[HN Gopher] The Closing of the Frontier
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The Closing of the Frontier
        
       Author : MindGods
       Score  : 159 points
       Date   : 2026-04-12 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (tanyaverma.sh)
 (TXT) w3m dump (tanyaverma.sh)
        
       | cyanydeez wrote:
       | if it is an actual leap, expect more 90% is good enough open
       | weights to hit the next 6 months. Theres no reason competitors
       | will hold underperforming models if they have to retool. might as
       | well do more marketing.
        
       | randallsquared wrote:
       | > _But it is another thing entirely to share access only with
       | enterprise partners such as Crowdstrike, Cisco, and Microsoft,
       | which are known to have massive security incidents regularly._
       | 
       | The stated purpose of Glasswing is to give infra and security
       | orgs the chance to close holes and improve their security. In
       | that context, it seems odd to call for not providing them access
       | with the justification being that they have security breaches
       | sometimes.
       | 
       | Mythos may or may not itself be opened to the public at some
       | point, but I would charitably expect that Anthropic plans that a
       | future model at least as good as Mythos Preview will be, and the
       | limited release for Mythos is intended to make that eventuality
       | safer by having most of the existing holes patched.
        
       | keybored wrote:
       | > The Anthropic Mythos announcement is the first time in my life
       | I've felt truly poor. Maybe because I grew up on the internet and
       | it was the one permissionless place where you could have leverage
       | and a shot at uncapped exploration and ambition. That is now
       | changing with the gap between models that are publicly available
       | vs those reserved for the already wealthy and pre-established.
       | 
       | The Internet was developed by the US state sector and handed off
       | to the private sector in the 90's. Then it worked as an open
       | space until it didn't any more. Predictably driven by corporate
       | interests.
       | 
       | > In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner argued that much that is
       | distinctive about America was shaped by the existence of free
       | land to the West where anyone could start over, and that this
       | condition infused America with its characteristic liberty,
       | egalitarianism, rejection of feudalistic hierarchy, self-
       | sufficiency, and ambition.
       | 
       | A more asinine comparison could not have been picked.
        
       | pizzly wrote:
       | Maybe not. You stated "Every country will pursue it as far as it
       | can, and given the multipolar world we are back in, and our
       | recent record with treaties and commitments, I do not believe
       | there will be global alignment on risk reduction" and that is
       | true. While Anthropic may hold of releasing Mythos I don't think
       | they will for long. As long as there is someone somewhere in the
       | world that releases a competing model then Anthropic will be
       | forced to release Mythos. This also assumes that its not a
       | marketing tactic from Anthropic in the first place, build
       | suspense before releasing it.
       | 
       | I would like to see more countries capable of producing frontier
       | models. At the moment we have two in the world but many countries
       | are building their own national models and AI infrastructure and
       | may join the race.
       | 
       | Having a multipolar world may actually result in more freedom in
       | gaining access to frontier models.
        
       | cortesoft wrote:
       | This feels really premature. The announcement was a week ago. The
       | "this model is too powerful for the general public" sounds like
       | marketing to me.
       | 
       | Give it a few months and it will be just another model they are
       | selling, but the NEWER model is just too powerful for the public.
        
         | jabedude wrote:
         | This happened before with GPT-2 being touted as "too dangerous
         | to release"[0] at the time by OpenAI. I don't think that means
         | every model will be safe to release in the future, but nothing
         | I've read about Mythos seems like it's going to be different
         | this time.
         | 
         | [0]: https://openai.com/index/better-language-models/
        
           | operatingthetan wrote:
           | It's going to be a slightly better Opus. Every model released
           | by any provider since 4o has been a modest improvement but
           | over-hyped. Opus 4.6 included.
           | 
           | I believe they are starting to split hairs and the primary
           | lever left is adding compute.
        
             | enejej wrote:
             | Yeah the only thing that will be left is to scale up
             | compute and pray it creates escape velocity. Which frankly
             | has been Sam's whole thesis in raising money.
        
         | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
         | I feel like "this model is too powerful for the general public"
         | was really just the equivalent of responsible disclosure, with
         | the "too powerful" bit just a positive marketing spin like you
         | say.
         | 
         | That is, Mythos will make it much easier to find lurking zero
         | days, so just like responsible disclosure requires a security
         | researcher to notify the software author first and give them
         | some time to patch, giving critical infrastructure folks at
         | least some time to analyze and patch systems seems reasonable
         | to me.
        
           | margalabargala wrote:
           | That's how I'm reading this too. They've made a (much) better
           | metasploit/shodan all in one.
           | 
           | If you make a better vulnerability scanner and find a bunch
           | of vulnerabilites, you should try to get them fixed before
           | making all the results public.
        
         | fwipsy wrote:
         | Security researchers always having a model one generation newer
         | than the general public would still achieve the stated goals.
        
           | cmxch wrote:
           | Which helps none, since that gates behind established actors.
        
         | taurath wrote:
         | For one I fully agree with your statement.
         | 
         | For me, the seeming majority optimism and acceptance of
         | "mythos'" as yet untold capabilities is betrayed as not real by
         | the fact that one can't react to it with the same reverence
         | while framing it as a downside without being told "it's not
         | even out yet".
         | 
         | "It's not even out yet" should apply to both situations or
         | neither.
        
         | atleastoptimal wrote:
         | Their main motivation of the model being too dangerous is
         | predicated on their discoveries in its ability to find exploits
         | in commonly used software. The idea is that if this were served
         | on a public API, it would massively increase the scale and
         | scope of what malicious actors could do.
         | 
         | I think it's a reasonable choice to make given that Mythos
         | actually does have cyber capabilities on that level. We already
         | have evidence that large-scale scams are being perpetuated
         | using AI models (such as AI video being passed as real, people
         | deepfaking themselves in job interviews).
         | 
         | If you've noticed your new model can be trivially pointed at
         | some open-source codebase with a prompt and harness that
         | amounts to "find as many exploits as possible" and your results
         | are non-trivially substantial and beyond what existing models
         | can do given the same initial parameters, then a gated rollout
         | seems the most reasonable option.
        
         | mike_hearn wrote:
         | Probably not. "This model is too powerful for the public" can
         | also be interpreted another way, which they've also strongly
         | hinted at - the cost/benefit ratio of the upgrade is negative
         | for the vast majority of all users. Finding vulnerabilities is
         | one of the few cases where it makes sense to use it.
         | 
         | Their writing about the model so far does say this is an issue
         | where, for instance, you can't really use Mythos for
         | interactive coding because it's so slow. You have to give it
         | some work, go home, sleep, come in the next day and then maybe
         | it'll have something for you.
         | 
         | All the AI labs and startups are still losing money hand over
         | fist. Launching Mythos would require it to be priced well above
         | current models, for a much slower product. Would the majority
         | of customers notice the difference in intelligence given the
         | tasks they're setting? If the answer is no, it's not economic
         | to launch.
         | 
         | Really, I'm surprised they've done Mythos. Maybe they just
         | wanted to exploit access to larger contiguous training
         | datacenters than OpenAI, but what these labs need isn't smarter
         | models, it's smaller and cheaper models that users will accept
         | as good enough substitutes (or more advanced model routing,
         | dynamic thinking, etc).
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | If the model isn't worth the cost for those who might want to
           | make use of it, then it can't be that impactful either.
           | 
           | One thing to compare to would be what's been paid for bug
           | bounties in the past.
        
             | ajross wrote:
             | Bug bounties don't reflect the market impact of the
             | vulnerability though, just the amount needed to incentivize
             | white hats to do research they wouldn't otherwise (or that
             | they would target to other platforms that pay higher
             | bounties). You need to look at market prices for zero days
             | on the black market to get closer.
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | Bug bounties reflect what companies are willing to pay to
               | find bugs. Mythos would have to be more expensive than
               | that (probably considerably so) to not be worth its cost.
               | If you are saying that finding bugs has significantly
               | more value than reflected by bug bounties, then that
               | strengthens my point.
        
             | zozbot234 wrote:
             | We've had such models before. GPT Pro, Gemini DeepThink.
             | Mostly targeting science advancements as opposed to
             | security research, but still, in a way Mythos is just more
             | of the same.
        
           | piker wrote:
           | Also offers an explanation for their recent move down the
           | stack including silliness like writing Word add-ins.
        
         | oofbey wrote:
         | Anthropic marketing is working very well. They are strongly
         | incentivized to say their model is too powerful to release even
         | if it's not. It's almost standard practice these days.
        
         | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
         | >The "this model is too powerful for the general public" sounds
         | like marketing to me.
         | 
         | Is no one else suspicious that they literally called it mythos?
        
         | amarant wrote:
         | Yup, this whole thing is quite typical for my generations
         | attempts at activism: they always end up as marketing pawns for
         | the very thing they set out to stop.
         | 
         | This whole "this model is too dangerous" ploy originated from
         | (in my opinion severely misguided) activists who wanted to stop
         | or slow AI development down as much as possible, spreading
         | outlandish Doomsday scenarios wherever they could.
         | 
         | These online-first activists have always been a key driver of
         | the success of the very thing they fight. They share the
         | offending thing among themselves, making it go viral in
         | process, and soon baiting these groups is the best marketing
         | imaginable.
         | 
         | There were some rather interesting studies made on the subject
         | around 2011, I particularly remember one made by Swedish jeans
         | brand cheap Monday, but i can't find it now.
        
           | pixl97 wrote:
           | > online-first activists have always been a key driver of the
           | success
           | 
           | Eh, pressing X to doubt that. Maybe way back in the early GPT
           | days, but once we got to GPT-4 these people could have
           | completely disappeared and wouldn't have changed the
           | trajectory we're on.
        
         | docheinestages wrote:
         | > The "this model is too powerful for the general public"
         | sounds like marketing to me
         | 
         | I tend to agree here. Anthropic has built a reputation and now
         | they are in a position where they can claim to have a model way
         | more powerful than it might actually be, and by limiting its
         | access, there won't be an independent way to test it. I'm not
         | denying that it's not smarter than Opus, but probably it's
         | somewhat exaggerated.
        
         | wonnage wrote:
         | They've been shilling the same statement since GPT-2
        
         | bombcar wrote:
         | There's a drain clog clearer sold in a jug like all the rest.
         | But they wrap the jug in a thick clear bag. The implication is
         | clear - this stuff is so powerful it's extra dangerous.
         | 
         | It's the same stuff inside as all the others.
        
           | dreamcompiler wrote:
           | No. That stuff is sulfuric acid and it needs secondary
           | containment during shipping, which the ordinary drain
           | cleaners (usually diluted sodium hydroxide) generally do not.
        
         | oooyay wrote:
         | > This feels really premature. The announcement was a week ago.
         | The "this model is too powerful for the general public" sounds
         | like marketing to me.
         | 
         | Anthropic was born out of the idea that they feel paternity
         | over humanity. They believe by limiting access they are
         | performing a necessary pillar of security in multiple facets.
         | 
         | I think it's up to the public, and articles like this are part
         | of the public's voice, whether this belief is serious or not
         | and secondarily whether it's okay to even posture this kind of
         | belief since it inherently results in marginalizing the many
         | and rewards an already very successful few.
        
       | OldGreenYodaGPT wrote:
       | The problem is Anthropic doesn't have the compute to deploy this
       | model to scale to everyone yet. Dario didn't believe that they
       | needed as much compute, OpenAI is going to have much more compute
       | unlocked this year and especially next year.
        
         | avaer wrote:
         | This is the real reason it's not out.
         | 
         | Great to see they were able to spin their lack of resources and
         | money losing business model into an abundance of benevolence
         | and concern for the proletariat.
        
         | DrProtic wrote:
         | Let's say the model is indeed groundbreaking but needs much
         | more compute that they have, I wonder would merging Anthropic
         | and OpenAI be on the table.
        
           | contraposit wrote:
           | On the efficiency side, why do we need 10 companies doing the
           | same thing. "Don't Repeat Yourself" principle would agree
           | with your proposal.
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | Hello. We have detected your account has breached our terms
             | of service. Your account has been banned. There is no
             | recourse for this actions.
             | 
             | As we all well know this message is great when there one or
             | two private providers that can kick you from an entire
             | market with no way of challenging them.
        
           | zozbot234 wrote:
           | It depends. If Mythos is AGI then OpenAI's charter says they
           | _have_ to merge with the winner.
        
             | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
             | And I have a bridge to sell you...
             | 
             | There is obviously tons of leeway it who gets to say what
             | is "AGI", and so far it seems like OpenAI's charter isn't
             | worth the paper it's printed on. I still find it funny that
             | Altman and Amodei couldn't even bring themselves to hold
             | hands at that AI summit, https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/
             | comments/1r8ua2j/sam_altma... , so I'm getting a chuckle at
             | the thought that Altman would be like "Whelp, close er up,
             | boys, Amodei won, so time to merge..."
        
         | enejej wrote:
         | So? They could basically open up an auction for bidding on
         | compute with mythos.. that's what you do with a scarce
         | resource. I'm sure many large enterprises would be willing to
         | pay a lot to have first dibs.
         | 
         | There's a whole lot of traffic they are servicing that comes at
         | a cost with no revenue in return. Why would you choose to forgo
         | potential revenue for this?
        
       | wyc wrote:
       | > A 16-year-old with no credentials and no capital could just do
       | things. The world of bits offered the freedom to build without
       | being drowned in arbitrary constraints, in a way that didn't
       | require assembling vast capital or prestige or connections, where
       | your creativity and work could speak for itself, and you had
       | agency.
       | 
       | This is now truer than it ever was.
        
         | Ancalagon wrote:
         | The point is it won't be if these new models stay locked to the
         | public.
        
           | bredren wrote:
           | We saw yesterday that expert orchestration around small,
           | publicly available models can produce results on the level of
           | the unreleased model.
           | 
           | I take a contra view and instead see this as fuel on the fire
           | for tinkering to squeeze advanced functionality out of more
           | available things.
           | 
           | It has always been like this, the amateur improvising tooling
           | and equipment to outdo companies with comparably infinite
           | resources.
        
             | enraged_camel wrote:
             | >> We saw yesterday that expert orchestration around small,
             | publicly available models can produce results on the level
             | of the unreleased model.
             | 
             | This is false. Yesterday's article did not actually show
             | this, and there are many comments in the discussion from
             | actual security people (like tptacek) pointing that out.
        
               | bredren wrote:
               | From what I can tell, this was not clearly settled.
               | 
               | Your example author, actually corrected themselves saying
               | LLMs "possibly" could perform successfully:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47732696
        
           | andyfilms1 wrote:
           | It has always baffled me how quickly, and how voraciously,
           | people started to rely on privately owned AI systems.
           | 
           | AI is not something discovered by scientists and plucked out
           | of the ether. It's engineered and controlled, for profit, by
           | corporations which have demographics and KPIs. These
           | companies don't owe you anything, and they make no promises.
           | 
           | If you're running a business that deeply relies on AI, you
           | might as well add Sam Altman to your board of directors--
           | because he has just as much control over your company as you
           | do. If they have a bad quarter and need to increase rates by
           | 1000%, your choices are to pay up or shut down.
           | 
           | This Mythos situation is just the beginning. Not only do they
           | have everyone hooked, but they've actively stalled the
           | personal skill growth of millions of people who fell into
           | vibe-coding rather than genuinely learning. And now they have
           | that choice: Pay up, or shut down.
        
             | p1esk wrote:
             | _your choices are to pay up or shut down._
             | 
             | Another choice is to switch to a different model, perhaps
             | open source this time.
        
               | kay_o wrote:
               | Another choice is to write code and learn. Especially if
               | you are 16 and have all day.
        
               | p1esk wrote:
               | We are talking about running a business. In business
               | world no one ever cared where code is coming from, the
               | only concern is how much the code costs.
        
               | andyfilms1 wrote:
               | Package manager incidents (like leftpad) have shown that
               | just because it's open source doesn't mean it can't do
               | damage to your project.
        
             | cgh wrote:
             | The same corporations that insist upon private Maven
             | repositories to control all code dependencies are
             | nevertheless fine with establishing a massive dependency on
             | a privately-held corporation in order to write software
             | that hardly anyone in the organization understands. When I
             | really think about this and how it plays out in the long
             | run, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
        
             | contraposit wrote:
             | I can't run my business without electricity. Yet we don't
             | fear of its access being revoked. Sam makes the comparison
             | of intelligence to electricity a lot. So we are on the path
             | to these systems becoming utilities.
        
               | anematode wrote:
               | Electricity is heavily regulated. Is there any evidence
               | that LLMs will be the same?
        
               | andyfilms1 wrote:
               | I would bet any amount that when the time comes to turn
               | AI into a utility, they will fight it tooth and nail.
        
           | avaer wrote:
           | Whatever is in Mythos will be open source in 6mos-1yr tops.
           | You might not have the GPUs but you won't be locked out of
           | the capability.
           | 
           | We're still not at the point where one person with a coding
           | agent can max out their salary in effectively using credits,
           | so the capability is still well within reach of the vast base
           | of the industry.
           | 
           | Meaning that for now, most people who want to pay for the
           | product (which IMO is pretty reasonably priced for what it
           | does) will be able to get the product.
           | 
           | The economics will make sure of that. The market is ripe for
           | someone basically copying the likes of Mythos and pricing it
           | competitively.
        
           | avazhi wrote:
           | You can't use your own brain?
        
             | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
             | I'm all about AI and not-AI... but the question is, can you
             | use your own brain 24 hours a day?
             | 
             | I don't agree with vibe coding, I see the appeal of an AI
             | ticking through my code at night to see if tests could be
             | better or I missed something, etc.
        
             | Ancalagon wrote:
             | The point is you won't be able to compete with just your
             | brain
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | You can do things without AI. That hasn't really changed.
        
             | Ancalagon wrote:
             | The point is you won't be able to compete with just your
             | brain
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | I think that remains to be proven. The context was
               | 16-year olds being able to freely build things. They
               | still can do that as before. Not everything is a
               | competition.
        
           | alwa wrote:
           | That assumes "more model" is the part that differentiates
           | successful ideas from unsuccessful ones.
           | 
           | Governments and corporations controlled enormous mainframes
           | far beyond the compute available to the hacker kid we were
           | waxing nostalgic about, didn't they? Not to mention the PhDs,
           | the mountains of capital, and so on?
           | 
           | My money's on team human.
        
         | simianwords wrote:
         | This is so untrue - prestige and connections matter even more,
         | now that work is being commoditised. no?
        
           | avaer wrote:
           | It seems to follow that when the world is full of slop
           | artists real artists don't get taken seriously/can't get a
           | job.
           | 
           | The Elons/FANGS are generally doing fine though.
        
         | CuriouslyC wrote:
         | The irony is that we've just shifted the complexity. Anyone can
         | make something now, but since everyone is making things, now
         | you need to compete on reach/distribution more aggressively.
         | The new "capital" is social media juice and pre-AI rep. Same
         | problem, different skin.
        
           | tsunamifury wrote:
           | It's the same as it always says.
           | 
           | You could always take the time to do something or pay someone
           | else to do it.
           | 
           | You pay others to focus on things you can't.
           | 
           | Unless myths fully does that (which I say in full confidence
           | that it doesn't) it's just making it cheaper to provide
           | focus.
        
         | walterbell wrote:
         | _> your creativity and work could speak for itself_
         | 
         | Including speaking to humans/bots with more resources to
         | monetize said work.
         | 
         |  _> you had agency_
         | 
         | Distribution is also helpful for revenue generation.
        
         | Forgeties79 wrote:
         | I didn't realize tokens were free!
         | 
         | Jokes aside, this is just a different flavor of the same
         | promise we see with each new technology, and 9/10 times it just
         | ends in worse professional environments.
        
         | justsomehnguy wrote:
         | Re-read the last paragraph of TFA.
        
       | derektank wrote:
       | Most important point in the piece (though I'm not sure if the
       | historical analogy to the grid holds, given local electricity
       | production has been unavailable for the majority of the history
       | of the grid)
       | 
       | > You can generate your own electricity with a solar panel (think
       | local models), but most people would rather pay a utility bill.
       | And the power company doesn't decide, on the basis of pedigree,
       | who is worthy of electricity. Intelligence should work similarly,
       | where the capabilities you can access scale may scale with
       | vetting and due process, but the presumption should be access.
       | Add safety guardrails to restrict dangerous use; start by making
       | them overly trigger-happy if you must, and calibrate over time.
       | But the default should be to allow entry.
        
       | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
       | I admit I didn't read the entire post (I honestly think authors
       | _really_ need to come to terms with the fact that we now live in
       | a world of information excess, and pithiness is more important
       | than ever), but I wouldn 't feel too bad yet given there was a
       | recent front page HN post about how free, open models could
       | actually catch all the issues Mythos did, it just required a
       | little more orchestration. E.g. see https://aisle.com/blog/ai-
       | cybersecurity-after-mythos-the-jag... for a detailed analysis.
        
         | airza wrote:
         | if an 1800 word post is just too long I think you are cooked.
         | This is the nicest thing I can say on the subject.
        
           | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
           | It's not that 1800 words is too long, it's that I've seen
           | probably 40-50 (at least) posts, analyses, and bloviations
           | about Mythos since it came out. If the author doesn't very
           | quickly get to why I should read _their_ particular 1800
           | words over the other similar and competing tens of thousands
           | of words on the subject, _they_ are  "cooked".
        
             | operatingthetan wrote:
             | Open gemini chrome sidebar, type "sum." Watch the magic
             | happen.
        
             | notpachet wrote:
             | They could just be writing for themselves, or their
             | friends, or for people with the patience to read. You are
             | making assumptions about how badly they want to reach your
             | particular eyeballs. They might not care about trying to
             | win over people with a minimal attention span as much as
             | you think they do.
             | 
             | What makes you think _your_ comment was worth reading?
        
         | aerhardt wrote:
         | I've read it, it's taken me about ten minutes, and it's been
         | refreshing to read something that is not sloppy. The page
         | design and type are soothing, too.
         | 
         | I don't agree with everything that the article says but it
         | soulfully blends concepts in history, politics, economics,
         | cryptography and AI.
         | 
         | I don't think the author could've compressed it without
         | precisely sacrificing the essay's soul.
         | 
         | Is this what everything is coming down to?
        
         | vector_spaces wrote:
         | > pithiness is more important than ever
         | 
         | I apologize for getting stuck on your parenthetical but while
         | pithiness is a fine aspiration in a North American business
         | setting, pithy reads generally can't exist without more
         | detailed and nuanced long-form analyses, and the latter face a
         | more dire existential threat. You are right that pithy
         | [writing] is an important skill, as are slow and deliberative
         | reading and writing of longer form work
         | 
         | I'm not claiming the original post is detailed or nuanced, to
         | be clear
        
           | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
           | To give a clearer example of what I was talking about, look
           | at the linked article from my comment above. It is _much_
           | longer than the original article from this post, but it (a)
           | starts with a TL;DR, so it gives me a summary that lets me
           | know if I want to read it in the first place, (b) combines
           | detailed original research with analysis and opinion, and,
           | IMO (c) continually adds new information /insights so it
           | builds on itself.
           | 
           | Obviously not apples-to-apples comparison to this article as
           | they have different purposes (original research vs. pure
           | opinion), I just point this out because a bunch of comments
           | seem to be stuck on the idea that I was saying "don't write
           | anything that doesn't fit in a tweet", and that wasn't my
           | point at all.
        
       | lowbloodsugar wrote:
       | In other, underreported news, companies like AirBnB are using
       | open source models. Anthropic and OpenAI have a six months to
       | year advantage over Qwen and other models. We reached the point a
       | while ago where Anthropic models where good enough, and so now,
       | inevitably, we've reached the point where open models are good
       | enough. The boasting of models so good they can't be shared was
       | propaganda to frame the conversation. But for anyone paying
       | attention, what matters is that open models are now good enough.
        
         | slopinthebag wrote:
         | Underrated comment. I think the future is actually quite
         | bright, if we can continue to use open models, even if they are
         | behind closed SOTA models they are still capable and will
         | continue to improve.
        
       | simianwords wrote:
       | While I don't think Mythos is so powerful that it justifies
       | containment permanently - I wonder how it might work when there
       | is such an AI that can justify containment.
       | 
       | What if this new model can start proving Millenial problems and
       | provide insights in other fields that was not possible before?
       | 
       | My intuition says that a model that is as good will also be
       | equally well aligned -- but it is still highly risky to give it
       | to the general public because all you need is one jailbreak from
       | bad actors.
       | 
       | At that point I think society would change so dramatically that
       | "access to general public" would be a non issue. Rather, time
       | would be spent on making abundance happen - you might think of
       | the political struggles, economics and new ventures.
       | 
       | Its a bit sad that democratised access is not provided because of
       | negative sum possibilities like cybersecurity.
        
       | zkmon wrote:
       | You never needed a godzilla or a megatron to get on with your
       | life. But the sellers of those monsters would make every attempt,
       | in connivance with the authorities, to make it a basic necessity
       | to use their services. That's a survival strategy for the
       | monsters. The owners can't keep the monsters in cages for too
       | long, even if the owner is a state actor.
        
       | fwipsy wrote:
       | The opportunity from the early days of the American frontier is
       | not typical. Instead, it's the brief burst of unrestrained growth
       | as a better-adapted organization (the US, software companies)
       | expands into, and expands, a niche--cannibalizing the previous
       | occupant (Native Americans, older stagnant companies.) At times
       | growth is so rapid that individuals are able to advance the
       | frontier, but if the field stagnates, individuals will be
       | outcompeted by corporations.
       | 
       | So, opportunity for individuals comes from disruption. Creative
       | destruction is good up to a point, but it results from advancing
       | capabilities. Technological advances compound and accelerate
       | exponentially. Eventually we reach the point where any malcontent
       | can destroy the world by snapping their fingers. At some point we
       | need to place restrictions on the capabilities accessible to
       | individuals. We have reached that point with nuclear weapons, and
       | I think it is sensible to believe that AI is reaching that point
       | as well.
        
         | brunoborges wrote:
         | > Yes, but today a 16-year-old building a unicorn is about as
         | likely as winning the lottery.
         | 
         | In today's world, a new digital service is more likely to be
         | successful when attached to celebrities than from pure PLG /
         | Marketing.
        
           | fwipsy wrote:
           | Sorry, I removed that line from the comment because I
           | realized it wasn't really in line with the rest of the point
           | I was making.
        
         | taurath wrote:
         | Frontier mythology also hides quite a lot of tragedy and deaths
         | too because of how many native Americans needed to die for it
         | to be a frontier. It was not by any means unsettled land.
        
       | shevy-java wrote:
       | > Even though the American dream is nearly dead
       | 
       | That dream was always a lie. But in the past, people could
       | purchase more in parity. You only need to look at income versus
       | housing cost in, say, Canada.
       | 
       | Realistically there should not exist any superrich, but this
       | seems hard to change. That means there needs to be a different
       | society be given as promise. Other countries manage that. In the
       | USA they have the orange oligarch who said a while ago how there
       | is no money for health care because he has to invade countries
       | and wage war. So much for the "no more wars" promise.
        
         | suzzer99 wrote:
         | The American dream was not a lie if you come from a country
         | with no economic opportunity, or where the govt can just steal
         | your successful business at any time. It's still not dead in
         | that regard, although it's seen better days.
        
       | oa335 wrote:
       | I don't understand this sentiment at all - the older models are
       | still available and still highly capable.
        
       | hgoel wrote:
       | I interpreted their "too dangerous to release" comment as a
       | statement about the current situation. If the model is truly as
       | capable as they say, and the security issues so numerous, it
       | makes sense to hold out until the biggest targets have been
       | patched.
       | 
       | It'd only take one company deciding to not worry about safety, to
       | change the calculus back to "we have to release this to stay
       | competitive".
        
       | rdedev wrote:
       | > already happening with recursive self improvement
       | 
       | Are any AI labs claiming this?
        
       | operatingthetan wrote:
       | I doubt that Mythos is just so wonderful and not able to be
       | replicated that we are actually being 'closed off' from frontier
       | models.
       | 
       | For example, the people who Anthropic "trusts" with this
       | "dangerous" model are a handful of fortune 500 companies?
       | Seriously? Those are the people we trust?
       | 
       | We are going to have access to this within 6 months, and if we
       | don't, someone else will offer an equivalent. Anthropic hasn't
       | walked to the edge of the abyss only to be like "let the CEO's
       | handle this!"
       | 
       | It is simply not the edge of the abyss.
        
       | atleastoptimal wrote:
       | I think we are going to look at the era between 2019-2025 as a
       | very rare blip in the history of public AI access. Regardless of
       | whether fears about Mythos end up being justified, the clear
       | trend is
       | 
       | 1. AI models are becoming better and better at causing massively
       | disruptive effects, leaving up larger and larger liabilities,
       | especially as laws and regulations are being passed/proposed
       | which would put the responsibility of some mass
       | disruption/hacking event on the company which serves the model
       | that made it possible
       | 
       | 2. The relative advantage of serving an AI model for inference in
       | exchange for money is waning compared to the advantage of using
       | that model internally for purposes which accrue
       | money/power/leverage for that AI company. Why serve a model at 30
       | dollars/million tokens when you've discovered you can use that
       | model to run a simulated Quant firm with a net profit of 300
       | dollars/million tokens? Why offer the model to companies so they
       | can find zero-day exploits, when you can find them yourself and
       | sell the discovery to companies which would may millions to avoid
       | this exploit being taken advantage of?
       | 
       | 3. Why serve models so another wrapper company like Cursor can
       | make billions off your tokens, and then try to train their own
       | models as fast as possible, trained on your outputs so they
       | aren't dependent on you? The entire AI startup industry and like
       | 90% of YC batches depend on being able to serve frontier models
       | at a profit, mediated through some wrapper, why can't
       | OpenAI/ANthropic, once their models are good enough to handle the
       | ideation/organizational problem, become their own incubator for
       | thousands of AI run startups, running on models way better than
       | the public has access to?
       | 
       | As a consequence, there is less and less incentive over time to
       | offer models as an API to the public.
        
         | operatingthetan wrote:
         | > AI models are becoming better and better at causing massively
         | disruptive effects
         | 
         | Anthropic chose to use their model to find a bunch of
         | vulnerabilities. People have used much smaller models since to
         | find the same issues. We are being set up to have certain pre-
         | concieved notions about this model.
         | 
         | Ripping away AI access from the public at this point would be
         | catastrophic for the world economy. It's just not happening.
        
       | willworktill4pm wrote:
       | I'm old enough to remember claims that gpt-2 is too powerful to
       | release.
        
         | djmips wrote:
         | Good point but that was only 2019... :)
        
       | skybrian wrote:
       | It's long been conventional wisdom that you shouldn't write your
       | own crypto libraries - leave that to experts. But excellent open
       | source libraries are available, which do get reviewed by experts.
       | And if you're willing to study, maybe you can learn enough about
       | cryptography to become one of the experts?
       | 
       | I'm wondering what other security-sensitive software that might
       | become true of in the era of Mythos-or-better AI's?
       | 
       | There will still be open source projects that anyone could learn
       | enough to contribute to, but maybe starting from scratch and
       | writing your own becomes less feasible if you aren't attracting
       | enough attention to get attention from people with access to the
       | best AI's?
       | 
       | For example, Linux patches are going to get expert reviews, but
       | maybe your homegrown OS won't?
        
       | tim-projects wrote:
       | Anthropic should provide a specific service where they attack a
       | businesses infrastructure using this frontier model and then
       | issue a report of all vulnerabilities found. I could imagine it
       | would be quite lucrative.
       | 
       | Much better than hiding it away where it can't help anyone.
        
         | avaer wrote:
         | Hypothetically... I'm joey joe bob who happens to be maintainer
         | of a top 10 npm package. My wife got cancer so I need money
         | FAST. Unrelated: can you mythos my lib?
         | 
         | 1 month later: whoopsie my lib got hacked and the hackers stole
         | a bunch of stuff. Sorry guys.
         | 
         | It just wouldn't be good PR. And this is the best case
         | scenario.
        
       | laurentiurad wrote:
       | My bet that this is just a model with a slimmer safety alignment
       | which yields results in 100 agent running in parallel
       | configuration.
        
       | gxs wrote:
       | I had a similar thought, though not as extreme, the second they
       | started nerfing and filtering models
       | 
       | Their intensions were good, they always are, but the minute you
       | decide to nerf something powerful for someone, it means someone
       | out there has access to the full blown, unnerfed version
       | 
       | Which means there are powerful people out there using AI in ways
       | or for activities in which you will never be allowed to anyway
       | 
       | So yeah, this is just more of the same
        
       | psychoslave wrote:
       | It's not clear to me if the author talk about European invasion
       | as the colonization pattern behind pretended American frontier,
       | as it was lands that never any human had reached before.
        
       | camillomiller wrote:
       | The richer are just getting scammed faster this time around
        
       | furyofantares wrote:
       | As a teenager, visual studio cost 650 dollars or so. More money
       | than I had ever held by a wide margin.
        
       | AIorNot wrote:
       | For pete's sake stop with the thinkpeices already.. its only been
       | an week and the model isnt even out yet!!!!!
       | 
       | OMG this generation - we can't separete the outrage from reality
       | anymore.
       | 
       | Meanwhile 3000 people have died arbitrarily in Iran War -while we
       | navel gaze.
        
         | contraposit wrote:
         | Human race is indeed fascinating. We kill millions of cows for
         | food while doing the following in the same breath.
         | 
         | A bronze sculpture unveiled in March 2026 in Almaty, Kazakhstan
         | (near the Europe/Asia border region), honors strangers who
         | formed a human chain to save a dog from the Sayran Reservoir in
         | 2016. The statue, located along the canal embankment,
         | symbolizes unity and collective action after the 2016 viral
         | rescue.
        
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