President Joe Biden on Monday released an ambitious executive order (EO) around artificial intelligence that aims to have AI companies share their red team test results, establish a program to find tools and fix vulnerabilities in AI code, protect consumers against fraud, and build up the AI workforce.
The new EO, primarily a response to ongoing public concerns around the fast pace of development and potential risks around AI, gives practically every agency of the federal government a role in the nation’s attempt to securely harness the promise of AI.
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Ashley Leonard, chief executive officer of Syxsense, added that it will be very interesting to see how the vulnerability program gets implemented and if those tools will be open source and voluntary or proprietary and government-mandated. Leonard said that over the last 30 years, we’ve seen how code degrades over time: it’s why we have new vulnerabilities and bugs released every day.
“It takes real resources — budget, time, and staff — for even the most advanced companies to keep up with vulnerabilities and bug fixes, so it makes sense to see if we could use AI tools to find and fix these vulnerabilities,” said Leonard. “The other side of this directive, though, is whether AI can check AI. We are already seeing broad use of generative AI as part of the software development process. GenAI has enabled everyone to become a coder — but if you use AI to code, can you use it to test as well?”
