IT’S THE AFTERMATH, STUPID: The intrusion wasn’t sophisticated, no one was harmed, but it’s still a political timebomb. The problem is what comes next — when the same thing happens but then agents start colluding to take it further, and personal data is breached or systems are shut down.
Wow! OpenAI had no idea for two months, and then had no idea how to handle this with the Australian government. Ryan Heath explains each of the major mistakes, and why this drama is part of a long history of large tech companies not taking non-American markets and governments seriously.
THE EXCUSES DON’T WASH: In Australian dollars, OpenAI has raised around $175 billion, is valued at over $1 trillion, and seeks to reshape the world. If its agents can hack the Australian health system, Playbook would be shocked if its global workforce of highly qualified and highly remunerated humans could not find the mobile number of the Australian minister’s media team. They can literally get the office phone number in an online search.
Slow: How it takes three weeks to escalate a global-first government hack to OpenAI’s senior leadership and government relations teams is anyone’s guess.
Give me just a little more time: How one meets multiple Australian ministers in that period, but there’s no system to say something, is also a mystery.
THE BUSINESS MODEL IS A CHOICE: There is no resource problem at OpenAI or its competitors. They all have the resources to ensure effective human management of their products — choosing to allocate those resources elsewhere is exactly that: a choice.
