White House launches AI contest to secure government systems

"Cybersecurity is a race between offense and defense," said Anne Neuberger, the US government's deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology. "We know malicious actors are already using AI to accelerate identifying vulnerabilities or build malicious software," she added in a statement to Reuters. He said his agency had seen AI being used for everything from creating phishing emails and writing malicious computer code to spreading disinformation. "Our goal with the DARPA AI challenge is to catalyze a larger community of cyber defenders who use the participating AI models to race faster – using generative AI to bolster our cyber defenses," Neuberger said. The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a US group of experts trying to improve open source software security, will be in charge of ensuring the "winning software code is put to use right away," the US government said.