Pierluigi Paganini
August 10, 2023
On Wednesday, the United States Government House introduced an Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge competition. The two-year competition aims to foster the development of innovative AI systems that can protect critical applications from cyber threats.
The White House offers $18.5 million to create new AI systems that can be used to protect critical infrastructure such as electric grids, hospitals, and transportation systems. The US government is asking white hat hackers to develop a novel solution to identify and quickly address vulnerabilities in critical software that can be exploited by threat actors.
The launch of the competition was announced Wednesday at the cybersecurity conference Black Hat in Las Vegas.
“[The competition] is a clarion call for all kinds of creative people and organizations to bolster the security of critical software that American families and businesses and all of our society relies on.” explained Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spokesperson said that the AI systems will be released to the public to increase the resilience of critical infrastructure to cyber attacks.
The DARPA also announced that it has allocated an additional $7 million into funding small businesses that want to compete. DARPA aims at creating an ecosystem that will allow small businesses to grow with the support of AI tech giants such as Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
AI systems can help increase the defense capacity of our infrastructures, above all, they will be the only solutions that will be able to counter criminal actions and attacks by nation-state actors that will employ AI-based systems.
Recently US President Bined urged tech giants to to “guide responsible innovation,” clearly the AI plays a crucial role in the future of our society.
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