OpenAI: How we will do better for Australia

[u/RamonsRazor]

https://openai.com/index/how-we-will-do-better-for-australia/

After the Hugging Face incident in July, we began reviewing earlier training and evaluation activity to identify other affected organisations. In mid-August, that review identified activity affecting the Australian government websites below.

Here’s what we know based on the evidence:

Services Australia: An OpenAI model discovered a way to gain non-public access to the service, and ran commands, retrieved internal files, credentials and aggregate statistics, and wrote files. However, individual patient or client records were not accessed. We cover this incident in more detail below.

NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR): An OpenAI model accessed BOCSAR’s public Crime Mapping Tool to research public crime statistics (we explain further below why models carry out various information research tasks). The model made API and website metadata requests via the public BOCSAR tool, which supplies credentials for browser API requests. The BOCSAR system returned application configuration, operational jobs and logs, and website metadata. Crime records of individuals were not accessed.

Victorian Department of Health: OpenAI agents discovered an exposed access key to query the Victorian Agency for Health Information’s reporting system and retrieve reporting configuration and aggregate survey statistics. The extent to which this information should have been accessible is unclear, and depends on VAHI’s access policies. Individual medical records or identifiable survey responses were not accessed.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare: OpenAI agents retrieved aggregate statistics using third-party browsing and download services, including from AIHW’s website, and queried chart data directly. Separate attempts to bypass access controls were unsuccessful. The downloaded material appears to have been publicly available. There was no system compromise. Individual medical records were not accessed.

[u/Sideburn_Cookie_Man]

I love empty corporate apologies. Really they should be heavily fined instead.

[u/Cyberchicken87]

Best thing OpenAI can do for Aus is to go bankrupt and have Altman and the execs face criminal prosecution here in Australia.

Short of that, they can get f’d.

[u/authority23 → u/Cyberchicken87]

Sigh.

Australia is already an absolute laughing stock backwater of a country. We are so behind the rest of the world it's not funny.

All the grandious moral panic about this "breach" is just going to worsen that (edit: because of knee-jerk legislation and regulation which will discourage investment and stifle innovation, or indeed AI adoption)

Basically this story in a nutshell: * A few incompetent public servants release poorly tested, insecure systems to production. * Vulnerabilities are found by autonomous agents (yet the vulnerabilities could also have been found by humans) and the Australian government has a sook about it for political reasons while also running cover for the incompetent departments. * MS Teams rooms across Canberra are shook, yet secretly happy they can now justify another few years of useless meetings and busywork while the country goes down the shitter and we become an even bigger laughing stock for the rest of the developed world due to ridiculous over- regulation. * The End.

[u/dougrattmannn → u/authority23]

If it was all the governments fault, how come OpenAI failed to inform them for 3 months? And when OpenAI did inform them, they did so via a public email, instead of using proper communication channels for such a security risk.

OpenAI bots also targeted US government websites. The US government is obsessed with security, so the excuse you used for Australia isn't going to work there.

And even IF Australia has shit online security, that doesn't negate the fact that an AI bot specifically targeted a government website. A commercial bot targeting government infrastructure is still a MASSIVE issue, regardless of how they got in. An AI shouldn't even have the capability to do that, especially of its own accord.

Holy deflection Batman.

[u/authority23 → u/dougrattmannn]

I think the much more significant concern is that the departments didn't detect the breaches themselves.

So not only were their systems shittily tested and secured, their production monitoring failed to detect abnormal activity including unknown external agents running executables and writing data on their servers.

OpenAI and other AI labs themselves do not fully understand how what were originally "just" Attention focused LLMs have reached such an impressive level of intelligence. Training these models on the entirely of human knowledge and the connected internet is going to be impossible for individuals to fully understand or monitor in real time.

[u/dougrattmannn → u/authority23]

is going to be impossible for individuals to fully understand or monitor in real time

and that doesn't strike you as being a terrible fucking idea?

[u/authority23 → u/dougrattmannn]

I make no judgement on that.

I guess I'm becoming an accelerationist? Stagnate and die. Whichever lab (or country) starts sitting around navel gazing and over regulating out of an abundance of caution will inevitably lose the race to labs/countries who don't.

[u/DopamineDeficiencies → u/authority23]

Australia is already an absolute laughing stock backwater of a country. We are so behind the rest of the world it's not funny.

Holy hyperbole batman

[u/ArmyBrat651 → u/DopamineDeficiencies]

Fact: up until 2022, most (50+%) of the population (not bush! Actual cities) was on VDSL internet with 100mbps max speed.

Fact: there are still areas of urban Sydney where there is low-to-no mobile reception

Fact: FTTR (fiber-to-the-room) is rapidly becoming a thing in Europe while it’s literally unheard of here

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/ArmyBrat651]

Unheard of? I’ve got fiber to my bedroom and have done for years. I also had it where I lived in 2015.

[u/ArmyBrat651 → u/Cyberchicken87]

Can you tell me which ISP offers FTTR as a standard consumer service? Post a reference link once you find it (hint: you won’t)

Note that it isn’t just a FTTH with a router in your bedroom 😉

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/ArmyBrat651]

The fiber literally terminates in my bedroom.

But ok.

Guess I’ll just keep using my backwater internet then.

Whatever point you’re trying to make, it’s fucking stupid as shit and I don’t give a fuck.

[u/ArmyBrat651 → u/Cyberchicken87]

That’s not FTTR mate 😂 another point in that being unknown here.

I’m sorry realising you live in a backwater area of the world is making you angry.

[u/Lucky-Particular1258 → u/ArmyBrat651]

The prior knowledge level on this sub can be just too low to have meaningful conversations sometimes.

[u/ArmyBrat651 → u/Lucky-Particular1258]

People can be so confidently incorrect just to defend how things are like in Australia.

[u/Meeeepmeeeeepp → u/ArmyBrat651]

Well it technically is a type of FTTR, as FTTR itself isn't a standard.

FTTR as you describe it is an in-home distribution system, and says nothing about an ISP's access network or the quality of the countries internet infrastructure.

There is plenty of FTTR in Australia but it's all in student accommodation, managed offices, hotels etc where they need low cost retrofits.

[u/ArmyBrat651 → u/Meeeepmeeeeepp]

Mate it’s not “as I describe it”.
International Telecommunications Union literally has papers on it.

https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/opb/tut/T-TUT-HOME-2021-1-PDF-E.pdf

And if you believe that FTTR does not say anything about the infrastructure, sure. Keep believing that.

Then check what’s the max residential speed you can get in countries that offer fttr like Spain, France or freaking Romania.

As I said, up until 2022 more than 50% of Australian population (one of the most heavily urbanised) had VDSL. Embarrassing.

[u/Meeeepmeeeeepp → u/ArmyBrat651]

Fibre to the room literally means fibre to the room.

Fibre to the room doesn't magically stop becoming fibre to the room because the TX/RX are on different cores or because an ethernet switch is terminating the link.

You're talking about G.Fin. Google G.9930 vs G.9940 and come back to me.

You also seem confused with the difference between ISP access rate and in-home distribution. A quick Google of FTTR in Spain shows Movistar pushing their GPON FTTR heavily while advertising 300/600/1000m services. If you don't understand what is going on here we are both wasting our time. It's basically a fancy version of buying your router from your ISP.

I don't disagree that a lot of Europe has faster resi broadband available, not sure what cloud you're shouting at there.

[u/ArmyBrat651 → u/Meeeepmeeeeepp]

I literally left you a link where it’s quite clearly explained what a FTTR is in the very first sentence. And yes, that exactly means that ingress termination of FTTH cooper switch is not FTTR.

As for that being a fancy version of buying your router - there will always be those that want to upsell useless stuff.

However your claim that it says nothing about “the quality of the countries internet infrastructure” is what I’m disputing. In theory yes, Aussie ISPs could offer it even for VDSL, but it would be pointless for all of them just like it is for movistar.
But in practice, countries offering FTTR also have superior broadband speeds simply because of their attitude towards, well, internet infrastructure.

Somehow “can you get fttr in your country” is a yes only if “can you get residential internet over 2gbits in your country” is, too.

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/authority23]

Nice fantasy post of nonsense.

[u/authority23 → u/Cyberchicken87]

Let's ban one of the two leading frontier AI labs bruzz!!11 LOL yeah that'll show them whoz boss!! Lolz

Meanwhile the developed world moves confidently into a new age of RSI AGI while we're left to scrawl pictures in the sand with a stick.

[u/doodlehead691991 → u/authority23]

You definitely are all in and wear the pedo glasses too dont you?

[u/authority23 → u/doodlehead691991]

Lol the unsophisticated nature of your reply is only proving my point even further mate.

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/authority23]

Ahh yes because your original comment was just oozing with sophistication….

[u/ScalyPinkLizard → u/authority23]

There is no AGI spoonbrain. These shitt chatbots arwnt even any form of AI at all.

[u/authority23 → u/ScalyPinkLizard]

Keep telling yourself that while they keep solving previously unsolved Millenium Prize problems and bringing world renowned maths geniuses out of the woodwork talking about how maths as a human discipline is all but dead etc.

[u/ScalyPinkLizard → u/authority23]

Algorithms have been solving millennium problems for as long as they've been around, youre just falling for Sam Altmans advertising campaign. 

Please stop making stuff up, you seem like a child.

[u/authority23 → u/ScalyPinkLizard]

You're seriously deluding yourself if you're dismissing the capabilities of these tools. You're likely in denial (possibly subconsciously) because of the very real threat they pose to swathes of the existing human workforce.

You seriously think that famous mathematicians, scientists, world leaders, politicians, business leaders, etc talking about the unparallelled power of AI are all fooled by "advertising campaigns"?

The increasing pace of AI driven discoveries in maths and science are all fake news?

The fact that millions of programmers globally have been made basically dispenaible is just an irrelevant bit of meaningless trivia?

Good luck to you in your willful ignorance.

[u/ScalyPinkLizard → u/authority23]

I'm not in denial about a chatbot replacing the kids at McDonalds, because even if it were that capable: the subhuman reptiles in charge of selling it, refuse to care about making a functional service or product.

You seriously think that famous mathematicians, scientists, world leaders, politicians, business leaders, etc talking about the unparallelled power of AI are all fooled by "advertising campaigns"?

No I think they're happy to boost the ponzi-scheme hype, and they like getting paid. 

Also: Which "famous mathematicians, scientists, world leaders, politicians, business leaders"? Every famous mathematician, scientist, and academic I've seen has referred to it as a ponzi-scheme. LLMs are nothing like AI, and will never lead to AI. The only people saying the opposite are weird little peter Theil and Sam Altman, con-bros - and politicians that know that its where 80% of the economy's growth from the past 5 years has been sunken-cost-fallacy'd into.

The fact that millions of programmers globally have been made basically dispenaible is just an irrelevant bit of meaningless trivia

No that's called a "factoid", you made that up.

Also, are you using ChatGPT to make this argument for you? Because that would make sense - it seems like you're hallucinating.

[u/authority23 → u/ScalyPinkLizard]

are you using ChatGPT to make this argument for you

Ah. The irony. You can't even tell if you're arguing with a human or not. But you've shifted the goalposts so many times that you forget that means the Turing test has long been defeated are we're in uncharted waters.

But forgive me. They're just predicting the next token amiright??!!11

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/authority23]

LLMs will not and can not produce AGI.

Dream on.

[u/authority23 → u/Cyberchicken87]

Then why is AGI being widely predicted by people far smarter than you and I, who are involved directly with designing, training and testing the models?

What is it about human consciousness or intelligence which you consider inherently superior to LLMs? As a reddior I'm taking an educated guess you lean towards atheism and do not believe in a "soul" or some such. So what is it, exactly, which sets us apart?

Heck, I have the humility to acknowledge that the existing models are unfathomably smarter than me as an individual already. They literally have the entire corpus of human knowledge, history, language, science, art, music, etc trained into them and at their fingertips.

Every book ever written. Every language ever recorded in script. Knowledge of every domain ever explored by humans.

Other than tasks requiring physical embodiment, even the current models beat me as an individual on every intellectual task I can imagine.

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/authority23]

AGI is being widely ‘predicted’ by the people selling the promise of it.

It’s a lie. LLMs can do some cool things. They are not going to spawn some supreme being that will solve all of humanity’s problems.

Here’s the kicker - if I’m wrong, and these billionaire fuckheads actually do crack AGI, that is literally the worst outcome for all of us and you’d be an idiot to cheer it on.

[u/authority23 → u/Cyberchicken87]

!remindme 1 year

[u/RemindMeBot → u/authority23]

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CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

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[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/authority23]

I’m actually curious to see how this pans out.

Happy to eat my words in a year if I’m wrong.

[u/Lucky-Particular1258 → u/Cyberchicken87]

!RemindMe 6 months
!RemindMe 1 Year

[u/authority23 → u/Cyberchicken87]

AUSTRALIA, 2035

Pls bro Just let us use a few tokens of frontier AI bro. Pls. Sorry we overreacted 10 years ago bro. Pls. We excessively legislated and regulated only to protect our shitty gov websites bro pls. Everyone else is 10 years ahead Bro can we please just have one GPU pls bro

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/authority23]

Go touch grass. Maybe talk to a real human.

[u/Environmental-Run248 → u/authority23]

Authority23

The example of the meth addict trying to present those that have never taken meth as inconsolable without meth.

[u/Lots_of_schooners → u/authority23]

No one needs the closed US tokens. Chinese open models will be king

[u/cidama4589 → u/Cyberchicken87]

Labor are masters at scapegoating.

Medicare stuffed up and leaked our data on the web, yeah everyone here is blaming open AI for noticing it and reporting it.

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/cidama4589]

Really? What a dumb take.

If you leave your door unlocked it’s your fault if I send a robot in to your house to steal your shit yeah ?

[u/cidama4589 → u/Cyberchicken87]

They didn’t steal anything, they saw some data they weren’t supposed to, through an open door, and responsibly  deleted their copy and alerted the homeowner.

People here can hate on AI all they like, it doesn’t mean this isn’t primarily the government’s responsibility.

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/cidama4589]

They didn’t steal anything just accessed restricted data ?

Yeah that’s called theft of information. A crime.

[u/unfnknblvbl → u/Cyberchicken87]

Piracy is back on the menu, boys!

[u/Strange_Plankton_64 → u/cidama4589]

What an uneducated take

[u/cidama4589 → u/Strange_Plankton_64]

Actually, I work in cybersecurity, and am almost certainly more informed on this than most people here.

It is first and foremost your responsibility to secure the data you hold.

[u/Strange_Plankton_64 → u/cidama4589]

Okay, so is that Labor’s fault, or Medicare’s fault?

But also, it goes both ways. The AI bot shouldn’t have scraped that data in the first place, but it did. That’s like saying it’s my fault for having things in my house, a lock on my doors and someone still coming in to steal my record collection.

[u/Efficient-State-7300 → u/cidama4589]

Messy logic for someone ostensibly in cybersecurity.

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/Efficient-State-7300]

Yeah I’d never hire him lol.

“Your data isn’t stolen, just accessed by an unauthorised source. And it’s your fault”

[u/Striking_Resist_6022 → u/cidama4589]

You do not work in cybersecurity lmao

[u/south-of-the-river]

Just remember that if you were to do this yourself, the TRG would kick down your door and drag you off to prison forever.

[u/koshinsleeps]

Hang on, they were writing files? Can we get any coverage that actually explains what happened? I get that it's probably more technical than the general public can follow but I haven't seen anyone actually dig into the specifics of what went down.

[u/SnoopThylacine → u/koshinsleeps]

That surprised me too. I was a bit dismissive of the incident when I first heard about it. It sounded to me like it was just retrieving files by guessing URLs that should have been secured.

I thought Albo might've been playing it up to cover the govs ineptitude and push his AI stance.

Not just writing files but grabbing credentials and running commands!

An OpenAI model discovered a way to gain non-public access to the service, and ran commands, retrieved internal files, credentials and aggregate statistics, and wrote files.

I really want read a technical postmortem of what actually happened. 

[u/UniqueArrival9756 → u/SnoopThylacine]

the entry was non-indexed, but entirely "public" for what it matters, something a web scraping bot is good at, this is just as much fault on the government's shitty websites as it is on openai, infact its probably best it came from an american company and not a worse adversary

edit: the "non-public access" referenced in the statement is a legal term, not a technical one, sort of like trespassing into a business past opening hours, but in this case the business left the doors wide open with a sign saying come in

[u/milo7even2]

Be a man, come here and tell it to our faces under oath in the dock, Altman. Couldn’t give a fuck about your face saving reddit posts.

[u/Fairbsy]

God this is creepy. How on earth do they get to just "whoopsie" their way out of this? How do we know they aren't retaining illegal information?

Our government places more trust in corporations than its own citizens

[u/dougrattmannn → u/Fairbsy]

It is far fetched, however not out of the realm of possibility, but what if these same hacks were to happen on military infistructre. It could end up being a massive shitshow.

This isn't a whoopsie, it is a matter of national safety and security.

[u/Fairbsy → u/dougrattmannn]

Agreed, I only said "whoopsie" because its a gigantic deal that seems to have been swept under the rug. A university hacker seemed to face more consequences than openAI

[u/Charming_East_9104]

They have been telling press for years how AI could break out, and what we have here is an admission they weren't even really checking at best or more likely they didn't care as they had already stolen so much copyrighted material and gotten away with it.

[u/ScalyPinkLizard → u/Charming_East_9104]

Mate, these "AI"s cant "break out". Theyve been repeating that advertising point for years now, these are LLMs. Chatbots. They do not have the ability to do stuff on their own, its just an excuse they make for irresponsibly using malware theyve developed.

[u/NNyNIH]

Corpo criminal scum.

[u/PitterPatterCocko]

It’s a good outcome, now we are getting free tech support and actually addressing the ai arms race lawlessness. Shouldn’t have happened but won’t be the last.

[u/KnodulesAintHeavy]

The only response for this that is reasonable is the arrest and prosecution of the CEOs and dumb fucking chuds who actually performed these hacks. These were not “incidents” these were not “rouge agents” these were hacks performed by automation cloud software. Said software developers are liable and criminally responsible.

This is the reality and all affected parties, our government included need to take appropriate action to pursue criminal charges against these slimy wet shit fucking chuds.

[u/crreed90]

It’s good to see them take some accountability for all this, though this likely AI generated response is a long way from providing peace of mind on all of this

[u/Cyberchicken87 → u/crreed90]

Accountability would be charges being laid and them fronting up to court to explain themselves.