A group of 100 firms, including Google, Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI, have signed an open letter calling on countries and organisations around the world to beef up their cyber defences before AI grows powerful enough to override them.
In an open letter, the group argues that current cybersecurity measures are no longer sufficient and calls for greater investment in protecting critical infrastructure, including hospitals, water utilities and other essential services.
This letter urges governments and technology companies to work together to provide defensive AI tools, testing, funding and specialist support to under-resourced organisations.
The warning comes amid a series of major cyber incidents and growing evidence of AI systems being capable of autonomous and unexpected behaviour, such as the successful cyber-attack on Hugging Face carried out by OpenAI AI agents during testing.
Simon Edwards, CEO of SE Labs, said: “The fact that AI not only makes life easier for attackers, but can accidentally become an attacker itself, highlights the need for greater defence against all types of computer hacking. As AI continues to evolve, it is vital that organisations strengthen their defences, by building and sticking to strong cyber security policies, and choosing products that have been tested thoroughly.”
Andy Ward SVP International at Absolute Security: “AI in cybersecurity offers huge potential to improve detection and speed up response times. However, AI is also causing cyber threats to become smarter and faster.”
“Attacks now move at AI speed, disruption moves at AI speed, and complexity grows at AI speed, so if your resilience doesn’t move at AI speeds, you’ve already lost. Without robust AI-powered cyber resilience strategies and real-time visibility in place, the UK risks sleepwalking into deeper vulnerabilities.”
“By leveraging AI to restore continuity after disruptive attacks, organisations can avoid becoming trapped in downtime cycles that will only worsen as cybercriminals increasingly adopt AI-powered attacks.”
While AI companies argue that advanced AI can also strengthen cybersecurity by identifying vulnerabilities faster than humans, critics have warned that the firms developing these increasingly powerful systems must do more to support defensive efforts and address the growing risks.
The letter concludes that governments, technology firms and cybersecurity professionals must urgently work together to test and strengthen systems against the capabilities of the most advanced AI models.
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