Last year I interviewed Oege de Moor, the boss of XBOW, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to test organisations’ cyber-defences. He described his team’s amazement at how creative the AI was in seeking out vulnerabilities, and how it seemed able to “smell blood”. Asked how things would play out when cutting-edge AI was in the hands of both attackers and defenders, he said there would be a “chaos phase”. 

Preventing this chaos phase was the reason why Anthropic, one of the big AI labs, has just stopped a general release of Mythos, a model with a frightening ability to identify cyber-security weaknesses. That decision is wise. In the wrong hands, Mythos would threaten critical infrastructure, from banks to hospitals. But it also serves as a wake-up call. Should a handful of geeks so famous that they can be identified by their first names—Dario, Demis, Elon, Mark and Sam—be in charge of the Western world’s most potent new technology? 

Our cover story this week examines the Mythos moment. In the past the Trump administration was more worried about over-regulating AI and falling behind in the race with China. But the models’ dizzying rate of progress, along with rising voter anxiety about the technology, means that a laissez-faire approach is no longer politically tenable or strategically wise. Anthropic’s decision to reserve use of Mythos to a limited number of firms, so they can boost their own defences, may be the basis for a workable scheme to manage AI safety. But the drawbacks, to competition and to the speed of AI diffusion, are grave, and the need for wider thinking about the technology’s economic and social impact remains urgent. The chaos phase is drawing near. There is no time to waste.     

In today’s edition of The Insider, a panel of our journalists asks whether the Mythos moment marks a turning point for AI, in which the technology’s fiercely competitive model-makers start to work together in the name of safety. You can watch the discussion now.

Finally, we are launching a new newsletter, Asia Bulletin—a window into our journalists’ reporting on the biggest political, social and economic stories from a region that is home to some 60% of the world’s population and that accounts for nearly half of the global economy. If you subscribe to The Economist sign up now to receive the first edition in your inbox next Tuesday.

Their AI models could reshape humanity. Washington is finally paying attention