AI proposed to clean up the internet's legacy vulnerabilities
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The cybersecurity panic known as "Black October" was not caused by AI, but exposed software vulnerabilities left over from decades of the internet's history. An a16z partner says that over the past decade, the risk-acceptance process has shifted from driving the business to becoming an excuse for refusing to fix security problems. Vercel Chief Product Officer Tom Occhino proposes forming an alliance to use AI and compute to find and replace fragile software; OpenAI's Patch the Planet is an example of a similar approach.
AI overview based on source reports · Updated 26 min ago
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- Hacker News AIThe internet has a human slop problem, and AI is exposing it
Business Insider's Alistair Barr argues that the recent surge in published software vulnerabilities reflects decades of neglected, human-written code rather than AI creating new security problems, since AI tools can now find weaknesses faster and more cheaply than trained humans. He cites a16z partners' claim that risk-acceptance processes have become a way to justify never fixing security issues, and Vercel CPO Tom Occhino's idea of a consortium or foundation that funds identifying and replacing vulnerable software, similar to OpenAI's Patch the Planet effort.
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