White House Seeks Cybersecurity Solution In An Unexpected Place

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Just this Monday the White House announced it was holding a contest in which artificial intelligence will be used to improve the security of government systems from cyberattacks. It is called the AI Security Challenge and will award $10 million to the teams that manage to develop AI solutions that detect and prevent malicious activities on federal networks.

The contest follows a series of high-profile hacks that targeted government agencies, critical infrastructure, and private sector organizations and is part of the government’s efforts to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity. A statement by the White House claims that AI has the potential to enhance government systems’ security by promoting the automation of tasks, data analysis, and anomaly identification.

According to Interesting Engineering, the contest is open to researchers, academics, industry experts, and students from the US and allied countries, is planned to run for two years and consists of three phases. Phase one will focus on developing AI models that can detect malicious activities on simulated federal networks, phase two will test the models on real-world data from federal agencies, and phase three will evaluate the models on live federal networks and measure their performance, scalability, and robustness.

The contest will open registration on August 16th, and the deadline for solutions submission for the first phase is November 15th. The winners of the contest are meant to be announced in 2025.

According to the White House, the aim of the contest is to foster innovation and collaboration in the artificial intelligence security field and create a community of experts that can help the government address its cybersecurity challenges. The White House also insisted that the contest will adhere to the principles of responsible and trustworthy artificial intelligence like fairness, privacy, accountability, and transparency.