The Download: AI hacking beyond Mythos, and chatbots’ impact on our brains
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The Meta hack shows there’s more to AI security than Mythos On Monday, reports emerged that attackers had used Meta’s AI customer support agent to steal Instagram accounts. Their approach was simple: they asked the agent to link the accounts to email addresses they controlled, and it complied. Since Anthropic announced that its Mythos model was too good at hacking for a general release, cybersecurity concerns have focused on the risk of superpowered AI systems overwhelming computer infrastructure. But the Instagram hack shows that far simpler exploits can still cause damage. As companies offload more work to AI, these comparatively unsophisticated attacks are becoming harder to ignore. Read the full story to understand why. —Grace Huckins Are AI chatbots making us lose control of our brains? Gloria Mark, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, fears that digital technologies are weakening our cognitive abilities. Her research suggests attention spans have fallen sharply over time, leading to higher stress and lower performance. She now believes AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude may accelerate this shift. “You’re deferring your cognitive work to AI,” she said. “And it’s not good for us.” Mark argues this could weaken critical thinking and emotional intelligence. Luckily, she thinks we can course-correct by changing our relationship with these technologies. Find out how AI could reshape attention and thinking. —Jessica Hamzelou This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Anthropic has called for a global slowdown in AI developmentIt flagged the risk of models “self-improvi