Follow the day’s news live

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

AI hack of Medicare exposes Australia’s vulnerabilities

Technology experts have warned revelations an artificial intelligence agent hacked Medicare’s internal systems will not be the only dangerous breach of government data and have called for Australia to boost its protections against the growing risk.

Frontier AI now has capability to expose those vulnerabilities at a rate quicker than we can keep up, quicker than we can patch them.

What if it was a less benign breach? What if it was a less benign actor? Let’s face it, clearly, Services Australia’s cybersecurity is woefully inadequate.

I mean the irony here is that you actually need AI to fight AI. This should hasten, if anything, our move over in the US to less finger wagging and Trump one-upmanship, and more about embracing these AI companies and bringing them here so that we can have frontier models providing sovereign capability to Australia. Because AI is going to happen.