(April 18): The White House said a meeting on Friday with Anthropic PBC chief executive officer Dario Amodei is “productive and constructive” as the Trump administration seeks wider access to the company’s powerful new Mythos artificial intelligence (AI) model.
The White House said opportunities for collaboration and for addressing the challenges from AI were discussed, and that it plans to continue that dialogue with Anthropic and other AI companies.
“The meeting reflected Anthropic’s ongoing commitment to engaging with the US government on the development of responsible AI,” according to a statement from the company, which said Amodei participated in the discussions.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles were among those in the meeting, according to people familiar with the matter, who shared the participants on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the talk.
The Friday discussions could set the stage for major federal agencies to eventually start using Mythos. Gregory Barbaccia, the federal chief information officer of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said in an email on Tuesday that the OMB is setting up protections that could allow their agencies to begin using the closely guarded AI tool.
Top administration officials have urged Wall Street leaders to use Mythos to identify cybersecurity weaknesses within their systems and fix them. Banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Citigroup Inc have been testing the technology internally to fund vulnerabilities.
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A White House official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said before the meeting that the administration is continuing to work with leading American AI labs to ensure that their models secure critical security gaps in software programmes. The official added that any new technology would require a testing period to ensure its safety and reliability.
Neither Anthropic nor the government has said what, if any, federal agencies have gotten early access to Mythos. The US Treasury has been seeking to gain access to the tool in order to begin hunting for vulnerabilities.
The Trump administration’s efforts to gain access to Mythos highlight the growing concerns surrounding the new model’s knack for detecting digital vulnerabilities. Anthropic has only provided Mythos to a limited group of technology companies, financial firms and others, over fears that hackers could weaponise its capabilities to target critical infrastructure, including the banking system.
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Friday’s discussions are taking place as senior US officials seek to get a handle on Mythos and the cybersecurity risks it could pose. Trump administration officials remain interested in Anthropic’s AI tools despite a bitter public feud with the company over the safeguards it demanded on US military use of its technology.
That dispute led the Pentagon to declare the firm and its products a threat to the supply chain, a designation that would bar it from defence work and that Anthropic is now suing to overturn. Last month, the company won a court order blocking a ban on government use of the technology, after Anthropic argued the move could cost it billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Within Anthropic, company leaders became worried that the new Mythos model could be a national security risk after testers were able to use it to turn up the types of critical bugs that it would normally take the world’s best hackers to uncover. Those concerns prompted the company’s limited release of the model.
Before its limited release of Mythos, Anthropic briefed senior officials across the US government on the model’s full capabilities, including both its offensive and defensive cyber applications, according to a company official who spoke on condition that they not be identified discussing the talks with government.
The talks included staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, among others, the company official said, and Anthropic has continued to work with government on security issues arising from the model.
Signalling the seriousness of US government concerns, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell convened Wall Street leaders for discussions in Washington on the day that Anthropic publicly disclosed Mythos’ existence to urge financial institutions to use the model to find weaknesses in their own systems.
At this week’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, global financiers expressed concern that Mythos or similar technologies could be used to breach traditional cyber defences, leaving the financial system open to untold threats.
Uploaded by Tham Yek Lee
