Anthropic’s new AI bot is one of the world’s most powerful hacking tools—and could turn the private company into a geopolitical force, Matteo Wong argues. “For the past several weeks, Anthropic says it secretly possessed a tool potentially capable of commandeering most computer servers in the world,” Wong reports. “This is a bot that, if unleashed, might be able to hack into banks, exfiltrate state secrets, and fry crucial infrastructure.” “For now, the bot will be available only to a consortium of many of the world’s biggest tech companies—including Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia.” Wong reports. These partners can use the bot, Claude Mythos Preview, “to scan and secure bugs and exploits in their software. Other than that, Anthropic will not immediately release Mythos Preview to the public, having determined that doing so without more robust safeguards would be too dangerous.” Mythos Preview has already identified thousands of major cybersecurity vulnerabilities—including exploits in every single major operating system and browser, Wong writes. This kind of capability is typically available only to elite, state-sponsored hacking cells. “Now it’s in the hands of a private company,” Wong writes. “For years, cybersecurity experts have been warning about the chaos that highly capable hacking bots could usher in,” Wong continues. “As a result of how capable AI models have become at coding, they have also become extremely good at finding vulnerabilities in all manner of software. Even before Mythos Preview, AI companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all reported instances of their AI models being used in sophisticated cyberattacks by both criminal and state-backed groups.” “Still, Mythos Preview appears to represent not an incremental change but the beginning of a paradigm shift,” Wong argues at the link. 🎨: Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic