Forget the AI Slowdown--the Vulnerability Explosion Is Already Happening

AI labs are toying with an industry-wide pact to slow development. Meanwhile, widely available AI chatbots are already helping uncover a tidal wave of security flaws. AI doomers have recently traded one worst-case scenario for another, putting aside a potential software vulnerability apocalypse to focus on the possibility of rogue AI causing mass human death in the next decade. As AI leaders consider a cooperative slowdown on frontier model development, though, one aspect of the cybersecurity sea change has already arrived thanks to existing, broadly available capabilities in mainstream AI products, including open weight models. A tidal wave of vulnerabilities uncovered using AI has only accelerated in recent months--piling more pressure on under-resourced, and very human, IT and security teams and straining volunteers who maintain crucial open source software.