Mythos threat: FM Sitharaman holds meet with RBI, MeitY, banks on systemic risks from AI

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on April 23 held a meeting with bank chiefs on risks around Artificial Intelligence in the wake of global concerns over Anthropic's Mythos model threatening data security of the financial systems.

The meeting, which was attended by officials from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), top officials from banks as well as representatives from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, discussed the various risks that Artificial Intelligence poses to the financial sector.

Banks have also been asked to assess these risks and take pre-emptive measures to ensure that their systems are secure and do not impact customers or their deposits.

Several countries across the world are assessing risks from Anthropic’s Mythos and have raised concerns over its impact on financial systems.

According to sources, both the Finance Ministry and RBI have been assessing the impact of AI and Mythos over the Indian financial sector and the kind of risks it poses. Officials in the RBI have also been holding independent consultations over the impact of Mythos.

US-based AI company Anthropic has introduced its new frontier AI model “Claude Mythos” in preview in April, which has advanced cybersecurity capabilities that can autonomously analyse codebases and identify "Zero-day" vulnerabilities. While it has the ability to autonomously find and exploit vulnerabilities in every major operating system and browser, there are concerns over its misuse as well.