Google’s ‘Big Sleep’ is wide awake and hunting bugs. The AI-powered vulnerability researcher Big Sleep identified 20 issues across several open-source software. Heather Adkins, Google’s vice president of security, posts it on ‘X’ to announce the news to the world. You might wonder what’s so substantial about finding these bugs; every company does that. Well, it’s the AI that detected the problems, the same AI that we’ve always been skeptical about. And sure, the question will remain the same, plus some others too. Will this shift in relying on AI just be an aid, or another move to replace humans?
What Did Big Sleep Find?
Big Sleep is a collaborative effort between the company’s DeepMind (AI department) and Project Zero (Google’s well-known hacking team). The tool identified its first vulnerabilities in the FFmpeg audio and video library and the ImageMagick image-editing suite. That said, Google did not reveal many details about the issues found. Needless to say, they are working on the problems, and their policies keep them concealed from public scrutiny.
Recently, XBOW was in the news for hitting number one at HackerOne (a bug bounty platform connecting organizations and hackers). Such big names, be it XBOW or Big Sleep, had human intervention where required. It goes without saying that having a human on the task is a must, and that idea is non-negotiable.
What does Google say about replacing humans?
A Google spokesperson argued against the notion of replacing humans and said, “This is not about replacing human security researchers, but about augmenting their capabilities. Our AI bug hunter can perform thousands of tests in the time it takes a human to run a few. This allows our security teams to focus on the more intricate and strategic aspects of cybersecurity, while the AI handles the repetitive and time-consuming work.”
Heather Adkins posted, “Today as part of our commitment to transparency in this space, we are proud to announce that we have reported the first 20 vulnerabilities discovered using our AI-based “Big Sleep” system powered by Gemini.”
Conclusion:
There is no replacing humans today or ever. AI technology like Big Sleep is meant to help companies work faster and protect users’ online security. Although there’s still a lot of work to improve the technology, humans will continue to interpret the data.
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