In June 2024, a cyber-attack on a pathology services company caused chaos across London’s hospitals. More than 10,000 appointments were cancelled. Blood shortages followed and delays to blood tests led to a patient’s death.

Lethal cyber-attacks like this are thankfully rare. But a new AI release could change that – plunging us into a terrifying new world of chaos and disruption to the digital systems that we rely on.

This week Anthropic, a leading AI company in San Francisco, announced “Claude Mythos Preview”, an AI model that the startup says is too dangerous to publicly release, thanks to its exceptional cybersecurity – and cyber-attacking – capabilities. Mythos, the company claims, has found vulnerabilities in every major browser and operating system. In other words, this new AI model might be able to help hackers disrupt much of the world’s most important software.

“This is Y2K-level alarming,” one security expert said. Already, Mythos has found a 27-year-old bug in a critical piece of security infrastructure and multiple vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel, essential for computer systems worldwide. These weak points could threaten almost everything on the internet from the streaming services you relax with to the banking systems you rely on.