The US government recently directed Anthropic to suspend access to two of its artificial intelligence models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, citing national security concerns. This forced the company to shut down these models for users worldwide. Anthropic has expressed disagreement with the decision, stating that the concerns are based on a limited 'jailbreak' technique.
Details of the Jailbreak Technique
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the technique in question was tested by researchers at Amazon. They used a series of prompts to get the AI model to identify a small number of software vulnerabilities. Katie Moussouris, chief executive of cybersecurity firm Luta Security, confirmed that Amazon researchers conducted the jailbreak research. Anthropic had reportedly shared a copy of the report with her.
The company maintains that the vulnerabilities identified were already known and relatively minor. 'We reviewed a demonstration of this specific technique being used to identify a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities,' Anthropic said in a statement. 'These vulnerabilities all appear relatively simple, and we have found that other publicly available models are able to discover them as well without requiring a bypass.'
US Government Restrictions
On Friday, June 12, the US government ordered Anthropic to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns. The directive applies to foreign governments, companies, and individuals, including foreign nationals inside the United States. Anthropic stated that the broad scope of the order forced it to disable both models for all users to ensure compliance.
Anthropic noted that it was not given detailed information about the government's concerns. 'The letter did not provide specific details of its national-security concern,' the company said.
About the Models
Mythos 5 is Anthropic's most advanced AI model and has been used by governments and companies to identify and fix software vulnerabilities. Fable 5, released earlier this week, was designed as a public version of the technology with additional safeguards.
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