Google, OpenAI collab with Biden administration for cybersecurity challenge

SAN FRANCISCO: The administration of US President Joe Biden is collaborating with four leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies -- Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic -- to launch a new cybersecurity challenge aimed at protecting the country's critical infrastructure.

The "AI Cyber Challenge", announced at the Black Hat US conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, is meant to pair experts with AI models produced by these four companies to develop systems to identify and fix software vulnerabilities, reports The Verge.

The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will be hosting the challenge, which includes a $20 million prize pool for the best systems that could be used to protect government infrastructure ranging from transportation to electrical grids.

“In an increasingly interconnected world, software undergirds everything from public utilities to our financial systems,” Perri Adams, DARPA program manager, was quoted as saying.

“Cyber defenders are tasked with protecting a daunting maze of technology, and today, they don’t have the tools capable of security at this scale,” it added.

Moreover, the report said that the teams are expected to compete in a qualifying event next spring, with the winners going on to compete in a semifinal event at next year's Def Con (a hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas).

The top five teams will compete in the finals, which will take place at Def Con 2025.

Prize winners will then be asked to open source their systems so they “can be used by everyone from volunteer, open-source developers to commercial industry,” Adams said.

Last month, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic came together to form a new industry body designed to ensure the "safe and responsible development" of "frontier AI" models.

In response to growing calls for regulatory oversight, these tech firms announced the formation of "Frontier Model Forum" which will draw on the technical and operational expertise of its member companies to benefit the entire AI ecosystem and develop a public library of solutions to support industry best practices and standards.