Carney flags risks of relying on U.S. AI providers

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Sunday that U.S. restrictions on advanced artificial intelligence models show the dangers of depending on a limited number of American providers.

Anthropic, the AI company based in San Francisco, took its latest models — Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — offline Friday to comply with Trump administration export controls preventing their use by foreign nationals. The move marks the most significant U.S. step to date in restricting access to advanced AI.

"The situation we're in collectively right now with Mythos and Fable is something that can happen with overreliance on certain models," Carney said Sunday in Westport, Ireland, ahead of the G7 summit beginning Monday in Evian-les-Bains, France. "Nobody has done anything wrong in the situation. But we will have done something wrong if we just accept this, don't take the lesson, don't build out and diversify."

Carney linked the U.S. AI curbs to Canada's broader push to diversify trade and technology away from the U.S. More than 70 per cent of Canada's exports currently go to the United States. Carney has set a goal for Canada to double its non-U.S. exports within the next decade.

Anthropic announced the Mythos model on April 7, describing it as so "strikingly capable" that the company is limiting its use to select customers because of its ability to surpass human cybersecurity experts in finding computer vulnerabilities.

Carney spent 45 minutes discussing artificial intelligence with French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday night. He said there "will not be a mission accomplished banner" coming from the G7 summit because the issues are complex.

Carney does not have a bilateral meeting scheduled with Trump at the summit despite the free trade agreement between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico being up for renewal. Trade discussions will happen between Canadian negotiators and U.S. Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.