Ethan Mollick: research suggests AI aids cyber attackers more than defenders, for now
emollick · x · 2026-10-23
Ethan Mollick notes that while evidence is limited, most academic papers modeling the dynamic suggest AI initially helps attackers more than defenders, due to the low marginal cost of attacks in the short term.
Papers shown include:
- Does AI Help Cyber Attackers or Defenders?: across 209 disclosed vulnerabilities with deterministic graders, repair scores beat attack scores in two nonpublic environments but fall below in three; passing an initial security test isn't enough—92 of 524 non-independent defender test intervals still fell to subsequent attacks after patches
- Frontier AI's Impact on the Cybersecurity Landscape (UC Berkeley/Google): expert surveys indicate AI will keep benefiting attackers over defenders, though the gap is expected to narrow
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