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areoformyesterday at 11:01 PM13 repliesview on HN

When Fable was yanked, it was said to be (in part) due to the "jailbreak" of instructing Fable to "fix this code" — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552687

Dumb question. If "Mythos-class" models are such a problem, then... why not just let it fix everyone's code?

There can't be more than a few million to tens of millions software businesses / services / regularly used F/OSS projects on Earth.

Why not just give everyone a $100 Fable / Mythos credit to "fix [their] code?"

It would arguably benefit Anthropic. For $100M to $1B, Anthropic could execute the greatest ad campaign in human history. And they'd make the entire world more secure.

Most people aren't malicious. If you, as an engineer, consultant, founder, business owner, or maintainer, were given access to Mythos' capabilities wouldn't you ask it to fix your code?

I might be wrong. But I think that a greater amount of harm will be done in the long-term by trying to lack these capabilities and systems away behind permission gates and sealed doors. It creates an asymmetric world with haves and have nots. And in that world who gets to have access now decides who gets to be secure.

If everyone has mythos, no one has "Mythos."

Just let people fix their code.


Replies

andy99yesterday at 11:16 PM

> If "Mythos-class" models are such a problem, then... why not just let it fix everyone's code?

Because it doesn’t really confer the advantage they claim, especially compared to e.g. paying an equivalent amount of money to do traditional security scanning.

It’s much better to play of FOMO and hype than to let everyone use it and be underwhelmed.

show 1 reply
overgardtoday at 3:23 AM

Because this is all kayfabe. You cannot take a single thing these companies or people say at face value.

StilesCrisisyesterday at 11:18 PM

I don't think a one-time $100 credit is enough. First of all, that isn't very much. But also, the volume of new code is going way up. Unless they keep giving out monthly free credits, it's just a stopgap.

benlivengoodyesterday at 11:47 PM

> Dumb question. If "Mythos-class" models are such a problem, then... why not just let it fix everyone's code?

That's basically project Glasswing; mixing responsible disclosure with frontier exploit generators.

paxystoday at 3:14 AM

$100 credit on Fable/Mythos will last a grand total of 10 minutes.

usef-yesterday at 11:48 PM

They are doing that (see their project glasswing over the past few months), but there's a lot more code in the world than you realise.

The problem with rolling it out is that bad and good actors can both use it at the same time, and bad actors will typically move faster than typical day-to-day software projects and patching schedules, so they set up glasswing to give access to the major producers and projects to patch their own software before it becomes available more widely (they've submitted tremendous numbers of security issues to open source projects)

bluGillyesterday at 11:18 PM

I doubt most bosses will give engineers the time. They care about security only to the extent that they have already been harmed by a lack of it. I would like to play with mythos, but on my own time my kids have plenty of activities to fill my time. My personal backlog of projects is only getting longer and none of it is something mythos could help. If I had more time is have restored my old truck instead of making payments on something new (in turn limiting what else I can afford to buy)

slashdavetoday at 2:24 AM

> why not just let it fix everyone's code?

That's the stated idea. Fix code before releasing to the public.

xboxnolifestoday at 1:16 AM

For starters, it's probably closer to $10,000 per codebase for Fable/Mythos for a full review. That would be around 5 years of their current spending I think.

They really want that level of spend coming into the company, not going out.

machinist5today at 12:05 AM

> Most people aren't malicious. If you, as an engineer, consultant, founder, business owner, or maintainer, were given access to Mythos' capabilities wouldn't you ask it to fix your code?

1. Some do not want to use LLMs because of grave ethical concerns.

2. Some do not want to use LLMs because of copyright concerns. Google v Oracle looms large in the background.

3. You presume the outcome of Fable / Mythos is a net positive for a FOSS project. Reviewing a firehose of code written without the context of the values and considerations of a particular project shaped over years or sometimes decades of formal and informal decisions is not necessarily the best use of the maintainers time.

ashu1461yesterday at 11:13 PM

I think eventually there will be Mythos grade AI which will be released which can solve a lot of bugs, even right now opus/fable can fix more things which companies can even keep track of.

The problem is how to make sure such AI is released safely. The same AI that can solve bugs can also find bugs in authentication or loopholes in critical systems.

Gigachadyesterday at 11:10 PM

I think there is some logic in delaying the rollout, giving it to the heads of the largest software products first to fix their code before dumping it on the general public. But yes eventually everyone will have this tech and it won't matter because the low hanging fruit will have all been picked clean.