Some in the AI community call it a “Chernobyl moment”: the fear that a catastrophic AI-related incident — from a hack that crashes the financial system to the release of a lethal bioweapon — could stop development of the technology in its tracks. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos is the first AI model that has made such risks seem real. Warning that Mythos’ exceptional ability to sniff out flaws in coding could, in the wrong hands, be used to bring down critical infrastructure, Anthropic has restricted its initial release to a group of chosen partners. Other risky models will follow, quickly.
AI as a whole requires light and agile regulation that does not stifle innovation in a world-changing technology. But with even Pope Leo XIV warning that AI must be “disarmed”, cutting-edge frontier models — those with “nation-state” capabilities — are one area in which setting up a vetting system is a matter of urgency. A formal mechanism is needed to understand just what these systems are capable of and decide how, or whether, to release them.
That makes it all the more unfortunate that the Trump administration last week postponed at short notice an executive order that would have set up a voluntary testing regime between US-based frontier AI companies and the government to study new models for 90 days before public release. President Donald Trump said he “didn’t like certain aspects of it” and wanted nothing to “get in the way” of America’s AI lead over China.