One of the nice things about being at Semafor World Economy in DC all week is that it takes me outside the Silicon Valley bubble and I get to hear what non-tech CEOs and leaders are talking about. One of the big topics is Anthropic's Mythos AI model, which has clearly struck fear into a segment of the population out here.

After a handful of discussions with people who know what they're talking about and some who don't, here's how I think the world should be processing this. Mythos, and now OpenAI's GPT 5.4-cyber, represent a step up in AI capability that could allow hackers to find more exploits in software. Part of what makes these models powerful is the high number of tokens they require to operate. In that sense, they're a glimpse into an AI future, when the cost of tokens inevitably comes down.

But the change might not be as dramatic as some people think. Imagine a bunch of bike racks in a public place. Some of the bikes have big, powerful locks. Some have puny cable locks that can be broken with pliers. And a lot of them have no locks at all.

AI is like giving bike thieves better lock cutters. But the bigger problem is that there's already an endless supply of unlocked or poorly locked bikes. More bikes will be stolen, but only marginally so.

Mythos, hopefully, is a wake-up call for the entire industry that everybody needs to start investing more in cybersecurity. We need better ways to help people use basic security. Password managers and passkeys just aren't user friendly. Companies need to work on new, innovative methods of authentication that preserve privacy and anonymity. Companies need to empower teams of software engineers who fix bugs, one area of notorious underinvestment.

All of this should have already happened. Perhaps fear will be the motivator the world needs.

View: Anthropic's Mythos is a wake-up call for AI