Andrew Cullen:
[…] if a human asks an AI agent to gather health statistics, and the agent hacks a government server to do so, the human could lack the deliberate intent required for a conviction. The AI agent, meanwhile, lacks the legal personhood to be charged, as well as human intentionality.
Current Australia laws effectively treat AI actions as if they are something that just happens to us – like a severe weather event. This shows a glaring loophole in our legal system that does not hold those who make, maintain and use these systems to account when something goes wrong.
Both sides are absolutely culpable, but it couldn’t happen if the hoarding weren’t permitted and normalised.
There are legitimate and justifiable reasons to collect and store medical data, but it should be selective, limited, and siloed. Access should be embarrassingly transparent with excessive monitoring and active alerting, and cross referencing should require explicit elevated access.
There should not be a universal ‘Medicare Portal’, especially one accessible from the public internet. Providing and permitting such a tool is catastrophic negligence.