The White House announced on Wednesday that it had started a multi-million dollar cyber competition to encourage the use of artificial intelligence to detect and fix security holes in the infrastructure of the United States government.
This is in response to hackers’ increasing use of technology for nefarious ends.
“Cybersecurity is a race between offense and defense,” Anne Neuberger, the U.S. government’s deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology said.
“We know malicious actors are already using AI to accelerate identifying vulnerabilities or build malicious software,” she added in a statement to Reuters.
Officials have issued warnings about upcoming dangers, particularly from foreign enemies, after numerous U.S. organisations, including healthcare organisations, manufacturing companies, and government institutions, have been targets of hacking attacks in recent years.
Neuberger’s remarks regarding AI are similar to those made last month by Samy Khoury, Canada’s cybersecurity head.
He claimed that his organisation had observed AI being used for anything from disinformation campaigns to building dangerous computer code and phishing emails.
The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. government agency in charge of developing technology for national security, will be in charge of the two-year competition, which will include incentives of about $20 million, according to the White House.
The U.S. government said the “winning software code is put to use right away,” under the direction of the Open Source Security Foundation, a U.S. organisation of specialists working to enhance open source software security.
