Deloitte must refund Australian government for errors in AI reporting

Sydney [Australia], October 9: Deloitte, one of the world's largest auditing firms, will have to refund part of its contract money to the Australian government after errors were discovered in its reporting, allegedly due to the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
On October 7, the Australian Department of Employment and Industrial Relations said Deloitte had admitted errors in writing notes and citing references, and agreed to refund the final payment in the contract worth 440,000 AUD (more than 7.6 billion VND).
The Australian Department of Employment and Industrial Relations has hired Deloitte to conduct a review of how information technology systems are used to automate penalties in the country's welfare program, AP reported. The 237-page report was first published on the department's website in July.
Dr. Chris Rudge, a researcher on health and welfare law at the University of Sydney (Australia), later discovered 20 unusual errors in the report. Mr. Rudge said the first error in the report that made him suspicious was the citation of a book by Professor Lisa Burton Crawford, a public and constitutional law expert at the University of Sydney. The title of the book was outside Ms. Crawford's area of ​​expertise, making Mr. Rudge realize that this bogus book was the product of AI hallucination.
In addition, Dr. Rudge said, some research works by his colleagues were cited to increase the credibility of the report without actually reading them. Notably, the report also fabricated a judgment of a judge from a federal court, which Mr. Rudge said was a particularly serious error.
In the revised version published on October 3, Deloitte removed more than a dozen documents, annotated errors, rewrote the bibliography, and corrected several typos, according to the AFR . The report also mentioned the use of Azure OpenAI GPT-4o, a language model licensed by the Australian Department of Employment and Industrial Relations, in the process.
Australian Greens Senator Barbara Pocock has demanded a full refund from Deloitte, saying the firm had "misused AI". The case raises concerns about the accuracy of AI tools in the auditing and financial advisory sectors.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper