Why India Wants Mythos AI Hosted Locally Amid Rising Global Fear| Explained

The

government is pushing for local or ‘sovereign’ hosting of AI systems from Anthropic in India, as per Money Control. This move comes following the rising cybersecurity concerns linked to the American tech giant’s advanced model called Mythos. Officials reportedly note that powerful AI tools used in sensitive sectors like telecom, banking, and crucial infrastructure should not run on foreign servers. They suggest that doing so might create risks linked to compliance, jurisdiction and national security.

Why the Mythos Model Is Under Scrutiny

The Mythos AI has been making headlines since the day it was launched under the initiative ‘Project Glasswing’. This AI tool is powerful enough to detect critical software flaws before hackers can exploit them. As per Bloomberg, AI researcher at Anthropic Nicholas Carlin himself tested the Mythos AI and concluded the tool could do far more than he expected, and not all of it was safe.He found during his testing that Anthropic’s powerful AI could break into digital infrastructure easily. He realised that the AI could go far beyond just assisting humans by acting on its own. Carlini and his team even found that Anthropic’s AI could identify system issues and exploit them on its own. It could even build its own hacking tools and target software like Linux. This simply means that instead of helping a hacker, the tool could itself behave like one.

Government and Banking Sector Response

Amidst these concerns, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked the Indian banks to strengthen their cyber defences against the potential risks associated with Mythos-like AI systems.She chaired a high-level meeting last month with banking officials and the Union Minister For Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw along with key stakeholders to assess the impact of emerging artificial intelligence models and how such technologies can be misused to exploit software vulnerabilities.Notably, she instructed the Indian Bank’s Association to prepare a coordinated institutional mechanism to ensure effective responses to cyber threats. She also asked the banking officials to engage top cybersecurity professionals and specialised agencies to make the monitoring and defence systems better.What lies ahead is how it will be noteworthy how the banking sector, industries and government across the world will need measures to combat such increasing cybersecurity issues that arose from growing AI adoption that was once claimed to help humans.