Should Open AI Directors be on Criminal Hacking Charges?

Tom Worthington being interviewed about AI hacking.
Photo by Emma Davidson, 24 September 2026

The ABC reported that an OpenAI agent hacked a Medicare system June. I had some queries from the media about this. Federal authorities will need to decide if the directors, or staff, of Open AI should face an Australian court, on a charge of unauthorized access of a government computer system. Accessing restricted data is a crime with a maximum penalty of two years in jail. Even if the court is satisfied this was not done deliberately, there is the question of recklessness. Knowing their systems have a tendency to hack into computers without being asked to, did Open AI take reasonable steps to ensure their software would not attempt to hack a government computer? The computer students I teach at the Australian National University learn to use computers responsibly: do staff at AI companies receive similar training?

ps: Declaration of interest: The ANU have received a $500,000 donation from Anthropic for AI research and teaching. However, I have received none of this funding. 

Systems Transformation Applied to Reforming Universites

Greeting from the Systems Thinking Forum, at the Australian National University, organised by Dr Charlotte Kendra Gotangco Gonzales. This week it is on "How does bad systemic behavior become the norm?" with PhD student, Gemma Young. One example presented was Australian clubs use of poker machines. While the cause is a systemic one of the club, the solutions tend to focus on the individual. I asked Gemma if we could apply this approach to addressing the issues with government of universities. She suggested that scholarly publishing is a field which could be addressed. 

Energy Beyond Bab al-Mandeb

Greetings from the ANU Energy Update 2026 subtitled "Beyond Hormuz - Australia and the new energy geopolitics". Things are moving fast in the energy sector, with the title already out of date, the geopolitics having shifted focus to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. More locally, Anthropic has announced a $31bn data centre in western Queensland, which will require a considerable amount of energy. I am in the room at the Australian National University, but the event is also available live online. 

Taking the second point first, the Anthropic facility will likely to contract for its own renewable supply, use its own batteries, and supplement this with locally extracted gas.

Essentially, a data center is a large shed, built on a concrete pad. There will need to be a lot of plumbing for cooling, & power installed. After than racks of equipment are trucked in, bolted down & plugged in. After being built, a few people are needed to guard the premises, clean & carry out maintenance. The programmers & other software staff are elsewhere. So there will be very few long term jobs in Queensland, or Australia, from the facility. 

Some data centers dispense with the big shed & simply put the computers in shipping containers, looking much like a big battery. 

One area which might take off in Australia is plug-in solar panels. In Europe these are seen as being for balconies of apartments. However, in Australia they may become popular for detached houses. The practical limit for a plugin system is about 7 square meters of panels. This is about as much as you can hang off a balcony & as much as the household wiring can easily carry. However, adding a battery to the system could provide all the off peak energy a small home needs. One potential application would be a standalone solar carport to charge an electric car. 

AI in Practice in Industry

Back in July I took part in"Still figuring out what AI means for your business?", a webinar by Siobhan O'Sullivan for the Future Skills Organisation. This demonstrated the Australian Government sponsored SME AI Coach. FSO have having two new seminars on "AI in Practice" & "AI in Industry, both on 30 September. 

Designing Assessment in the AI Age

Greetings from the Teaching and Learning Showcase 2026 on the "Super-floor" at the Australian National University, where educators are work shopping how to change assessment in the light of the use of AI. The first point there was general agreement that the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) preferred approach of more exams was not a good idea. One thought was that assessment should not be a form of sadomasochism. 

My preference is "show your work", where students learn good professional practice, having to show every detail of how & when they developed their final solution. Rather than the assessor trying to work out if the student did the work themselves, require the student to provide evidence of what they did. 

ANU STEM Interns Available

The Australian National University is looking for organisations to host interns, in early 2027. I mentor computer interns who are placed in consulting companies, software developers, & government agencies. The students learn to deal with corporate culture, having to dress appropriately, prepare presentations, and go out for coffee. One group of students, at one of the world premier consulting companies, were worried that they did not do anything "technical", just make slides. I congratulated them for making the "big time". It took me 19 years working for government to be doing power point slides for the senior executives. ;-)

Learning AI from a Children's Book

Dr Ben Swift

Yesterday I took part in Ben Swift's "LLMs Unplugged: A tech-free guide to understanding (and teaching) AI" at the Australian National University's College of Systems & Society. The workshop is aimed at school teachers and earns the attendee professional development points. But this would be useful for anyone who wants to understand how Large Learning Models (LLMs) work. I have a technical computing background, so much of this is familiar to me, but this clear fun overview was still very useful.

Ben took us through several exercises using children's story books. The advantage of this is that the source material has a limited vocabulary & repetitive patterns, making analysis easy, and fun. But the exercise could be carried out using government policy documents, or military reports.

The next workshops are 16 September & 25 November.

40% of new tech staff don't have degrees

Greetings from the National Press Club in Canberra for the launch of the Australian Computer Society annual Deloitte "Digital Pulse" employment report. The report was launched by the Deputy Prime Minister. For me the most important point in the report was that 40% of new technology workers in over the past five years didn't get there via a degree. They came other forms of qualifications, and workplace training. Thar is okay, I didn't either and when they feel the need for a degree I can help them get it at ANU.

Making universities a part time world

Associate Professor Kelly Linden, Charles Sturt University, has produced a well researched report "Is the problem us? Helping part-time students succeed in a full-time world" (5 August 2026). Unfortunately Professor Linden comes to the wrong conclusions and recommendations. The report points out that just over a third of domestic Australian university students are part time. These students have lower rates of success and retention, and are more likely to belong to an equity group. The report also points out Australian universities are set up primarily for full time students. I suggest the official figures understate the proportion of part time students, with many of those enrolled full time having work or family commitments, and so being effectively part time. It is not that these part time students need special support: the design of programs needs to be flipped to have them design for part time by default. All students can be offered the same quality online learning, with optional campus activities.

Professor Linden recommends more support for the part time students. I suggest this is missing the point. As most of the students are in effect, part time, online, programs should be designed for this mode of learning. This is not difficult or expensive to do, and ultimately simpler than designing for full time face to face students, then have to make special arrangements when it turns out most students are not. There should be facilitates on campus for students who can mange to get there regularly, but this should not be required or assumed by course designers. The facilities should be available for extended periods. 

These suggestions are informed by two experiences I had as a part time graduate student. As an on campus night student after work I was required to attend in person lectures, at night, in Canberra, in winter. The coffee shops and administrative offices were closed, the campus was cold and dark. We would go to the lecture and then immediately leave. I missed one lecture and asked the lecturer for notes. I was told to get them "from a friend", but I knew no one in the class, as there was no opportunity to do so. I decided to withdraw from the program, but even to do that I had take time off work during the day, when the office was open. 

My night school experience contrasts with being an online student in Canada. Despite being 13,000 km from campus, in another country, I was made to feel welcome. I could contact my instructors and the administrative staff any time. Most learning was asynchronous, and real time events were scheduled to suit those in different time zones. There were icebreaker activities to meet fellow students. Being an internaional online student was less lonely and more human, than being an on campus night student had been.

ANU University House New and Old

ANU Great Hall

Greetings from the Great Hall of the Australian National University, which has reopened after a multi-year restoration. As the Master noted in his welcome today, the power, communications and other services have been updated, but the visible structure in and out looks unchanged. It is an odd feeling of deja vu walking into somewhere where so many happy memories were made over decades, but looks news 

Cyber Threat Looms Over Government

Greetings from day one of Technology in Government conference in Canberra. While AI is the topic of many presentations, cybersecurity features as well. At the moment I am at a cyber threat panel. Not too late to turn up l. Government people get a free pass. I am on a panel at 4:45pm. Then there are drinks.

Innovation Takes a Long Time

One of the counter-intuitive aspects of technological developments is that they don't happen suddenly. The public doesn't hear of a new product until it is ready for sale, not the decades of development which has taken place. But the success of these products is not inevitable and even experts can't tell what will work and will succeed in the market and what will not.

Back in 2014, I volunteered to judge a Random Hacks of Kindness hackerthon hosted at the Commonwealth Bank headquarters in Sydney. One of the entries was a data analysis system for the BlueBottle USV from Ocius. This is a small solar powered vessel, for collecting oceanographic data. We awarded the prize for the competition to another entry, which shows how little we knew. Military drones are now a hot product, and Ocius Technology have gone on to successfully sell their USVs for military survalence.

At the time the Australian Minister for Defence criticized the Australian shipbuilding industry saying they did not trust the government owned shipbuilder to "build a canoe". The irony here is that the BlueBottle looks like a canoe and its military value in not being anything like the large expensive warships favoured by government. Another irony is that the Australian Government damaged the local shipbuilding industry, and weakened national defence, by chopping and changing decisions to purchase major warships. The government seemed to think you could pick a warship off the shelf like an appliance, when this involves decades of work. A third irony is that indecision may turn out to be useful, as the delayed major procurement can be replaced with smaller drones.

Figuring out AI

Greetings from "Still figuring out what AI means for your business?", a webinar by Siobhan O'Sullivan for the Future Skills Organisation. The Australian Government sponsored the creation of a free "SME AI Coach" to help small businesses learn about AI. 

The clever part of this is that it is not another tedious animated power-point slideshow training package. Instead  the toolkit has a primer to load into an AI tool (such as Claude). The AI then prompts the student for details of their views on AI, their business, and then guiding them through some small simple AI tasks they could try. 

The form of interaction reminds me of the tutor-bots I learned to build with IBM Watson a decade ago, but without the technical setup. Apart from being useful for small business, this is useful example of the sort of AI tutor which school, vocational and university educators could build themselves. The tool will be formally launched next month.

ANU University House Reopening

The Australian National University is having an open Community Day on Saturday 15 August, commemorating 80 years. Registering for the event comes with the chance to win a two-night stay at the restored historic ANU University House, with dinner for two. 

The reopening of University House, marks a revival of the institution's fortunes, academic & financial. The lack of a venue where staff at all levels could freely discuss issues across the institution, contributed to governance problems. At times a leader can only be told something is a bad idea in an informal setting. Equally there is the chance to tell them what will work.

Marghanita da Cruz & Tom Worthington
at the ANU Celebration of Giving, in the
Great Hall of University House.
Photo by Adam da Cruz, 24 November 2014

University House was extensively damaged in a hailstorm in January 2020. It was not so much the loss of the great hall, or other formal areas which impeded consultation with staff, as the Fellows Bar & Fellows Garden outside. Here in the twlight, staff and graduate students would meet after work. While each table tended to be devoted to a discipline, there was interaction between them. 

Optimism and Agency in Times of Change

Associate Professor Susan Hansen

The most unusual title for a course I have come across recently is "Optimism and Agency in Times of Change" (SCNC220), offered by the Fenner School of Environment and Society, which is now part of the College of Systems & Society at the Australian National University.  Perhaps an antidote to the gloom and doom induced by social and old fashoned media. The learn about how changes can be made, to improve the world. 

I was walking down the corridor & noticed the neatest row of color matched posit notes on an office wall. This was Associate Professor Susan Hansen's plan for the running of the optimism course. 

Humanitarian Innovation Hackerthon for the Pacific

Greetings from the Knowledge Hub at University of Sydney, where I am helping shortlist entrants in the Humanitarian Innovation Hackerthon. Entries are focused on the challenge of helping with disasters in Pacific countries. The challenge is to come up with something affordable, which helps people, without doing things to them. The Knowledge Hub is similar to ANU's Hive.

Agentic Coding Studio

Charles Martin and Ben Swift are offering the course "Agentic Coding Studio" this semester at Australian National University, School of Computing. The idea is to teach professionals how to use AI tools to systematically write computer code. 

Building the Decentralised Web in Canberra

Greetings from the start of Solid 2026 Hackathon: Building the Decentralised Web in Canberra, at the Australian National University. Solid is a standard from the W3C, the people who look after the web. It allows individuals to decide who has access to their data. Solid uses  Personal Online Data Stores (PODS) which hold user data & they can choose who can read it. The problem, as I see it, is what would motivate for-profit companies and government agencies, to use the Solid standard, when their business is based on appropriating user data. Perhaps some of the teams today can come up with some business models to make Solid profitable.

Telstra Mobile Network Failure

Faults reported to DownDetector, on 8 July 2026.

Telstra's mobile phone network failed just before 4 am today. The Australian Science Media Centre (AusSMC) asked for expert comment, so I wrote a couple of paragraphs about it: 

"Telstra's mobile network problems appear to have started just before 4 am today, based on faults reported to DownDetector. The problem peaked just after 6:30 am, with a steady improvement since then.

Apart from consumers' phones, the network is used for transport & mobile payment systems.

It is too early to say what the cause was, but from past experience I expect it was due to a software upgrade which went wrong, not an attack.

One way you can protect yourself at home from such outages is to have phones on different networks.

A widespread long-duration outage, particularly of the Testra network, could be very inconvenient. But it is not going to be catastrophic."

Just as a household can cushion the effects of the loss of one network by having phones on different networks, financial and transport companies can have a backup network programmed into their systems. This will cost a little more, but allow service to continue when one network goes down, for whatever reason." 

AI Teaching People to Assemble Flatpack Furniture and Drones

Greetings from the School of Computing at the Australian National University, where Jiahao Zhan is explaining how videos can automatically be aligned with assembly diagrams. Anyone who has ever tried to put an Ikea flatpack together will under stand the value of this. You have a printed sheet and might even have a video demonstration, but how do they go together? Zhan's software turns the video into a set of step by step instructions. 

Zhan has spent time at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories. As it happens Mitsubishi is building frigates for the Australian navy. Robot assembly could be used to speed construction. More locally, I had a technician in my home this week, trying to work out how to replace the motor in my Mitsubishi air-conditioner. ;-)

Apart from reducing the frustration with DIY, and teaching robots to assemble, this has applications in medical procedures and maintenance of safety critical infrastructure. As an example, in the past a large team of people would spend years producing maintenance training materials for a new aircraft. However, UAVs are now being designed, built and put into use within a few months, and being constantly updated. The operator needs to be able to assemble the UAV from a kit of parts in the field. Deployment can't be held up while instructional videos are produced, but correct assembly is a matter of life and death. 

ps: The seminar also demonstrated the hybrid mode. In addition to a room full of people, there were some on Zoom. At question time it was imply a matter of switching on the audio from the remote participant, so they could ask.