Bank of America Hired 1,000 Contractors to Patch Code Flagged by Anthropic's AI
While cutting thousands of office jobs to save on automation, the lender spent hundreds of millions of dollars scrambling 4,000 engineers to fix flaws spotted by Mythos 5.
In the second quarter of 2026, Bank of America brought on 1,000 external contractors to remediate software vulnerabilities discovered by Anthropic's Mythos 5 language model. According to an interview given to CNBC by chief executive Brian Moynihan, those contractors joined 3,000 in-house engineers to overhaul a broad swath of internal and vendor-supplied software.
The push followed Anthropic's April preview of Mythos to a closed circle of lenders, technology firms, and government agencies under an initiative named Project Glasswing. While model makers highlight automated audit capabilities, the practical fallout for recipients is asymmetric: once an advanced model demonstrates it can pinpoint and exploit weaknesses in production software, remediation becomes an urgent, labor-heavy defensive requirement.
The defensive sprint came with a heavy price tag. Following its third-quarter earnings release, Bank of America disclosed spending "several hundred million dollars" on code repairs and anti-money laundering regulatory compliance. The unexpected cost surge contributed to an 8% drop in the company's stock price, though Moynihan maintained to investors that the intervention was a temporary expense.
The security scramble stands in stark contrast to the bank's broader automation pitch. Moynihan noted the firm runs about 130 internal AI projects, projecting operational savings will rise from $300 million this year to $700 million next year. Over the preceding year, the bank reduced its overall workforce by roughly 3,400 employees and eliminated about 5% of its management tier.
Source: habr
Reporting: CNBC
Comments
Help shape the next version: Add context or suggest a correction. AI review can add points toward a rewrite. Reviews and updates may take time; a full meter does not guarantee a new version.