White House Announces Award for Artificial Intelligence to Combat Cyberattacks
Millions of dollars in prize money are up for grabs as the White House initiates a competition to develop innovative artificial intelligence systems capable of safeguarding vital software against cyberattacks.
President Joe Biden’s administration said contestants vying for $18.5 million in prize money must design new artificial intelligence systems that can quickly find and fix software vulnerabilities in power grids, subways or other critical networks that hackers can exploit.
“This competition is a clarion call to all kinds of creative people in organizations to strengthen the security of the critical software that American families and businesses and our entire society rely on,” the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Arati Prabhakar told a press conference.
To increase participation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which organizes the competition, is investing $7 million in funding for small businesses, according to the White House.
DARPA is partnering with AI technology titans Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which are providing expertise and technology to the competition, Prabhakar said.
The purpose of the challenge is to “bring together diverse thinkers from across the nation to think about how we can use artificial intelligence to dramatically improve cybersecurity,” Anne Neuberger, deputy adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said at a news conference.
The challenge was announced in Las Vegas at a cyber security conference before the Defcon meeting, where hackers try to penetrate various artificial intelligence systems.
“We have thousands of people over two and a half days running AI models to see how they stack up,” Prabhakar said.
Red teaming is a tech industry reference to testing systems by aggressively attacking them like hackers.
“In cyber security, there’s always a competition between offense and defense,” Neuberger said.
“We see the promise of artificial intelligence to enable defense to be one step ahead.”
Biden raised the “tremendous” risk and promise of artificial intelligence last month at a White House meeting with tech leaders, who pledged to protect against everything from cyberattacks to fraud as the industry transforms society.
Joined by top representatives from Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, Biden said the top companies are committed to “leading responsible innovation” as artificial intelligence penetrates ever deeper into personal and business life.
