Bank of America has hired an army of external contractors to help patch software vulnerabilities spotted by advanced artificial intelligence models including Anthropic’s Mythos, the bank’s CEO, Brian Moynihan, told CNBC on Wednesday.
In an interview after the bank’s third-quarter earnings release, Moynihan said that earlier this year the company quickly expanded its spectrum of internal code and vendors by using thousands of employees and outside personnel.
“The risk is a real risk, and that’s why when the frontier-type model comes out. … A lot of people are sitting down and saying, ‘How do we solve this quickly?’ Moynihan told CNBC’s Leslie Picker.
“We provided 1,000 contractors to help us do the patching work in the second quarter, and they are still here, helping us, on top of the 3,000 people who are in the area,” he said.
The bank spent “a couple hundred million plus” on software remediation and regulatory issues related to anti-money laundering compliance in the third quarter, Moynihan told analysts earlier Wednesday.
The comments are some of the first by major U.S. companies to detail the manpower and dollars spent on protecting their software systems from Mythos, which was released to a small group of banks, technology companies and government agencies in April.
He also highlighted the dual-edged nature of AI: While it can help companies save money by increasing productivity, the ability of models like Mythos to find and exploit decades-old software flaws has also forced companies into a costly defensive scramble.
“We have to stay ahead of the curve, and we have to remember that the people doing the software development are the people trying to sell the service,” Moynihan said.
Still, Moynihan – said as the company’s shares slumped as much as 8% Wednesday – sought to reassure investors that increased spending temporarily.
“Once you patch, you don’t have to patch as much. … The pipeline is moving forward,” Moynihan said, adding that the bank expects remediation costs to drop over time.
Elsewhere, AI is helping to reduce costs. Bank of America has about 130 internal AI projects, and savings from those efforts are expected to grow from $300 million this year to $700 million by 2027, Moynihan told analysts.
Bank of America’s head count fell by about 3,400 employees last year as the company cut 5% of managers, he said. It’s unclear how much of that workforce reduction is due to AI.