White House Launches AI-based Contest for Cybersecurity

The AI-based contest will offer nearly US$20 million in prizes and includes collab from leading AI companies

The White House on Wednesday said it had launched a multimillion-dollar AI-based contest to spur the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to boost cybersecurity in the U.S. government infrastructure due to hackers' growing use of the technology for malicious purposes.

"Cybersecurity is a race between offense and defense," said Anne Neuberger, the U.S. government's deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology.

A qualifying event will be held in the spring, where up to 20 top-scoring teams will be chosen to advance to the semifinal competition at DEF CON 2024, a cybersecurity conference. Up to five teams will win US$2 million each and advance to the final at DEF CON 2025. The top three teams will be eligible for additional prizes, including a top prize of US$4 million for the team that "best secures vital software," according to a press release.

Competitors will be asked to open-source their systems so that their solutions can be used widely. The Linux Foundation's Open-Source Security Foundation also advises on the challenge.

DARPA will host an open competition in which the competitor that best secures vital software will win millions of dollars in prizes. AI companies will make their cutting-edge technology—some of the most powerful AI systems in the world—available for competitors to use in designing new cybersecurity solutions. To ensure broad participation and a level playing field for AIxCC, DARPA will also make available US$7 million to small businesses that want to compete.

The government said that Alphabet's Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI – the U.S. technology firms at the forefront of the AI revolution – will make their systems available for the challenge.

The contest signals official attempts to tackle an emerging threat that experts still try to grasp fully. In the past year, U.S. firms have launched a range of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, that allow users to create convincing videos, images, texts, and computer code. Chinese companies have launched similar models to catch up.