US artificial intelligence lab Anthropic scored the highest in a six-monthly security ranking, but globally the industry is failing to combat “existential” threats, according to a report published on Tuesday.
Meta climbed two spots to fourth place, while xAI fell three spots to seventh, just ahead of China’s DeepSeek and France’s Mistral, which were ranked last, according to US-based AI security research institute Future of Life Institute, which ranked nine of the world’s top AI companies.
Seven researchers and governance experts determined the rankings based on public data and information provided by companies.
They assessed efforts in six different categories: risk assessment, actual damages, security frameworks, existential security, governance and accountability, and information sharing.
No company received an “A” in any single category, while Anthropic received the best overall score of “C+.”
Mistral was included in the list for the first time, although when asked by AFP to comment on the last place, the company said that the framework of the report is not suitable for its approach to the development of AI models.
The French company develops so-called open models, which allow users to download and modify them. Many of its competitors develop closed AI models – including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind, which are also included in the report.
“I was very disappointed to find out that they came last, especially since Europe has really been a leader in AI security,” Max Tegmark, an MIT professor and president of Future of Life, told AFP.
“We reached out many, many times” but Mistral did not respond to the organization’s survey, Tegmark continued.
Alibaba, xAI and DeepSeek also did not respond to its survey, the organization said.
Three Chinese developers included in the report also produce open models and landed in the bottom half of the ranking: DeepSeek (fifth), Alibaba Cloud (sixth) and Z.ai (eighth).
– “Suspicious” practices –
The report noted that some companies that previously banned their technology from military uses have “gradually reversed course,” including Anthropic, which the report criticized for “dubious military engagements.”
The US government used Anthropic’s technology in military operations in Venezuela and Iran over the past year, according to various media reports — although the company was subject to a recent ban by the Pentagon over disputes over AI security.
All nine companies are failing when it comes to combating “existential” threats such as pursuing models that achieve human-level intelligence, known as “artificial general intelligence” or AGI, the report said.
Although “constructive efforts exist”, efforts across the board are “grossly inadequate”.
Other risks include the potential misuse of a model to carry out a cyberattack or perform tasks potentially harmful to humans.
Anthropic came into the limelight recently after releasing its most powerful model yet, called the Mythos.
In early April, the San Francisco-based company released Mythos to only a handful of trusted organizations because of its capabilities to expose cybersecurity vulnerabilities to bad actors.
However, as of June 12, the US government blocked Anthropic from releasing Mythos to foreigners for national security reasons.
The Trump administration eventually lifted the ban a few weeks later, on June 30.
