In this edited conversation, James Mickens, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at SEAS and director of the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, explains what these breaches mean for the future of AI security. We do know both companies have talked to third-party security companies to validate stuff. I would also say these are not threats that the security community and the AI safety community are just realizing were possible. Given the winner-take-all stakes in AI, could such unflattering disclosures be a kind of humblebrag by OpenAI and Anthropic to show how cutting-edge their AI models are? There are also regulators and people in government thinking about this too, so it’s not as if there aren’t people who care about AI safety risks.