GoKawiilAnthropic’s new Mythos AI model is raising concern among governments and companies that it could outpace current cyber security defenses, turbocharge hacking, and expose weaknesses faster than they can be fixed.
The San Francisco-based startup released a cyber-focused model this month, which has shown the ability to detect software flaws faster than humans but also demonstrated it can generate exploits needed to take advantage of them.
In one alarming case, the Mythos model showed it could break out of a secure digital environment to contact an Anthropic worker and publicly reveal software glitches, overriding the intention of its human makers.
This week, OpenAI also released its own advanced cyber model with similar capabilities.
The developments have led senior international financial officials and government ministers around the world scrambling to understand the dangers, in some cases seeking access to the new models that have only been given to a small number of vetted partners.
“This feels like the discovery of fire: a force that can profoundly improve our lives or, if mishandled, cause real harm across the digital world,” said Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cyber firm Sophos.
Last week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell summoned some of the largest US banks to discuss the cyber threats the AI model posed. The UK’s AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, told the FT “we should be worried” about the capabilities of the model.
These risks are well known within Anthropic. Logan Graham, who leads Anthropic’s frontier “red team,” which tests the lab’s models, said: “Somebody could use [Mythos] to basically exploit en masse very fast in an automated way, and most of the organizations around the world… including the most technically sophisticated ones, would not be able to patch things in time.”
AI tools have already significantly boosted the multibillion-dollar cyber crime industry. They have provided amateur hackers with cheap tools to write harmful software, as well as enabling professional criminals to better automate and scale their operations.
“Attacks are already increasing in frequency and sophistication, thanks to AI,” said Christina Cacioppo, chief executive at security and compliance firm Vanta.
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