‘Dangerous’ AI Models Are Coming No Matter What

Anthropic recently took its AI models, Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, offline in response to a U.S. government export-control directive aimed at preventing foreign use. These models possess advanced capabilities, presenting both cybersecurity benefits and risks, as they can be exploited by malicious actors. The U.S. government raised concerns that Fable 5's guardrails could be bypassed, posing a national security risk. Experts warn that Anthropic's situation may just be the beginning, as other companies are likely developing similar technologies, prompting calls for a broader and more transparent policy approach to address AI-related risks in cybersecurity and beyond.

Comment Loader Save StorySave this story

Late last week, Anthropic took its new Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models offline following a United States government export-control directive barring “any foreign national” from using the services. The company has been in talks with the White House since Friday but has yet to secure an agreement that would allow it to reinstate the offerings.

Since Mythos debuted in April, Anthropic has claimed—and warned—that the model has advanced capabilities for not only finding software vulnerabilities to help defenders patch them, but also figuring out ways to exploit them that could be used by bad actors. Anthropic itself noted this double edged sword in its launch of Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5. “A great deal of advanced usage of AI models is dual use: the same queries that are beneficial in the hands of cybersecurity professionals and biology researchers could be dangerous if available to malicious actors,” the company wrote in a blog post last week.

With this in mind, the company initially released a version called Mythos Preview to a select consortium as part of a working group known as Project Glasswing. Mythos 5 was also privately released to this group last week, while Claude Fable 5, which is a Mythos-grade model, was released to the general public with specific blocks on its ability to give responses to questions about biology and cybersecurity.

Then, at the end of last week, the Trump administration moved to restrict both models because it believes that Fable 5’s guardrails can be disabled to allow full access to the Mythos 5 capabilities, allegedly making it a national security risk.

Experts say, though, that this institutional clash is simply delaying or masking a hard truth: Anthropic may be the tip of the spear in this moment, but AI capabilities in general and models from multiple companies and open-weight developers will almost certainly have similar capabilities to Mythos 5 in the near future—if they don't already.

“It's myopic in the extreme to think that no other competitors to Anthropic will develop similar capabilities to Mythos or even that they have not already done so,” says Tarah Wheeler, chief security officer of the specialized cybersecurity consulting firm TPO Group. “There are other companies hot on Anthropic's heels who probably have the capabilities, too, and are holding them in reserve as they see how Anthropic is being treated in the current regulatory environment.”

Anthropic itself has emphasized this point since the launch of Mythos Preview. “The real message is that this is not about the model or Anthropic,” Logan Graham, the company's frontier red team lead, told WIRED when Mythos Preview launched in April. “We need to prepare now for a world where these capabilities are broadly available in 6, 12, 24 months.”

OpenAI, for example, also did a private release of a cybersecurity-focused model in mid-April and announced an expanded cybersecurity strategy.

Researchers note that even before this next generation of models, existing AI offerings could be used for advanced vulnerability-hunting and exploit development with a refined harness. A large group of cybersecurity leaders emphasized this to the administration in an open letter on Sunday, arguing that the White House's export-control directive was misguided.

“It's not one model; it's the general trend of technology,” says Bruce Schneier, a researcher at Harvard University and the University of Toronto who has been analyzing the situation. “Smaller, cheaper, open-source models, sometimes by themselves and sometimes in concert with each other, can match Mythos/Fable's performance with more sophisticated prompting. And we should expect other models to match Mythos/Fable's creativity and tenaciousness within months—slightly longer for open-source models.”

What the White House and governments around the world need to focus on, experts say, is democratically developing much broader and more transparent plans for how they will contend with advances in AI capabilities on cybersecurity and in other sensitive areas as they inevitably occur.

“The policy question is not whether a technology has risk,” says Chris Wysopal, cofounder of the cloud security firm Veracode. “The question is whether a specific restriction meaningfully reduces that risk or whether it mainly slows down the people trying to make systems safer.”

Comments

Join the discussion

Comments

Back to topTriangle

In your inbox: The week’s biggest tech news in perspective
The Pentagon did almost nothing to stop enemies from tracking US troops’ phones
Big Story: Can normies really vibe code?
A hacker group is poisoning open source code at an unprecedented scale
Livestream replay: How AI is transforming work

Lily Hay Newman is a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, digital privacy, and hacking. She previously worked as a technology reporter at Slate, and was the staff writer for Future Tense, a publication and partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University. Her work ... Read More

Senior Writer

Topics cybersecurity artificial intelligence hacking security vulnerabilities Anthropic OpenAI

Anthropic Is Still at Odds With the White House Over Claude Fable 5

Anthropic leaders flew to Washington, DC, to meet with White House officials on Monday. After high-level talks, they’re still split on the risk Claude Fable 5 presents.

Hugo Lowell

The FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones

Plus: AI bug hunting fuels Microsoft’s biggest-ever Patch Tuesday, ShinyHunters ransomware gang exploits an Oracle zero-day, and more.

Andy Greenberg

Anthropic Says It’s Taking Claude Fable 5 Offline to Comply With US Government Order

“The government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking’ Fable 5,” the company said in a blog post.

Maxwell Zeff

CISA Tells US Agencies to Fix Security Bugs in as Little as 3 Days Thanks to AI Threats

“Defenders cannot afford to take weeks to patch,” one Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official warned on Wednesday.

Lily Hay Newman

Anthropic Walks Back Policy That Could Have ‘Sabotaged’ AI Researchers Using Claude

The company changed course after researchers spoke out against the policy, which would have covertly limited Claude’s ability to develop competing AI models.

Maxwell Zeff

Anthropic Offers Mythos Upgrade for Cyber Partners and a ‘Safe’ Version for the Rest of You

Anthropic is releasing Claude Mythos 5 to trusted organizations and Claude Fable 5 to the public, a version it says can’t be used for cyberattacks.

Maxwell Zeff

Crypto-Funded Chinese Peptide Labs Are Booming

Plus: Hackers use Meta’s AI bots to hack Instagram accounts, Anthropic helps NSA hackers, a decades-long GPS satellite mystery may have been solved, and more.

Andy Greenberg

The UK Is Betting on a Billion-Dollar AI Supercomputer to Kick Its Addiction to US Tech

The British government thinks a state-backed infrastructure initiative will help supercharge homegrown chip startups.

Joel Khalili

The AI IPO Race Heats Up, DOGE Whistleblower Sues Elon Musk, and Instagram Gets Hacked

On Uncanny Valley, we dive into the IPO bonanza that the top AI companies are embarking on to the point where some real estate listings are looking for not just regular old cash, but Anthropic stock.

Brian Barrett

OpenAI and Anthropic Sign Letter to Prevent AI-Developed Biological Weapons

Leading AI labs, executives, and scientists are sending a letter to lawmakers urging them to improve tracking of synthetic DNA sequences that could be used for bioweapons.

Emily Mullin

The Trump Administration Is at War With Itself Over AI Regulation

Donald Trump killed an executive order to regulate AI. Now, administration officials and AI executives are trying to figure out if there’s anything left to piece back together.

Maxwell Zeff

This Is How Trump Finally Signed the AI Executive Order

After shelving the original executive order last month, Donald Trump finally got on board Monday night.

Maxwell Zeff

Read Original at WIRED →

‘Dangerous’ AI Models Are Coming No Matter What

Comments

Comments

You Might Also Like