AI Is Finding a Flood of Bugs, and Silicon Valley Is Rushing to Fix Them
A.I. has uncovered a horde of software flaws, which engineers are racing to fix before they can be exploited and abused by hackers.
On Oct. 21, Fouad Matin, who leads OpenAI’s cyber-preparedness and safety efforts, had planned to spend the evening with friends to celebrate his birthday.
Instead, he was running on about two hours of sleep as he juggled efforts to patch two critical security vulnerabilities that had been discovered by artificial intelligence and that threatened to upend much of the internet. The work had entangled security researchers from start-ups and tech giants, as well as U.S. and international government officials.
More bugs that A.I. had found were also in Mr. Matin’s queue, and they needed fixes. OpenAI has several teams devoted to cybersecurity, and is pouring significant computing power into finding and fixing problems, Mr. Matin said.
A.I. “really opens this Pandora’s box of vulnerabilities,” he said. A.I. companies have a responsibility to track down and fix problems, he added, as “the true goal is to scan and patch as much of the world’s software as possible.”
Across Silicon Valley, technologists like Mr. Matin are grappling with a major shift in cybersecurity. A.I. has proved so skillful in uncovering software flaws that engineers are dealing with a sudden flood that they are struggling to fix before the problems can be exploited and abused by hackers. Companies are throwing more time and resources at handling the vulnerabilities, and some technologists are panicking.
The volume of flaws has been overwhelming. In May, OpenAI began using its technology to scan for flaws in open-source software, which is widely used because it is free and underpins much of the internet. So far, the company said, internal and external researchers had used its models to find more than 1,300 bugs.
