But honestly, that's the wrong question.
What they should've been asking was what happens when AI becomes better at breaking things than we can fix them?
That moment might already be here.
The Shift No One Was Ready For
Recently, there has been a shift with regards to Anthropic and their newer Claude Mythos Models. This is completely different from what we've seen in the AI world so far.
This isn't about how fast AI can write your English essay. Neither is it about how fast you can vibe-code a SaaS with it.
It's about AI being able to
- Find unknown software vulnerabilities that have existed for decades
- Simulating cyber attacks to pentest software better than before
Forget AI building systems, it's now smart enough to break and tear them apart.
The Opportunity
AI was always marketed as a productivity assistant. Something to help you do your work better and faster.
- Write cleaner code
- Debug more efficiently
- Get repetitive boring tasks done in seconds
The same skills that AI has, however, in building software, also position it to be able to break it really, really easily.
The way testing works is:
- You understand how a system works
- You look for potential edge cases
- You predict what might happens
- And you try to break the software
This requires reasoning, and these AI models? They're really good at reasoning.
AI-Powered Cyberwarfare
A human security professional might find a dozen bugs a week. Not bad for codebases this refined and large.
An AI system on the other hand can
- Scan thousands of files
- Go through millions of test cases
- And keep iterating 24/7 until it breaks something
AI doesn't need rest. Is this cool? Yes. Is this scary in the wrong hands? Extremely.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here's the part no one likes to say out loud:
Defense is harder than offense.
An attacker needs to succeed just once to break into a system. But the system managers? They need to protect against anything and everything.
Giving malicious attackers AI gives them the automation, speed and scale to chain multiple agents together to create the most dangerous cyber weapon yet.
System managers can't do much except try to cover more surface area in reinforcing their systems. We've never seen this kind of imbalance in the security world.
The Double-Edged Sword
AI cybersecurity isn't all bad. These same systems can be used to find issues that no-one ever would've noticed. These same systems can also create solutions to the problems they find automatically.
This, however, creates a dystopian 1984-esque scenario where we have AI defending against AI. Or even worse, AI outpaces human control completely.
And right now, we don't know where we're headed.
What does this mean for YOU?
Every single person in the industry is now impacted. Your role is no longer just to write write code and understand systems.
Those days are gone.
You need to actively fight against an AI trying to break into your systems.
A future proof engineer no longer just builds software and leverages AI to their advantage to build faster, they build systems that can survive intelligent attacks.
Final Thoughts
The fear of AI replacing humans is no longer the priority.
AI outperforming humans in security and breaking our software is the new fear.
AI is now the most powerful hacker we've ever seen, and it's getting better by the minute.
