A powerful new artificial intelligence model developed by Anthropic has triggered a flurry of crisis meetings among finance ministers, central bankers and senior financiers, who fear the technology could be turned on the global financial system with devastating consequences.
The model, known as Claude Mythos, has been shown to pinpoint vulnerabilities in many of the world’s most widely used operating systems, prompting alarm at the highest levels of government and commerce. While some specialists believe it marks a step-change in AI’s ability to uncover and exploit cyber-security flaws, others have urged caution, arguing that far more independent testing is needed before its true capabilities can be judged.
Canada’s Finance Minister, François-Philippe Champagne, confirmed to media that Mythos had dominated discussions at this week’s International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington DC. “Certainly it is serious enough to warrant the attention of all the finance ministers,” he said. Drawing a comparison with geopolitical risks, he added: “The difference is that the Strait of Hormuz – we know where it is and we know how large it is… the issue that we’re facing with Anthropic is that it’s the unknown, unknown. This is requiring a lot of attention so that we have safeguards, and we have processes in place to make sure that we ensure the resiliency of our financial systems.”
Mythos is among the latest additions to Anthropic’s Claude family of models, which competes directly with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. It was unveiled earlier this month by developers responsible for stress-testing so-called “misaligned” AI behaviour, instances in which a model acts against human values or intended goals. Their verdict was that Mythos is “strikingly capable at computer security tasks”.
Citing concerns that the model could surface long-dormant software bugs or identify novel ways to exploit system weaknesses, Anthropic has opted not to release it publicly. Instead, access has been granted to a handful of technology giants, including Amazon Web Services, CrowdStrike, Microsoft and Nvidia, under an initiative dubbed Project Glasswing, which the company describes as an “effort to secure the world’s most critical software”.
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