Yes, this was necessary, and I am very happy that, given the capabilities involved exist, things are playing out the way that they are. All alternatives were vastly worse.
...
Despite this, a prominent safety researcher endorses the low-key chaos option:
Boaz Barak (OpenAI): I think preserving models for internal deployment is risky. I encourage Anthropic to release Mythos, even if it’s a version that over refuses on cyber tasks or routes risky responses to a weaker model, as we did with codex.
They should release it for general availability. You learn much more about the model this way. If they trust their safety stack then they can make it refuse on cyber related tasks. They can start with over refusing to be on the safe side, as we did in our release.
I understand the allure of iterative deployment, but no, obviously not. You have to give the ‘good guy with an AI’ enough of a head start that at least the major stuff has been secured reasonably well.
I don’t understand your objection here. Releasing with aggressive refusals on cyber (and potentially aggressive KYC as well) seems better to me—seems like it should mitigate a large fraction of the misuse potential. I think most of the worst risks come from internal deployment so I’d prefer more general awareness of scary capabilities and access for independent safety researchers etc.
...
I don’t understand your objection here. Releasing with aggressive refusals on cyber (and potentially aggressive KYC as well) seems better to me—seems like it should mitigate a large fraction of the misuse potential. I think most of the worst risks come from internal deployment so I’d prefer more general awareness of scary capabilities and access for independent safety researchers etc.