It’s the End of the Internet as We Know It

For decades, two kinds of scarcity kept the internet safe — or safe enough. Writing software was hard, so the people who did it were trained, careful and few. Finding bugs was also hard, so the worst flaws stayed hidden, sometimes for decades. It wasn’t a great system. But the difficulty on both sides created a kind of détente that held. But publicly available A.I. models are finding security vulnerabilities in commonly used software. If we don’t respond carefully and decisively, then the millions of people who stand to gain the most from A.I.’s progress as a programming tool will also be the ones most exposed to attack. Leaving them to fend for themselves could erode the internet as we know it. Every company that ships open-source code in its products — which is most of the technology industry — should invest in the essential workers who maintain it. That means funding, but it also means that A.I. firms contribute engineering time, security expertise and staff to the projects we all depend on. A.I. companies that are building tools like Mythos, beyond Anthropic, should put them into the hands of these workers. And all of us who benefit from open-source infrastructure need to treat it as what it has always been: as critical as any road, bridge or power line. And for the millions of new creators building software for the first time, we need to make it easy for them to build safely. Integrate security into the tools they’re already using. Make sure the A.I. that writes the code also protects the code. Not as an add-on and not as a premium feature, but as a default. The détente is over. The flaws are visible. The creators are everywhere. The only question is whether we protect all of them — or just the ones who can afford to protect themselves.

[Raffi Krikorian is the chief technology officer at Mozilla.]