Anthropic’s Mythos puts DC, Wall Street on high alert

The limited release of Anthropic’s new Mythos model is putting Washington officials on high alert after the AI firm’s warning about the model’s security risks sent shockwaves through and sparked debate in the tech industry. 

Within days of being informed of Anthropic’s new technology, the White House ratcheted up a multipronged response involving Trump administration leaders across agencies to evaluate just how powerful AI is becoming. 

Anthropic’s announcement follows years of AI warnings, but last week it seemingly landed differently, upping pressure on Washington to stay ahead even as some question the extent of the latest threat. 

“A bunch of people in the [Trump] administration are coming to the realization” AI development has not plateaued as some officials predicted last summer, Dean Ball, the co-author of the Trump White House AI Action plan, told The Hill in an interview Monday. 

“They are realizing, ‘My goodness, I’m going to have to jump in here and get involved and get my hands dirty’ because this is not being handled,'” said Ball, adding, “The administration was not prepared to deal with this, that’s just the frank reality.”

Anthropic announced last week it will hold back the full release of Claude Mythos Preview, claiming the model is too dangerous for the public at this stage. 

The model was released to a small group of technology firms and critical software builders, which will use the model in their defensive security work and share their findings with Anthropic under a new initiative called Project Glasswing. Partners including Cisco, Google, and Palo Alto Networks came out in support of the project, with the latter company calling it a “game changer” for finding hidden vulnerabilities. 

Mythos has already found thousands of high-security vulnerabilities, some of which date back more than two decades, according to Anthropic. While the tool can help governments find these vulnerabilities, it also makes it much easier for hackers to exploit these security gaps.

“This time, the threat is not hypothetical,” Anthropic’s researchers wrote in a Mythos assessment. “Advanced language models are here.” 

Prior to external release, Anthropic briefed senior officials across the U.S. government on Mythos’s offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, an Anthropic official confirmed to The Hill on Monday. This includes conversations with the........

© The Hill