Anthropic’s Cybersecurity Shock Wave + Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on Their Sam Altman Investigation + One Good Thing
Key Takeaways
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Anthropic's Mythos model is too dangerous for release
“Notably, they are not releasing this model to the public because they claim it is too dangerous to do that. Instead, they are giving access to a consortium of tech companies, including Cisco, Broadcoms, or makers of Internet infrastructure, as well as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon. Basically, every big tech company that is not OpenAI or Meta is getting access to this model, but not general access. Just access to do defensive cybersecurity testing, basically, to go out and harden their systems and their infrastructure and their software before the general public can get its hands on this model.”
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Mythos found a 27-year-old flaw in OpenBSD
“One of them was that this model apparently found a twenty seven year old security flaw in OpenBSD. OpenBSD is an open source operating system that runs on firewalls and routers. It is sort of like a critical security layer on the Internet, and it was designed specifically to be hard to hack. And this model, because of its advanced coding and reasoning capabilities, was able to find this bug that twenty seven years worth of professional security researchers had not been able to find.”
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AI can autonomously chain complex software exploits
“Alex Stamos said, like, yes. This is a big deal. And he was hoping for a long time that we would see a consortium come together like this because of exactly what you just said, Kevin. The intelligence in in these machines and their ability to work autonomously are now great enough that they can chain together exploits that human beings either would never see, would take them a long time to see, or they would just never get to because we're we're limited in ways that these machines are not.”
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Project Glasswing provides defensive access to tech giants
“You have a new model that you claim is the most powerful model in the world. So instead of selling it, you give a $100,000,000 of claud credits away to a consortium of companies that includes many of your competitors, which is what Anthropic is doing. That is not how I personally would market a spooky new model if I were in the business of marketing spooky new models.”
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Hard Fork Live returns to San Francisco June 10
“On June 10 in San Francisco, we are doing the second ever installment of Hard Fork Live. It's happening on June 10 in San Francisco at the Blue Shield of California Theater. Bigger venue than last year. Tickets will be on sale at nytimes.com/events. Not today, but next Friday, April 17.”
Episode Description
This week, we look at the cybersecurity threats that a new unreleased model from Anthropic are posing to software everywhere. And we ask whether Project Glasswing, the company’s bold new defense initiative, will give tech companies enough of a head start to secure the web. Then, we’re joined by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker to discuss their blockbuster new profile of Sam Altman. And finally, we look to the skies for this edition of One Good Thing. Guests: Ronan Farrow, investigative reporter and a contributing writer to The New Yorker. Andrew Marantz, staff writer at The New Yorker. Additional Reading: Anthropic Claims Its New A.I. Model, Mythos, Is a Cybersecurity ‘Reckoning’ Why Anthropic’s New Model Has Cybersecurity Experts Rattled Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted? Artemis II Moon Launch We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.