Bank of America had to bring in 1,000 contractors to patch all the bugs Mythos identified

Bank of America enlisted 1,000 additional contractors to address the multitude of vulnerabilities unearthed by Anthropic's Mythos model, according to the bank's CEO Brian Moynihan during the company's Q3 earnings call. The remediation costs associated with Mythos, which amounted to "a couple of hundred million plus," are projected to decrease over time, as the contractors were brought in initially to tackle the overwhelming workload.

The bank's chairman emphasized that the concerns over Mythos' rapid identification of complex vulnerabilities were shared globally, as the model's marketing as an all-powerful cybersecurity solution led to an influx of patches. Although some early adopters claim it is no more capable than skilled human researchers, Mozilla CTO Bobby Holley noted that Mythos found 271 flaws in Firefox 150, and it has not discovered any bugs beyond the reach of elite human researchers.

The bank has added the contractors to its existing 3,000 technical staff, with Moynihan stating that the company has made its tech engineering workforce 10 percent more efficient. The CEO expects AI projects to deliver between $250 million and $300 million in benefits in 2026, with the potential to rise to $700 million by the end of 2027.

Despite the high costs, Moynihan did not disclose the breakdown of the "couple of hundred million plus" in remediation expenses between AI and AML issues. The bank's share price experienced a significant drop of over 8 percent on Wednesday morning following a 17 percent profit decline, primarily due to a $1.21 billion settlement with the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and a $750 million penalty from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, both related to AML compliance deficiencies.