White House Opposes Anthropic’s Expansion of Mythos Usage to 120 Companies, Citing Insufficient Computing Power

Odaily Planet Daily News The White House recently opposed Anthropic’s proposal to expand the use of its AI model, Mythos, to approximately 120 companies, primarily based on security and computing power concerns. Anthropic originally planned to add 70 new companies to the existing 50 or so businesses using Mythos, but the White House raised questions about this, worrying that insufficient computing power could affect the government's own use of the model.

Launched in early April, Mythos is designed to detect and exploit critical software vulnerabilities. It is currently limited to testing by companies managing key infrastructure and has no public release plan. The White House fears that expanding its use to more commercial users will create a computing power bottleneck for the government when using the model. This is especially concerning given Anthropic's computing power procurement agreements with Amazon, Google, and Broadcom, where new capacity has been contracted but is not yet online.

On the political front, relations between the White House and Anthropic show no signs of easing. The Trump administration has publicly criticized Anthropic for hiring several former Biden administration officials and expressed displeasure with its ties to liberal organizations. One example highlights the trust issues between the two sides: Collin Burns, a former researcher at Anthropic, was initially appointed to a government position evaluating AI models. However, after senior White House officials learned of this, they directly replaced him, citing the need to prevent personnel from AI companies from directly engaging in matters concerning dealings with other AI firms.

Additionally, Anthropic last week disclosed an unauthorized access incident involving the Mythos model, further intensifying external regulatory scrutiny of the company.