The Big Contract: Real Money, Questionable Methods
It all began when the Australian government hired Deloitte to produce a substantial report for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) – Australia’s Ministry of Labour – to investigate the automation of penalties in the country’s social assistance system. And with seriousness comes a hefty price tag: AUD 440,000 (that’s around €251,000 or about USD 270,000 at current rates). Not exactly pocket change, so you’d expect some good, old-fashioned, thorough human work, right?
Uh-oh: The AI-Generated House of Cards
Shortly after the report was published, trouble was spotted. A director from the Health Law Department at the University of Sydney started noticing bizarre anomalies while reading. Among them: invented references to publications that simply don’t exist, and quotes linked to the supposed research of a real-life professor that were, as Australian Financial Review reports, pure invention. Imagine being cited for a study you’ve never even thought of—surprise!
To put it bluntly, Deloitte apparently asked ChatGPT (or another AI tool) to handle much of the heavy lifting for this report—without checking what the AI spat out. A bit over the top for that size of invoice…
The Fallout: Fixes, Refunds, and Lingering Questions
When the scandal broke, Deloitte and the ministry scrambled to react. A revised version of the whopping 273-page report was released, to include, as they ingenuously put it, “a small number of corrections for references and footnotes.” The update even explicitly mentions the use of “a toolchain based on a generative language model (Azure OpenAI GPT-4o)” – transparency, if a bit late in the game.
The fabricated references and those completely invented quotes? Quietly scrubbed from the record. Deloitte announced it would reimburse the ‘final version’ of the contract, though they didn’t specify what portion that covers. The ministry, however, didn’t seem too rattled by the AI shenanigans. In their words:
“The content of the independent audit remains preserved.”
So, yes—the recommendations from the initial report are still in place, even if the evidence propping them up was, well, the product of an AI’s imagination. Anyone else feeling a bit queasy about robot ghosts in the bureaucracy?
Business as Usual?
Despite these questionable shortcuts and the resulting refund, the Ministry of Labour hasn’t abandoned the report’s findings. Its recommendations are still alive and kicking in Australia’s social assistance system, hallucinations and all. So, for now… move along, nothing to see here—unless you fancy spotting a few more imaginary footnotes.
