October 5, 2026, 8:27 pm ETA.I. Hacking in Australia raises concern: can the law keep up? Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia at the UN General Assembly in New York last month. He has called for international standards to govern AI. Credit…Lexi Parra/The New York TimesIf human hackers had infiltrated an Australian government healthcare portal, bypassing defenses to access non-public information, they would have faced up to two years in prison. But who gets locked up if the intrusion was the work of an AI model acting without the permission of its human operators? legal responsibility. The hack, the first known case of a government website anywhere in the world being breached by AI, has raised questions about whether laws in Australia or anywhere else are prepared for the challenges posed by rapidly evolving technology. “It’s an incident that is likely to become increasingly frequent in the future,” Andrew Charlton, Australia’s assistant minister for science, technology and the digital economy, said in an interview Friday with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Because an AI agent is not a legal entity, “liability must be traced back to the intent of a person or company that created or directed the agent,” Charlton said. The June 18 breach, made public on Wednesday, was particularly disturbing because it involved Medicare, Australia’s universal health insurance system, which has data on almost the entire population. Australian officials and OpenAI said no sensitive patient information had been exposed, only aggregated data typically used by researchers or academics. The Australian government announced an investigation into the rape and could refer the case to federal police. Officials said they would also need to review laws to determine whether new regulation might be necessary to address a threat that will most likely increase in severity as AI models become increasingly powerfulNYT: September 18, 2026.Show more
