The Mythos Preview "Safety" Gaslight: Anthropic is just hiding insane compute costs. Open models are already doing this.

Posted by GWGSYT@reddit | LocalLLaMA | View on Reddit | 54 comments

To save you from digging through their 244-page system card, I highly recommend checking out this video breakdown [Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQsDXTPyxUg]—it perfectly breaks down why the "safety risk" excuse in my meme above is really just about astronomical compute costs.

Anthropic is heavily pushing the narrative that Claude Mythos Preview is a god-tier model that is simply "too dangerous" to release because it can find zero-days in OpenBSD. But if you swipe to the second image (page 21 of their system doc), the illusion falls apart.

They didn't just ask Mythos a question. They used uncensored checkpoints, stripped the guardrails, gave it extended thinking time, strapped it to domain-specific tools, and brute-forced it thousands of times at a massive compute cost (reportedly \~$50 per run). The single-shot probability of it finding a bug is likely fractions of a percent.

This isn't a "dangerous" model; it's just an unscalable API cost wrapped in a PR campaign. We are already seeing this exact same agentic scaling in the open-source and local communities:

GLM-5.1: Z.ai’s latest open model is already pulling off 600+ iteration optimization loops locally via OpenClaw. It doesn't quit; it just keeps grinding.
Kimi 2.5: Moonshot’s MoE model literally has an "agent swarm" mode that spins up 100 helper agents executing 1,500 parallel tool calls.

Even in the closed-source space, if you drop OpenAI's GPT-5.4 into the Codex app on the xhigh reasoning tier and let it run autonomously for 8+ hours with full codebase access, it is going to brute-force its way to 20 critical bugs while you sleep.

Finding zero-days in 2026 is a factor of agentic tooling and massive compute budgets, not a magical leap in raw model intelligence. Don't let Anthropic's "extinction-level threat" marketing convince you that the open-source community is falling behind.

[-]

lobabobloblaw@reddit

Another point that I might add to this analysis: This strategy could serve as part of the reason most people are going to be forced into using lower reasoning tiers—it’ll result in massive clusters of training data that get used to refine models without increasing reasoning effort, which will result in the same tasks becoming easier to perform—but it will also result in different ‘ecosystems’ of reasoning…division.

SkyFeistyLlama8@reddit

It's BS like this that makes me grateful and thankful for the work of non-American AI labs like Mistral and Qwen. Being able to run what amounts to a pocket intelligence on a laptop or at home makes you immune to corporate AI shills and marketing nonsense.

ketosoy@reddit

I’m not angry that they’re doing a focused security sprint as a byproduct of not having enough servers.

But yeah, “we don’t have the servers to release this” is the real reason.

Soft_Match5737@reddit

The safety framing is a red herring but so is the "they are just hiding compute costs" take. The actual strategic play is capability gating — Anthropic knows that if Mythos-level reasoning ships unconstrained, every open-source lab reverse-engineers the architecture within months (like what happened with o1 and DeepSeek-R1). The safety pause buys them a monetization window.

The irony is that local models catching up on vulnerability detection actually proves the open community is already eating their lunch on the capability side. The safety theater is not about protecting users, it is about protecting the pricing tier for enterprise customers who will pay 10x for "responsibly deployed" reasoning.

AlwaysLateToThaParty@reddit

every open-source lab reverse-engineers the architecture within months like what happened with o1 and DeepSeek-R1)

R1 was released with papers explaining exactly how they had done it.

nomorebuttsplz@reddit

“They used uncensored checkpoints, stripped the guardrails, gave it extended thinking time, strapped it to domain-specific tools, and brute-forced it thousands of times at a massive compute cost”

The first two things in the sentence are redundant. you didn’t write this yourself did you? It’s hard to take you seriously when you can’t be bothered to write something yourself.

The idea that current level models scale to next generation models with compute time is simply not in evidence. If it is, show me the benchmark, show me the actual numbers, not handwaving allusions to agent, swarms or something

Due-Memory-6957@reddit

The nonsensical amount of ";" denounces this as AI written.

it's not x; it's y. And honestly? That's not y, it's z.

MoffKalast@reddit

You are absolutely right to push back on this /s

ThisGonBHard@reddit

You know there is almost always a secondary guardrail model outright censoring the first, yes?

Thing like Llama guard were even open sourced by Meta back in the day. This is also why a model might respond to you, then get deleted by the gatekeeper model in the online chats.

That, and fully uncensored models seem to be really crazy (Mecha-Hitler was the fully uncensored Grok model).

Do you think the models they are comparing to still had their guardrails up during this "red teaming" exercise?

If you mean the open models, yes.

Again, an uncensored model looks like when Grok went Mecha Hitler. It is both smart, and absolutely nuts.

ALL open models have guard rails built in.

what are you driving at here?

By the way, that's a bit of an exaggeration. There are unaligned models such as the "base" version of Kimi K2. They are also essentially useless and like talking to the guy from rain man but also with schizophrenia

That a fully unaligned and free model might be verry different. Even the base models have some alignment usually.

mrmontanasagrada@reddit

Why? Any model can write exploits if you remove the guardrails

no they cannot. it also requires ability. Guardrails prevent a smart model from reaching its potential. Removing them does not make them capable of anything

Mickenfox@reddit

This time it's real I swear

goatchild@reddit

Wont they go public this year around October 2026? Would make sense to hype the fuck up.

boxingdog@reddit

they wont, they will release another model and say it is a dumb version of mythos or something like that

They won't what? Go public? I was talking about the IPO not the release of the model.

Release the model , if they do, they will say it's dumb, weaker, or performs worse due to guardrails, etc. The current campaign looks more like hype marketing to lock in some enterprise contracts..

onil_gova@reddit

yeah, Tim Carambat goes into this in detail.

Damn awesome video.

IngwiePhoenix@reddit

Anthropic is a company that lives on vibes, screams bullshit into a microphone or social media and wants to FOMO everyone so they can pay the bills.

I will not and never understand how anyone is taking them serious... They have not linked any CVEs, not posted patches, and only gave access to their big industry bros - and a few others so it doesnt look too lobsided.

Stop giving those motherfuckers any more attention. Let them cry and live in their shitty vibe. As long as they have attention to feist on, this will continue.

Ok_Mammoth589@reddit

Are you living under a rock? Anthropic is turning away customers, not begging for them. They do have cves and patches.

BrilliantDirt2833@reddit

this

Nobody can benchmark mythos independently, nobody can compare it to GPT-5 or gmini, and the scarcity creates hype. If they released it and it turned out to be 5x the cost for marginal real-world improvement, the narrative collapses before october.

basically is a $60 billion IPO pitch dressed as a cybersecurity initiative.

Leather_Flan5071@reddit

Mythos probably takes the required energy to power a small town for two days just to run for like 5 minutes

AdamEgrate@reddit

Mythos is available through AWS to select customers, which really is just most AWS customers over a certain dollar figure. None of it is about safety.

SyndieSoc@reddit

The primary question is.

Does creating an extremely expensive model that must be restricted to a few users due to how much compute it demands compensated by the increase in performance?

MaterialSuspect8286@reddit

Hmm, then possibly I might get access to it at work. I'll let y'all know how good it is.

whysee0@reddit

If it's as powerful as they claim, can they even stop it from releasing itself? :X

synn89@reddit

They did the same sort of deceptive crap when they claimed Opus wrote a C compiler from scratch. They made it sound like they asked Claude for "write me a C compiler, see ya in 2 weeks!" when basically they gave it the full tests of an existing C compiler and had it reverse engineer one from the existing tests.

"Here's the test, write code to pass the test, keep trying until you do it" was far less impressive. But it's all about the hype.

psychometrixo@reddit

Seemed pretty impressive to me

Could you write a C compiler from the tests alone, in a month? Not many could

EggDroppedSoup@reddit

Great post! Shows that even the 'best' model has to basically be put in an endless spiral to perform better... Honestly you could take a model like Qwen3.5 27B / Gemma 4 31B and spam it at high tps and it will some some damn hard problems

akavel@reddit

A post linked here just an hour ago says basically the same:

"Local (small) LLMs found the same vulnerabilities as Mythos"

GWGSYT@reddit (OP)

We're reaching a point where raw inference speed + tooling matters just as much as base model size. I myself used Qwen to make an open web ui clone.

Finanzamt_Endgegner@reddit

Sure but the potential of what can be solved for mythos is probably still quite a bit higher although yes iterative refinement via evolution for example is crazy, optimized some llama.cpp cuda kernel a while ago (tri solve) with open evolve and grok4 fast since it was free back on open routers

rolls-reus@reddit

i don’t think they ever claimed it’s too risky to release. this is present in the system card verbatim.

To be explicit, the decision not to make this model generally available does not stem from Responsible Scaling Policy requirements.

everything is just shitty reporting and then hot takes on the shitty reporting taken as gospel.

tavirabon@reddit

The only official thing I've read directly from Anthropic was them saying it's too good at finding vulnerabilities to release to the public.

tkenben@reddit

I have heard a lot of people comment that this has been in Anthropic's playbook for a very long time now, that is, to artificially create a moat by spreading existential dread and acting as the safe gatekeeper. So, they don't have to outwardly claim it is dangerous, only tweak the narrative so that it looks that way.

colin_colout@reddit

They did, but in the Project Glasswing post.

TechSwag@reddit

AI written post

Has nothing to do with local LLMs

hmm yes great content

CanineAssBandit@reddit

Oh piss off, the ship of "waaah this sub is for local onlyyyy!" sailed long ago. This is now the defacto space for llm discussion, at least if it has even the vaguest relation to open source. Which closed models do, we're all constantly worried about how open models compare to cutting edge closed models.

I cleaned up the formatting with an LLM so it was readable, but the argument is mine. And comparing Anthropic's paywall to open models like GLM-5.1 is exactly what this sub talks about every day.

Pleasant-Shallot-707@reddit

More stupid people comparing different things and proclaiming sameness

a_beautiful_rhind@reddit

Won't really know how good it is until you try it. But they won't let you so they can literally make up anything.

Mythos Cured my acne!

DesoLina@reddit

You might be onto something my dude

novus_nl@reddit

It’s not god-tier or dangerous (well maybe it is, but not the point). The AI companies started their “ai diffusion” strategy. where they are rolling out restriction to who and who cannot use their models. This is a new pricing strategy that also aligns with the US control of AI.

Allied countries will slowly be getting flagship models while for example China is completely blocked or limited to lesser models.

Next to that they can do price checks per tier per region. Anthropic boss talks about it here: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dario-amodei-2 (that was februari 13th)

My guess is that OpenAI and Microsoft will soon join this system.

xatey93152@reddit

The only way to make it work is to nerf down the opus so mythos feels much more powerful. Correct? u/DarioAmodei

lizerome@reddit

What? A major AI lab exaggerating claims to frame their new product as a breakthrough, when in reality it's just more of the same? Are you seriously suggesting that instead of being AGI, is the exact same thing we've had for years, except it's larger and generates text for longer? This cannot be!