India's markets regulator to soon issue advisory on emerging AI risks

Oh, marvellous. India's markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), has announced it will soon issue an 'advisory' on emerging risks from AI tools—specifically name-checking Anthropic's Mythos. Because nothing says 'we have this under control' like a non-binding piece of paper that market intermediaries can politely ignore while their algorithms continue to trade at the speed of light. The chairman, Tuhin Kanta Pandey, presumably delivered this news with a straight face, as if an advisory—not a regulation, not a ban, not even a consultation paper with teeth—is going to stop the next flash crash cooked up by a rogue model.

Let's be clear about what this isn't. This isn't a ban on Mythos or any other AI tool in Indian markets. It's an 'advisory.' The same kind of gentle suggestion that your bank sends you about phishing emails. The kind that gets filed under 'noted, ignored.' Meanwhile, the AI models that SEBI is worried about are already being used by hedge funds, high-frequency traders, and probably your local chaiwalla's cousin who runs a quant bot out of a co-working space in Bengaluru. But sure, an advisory will sort it out.

And the timing is exquisite. Anthropic's Mythos has been out for months, causing predictable chaos in everything from sentiment analysis to fake news generation in financial markets. Yet SEBI is only now getting around to a 'soon-to-issue advisory.' It's almost as if the regulator is waiting for the disaster before it acts, so it can then hold a press conference and say 'we warned you.' Classic. The gap between AI capability and regulatory response widens another inch. Cheers to the chairman for keeping the bureaucratic tradition alive.