After dissing Anthropic for limiting Mythos, OpenAI restricts access to Cyber, too

Ah, Sam Altman, the high priest of AI transparency, has discovered the ancient art of hypocrisy. After spending weeks sneering at Anthropic for locking down Mythos to 'trusted partners' — because nothing says 'open AI' like a velvet rope — OpenAI has now proudly announced that GPT-5.5 Cyber will be rolled out 'to critical cyber defenders' only. That's right, the same company that lectured everyone about the dangers of gatekeeping is now gatekeeping. And calling it 'critical cyber defenders' is a nice touch — like handing out VIP passes to the AI apocalypse while telling the plebs to wait outside.

Let's parse this carefully. OpenAI criticised Anthropic for limiting access to Mythos, implying that restricting capabilities is anti-innovation. Now they're doing exactly the same thing, but with a different flavour of hand-wavy justification. The model is called 'Cyber' — because nothing says 'we're responsible' like giving your powerful AI a name that sounds like a 90s hacker movie villain. Sam Altman's logic seems to be: it's fine when we do it because we've identified the right people — 'critical cyber defenders' — as if there's a universal registry of trustworthy humans.

And here we are, watching the AI labs play an elaborate game of 'we're the responsible ones, they're the dangerous ones.' The regulatory vacuum yawns wide, and these companies are writing the rules themselves, inconsistent and self-serving. The only consistency is that nobody outside the club gets access. So raise a glass to GPT-5.5 Cyber — the most exclusive, 'responsible' AI that money and a secret handshake can buy. Just don't mention the ethical about-face; that would be impolite.