How can artificial intelligence (AI) tech work to identify and fix software vulnerabilities in critical systems? The White House and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are offering up $18 million of good reasons to find out through their “AI Cyber Challenge” (AIxCC) announced today, and that will play out over the next two years and award seven-figure prizes to the winners. Rob McHenry, DARPA’s deputy director, said the goal of the effort is to “create this kind of new ecosystem with a diverse set of creative cyber competitors, empowered by the country’s top AI firms, all pointed at new ways to secure the software infrastructure that underlies our society.” Techies competing for prizes will have some serious help – AI tech creators Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are lending their expertise and making their cutting-edge technology available for the challenge.