As a part of an ongoing White House initiative to make software more secure, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to launch a two-year contest, the AI Cyber Challenge, that’ll task competitors with identifying and fixing software vulnerabilities using AI. In collaboration with AI startups Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as Microsoft and Google, the AI Cyber Challenge will have U.S.-based teams compete to best secure “vital software” — specifically critical infrastructure code — using AI. With the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Security Foundation (OSC) serving as a challenge advisor, $18.5 million in prizes will be awarded to the top contestants. DARPA says that it’ll also make available $1 million each to up to seven small businesses who wish to participate. “We want to create systems that can automatically defend any kind of software from attack,” DARPA program manager Perry Adams, who conceived of the AI Cyber Challenge, told reporters in a press briefing yesterday. “The recent gains in AI, when used responsibly, have remarkable potential for securing our code, I think.” Adams …

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