Federal agencies and government officials are quietly skirting US President Donald Trump's ban on working with Anthropic, according to Politico and Reuters.
The Commerce Department's Center for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Standards and Innovation is actively testing the hacking capabilities of Anthropic's next-generation AI model, called Mythos, the publication writes.
Anthropic, the White House and the Commerce Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Staff from at least three congressional committees have held or requested briefings from the company to learn more about Mythos' cyber-scanning capabilities over the past week.
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said at the Semafor World Economy event on Monday that the firm was discussing Mythos with the Trump administration even after the Pentagon cut ties with the US AI company following a contract dispute.
The nature and details of Anthropic's discussions with the US government, including the agencies involved, are unclear at this time.
Mythos, announced on April 7, is “Anthropic's most capable model to date for coding and agency tasks,” the company said in a blog post, referring to the model's ability to act autonomously.
Mythos, an extraordinarily powerful and dangerous model
Anthropic last week announced the development of a new artificial intelligence model, called Claude Mythos Preview, which it does not plan to release publicly, however. Unlike other recent AI systems, aggressively promoted and quickly rolled out to users, Mythos will only be accessible to a small group of organizations, mainly large technology companies and cyber security players.
The decision to limit access comes amid serious concerns about the model's capabilities: “The consequences for public safety could be severe.”
Anthropic says the model could outperform almost all human experts in discovering and even exploiting software vulnerabilities. Some of these vulnerabilities are extremely subtle and would normally go undetected, even in programs tested millions of times.
Also last week, the heads of the US Fed and Treasury called in the heads of major banks after Anthropic revealed what Mythos can do.
