Anthropic’s Mythos AI model sparks fears of turbocharged hacking

Anthropic’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 ...