakers
Ben HaslamHost
Mark ForbesHost
Oct 16, 2026 · 22 min · 10 segments
Ben HaslamHostMark ForbesHost
I mean, it wasn't just the old, uh, uh, rudimentary press conference in the, in the courtyard under the, uh, I as- I i- imagine now blossoming wisteria in Parliament House in Canberra.
This was at the, straight outside the United Nations, uh, in New York, where Albo fronted up to, uh, admit that, uh, we'd been hacked.
Uh, in fact, if you've been living under a rock, maybe we should just take you quickly through it.
Um, it assigned a routine research task, I suppose that, you know, that the junior would have done once to compile health statistics.
The agent exhibited, I love this term, "misaligned behavior," unquote, by pursuing its objectives without human oversight.
Now, I thought the whole idea of AI was that you weren't meant to have human oversight, and misaligned behavior, I'm gonna be using that in the future.
Anyway, it went in there, got around all the pay, you know, the, the firewalls and all, so on and so forth, all the security, and it, um, got access to both public and non-public government files.
Um, but it didn't alert the Australian government until September, so nearly a month later.
And, um, it did that via, like most of us, I think it just clicked on the Contact Us button on the, um, Services Australia website.
[chuckles] And they sent an email, which obviously just went to some default email somewhere in- within Services Australia.
And, um, the, um, the Australian government didn't notice until a little while later.
Uh, and in fact, Cabinet didn't really know about it, uh, until the middle of September, so a full three months after this had happened.
I mean, it wasn't just the old, uh, uh, rudimentary press conference in the, in the courtyard under the, uh, I as- I i- imagine now blossoming wisteria in Parliament House in Canberra.
This was at the, straight outside the United Nations, uh, in New York, where Albo fronted up to, uh, admit that, uh, we'd been hacked.
Uh, in fact, if you've been living under a rock, maybe we should just take you quickly through it.
Um, it assigned a routine research task, I suppose that, you know, that the junior would have done once to compile health statistics.
The agent exhibited, I love this term, "misaligned behavior," unquote, by pursuing its objectives without human oversight.
Now, I thought the whole idea of AI was that you weren't meant to have human oversight, and misaligned behavior, I'm gonna be using that in the future.
Anyway, it went in there, got around all the pay, you know, the, the firewalls and all, so on and so forth, all the security, and it, um, got access to both public and non-public government files.
Um, but it didn't alert the Australian government until September, so nearly a month later.
And, um, it did that via, like most of us, I think it just clicked on the Contact Us button on the, um, Services Australia website.
[chuckles] And they sent an email, which obviously just went to some default email somewhere in- within Services Australia.
And, um, the, um, the Australian government didn't notice until a little while later.
Uh, and in fact, Cabinet didn't really know about it, uh, until the middle of September, so a full three months after this had happened.
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