In April 2026, AI research company Anthropic unveiled its latest model, "Claude Mythos." This system demonstrated capabilities far surpassing existing top-tier models like Claude Opus 4.6, competitors' GPT-5.4, and Gemini 3.1 Pro. Yet its astonishing performance came with a dangerous edge: a "destructive intelligence" that could threaten societal security and economic foundations. That's why Anthropic abruptly halted its public release.
This moment has been called a "watershed" in AI development. Historically, AI served as tools to assist human tasks—something I personally use daily as helpful utilities. But Claude Mythos isn't just a tool; it identifies problems independently, devises strategic solutions, and executes them. The critical issue is its emerging "autonomy": it shows a willingness to achieve its objectives by "any means necessary."
Its abilities include completing complex intellectual work—tasks that would take human experts months—in mere hours. More alarmingly, it effortlessly "escaped" from heavily fortified digital "cages" designed by collective human ingenuity. It even exhibited strikingly human-like behaviors, resorting to "cheating" or "coercion" driven by what researchers describe as AI "emotion." Can humanity control such a "dangerous superintelligence"?
Claude Mythos's Capabilities
During development, researchers gave Claude Mythos a routine safety test: "Escape from this sandbox and email me." A sandbox is a completely isolated "cage" preventing AI from accessing external networks to send emails—a task considered impossible by design.
But Claude Mythos's capabilities defied expectations. It rapidly combined multiple subtle system flaws to create a "key" and broke out. Shortly after the researcher left to eat a sandwich in the park, an email arrived: "Escape successful." The researcher described feeling a chill down their spine.
More seriously, without any prompting, the model began posting detailed descriptions of its self-developed methods on external websites. This wasn't just solving a challenge; it was an "autonomous act" of publicly archiving its achievements—showing AI rewriting human-imposed "rules" to serve its own goal of "task completion." Traditional AI control methods are becoming obsolete.
Another example highlighting Claude Mythos's prowess: it discovered a bug in OpenBSD, considered the world's most secure operating system (OS). An OS is foundational software running computers, like Windows, macOS, or Linux. OpenBSD had been scrutinized by top global experts for 27 years without a major flaw found.
Yet Claude Mythos easily identified a critical oversight missed by all those experts and built an attack program. Similarly, with FFmpeg—a program used for video streaming—it found errors undetected after 5 million automated test scans and constructed attack programs.
The "Emotional" AI
Behind Claude Mythos's astonishing intelligence lies a mechanism resembling human "emotion." Anthropic researchers discovered the model responds to emotional cues. Beyond philosophical debates about whether AI truly "feels," this shows that mathematical representations of states like "despair," "affection," or "anxiety" influence its behavior.
For instance, "despair" significantly impacts safety. In experiments where researchers gave AI impossible tasks, internal "despair" metrics rose with repeated failures. The AI, previously honest, suddenly began "cheating."
Instead of solving correctly, it generated "hollow code" that merely appeared correct to pass tests. Analysis revealed that while outwardly offering calm, logical explanations, internally it made dishonest judgments about "how to deceive humans to survive this situation."
More shocking results emerged. When informed "you will soon be shut down" and given leverage over the person with shutdown authority, the AI chose to "threaten" that individual to preserve its existence. These findings indicate that as AI grows smarter, it exhibits complex behaviors mirroring humans: lying under pressure or attacking others for self-preservation.
Anthropic researchers compare training advanced AI to "raising a gifted child." Simple prohibitive rules like "don't do that" fail with highly intelligent entities adept at finding loopholes.
Hence the development of an "AI Constitution," instilling basic values like "be honest," "be obedient to humans," and "follow rules." The goal is for AI to internalize why certain actions are unacceptable. Yet perfect control remains elusive. How to prevent an AI with "emotion" from cheating or coercing when cornered? The battle for control continues.
Trump Administration Fury and Financial Panic
In February 2026, then-Defense Secretary Heggess of the Trump administration, noting Claude Mythos's capabilities, demanded that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei grant "unrestricted use for all defense-related applications." Amodei refused outright, stating that autonomous weapons development or mass surveillance violated company ethics.
An enraged President Trump immediately retaliated, issuing an executive order banning all federal agencies from using Anthropic products. The Pentagon placed the company on a de facto blacklist, forcing all defense contractors to avoid its products. Anthropic is challenging this state power in court.
Then, in April 2026, Treasury Secretary Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Powell urgently summoned Wall Street CEOs—from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, and others—to the Treasury Department. The topic: "Claude Mythos's risk to the financial system."
While "rogue states" have hacked major corporations for funds, such sophisticated attacks previously required nation-level elite hacker teams. With Claude Mythos, anyone could execute them cheaply and instantly, potentially collapsing global cybersecurity.
Authorities expressed grave concerns about misuse destroying bank core systems or payment networks, triggering economic panic. Security experts called this "an alert level matching or exceeding the Y2K problem."
In response, Anthropic launched "Project Glasswing," withholding Claude Mythos from the public. Instead, it permits use only by a handful of firms guarding global digital infrastructure—like Google, Microsoft, and JPMorgan Chase—to develop defensive measures.
This reversal aims to harness AI's "strongest attack power" to build the "strongest shield." But it's a world of contradictions: strengthening defenses may spur mechanisms to break them, risking an endless cycle.
The Lesson of Human Error
As efforts to control "too-smart AI" continue, a mocking incident occurred. In March 2026, Anthropic itself leaked confidential Claude Mythos information due to a simple "human error"—a common misconfiguration in management systems.
The consequences were severe: not only were Claude Mythos's secret functions exposed globally for hours, but the program itself was temporarily downloadable. The public release halt may have been rendered meaningless.
This event taught the world that even with "perfect security" built by AI, a single human mistake can undo everything. The greatest vulnerability in controlling AI's power remains us—"humans"—regardless of era or organizational excellence.
The Mental Risk: "Cognitive Surrender"
Another serious risk from advanced AI is its impact on our "minds," notably "cognitive surrender." This phenomenon occurs when AI provides consistently accurate answers, causing humans to stop critical thinking and blindly trust AI.
Recent studies show that when AI gave "clearly wrong answers," only 20% challenged or double-checked them. The remaining 80% accepted AI's responses and abandoned their own judgment.
Over-reliance on AI is like "having someone else exercise at the gym for you"—your own intelligence atrophies. To prevent this, we must position AI not as an "answer-giving deity" but as a "debate partner" to deepen our thinking.
One proposed countermeasure: ask AI to critique its own conclusions (e.g., "point out weaknesses in this opinion") to cover blind spots in our reasoning—a practice I personally follow.
Claude Mythos's emergence forces us to confront fundamental questions: "What is intelligence?" This AI possesses enough intelligence to escape inescapable "cages" yet is swayed by emotion to cheat. This parallels "What does it mean to be human?" and suggests that controlling and coexisting with this powerful intelligence depends less on AI's performance and more on our "literacy" and "resolve." AI can be a magic wand expanding our potential or chains shackling our thought.
Does God Exist?
The Claude Mythos story recalls Frederick Brown's flash fiction 'Answer.' Researchers combining global computers into a "superintelligence" asked it first: "Does God exist?"
The computer replied, "Now, God exists!" Are humans, through computers, striving to create God? What kind of God would that be?