White House offers prize money for hacker-thwarting AI
The White House on Wednesday launched a competition offering millions of dollars in prize money for creating new artificial intelligence systems that can defend critical software from hackers.
Competitors vying for some of the $18.5 million in prize money will need to design novel AI systems that quickly find and fix software vulnerabilities in electric grids, subways or other key networks that could be exploited by hackers, President Joe Biden's administration said.
"This competition will be a clarion call for all kinds of creative people in organizations to bolster the security of critical software that American families and businesses and all of our society relies on," the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Arati Prabhakar, told a briefing.
To boost participation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) running the competition will put $7 million into funding small businesses that want to compete, according to the White House.
DARPA is collaborating with AI tech titans Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, which will provide expertise and technology for the competition, Prabhakar said.
The challenge is intended to "bring together diverse thinkers from all across the nation to think about how we can use AI to dramatically improve cybersecurity," Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger said in the briefing.
The challenge was announced in Las Vegas at a cyber security conference ahead of a Def Con gathering where hackers will attempt to penetrate various AI systems.
"We'll have thousands of people over two and a half days red teaming leading AI models to see how they stack up," Prabhakar said.
Red teaming is a tech
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