Experiments show AI could help to audit smart contracts, but not yet
Artificial intelligence has proven effective at identifying security vulnerabilities, but early tests indicate it won’t be able to replace humans for a while. While artificial intelligence (AI) has already transformed a myriad of industries, from healthcare and automotive to marketing and finance, its potential is now being put to the test in one of the blockchain industry’s most crucial areas — smart contract security. Numerous tests have shown great potential for AI-based blockchain audits, but this nascent tech still lacks some important qualities inherent to human professionals — intuition, nuanced judgment and subject expertise. My own organization, OpenZeppelin, recently conducted a series of experiments highlighting the value of AI in detecting vulnerabilities. This was done using OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 model to identify security issues in Solidity smart contracts. The code being tested comes from the Ethernaut smart contract hacking web game — designed to help auditors learn ho...
