Bank of America hired 1,000 contractors to patch AI-exposed software flaws

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said in a CNBC interview on Wednesday that the bank added 1,000 contractors in the second quarter to patch software vulnerabilities exposed by AI models including Anthropic's Mythos.1

Moynihan told CNBC that when the frontier-type models came out, "a lot of us sat down" to work out how to get through the risk quickly, and Newcome.ca reported that the bank rushed to bolster internal and vendor code using thousands of employees and outside personnel.1 Mythos was released in April to a small group of banks, technology firms and government agencies, and the models can uncover and exploit decades-old software flaws, according to the report.1

Moynihan said the contractors remain at the bank, working on top of the 3,000 people it has in that area.1

Moynihan told analysts the bank spent a "couple hundred million plus" in the third quarter on software remediation and regulatory issues related to anti-money laundering compliance, so the figure does not isolate the patching cost.1

Moynihan said the bank expects remediation costs to decline over time, and he told CNBC: "Once you patch, you don't have to patch as much."1

Moynihan also said the bank must be mindful that the people doing the software development are the people trying to sell it the services; the report did not say how vendor fixes are being handled.1