Even as it held back commercial deployment citing all these concerns, Anthropic parallely announced Project Glasswing, which aims to assist companies that hope to use Mythos to step up cyber-defences before it is widely released.
Anthropic is talking to several governments, including that of India, to help safeguard critical infrastructure — banking, energy, telecom — in the face of cybersecurity risks posed by its powerful AI model, Mythos, The Indian Express has learnt.
“Anthropic is actively engaging with a broad range of governments, including India. There are ongoing discussions which are very constructive. The conversations are centred around securing critical infrastructure.
There is a belief within Anthropic that allied democracies need access to defence capabilities against powerful AI models,” a source close to the company said on condition of anonymity.
The company is also coordinating very closely with the US government on three things — the timing, scope, and the structure of providing access to Mythos to Washington so that they can study the system and prepare defensive measures against its risks.
This particular conversation, centred around offering access to the government, is not currently happening between Anthropic and India, it is understood.
The Indian Express had earlier reported that the government is currently in conversation with Anthropic’s senior leadership in the US on the issue, a discussion which was initiated by the Ministry of External Affairs.
Earlier this month, Anthropic unveiled a preview of Mythos, calling it the most powerful model it has ever built. So powerful that unlike typical AI launches, the company is deliberately keeping the technology away from the public for now — the reason being the model’s unprecedented ability to autonomously identify serious vulnerabilities in widely used software and infrastructure, posing significant cyber security threats.
Story continues below this ad
Even as it held back commercial deployment citing all these concerns, Anthropic parallely announced Project Glasswing, which aims to assist companies that hope to use Mythos to step up cyber-defences before it is widely released.
Major software developers—including Apple, Nvidia, the Linux Foundation and CrowdStrike, as well as competitor Google were in this list.
On Thursday, chairing a high-level meeting to assess the risks that Mythos poses to India’s financial sector, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told banks to exercise a “high-degree” of vigilance and develop a coordination mechanism to respond to threats emerging from capabilities of the advanced large language model.
In a statement, the Ministry of Finance said the meeting took place “to assess the potential impact of emerging threats linked to recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) models, particularly the possibility of such technologies being misused to weaponise software vulnerabilities”.
Story continues below this ad
“…the nature of the emerging threat from the latest AI model is unprecedented and requires a very high degree of vigilance, preparedness and better coordination across financial institutions and banks,” the Ministry said, without naming Mythos.
A senior official said a report stating that Mythos, not yet widely released owing to its capabilities, was accessed by unauthorised individuals, had raised significant concerns. Anthropic has said Mythos can outstrip all but the most skilled humans at identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities, and in tests, the model found critical faults in every widely used operating system and web browser.
Full report on
https://indianexpress.com
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
