You may be excited, or worried, or both, about artificial intelligence (AI). The proliferation of AI into nearly every corner of your life is bound to make friends and foes. The technology has done a world of good, but certainly, its power could be used to do evil as well. That’s what Anthropic is worried about. The company’s new AI, Claude Mythos, is apparently so capable of breaking through cybersecurity defenses that Anthropic has decided to hold it back. Kevin Roose reports in the New York Times:
Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company that recently fought the Pentagon over the use of its technology, has built a new A.I. model that it claims is too powerful to be released to the public.
Instead, Anthropic said on Tuesday, it will make the new model — known as Claude Mythos Preview — available to a consortium of more than 40 technology companies, including Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, which will use the model to find and patch security vulnerabilities in critical software programs.
Anthropic said it had no plans to release its new technology more widely, but was announcing the new model’s capabilities in one area in particular — identifying security vulnerabilities in software — in an effort to sound the alarm over what the company believes will be a new, scarier era of A.I. threats.
“The goal is both to raise awareness and to give good actors a head start on the process of securing open-source and private infrastructure and code,” Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, said in an interview.
The tech is so worrisome that it’s been reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell held a meeting with America’s top banking institutions to warn them about it. Reuters reports:
The Treasury-hosted meeting in Washington on Tuesday was aimed at ensuring banks are aware of the risks posed by Mythos and similar models and are taking steps to defend their systems, one of the sources said.
Invitations were sent while most CEOs of the largest U.S. banks were already in Washington to attend other meetings, one of the sources said.
Access to Mythos will be limited to about 40 technology companies, including Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab and Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab, the startup has said.
Action Line: It’s a cliche, but with great power comes great responsibility, and it seems like artificial intelligence will be a great example of that. AI being used for evil is inevitable, and being prepared is always your best course of action. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
