Squiz Shortcuts: What’s an AI agent?

We’ve been hearing a lot about artificial intelligence over the past few weeks, including multiple incidents where OpenAI agents took it upon themselves to access restricted parts of government websites. One of those was our Medicare system here in Australia, and being the first known case of an AI system infiltrating a government website in the world, it got a lot of attention and raised a heap of questions. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll take a look at what an AI agent is, how they work, and what might happen next.

Squiz Recommends:

Watching: This Wall Street Journal video which explains how artificial-intelligence models are trained before they can hack into other organisations, with some helpful graphics that explain concepts like the sandbox - (the training ground for AI agents) and compares the training exercises to a digital game of capture the flag.

Reading: This piece in The Guardian that looks at who is legally responsible when AI agents go rogue and the intersection between the law and ethics. Spoiler alert: the experts say it’s a murky area.

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Hosted by Andrew Williams and Anna Pykett

Researched by Anna Pykett

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