No crying wolf: Regulate the AI juggernaut before it’s too late

April 21, 2026 — 12:09pm

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Anthropic’s release of its Claude Mythos Preview tool earlier this month shows that the development of artificial intelligence has reached a critical point - one that illustrates that those who highlighted the potential dangers of AI weren’t crying wolf.

Mythos, Anthropic has said, is able to identify and exploit flaws in every operating system and web browser at a scale and speed beyond almost all human capabilities. It is capable, autonomously, of executing attacks on systems that would bring down critical national infrastructure like power, water, health or banking systems.

So dangerous does its creator consider the model that it hasn’t yet released it generally, instead offering access (it calls it Project Glasswing) to about 40 organisations, including competitors, to enable them to test it on their systems and expose and patch flaws before anyone with malicious intention can discover and exploit them.

Last Friday, Anthropic’s chief executive Dario Amodei met with the Trump administration, which is seeking access to the model.

The administration has, of course, labelled Anthropic a national security and supply chain threat and purported to ban it from doing business with the government, or companies that deal with the government because the company sought to prevent the administration from using one of its tools for autonomous control of weaponry or mass domestic surveillance.

Trump has described Anthropic – a company that prides itself on a safety-first approach to AI – as “a radical left, woke company” full of “left-wing nutjobs” and said he had “fired them like dogs” and wouldn’t do business with them again. Now the administration is urgently seeking the nutjobs’ help to avert a national........

© Brisbane Times