AI cyber attack threatens global financial crisis, warns International Monetary Fund

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cyber attacks could create a worldwide financial crisis. “AI-driven cyber risks could destabilise the financial system if not managed carefully,” the IMF warned, as AI cyber attacks risk disrupting payments, causing solvencies and straining liquidity. Financial systems’ dependence on shared cloud services made the threat of successful cyber attacks all the more worrying, senior IMF officials said in a blog post, and a single vulnerability could ripple out across many institutions. The warning follows Anthropic’s introduction of AI model Mythos, which sparked global concerns because of its potential to identify software vulnerabilities at scale. It’s not just the financial sector at risk. Financial services share “digital foundations” with energy, telecommunications and public sectors, all of which are threatened by the model’s rapidly evolving capacities. Using the same infrastructure means vulnerabilities can be exploited across many industries. The model could identify and exploit vulnerabilities “even when used by non-experts”, the IMF said. During a speech at Columbia University in April, Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey warned that Anthropic’s latest model might “crack the whole cyber risk world open”. Anthropic set up Project Glasswing to give Mythos to 40 companies they deemed critical to protect – such as Nvidia, Apple, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft – rather than make it generally available. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said the company also intended to work with government officials to defend the US and its allies from the dangers of AI. The US company gave British banks access to the model at the end of April, and financial regulators rushed to assess its risks. Cross-border risk But the IMF warned that “cyber risk does not respect borders”, and that emerging economies are disproportionately exposed to attacks that could topple international services. It...