US Defense Agency Announces Major AI Challenge

Uploaded on 2023-08-21 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Artificial Intelligence, FREE TO VIEW

The Biden-Harris Administration has launched a major two-year competition that will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to protect the United States’ most important software, such as code that helps run the internet and our critical infrastructure.

And now the US government research and development organisation, Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), is calling on top computer scientists, AI experts, software developers, and others to join in the AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC).

AIxCC is a 2-year Contest

The two-year competition will be held in stages, with the final being held in Las Vegas in August 2025. The competition focused on automatically finding and fixing vulnerabilities to secure the nation’s most critical software and the overall winner of the contest is set to receive $6 million.

“AIxCC represents a first-of-its-kind collaboration between top AI companies, led by DARPA, to create AI-driven systems to help address one of society’s greatest challenges, cyber security,” said Perri Adams, DARPA’s AIxCC program manager... In the past decade, we've seen the development of promising new AI-enabled capabilities. When used responsibly, we see significant potential for this technology to be applied to key cybersecurity issues. By automatically defending critical software at scale, we can have the greatest impact for cyber security across the country, and the world.”

This competition brings together leading AI companies Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic Google that will work with DARPA to make their cutting-edge technology and expertise available to challenge competitors. The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) will also serve as a challenge advisor to guide teams in creating AI systems capable of addressing vital cybersecurity issues, such as the security of our critical infrastructure and software supply chains.

Teams will participate in a qualifying event during the semifinal phase, where the top scoring teams (up to 20) will be invited to participate in the semifinal competition. Of these, the top scoring teams (up to five) will receive monetary prizes and continue to the final phase and competition. The top three scoring competitors in the final competition will receive additional monetary prizes.

AIxCC will allow two tracks for participation:

The Funded Track: Will select and fund up to 7 small businesses that submit proposals to a Small Business Innovation Research solicitation.

The Open Track: Welcomes anyone who meets eligibility requirements to register via the competition website. These teams will be self-funded.

Registration for each track will open separately in the coming weeks. In addition to this contest, the Biden-Harris Administration is currently developing an executive order and will pursue bipartisan legislation to help America lead the way in responsible AI innovation.

The White House: Oodaloop: DARPA: LinkedIn: Tech Monitor: PR Newswire: Infosecurity Magazine

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