DARPA awards AI contracts
DARPA has awarded $7 million in AI contracts. (Image: DARPA)
The US has been working to out how to use and defend against AI with DARPA alone outlining in 2008 ‘AI Next’ programme with US$2 billion committed to advance the science of AI.
The US DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded millions-of-dollars in contracts to develop AI-enabled cyber reasoning systems that automatically find and fix software vulnerabilities at scale.
DARPA awarded seven companies contracts of $1 million each as part of the AI Cyber Challenge's ((AIxCC’s) Small Business Track through which DARPA intends to redefine software security by using a competition model to drive innovation among the security and AI communities.
AIxCC competitors will develop and test their solutions at DARPA's semi-final event at DEF CON 32 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
An independent judging panel of government subject matter experts from institutions such as the USAF Research Lab, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Research and Engineering and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health reviewed submissions.
Companies selected Shellphish Support Syndicate, Trail of Bits Inc, Zellic, Smart Information Flow Technologies (SIFT), Net Shield LLC, GrammaTech Inc and Panacea.
The US has increasingly turned its attention to AI in the face of the technology’s burgeoning potential and potential threat from adversaries.
In November last year, the DoD released its updated ‘2023 DOD Data, Analytics, and AI Adoption Strategy’ to address the substantial threats faced by US forces.
According to a statement accompanying the report: “The 2023 strategy orients the department’s data, analytics and AI adoption activities towards an ‘AI Hierarchy of Needs’, with quality data as its foundation, and a focus on speed, agility, learning and responsibility.”
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