Better than any human 'hacker': what is the new artificial intelligence model that scares the financial system

Anthropic
Reuters via BBC
In recent weeks, the world of artificial intelligence has been in an uproar following claims made by leading company Anthropic about its new model, Claude Mythos.
The company claims to have discovered that the tool can outperform humans in some hacking and cybersecurity tasks - which has led regulators, parliamentarians and financial institutions to discuss the dangers it could pose to digital services.
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Several technology giants received access to Mythos through an initiative called Project Glasswing, designed to strengthen resilience against Mythos itself.
Anthropic announced this week that it will extend access to Mythos to another 150 institutions in diverse sectors, such as energy, water, health, communications and equipment. New partners will need to meet security requirements before gaining access to the model.
Some analysts are still more skeptical about Mythos' capabilities and say it is in Anthropic's interest to suggest that it has a tool with abilities never seen before.
The topic also caused fear in the financial system and was even addressed at an IMF meeting in Washington involving international authorities.
In practice - as is often the case with AI - the task of distinguishing between facts and exaggerations is complicated.
What it is the Claude Mythos?
The Mythos is one of Anthropic's latest models, developed as part of its broader AI system called Claude.

It encompasses the company's AI assistant and family of models, rivaling OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
It was introduced by Anthropic in early April as "Mythos Preview."
Researchers testing how AI models handle specific requests or tasks, known as "red teams," said in a report that Mythos was "incredibly capable at computer security tasks."
They found that the tool could locate bugs hidden in decades-old code and exploit it with ease.
Instead of making it widely available to Claude users, Anthropic granted access to 12 technology companies through Project Glasswing, which it described as "an effort to protect critical software systems."
They include cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services, device makers Apple, Microsoft and Google, and chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom.
A Crowdstrike, whose faulty software update caused a major global outage in July 2024, is also among the project's partners, and Anthropic says it has granted Mythos access to more than 40 organizations responsible for critical software. models."
Why are there concerns?
Anthropic says that during testing, it found the model to be highly skilled at cybersecurity and hacking tasks, surpassing humans.
"Mythos Preview has already found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser," Anthropic said on April 7.
"Given the speed of AI progress, it won't be long before such capabilities become widespread, potentially as well as agents committed to its safe use."
The company said it could locate - with little supervision - critical flaws that require immediate action in old systems, including a vulnerability that had been present in one system for 27 years, and suggest ways to exploit them.
Since then, some finance ministers, central bankers and financial sector executives have expressed serious concerns, fearing that the model could compromise the security of financial systems.
Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, told the BBC that Mythos was discussed at an International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington in April.
"It is certainly serious enough to deserve the attention of all finance ministers," he said.
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey told the BBC: "We have to look very carefully now at what this recent development in AI might mean for the risk of cybercrime."
The European Union said it is also in discussions with Anthropic about your concerns related to the Mythos.

In May, the European bloc was given access to the tool.
What do cyber experts say?
Ciaran Martin, former head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, told the BBC earlier this week that the claim that Mythos could discover critical vulnerabilities much faster than other AI models "really shook people up". Although it is well defended, it is simply a very good hacker," he said.
Many independent analysts and cybersecurity experts have not yet been able to test Mythos for themselves, and some remain skeptical about its performance.
The UK AI Security Institute recently concluded that although it is a very powerful model, its biggest threat would be against poorly protected and vulnerable systems.
"We cannot say for certain whether Mythos Preview would be able to attack well-protected systems," said its researchers.
For them, where there are good cybersecurity practices, this model, in theory, would be contained.
Italian Valentina Palmiotti - better known as Chompie - takes part in international ethical hacking tournaments, in which competitors earn money by finding vulnerabilities in security systems before they can be exploited by cybercriminals.
She told the BBC that her competitive days may be numbered due to the rise of AI tools like Claude Mythos.
We should worry?
Fears surrounding AI are nothing new.
New models and tools are emerging all the time and are often accompanied by promises to revolutionize our lives - for better or for worse.
Harnessing this mix of fear and excitement about AI and its future impact has also become a hallmark of the industry and its marketing strategies in recent years.
In the case of Mythos, we still don't know enough to understand whether these hopes or fears are justified, or more of a reflection of the excitement surrounding the industry.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned against the misuse of the company's products before
Reuters via BBC
In either case, according to the National Cyber Security Centre, the British cybersecurity body, the most important thing we can do now is not to panic and instead focus on the need to fix basic cybersecurity.
After all, most hackers don't need artificial superintelligence tools to breach systems - much simpler attacks are usually sufficient.
"For some this is an apocalyptic event, for others it seems like a lot of hype," Martin told the BBC.
But he said that whether this tool or subsequent ones developed by Anthropic or competitors, beyond the risks lies an opportunity to build a safer online world.
"In the medium term, there is an opportunity to use these tools to patch many of the internet's underlying vulnerabilities," he said.
In late April, Anthropic announced that it was investigating a report that a small group of people gained access to the Claude Mythos.
"We are investigating a report of unauthorized access to the Claude Mythos Preview through one of our third-party vendor environments," the company said in a statement.
The statement was in response to a Bloomberg report, which revealed that users on a private forum were able to access the model without the necessary permissions.
We used artificial intelligence to translate this report, originally written in English. The text was reviewed by a BBC journalist before publication.

Find out more here about how the BBC is using artificial intelligence (link to text in English).
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