UK banks still lack access to Mythos AI model - iTnews

Six weeks. That's how long British banks have been locked out of Anthropic's Mythos AI model since concerns were first raised about its suitability for cyber threat checking. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey let slip the news, which means we've officially entered the phase where central bankers are reduced to publicly pleading for API keys. Meanwhile, the model's presumably sitting on some server somewhere, fully capable of thinking about cyber threats — just not for the people who actually need it.

Let's be clear about what's happening: a safety-critical AI tool has been dangled in front of UK financial institutions, then whisked away for reasons nobody's explaining. The banks want to use it to check their systems — a job that, in case you'd forgotten, is increasingly left to overworked humans and legacy software that's older than their Chief Risk Officer's tie. But no, the model must remain inaccessible, because the number one cybersecurity principle is 'better safe than sorry' — unless 'safe' means 'bureaucratically stalled.'

And the best part? When the inevitable breach happens — and it will, because banks are still running on COBOL and prayers — the post-mortem will conclude that they lacked the AI tools they'd been begging for. Six weeks of inaction will be forgotten in a flurry of identical press releases about 'proactive investments in next-generation security.' At which point someone will surely ask: which AI model were they asking about again? Ah, Mythos. Could've used that. Oh well — on to the next panic.