Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has wrapped up his US tour telling a mostly empty United Nations General Assembly about the OpenAI intrusion of a government website and dismissed concerns about his plan to restrict algorithms.

He spoke to the UNGA just after 7.30pm local time on Thursday night for about half-an-hour.

Before addressing the chamber, which was about a third full, he continued his selfie diplomacy, this time snapping a picture with the centre-right Greek Prime Minister Kyrios Mytsotakis which he published on his social media channels.

Mr Albanese’s speech to the UN did not contain any new proposals for foreign policy, but stated Australia’s case for a non-permanent seat on the United Nation’s Security Council (UNSC).

He has nominated the need to curb artificial intelligence as a priority for Australia’s bid to sit on the UNSC in 2029 and 2030.

He said that the emerging technology was evolving at a “furious pace,” and said the “breakdown of trust, civility and social cohesion” was promoting conflict within and between countries.

“More recently, our Government has announced a Digital Duty of Care. Its purpose is to deliver control back into the hands of people by empowering them to determining what appears in their feed. Giving them the choice,” he told UNGA.

“The technological development that must now be the subject of public discussion is artificial intelligence. AI can improve lives, boost growth and productivity, and provide revolutionary breakthroughs in healthcare and other fields.

“But leaders of AI companies themselves have warned of the potential risks of allowing frontier AI to develop too fast without guardrails.

“Recently an Artificial Intelligence Agent infiltrated an Australian Government website.

“This is unacceptable. And it is why Australia has been leading the way in establishing Australian Standards for AI. Standards to ensure AI will work and deliver for people – not the other way around.

“We can’t ignore AI or prevent it. And it’s why we joined with other nations this week to call for action to shape AI development rather than be passively shaped by it.”

The United States and China are racing to dominate the technology which the industry says needs slowing, because it is escaping human control. But Donald Trump has defied calls made by the industry and leaders of middle powers, saying he wants the US to win the AI race.

The US President hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping on a State visit at the the White House in Washington DC, as Mr Albanese spent his final day in New Work.

Mr Xi told his hosts that AI should remain under human control.

Speaking earlier to former prime minister Kevin Rudd at the Asia Society think tank which Dr Rudd leads, Mr Albanese said he hoped that the meeting between the pair went well.

He said it was not just the views of the superpowers that should be heard but those of smaller countries as well.

Explaining Australia’s approach towards China to the attendees, Mr Albanese reprised his line that the strategy with the PRC was to “cooperate where we can and disagree where we must”.

He told Dr Rudd, who is a China scholar and turned his Doctorate of Philosophy completed at Oxford University into a book on Xi Jinping’s world view, that China and Australia’s systems differed as China had a “state-run operation.”

Mr Albanese said the differences in government systems should not turn into conflict.

“Humanity needs to ensure we can have discourse and differences without it going into conflict.”

And he came the closest he ever has to conceding that AUKUS is directed at China, something he has previously refused to link, saying: “We’re upfront (with China) about what we’re doing with AUKUS.”

Censorship claims ‘scare campaign’

He revealed new details about when he first found out about OpenAI’s intrusion into the Government’s statistics website that contains data.

He said he first found out when he arrived in New York on Saturday night local time and Sunday Australian time, about the breach, which OpenAI reported to the Government on September 10.

The Opposition has questioned why it took 10 days for the Government to tell the public about the breach.

“The Government does have some questions to answer about when they knew, and what they did, and why the Prime Minister decided to disclose it in the way he did, in the place he did, at the time he did. But in terms of the nature of the potential or actual security breach here, this is at the bottom end of the spectrum of seriousness,” the opposition’s defence spokesman James Paterson said on the ABC.

“This might have been different had it been a People’s Republic of China based training model and not a US training model, because they did voluntarily disclose this to the Australian Government.”

Mr Albanese told his US audience that his plan to impose restrictions on the internet and social media platforms, was building on the social media ban for teenagers, which the government has cited as a mental health measure.

He told the audience that the “very powerful” Netflix drama Adolescence was an example of what could go wrong due to the harms of social media.

While the social media ban was first proposed by the Coalition under then leader Peter Dutton and therefore received bipartisan backing, Mr Albanese has found it harder to rally support for his plan to force social media to give users the option to switch off the algorithm.

He has used the breach, which OpenAI only alerted the government to via an email to the public email, to highlight the need to press ahead with his calls to regulate the internet, despite warnings from the Trump Administration that it would be viewed as “censorship.”

“It’s a bit of a wake-up call, frankly, about the risks that are there,” he said.

Of his critics, he said it was a “ridiculous scare campaign” and this his Digital Duty of Care proposal had “nothing to do with censorship”.

But speaking to the UN earlier this week, he said the bill was needed as speech on the internet was trending to the far left and far right.

“The truth is this is having an impact on our entire society and how it functions with misinformation, disinformation, with the increased polarisation that we’re seeing as well in the political system, where people are moving away from the centre and more and more to the extremes, be they of the left or the right,” he said.

“And that is why we think that this is a very positive move that’s being put forward.”

Mr Albanese heads home after his eight-days overseas which began with a visit to Silicon Valley to meet Apple Chairman Tim Cook at Apple HQ.

During his visit to New York he was lauded as a global citizen, a title he said he accepted with humility.