Mythos a serious threat but more will follow, Barclays CEO says

Anthropic’s frontier AI model Mythos is a serious threat to the global banking system, and it is likely to be followed by similar, even more powerful cyberthreats, Barclays Chief Executive C. S. Venkatakrishnan said on Friday. The vast capabilities of Mythos ⁠to ​code at a high level have given it a potentially unprecedented ability to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities and devise ways to exploit ​them, raising fears ​it could be exploited ⁠to destabilise banks.

This has forced regulators and supervisors into a scramble, and ‌selected organisations are now reviewing the model to gauge the actual cybersecurity risk. Mythos has raised alarm bells among regulators, who see it as a significant challenge to the banking sector and its ⁠legacy technology ⁠systems.

“On Mythos, look, it’s a serious issue,” he told a meeting of ⁠the ‌G30 consultancy group on ​the sidelines of the IMF’s spring ‌meeting.

“But here’s the thing: there will be a Mythos 2 and ‌a Mythos 3, and ​they’ll ​come up ​with probably distressing frequency,” he said.

Such technological leaps will accelerate an ​arms race that forces lenders to ⁠innovate, and may be especially challenging for older and larger institutions potentially running legacy systems, ‌Venkatakrishnan ⁠said.

“We have to understand its capabilities and we have to understand how ​to safeguard against it.”