I just did a search and apparently this fact (the specific one about no payouts for the first time in almost 20 years) has not gotten a discussion on HN. Given the degree of skepticism around the utility of AI bug finding and fixing (this very thread is full of it), I would have thought that concrete evidence that it can help actually make real software more secure against attacks would have gotten a write-up somewhere.

After doing a bit more research, this fact is somewhat less impressive. Apparently, this was also the first time in nearly 20 years that there was such a large capacity crunch and many researchers weren't able to get into the competition. One of the rejected researchers did apparently have a working exploit, which, upon not getting into the event, they responsibly disclosed, and it was then patched before the event.

We KNOW AI is bad, so why would we have a use for "concrete evidence that it can help"??