Was the Mythos Ban Justified? (Good Idea. Bad Execution.) | AI Reality Check
6/17/202629 min
Cal Newport takes a critical look at recent AI News. Video from today’s episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia (0:00) Was the Mythos ban justified? (5:32) Is Fable 5 actually dangerous? (11:03) Is Fable 5 without guardrails actually a unique national security concern? (15:13) Should the government be more involved with AI? Links: Buy Cal’s latest book, “Slow Productivity” at www.calnewport.com/slow https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/technology/anthropic-ai-claude-fable-mythos.html https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2065853007619588171 https://www.economist.com/business/2026/06/14/donald-trumps-blocking-of-anthropic-is-capricious-and-chaotic https://x.com/deanwball/status/2066151868556865860 https://x.com/GaryMarcus/status/2066166713453060512 https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2065853007619588171 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/opinion/anthropic-ai-claude-mythos.html https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/promoting-advanced-artificial-intelligence-innovation-and-security/ Thanks to Jesse Miller for production and mastering and Nate Mechler for research and newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsCal Newport· Host0:01
Arguably the only topic that's more controversial than AI criticism at the moment is really any mention of the Trump administration. Well, late last week, both of these topics came together, creating a tidal wave of chaos and recrimination. Uh, here's what happened, if you haven't been following. Back in April, Anthropic announced that their new large language model, which they called Claude Mythos, was so good at finding bugs in computer code that it was too dangerous to release to the public. Here were their exact words: "The fallout for economies, public safety, and national security could be severe." Okay, fast-forward to last week when Anthropic essentially said, "Hey, good news. We added guardrails to Mythos, and now it is safe." They call this protected version of the model Fable 5, and they made it widely available. On Friday, the US government said, "Not so fast." Now, according to David Sacks, who was until recently the White House AI tsar, the administration had heard from an independent researcher they trusted who said that he had easily evaded the guardrails that had been added to Fable 5. The Commerce Department promptly placed Fable 5 and its unprotected version, Mythos 5, on an export control list, which means the company must suspend access to the model from all foreign nationals, which presumably includes many of Anthropic's