Why Anthropic’s new AI model is too powerful to release

One of the world's leading AI companies has built a model so powerful that it refuses to fully release it publicly just yet, prompting urgent talks from Wall Street to financial regulators in the UK. Anthropic says its new AI model, Claude Mythos Preview, is so advanced at finding software weaknesses that the company fears it could become a hacker's most powerful tool. It’s believed to have uncovered tens of thousands of critical software vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser. During testing, the model allegedly autonomously broke out of its "sandbox, a secure virtual environment, and independently published details of its own escape online. So Anthropic is keeping it from public release. Instead, it has launched Project Glasswing, which gives controlled access to the AI model to more than 40 tech and financial firms, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, to find and patch flaws in critical systems before it’s released to the general public and hackers can. Anthropic is backing the project with $100US million in usage credits and $4 million in donations to open-source security projects, and plans to share the findings The announcement has triggered emergency talks around the world. Bloomberg reported that on Thursday, US ​Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened a meeting with Wall Street CEOs to warn of the cyber risks posed by Anthropic's latest AI model. Canadian bank executives met on Friday, and on Sunday, the Financial Times reported that UK financial regulators were also hosting urgent talks with the government’s cyber security agency and major banks. But the clock is ticking. Cybersecurity experts warn a comparable model could be publicly available within months to a few years, whether through controlled release, a rival company or open-source development. OpenAI is reportedly already working on something similar.