Mythos’ AI scare is real—enough for US regulators to call an emergency meeting to assess what Anthropic’s advanced artificial intelligence model could mean for banks.
The meeting took place on Tuesday, when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell sat down with Wall Street bank chiefs to discuss possible cybersecurity risks associated with Mythos, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.
Attendees included top executives from Citigroup Inc, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp.’, Wells Fargo & Co.’s and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s. All of these are designated as systemically important, meaning that disruptions in their operation could have global consequences.
Mythos, an advanced artificial intelligence model developed by Anthropic, is designed to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in software systems when prompted. Unlike typical consumer-oriented AI tools, Mythos is aimed at cybersecurity software development and cybersecurity tasks. Its specialty is identifying critical software vulnerabilities and bugs, but it can also assemble sophisticated exploits.
The episode highlights a fundamental shift in how regulators frame AI risk, not just as a technological challenge, but as a potential catalyst for systemic events.
This has already raised red flags in crypto, with experts concerned that Mythos’ ability to detect and exploit zero-day vulnerabilities in real-time at a low cost poses a risk to the DeFi infrastructure.
Anthropic has therefore taken a cautious approach and is only releasing the product to a small group of large technology and financial companies under “Project Glasswing.”
Anthropic has previously disclosed that it consulted with US officials ahead of Mythos’ release regarding both its defensive and offensive cyber capabilities. The company is also separately embroiled in a legal dispute with the Pentagon, which has designated it a supply chain risk — a classification that Anthropic disputes in court.
