In an interview after the bank's third-quarter earnings release, Moynihan told CNBC that the company rushed earlier this year to bolster a wide spectrum of internal and vendor code. 'That risk is real risk, and that's why when the frontier-type models came out... A lot of us sat down and said, How do we figure out how to get through this quickly?' he said.
The 1,000 contractors, put on in the second quarter, remain employed today, working alongside 3,000 internal staff in that area. 'We spent a couple hundred million plus on the software remediation and regulatory issues related to anti-money laundering compliance in the third quarter,' Moynihan told analysts.
The comments are among the first by a major US corporation to detail the manpower and cost of protecting systems from Mythos, which was released to a small group of banks, technology firms and government agencies in April. They highlight the dual-edged nature of AI: while it can boost productivity, the ability of models like Mythos to uncover and exploit decades-old software flaws has forced firms into a costly defensive scramble.
'We've got to stay ahead of them, and we've got to be mindful that the people doing the software development are the people trying to sell us the services,' Moynihan said.
Speaking as Bank of America's shares slumped as much as 8% on Wednesday, Moynihan sought to reassure investors that the spending increase was temporary. 'Once you patch,' he said, the need for extra contractors would diminish.