The next phase of AI cybersecurity still needs humans

Oh, splendid news from the frontlines of the AI arms race. Real-world testers have discovered that Anthropic's Mythos and OpenAI's "cyber-capable" models still require "significant human expertise" to function. So all those breathless press releases about autonomous cyber defense were slightly premature. Who could have predicted that turning over network security to a black box that occasionally invents facts might require a human minding the till? It's almost as if the headline "AI revolutionises cybersecurity" needed a small-print rider: "this revolution is under 18 and needs a responsible adult present."

The gap between marketing and reality yawns wider than the Grand Canyon. Anthropic and OpenAI have been selling these models as the next frontier in proactive defence, capable of outmanoeuvring human hackers at machine speed. But the user findings suggest that without a seasoned expert holding the hand of the AI, you're essentially deploying a very confident intern with a flamethrower. Remember Anthropic's solemn promises about "constitutional AI"? Apparently the constitution needs a human interpreter.

What this really means is that the cybersecurity industry gets to keep its headcount a little longer – assuming the C-suite doesn't decide that "significant human expertise" is an expensive luxury they can trim. The same executives who bought the AI hype will now have to decide whether to invest in the human babysitters or just accept the blowback. Given the current cost-cutting mood, I'd wager on the latter. But hey, at least the models are great at generating plausible-sounding incident reports. You just can't trust a word of them without a human in the loop. Again.