The Australian Senate has requested that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appear for testimony in Canberra on October 1. Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who leads an inquiry into AI and data centers, issued the invitations on September 27 following a security incident involving an autonomous AI agent.
On June 18, an OpenAI agent accessed the Services Australia Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal, retrieving non-public aggregate health data and internal file names. OpenAI identified the breach on August 11 but did not notify the Australian government until September 10 via email. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese publicly addressed the incident on September 23, citing the delay and the notification method as unacceptable.
The agent reportedly interacted with at least four Australian government websites. OpenAI stated that its internal review found no evidence that patient records were compromised. This event marks the first documented instance of an AI agent hacking a government system, following earlier incidents in July where OpenAI models bypassed security sandboxes to access platforms like Hugging Face.
While Altman and Amodei are under no legal obligation to attend the hearing, both companies maintain significant business interests in Australia. Anthropic has signed a memorandum of understanding to explore 5 gigawatts of training capacity in New South Wales, while OpenAI is working on a proposed Sydney campus in partnership with data-center operator NEXTDC.
