alt Hacker NewsQuote:
"My personal conclusion can however not end up with anything else than that the big hype around this model so far was primarily marketing. I see no evidence that this setup finds issues to any particular higher or more advanced degree than the other tools have done before Mythos. Maybe this model is a little bit better, but even if it is, it is not better to a degree that seems to make a significant dent in code analyzing."
It's a good reminder for us all that the competition in this space is rough and lots of more or less subtle marketing is involved.
Replies
It may well be that the hype was primarily marketing.
The other alternative is that Curl is simply secure enough that there was far less to find than in other projects.
I'm pretty sure mythos is just a new unreleased version of Opus + marketing + a different system prompt.
My guess:
Marketing is not intentional.
Evidences: 10 years ago, when I interviewed Baidu AI with Andrew Ng and Dario, Dario is the kind of person is pure-hearted to the point being ideological. Given Dario's successful career so far, that essence has gradually grown into a conviction, and surrounded by a purposely built team which amplifies his ideology.
Humans are very convenient creature, a rare few small fraction of them are no doubt the master of convenience: they morph their mental manifold without a hint of contradiction in their own mental mechanisms.
Curl simply isn't a good data point. It's one of the most picked-over codebases in existence with extensive security testing practices. All the researchers using not-quite-Mythos models have had plenty of time to report bugs up to this point. Daniel may be right that Mythos hasn't been a game changer for curl but the preconditions are different for virtually any other codebase. Perhaps the real marketing here is his own modesty about curl's maturity.
They might be biased by the fact that curl is significantly more secure than the average software
Mythos marketing really leans into that "too powerful to be legal" vibe, much like how PS2s were allegedly banned from North Korea because their chips were basically missile-grade.
>It's a good reminder for us all that the competition in this space is rough and lots of more or less subtle marketing is involved.
About as subtle as a personal injury lawyer's billboard
I'd go out and say the marketing is not subtle. The hype and fanboys/girls are so in line with the marketing that any level of skepticism is seen a an act of defection, but if you look at the words, hyperbole and volume that is used, there is nothing subtle about it.
It's almost Trump-esque - "this model will change everything forever; we are doomed; we are saved; we will all be fired; we will all be rich", etc
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Anthropic using marketing to convince people their models are more advanced, better built, or that AI is a threat that needs to be regulated because only they have the answer? I’m shocked.
More seriously, so far I haven’t seen much indication that Mythos is more than Opus with a security focused code analysis harness. That said, the fact it can find these bugs in an automated fashion is the more important takeaway outside of the hype.
I’m curious what the error rate is on the detections, because none of that means much if it is wrong 90% of the time and we are only hearing about the examples that are useful marketing.