Just as the unstoppable rise of artificial intelligence is bringing about upheavals in the tech world and becoming a driving force across the global economy, so the complex, rapidly evolving AI tools raise legal and national security concerns.
Anthropic has disabled access to its most advanced AI models, including Mythos, following an unprecedented order by the Trump administration to keep the technology out of the hands of all foreign nationals.
The US government told Anthropic to suspend access to the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models by any foreign national “whether inside or outside the United States,” citing national security concerns.
Never before has the US government taken such sweeping measures to rein in foreign access to frontier AI models developed by an American company. Anthropic has said its new AI tool, Mythos, is so good at finding vulnerabilities in software and computer systems that it can’t be released to the general public.
That risk was underscored when a small group of unauthorised users in a private online forum gained access to Mythos in April.
Even so, Anthropic is allowing 150 additional organisations around the world to access Mythos, bringing the total groups with access to about 200. The new organisations are based in 15 countries and span industries such as power, healthcare and communications.
For the last several years, cybersecurity companies have promised that AI will speed up and automate some of the work of preventing digital breaches. But hackers and cyberspies have discovered the advantages of AI too.
The advent of Mythos and models like it that can exploit well-hidden flaws in popular software without human supervision points to a faster-moving, less predictable phase of the cyber arms race.
Anthropic has described Mythos Preview as “a watershed moment for security.”
Claude Mythos Preview is a general purpose AI model that Anthropic says significantly outperforms prior offerings on a range of benchmarks, including for coding and reasoning.
The company explained that some AI models have reached a level of coding capability that allows them to beat all but the most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities.
According to Anthropic, Mythos Preview has already found thousands of “zero-day” vulnerabilities during testing, including in every major operating system and every major web browser. “Zero days” are flaws that were previously unknown to the software’s developers — the name implying they have zero days to come up with a patch to resolve the problem. These often represent a gold mine for hackers because they offer a window of free rein inside vulnerable systems.
The latest government restriction on Mythos is colliding with a race among US AI developers to deliver the most advanced AI models and prove to their investors that the technology can turn a profit. Many observers agree that AI has entered a new era requiring greater government involvement, but they strongly objected to the manner in which the action is carried out.
AI is estimated to contribute up to $15.7tn to the global economy by 2030.
As AI advances, global governance and international collaboration and knowledge-sharing are becoming essential for effective and responsible adoption. Looking forward, these efforts will be critical in addressing the gaps in technology governance, as more countries formalise AI strategies and strengthen their capacity to adopt the technology effectively.