The DEF CON security conference is set to become quite a battleground between generative artificial intelligence (AI) models and hackers. This year, the AI Village at DEF CON 31 will feature an independent assessment meant to evaluate the security of existing generative AI models. Some of the most prominent vendors in this arena, such as Anthropic, Google, Hugging Face, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI and Stability AI, will be participating in the evaluation aimed at finding previously unknown vulnerabilities.
This event has been initially pushed forward by the Biden-Harris administration’s Actions to Promote Responsible AI announcement. Calling for public assessments on existing generative AI systems, the evaluation at DEF CON is part of the White House’s efforts to strengthen the security of AI developments.
The assessment at AI Village will consist of attackers gaining points for achieving certain objectives that may lead to potentially harmful activities. Those with the highest number of points will win a high-end Nvidia GPU as a prize. The event will also be conducted using an evaluation platform developed by Scale AI.
Scale AI is an engineer outfit specializing in the development of AI from the ground up. The company prides itself with its impartiality and ability to independently assess the reliability and accuracy aspects of foundation models. Their expertise and insights brought at DEF CON is something they hope will help raise awareness and ensure progress in model evaluation and safety.
Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of Scale AI, believes that simulation through red teams is necessary to identify any risks and that more must be done in the field of generative AI. Sven Cattell, the founder of the AI Village, holds the same opinion, emphasizing the need to get more people career and assessment of generative AI.
This is not the first time DEF CON is organizing a “village” to take a closer look at modern technology. In 2016, the Voting Village was set up to examine security of voting machine technology and the election processes. This year, the focus again shifts to a technology greatly impacting society—generative artificial intelligence.
