Sam Altman throws shade at Anthropic's cyber model Mythos, calls it 'fear-based marketing'

Sam Altman throws shade at Anthropic's cyber model, Mythos: 'fear-based marketing' | TechCrunch

OpenAI and Anthropic continue to take swipes at each other. This week, during a podcast appearance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called out his competitor's new cybersecurity model, noting that the company was using fear to make its product sound more impressive than it actually is. Anthropic announced Mythos earlier this month, releasing the model to a small cohort of enterprise customers. The company has claimed that Mythos is too powerful to be released to the public out of concern that cybercriminals will weaponize it. Critics have said this rhetoric is overblown. During an appearance on the podcast "Core Memory," Altman implied that Anthropic's "fear-based marketing" was a good way to keep AI in the hands of a small and exclusive elite. "There are people in the world who, for a long time, have wanted to keep AI in the hands of a smaller group of people," he said. "You can justify that in a lot of different ways." "It is clearly incredible marketing to say, 'We have built a bomb, we are about to drop it on your head. We will sell you a bomb shelter for $100 million,'" he added. Fear-based marketing was not invented by Anthropic. Arguably, much of the AI industry has leveraged scare tactics and hyperbole to make its tools sound powerful. Ongoing rhetoric about how AI may lead to the end of the world hasn't just come from luddite doomer activists; it has also come from the people selling this technology to the public -- Altman included.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Slams Anthropic's 'Fear-Based Marketing' Strategy For Claude Mythos: 'We Have Built

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman criticized the cybersecurity marketing strategy of rival company, Anthropic for its newly launched cybersecurity product, Claude Mythos. "You can justify that in a lot of different ways," said Altman. Altman further used a metaphor to illustrate his point, likening Anthropic's strategy to selling a bomb shelter while threatening to drop a bomb. 'We have built a bomb, we are about to drop it on your head. We will sell you a bomb shelter for $100 million," he added. Anthropic AI Raises Cybersecurity Fears In the following week, Anthropic unveiled Claude Opus 4.7 to test new cyber capabilities, saying it is less advanced than Mythos Preview as part of a phased safety rollout. Last week, Barclays CEO Venkatakrishnan flagged Mythos as a potential catalyst for cyberattacks on global banks. He called it a "serious issue" and warned that Mythos was just the beginning, with more advanced systems likely to emerge rapidly. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Image via Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.