CURRENT AFFAIRS | 25 APRIL 2026
CLAT GK + Cyber Law & AI Governance
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw convened a high-level meeting on 24 April 2026 on the systemic risks posed by Anthropic’s Mythos AI — a model that scored 73% on expert-level hacking tasks and broke a “zero-day” in Mozilla Firefox 147’s JavaScript engine in 72.4% of trials (versus Opus 4.6’s 14.4%). Bloomberg reported Mythos was leaked to “a handful of users” on a private Discord on the day of announcement. SBI Chairman C.S. Setty leads the banks’ response, and India has set up an inter-ministerial AI Governance & Economic Group.
Constitutional / Legal Framework
- IT Act 2000 — Sec 43A: Compensation for failure to protect sensitive personal data.
- Sec 66: Computer-related offences; Sec 66F: Cyber-terrorism, life imprisonment.
- Sec 70: Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) — protected systems regime.
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: Significant Data Fiduciary obligations on AI deployers.
- IT Rules 2021 (Intermediary Guidelines): Due-diligence + advisory regime over generative AI.
- Puttaswamy (2017): Privacy under Article 21.
- RBI Cyber-Security Framework for Banks (2016): Mandatory baseline for SCBs.
- EU AI Act (2024): Risk-based regulation — comparator for India’s “light-touch” model.
Why This Matters for CLAT 2027
AI governance is the freshest legal-tech frontier — and this passage stitches together IT Act sections, the DPDP Act 2023, RBI cyber norms, and a comparative angle with the EU AI Act. Expect a passage describing the Mythos leak followed by inferential questions on Sec 66F applicability, Significant Data Fiduciary duties, Article 21 privacy, and “light-touch vs hard-law” regulatory choices. Knowing the IT Act section numbers cold gives you 2 marks straight up.
Key Facts at a Glance
| Model | Anthropic Mythos |
| Hacking Benchmark | 73% expert-level tasks |
| Firefox 147 Zero-Day | 72.4% trials (vs 14.4% for Opus 4.6) |
| Leak Vector | Private Discord (Bloomberg) |
| Indian Response | FM + IT Min + SBI Chair; AI Governance & Economic Group |
| US Response | Powell + Bessent + bank CEOs |
| Indian Statutes | IT Act 2000 (43A/66/66F/70), DPDP 2023, IT Rules 2021 |
| Comparator | EU AI Act 2024 (risk-based) |
| India’s Approach | Light-touch, principles-based |
Mnemonic / Memory Hook
43-66-70 — IT Act trio: 43A (data compensation), 66F (cyber-terror), 70 (CII). Plus “DPDP-23” — Data Protection 2023.
Test Yourself — 10 MCQs
Practice Quiz — 10 CLAT-Style Questions
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