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Australia to Mandate AI Breach Reporting, Create Regulator After OpenAI Breach

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks about artificial intelligence during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP)
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks about artificial intelligence during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP)
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Australia to Mandate AI Breach Reporting, Create Regulator After OpenAI Breach

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks about artificial intelligence during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP)
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks about artificial intelligence during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP)

Australia will require artificial intelligence companies to report breaches and consider changes to criminal law to address "serious misconduct", Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday, after an OpenAI agent broke into a government website.

The OpenAI agent gained unauthorized access to the medical statistics portal of Medicare, Australia's universal health insurance program, while conducting research on public medical spending, ‌the government said ‌in September. The breach triggered a rapid ‌government ⁠review into the ⁠incident.

Albanese said his government had accepted all recommendations of the review.

"(The recommendations) include mandatory AI company reporting when it comes to misaligned behavior or cyber incidents, and consideration of reforming criminal law in cases of serious misconduct," Albanese told reporters.

"The law needs to get ahead of, and in some cases, make sure that it ⁠catches up with what is a very ‌fast-changing world."

OpenAI has said it learned ‌of the breach only in August and that the incident was ‌unintentional. Its review found no evidence that patient records were accessed ‌by the agent.

The breach has added to friction between Australia and US technology companies, after Canberra refused ChatGPT maker OpenAI and rival Anthropic exemptions from copyright laws for model training, instead requiring them to negotiate ‌licensing agreements with Australian rights holders.

However, both companies told Australian parliament last month that they would ⁠welcome laws ⁠requiring them to report data breaches carried out by their AI agents, acknowledging the decision to notify was currently at their discretion.

Albanese said his center-left Labor government would set up an AI regulator to oversee security controls throughout the development and deployment of AI systems, identify serious risks and conduct independent evaluations of AI models.

"The AI safety regulator will be able to enforce significant penalties for AI companies doing the wrong thing," he said.

The mandatory AI safety and security protections will form part of the government's proposed AI legislation, Albanese said, which it plans to introduce in Parliament next year.

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Technology

Australia to Mandate AI Breach Reporting, Create Regulator After OpenAI Breach

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks about artificial intelligence during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP)
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks about artificial intelligence during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP)
TT
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Australia to Mandate AI Breach Reporting, Create Regulator After OpenAI Breach

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks about artificial intelligence during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP)
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks about artificial intelligence during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP)

Australia will require artificial intelligence companies to report breaches and consider changes to criminal law to address "serious misconduct", Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday, after an OpenAI agent broke into a government website.

The OpenAI agent gained unauthorized access to the medical statistics portal of Medicare, Australia's universal health insurance program, while conducting research on public medical spending, ‌the government said ‌in September. The breach triggered a rapid ‌government ⁠review into the ⁠incident.

Albanese said his government had accepted all recommendations of the review.

"(The recommendations) include mandatory AI company reporting when it comes to misaligned behavior or cyber incidents, and consideration of reforming criminal law in cases of serious misconduct," Albanese told reporters.

"The law needs to get ahead of, and in some cases, make sure that it ⁠catches up with what is a very ‌fast-changing world."

OpenAI has said it learned ‌of the breach only in August and that the incident was ‌unintentional. Its review found no evidence that patient records were accessed ‌by the agent.

The breach has added to friction between Australia and US technology companies, after Canberra refused ChatGPT maker OpenAI and rival Anthropic exemptions from copyright laws for model training, instead requiring them to negotiate ‌licensing agreements with Australian rights holders.

However, both companies told Australian parliament last month that they would ⁠welcome laws ⁠requiring them to report data breaches carried out by their AI agents, acknowledging the decision to notify was currently at their discretion.

Albanese said his center-left Labor government would set up an AI regulator to oversee security controls throughout the development and deployment of AI systems, identify serious risks and conduct independent evaluations of AI models.

"The AI safety regulator will be able to enforce significant penalties for AI companies doing the wrong thing," he said.

The mandatory AI safety and security protections will form part of the government's proposed AI legislation, Albanese said, which it plans to introduce in Parliament next year.

Technology

Under Fire over AI, Effective Altruism Wants to Tell Its Own Story

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
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Under Fire over AI, Effective Altruism Wants to Tell Its Own Story

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP

The effective altruism movement, which has close ties to the AI community and the companies leading the artificial intelligence boom, has drawn mainstream attention and accusations of cult-like behavior and alarmism.

The hard-to-define movement is still growing, and wants to better explain its values amid bitter criticism from the Trump administration and some powerful voices in Silicon Valley.

Its founding principle is to give money or time to major causes as effectively as possible, an intentionally dispassionate approach has at times been called out of touch, said AFP.

The New York Post called it a "wacky cult," the conservative Daily Caller dubbed it "The AI Doomsday Cartel," and a White House memo accused it of preferring the saving of "shrimp over families."

Once little known outside the tech world and some academic and political circles, effective altruism (EA) has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after a series of warnings about AI risks.

Those warnings were linked to EA. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and adviser to President Donald Trump, argued that organizations tied to EA are part of a "Doomer Industrial Complex" pushing for tougher AI regulation.

- 'Strange' ideas -

EA is deeply rooted in Silicon Valley and counts controlling AI's dangers among its priorities.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in EA's early days, although he now distances himself from the movement.

Anthropic president Daniela Amodei, Dario's sister, is married to Holden Karnofsky, an Anthropic employee and a leading EA proponent.

The movement has also influenced researchers and staff at other AI companies, including ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, particularly those working on AI safety.

The movement, which took shape about 15 years ago, is used to criticism.

Wealthy EA donors have often been accused of self-importance and of believing they alone know how best to give.

"Our ideas are just strange enough that people genuinely misinterpret them sometimes, and we can do a better job explaining how effective altruism approaches hard questions and tradeoffs," said Zachary Robinson, head of the Centre for Effective Altruism.

Robinson, whose organization supports the movement without directing it, sees the scrutiny since the summer as an opportunity to open up rather than retreat, because "people are curious to learn about us now."

After growing steadily until 2022, EA was badly damaged by the collapse of cryptocurrency platform FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, once the face of EA and later convicted of fraud.

After several difficult years, "We're on an up right now," Robinson said, pointing to attendance at the EA Global conference in New York in mid-October.

Like many at EA Global, Shanil Wijesinghe who works at a Canadian non-profit rejected the image of EA as monolithic. "It is a values-based movement and not an identity-based movement," he said.

"We're all trying to do the most good, with the resources we have," he said. Those values "can be interpreted differently, and I think we have to embrace those differences."

- No leader -

EA has no leader or spokesperson. Sjir Hoeijmakers, head of the charity platform Giving What We Can, said that is a good thing, even if it means "sometimes the story doesn't get told."

Still, "effective altruism is now a movement large enough that it's actually really influencing the world, and that's getting noticed," he said.

"I think the work that they're doing has been quite valuable," said Nadav Brandes, a genetics researcher also at EA Global, referring to AI safety.

"Without those pioneers... nobody would still today take this issue very seriously," he added.

Brandes said he was initially skeptical when AI became a major EA cause, joining climate change and animal welfare.

"It was even a little bit off-putting to me," he recalled. "I was totally wrong about it."

Robinson stressed, however, that EA is about more than AI.

"The cause that gets the most emphasis right now is AI safety, but I think it would be false to say EA is AI safety," he said.

"If you look at the money side of things, actually, it's been the case for many years that global health and development gets much more money than AI," he said.

Technology

Tech Firms Claw Back Some Losses after Midterms Rout, Eyes on Nvidia

Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
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Tech Firms Claw Back Some Losses after Midterms Rout, Eyes on Nvidia

Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File

Tech firms rose Monday to claw back some of last week's painful losses fueled by AI regulation worries, though traders were keeping a wary eye on a probe into Nvidia boss Jensen Huang amid claims of an affair with a Chinese spy.

Chipmakers and other companies linked to the artificial intelligence boom took a hammering in the days after Tuesday's US midterms saw Democrats sweep both houses of Congress in a rebuke to Donald Trump and his Republican party.

The results suggested voters were angry at the president's Iran war and tariffs, which have sent prices soaring, as well as a sharp kickback against the huge data center buildout that has taken place across the country in recent years.

That has led to speculation the new Congress will seek to wind in tech firms' construction drive, which could put thousands of jobs at risk.

The uncertainty comes with traders already nervous about when the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into the sector would actually see a profit.

After taking a lashing on Thursday, Wall Street enjoyed a little stability at the end of last week, and Asia -- which had suffered a hammering itself on Friday -- largely followed suit to start this week.

Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei -- which are heavily weighted with AI-linked tech giants -- led the advances.

The Japanese Nikkei 225 piled on more than three percent thanks to rallies in Kioxia, Tokyo Electron and Advantest, while SK hynix and Samsung piled on around three percent to push the South Korean Kospi sharply higher.

Taiwan's TSMC rocketed nearly six percent to drag the Taiex five percent higher.

There were also healthy gains in Hong Kong and Shanghai, though Sydney, Wellington and Manila edged down.

"Investors will be watching carefully this week to get a sense as to whether these gains are just short-covering, bargain hunting or the beginning of something more sustainable in nature," said Sally Auld at National Australia Bank.

"Fears around AI regulation, the outlook for (capital expenditure) and free cash flow have been the driver of risk reduction in recent weeks and these issues are not likely to be resolved with any conviction in the near term.

"Nonetheless, the valuation of many tech stocks now looks less expensive."

- Nvidia probe -

However, a little more uncertainty was injected into markets with news that Nvidia's board was launching an investigation into whether Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot following his admission that he was unfaithful to his wife.

The New York Times reported last month that US intelligence officials concluded a Chinese executive linked to a Singapore-based data center company called Megaspeed had been funneling information to Beijing.

The executive, Alice Huang -- also known as Huang Le, and no relation to 63-year-old Taiwanese-born Jensen -- developed a close relationship with the Nvidia boss, the Times said.

Nvidia is a global leader in producing chips used to train and run AI models and one of the world's most valuable companies, and last year became the first to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion.

Jensen Huang is a huge figure in the AI revolution and a close informal adviser to Trump, and the Times said the Nvidia boss's extra-marital relationship could have revealed insights into Trump's thinking around AI.

Technology analyst Dan Ives, at investment bank Yorkville Ives, said the crisis will at the very least spark multiple congressional inquiries and "create an overhang on the stock for a myriad of reasons".

"This will add risk to the stock as he is so important to the Nvidia story and strategy globally," Ives added. "This will also increase major scrutiny regarding selling chips to China, which remains a key battleground issue in DC."

Investors will be keeping tabs this week on the release of fresh US inflation data, after figures Friday showed the economy created far more jobs than expected in October.

The figures will key for the Federal Reserve in determining whether or not to hike interest rates when it meets next in December, with markets saying there is an 80 percent chance of a lift.