Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal Says AI Shouldn’t Be Stifled, but Letting It Run Unchecked Will Be ‘Foolish’.

New Delhi: Calling for AI regulation to be thought through now, Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal on Wednesday said the technology or its growth need not be stifled, but waiting for an “accident” before acting would

be “foolish.”

Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum 2026, Mittal noted that governments and policymakers are struggling to keep pace with the speed of artificial intelligence and asserted that regulations need to be thought through now, before something goes wrong.

Mittal said India is putting out a consultation paper on regulations, and guardrails around AI.

He cited growing concern voiced by prominent global tech founders and instances of AI agents behaving unpredictably or running “rogue,” and said: “it is not something that, we can take lightly.”

“So suddenly, you’re seeing a scrambling around the government corridors, policymakers to say, how we can secure our nation when we introduce AI in every aspect of our lives,” Mittal said.

With people already using artificial intelligence and adoption of AI agents proliferating, Mittal asked: “Are we going to wake up only when an accident happens or we do it before.”

Mittal said he does not want to stifle AI or stop its growth, but that it would be “foolish” to let the technology develop with no safeguards.

“We need to think about the regulation. I don’t think we need to stifle it or stop the growth of it, but equally, it will be foolish for anybody to think that we can let it flow to a level, and then if an accident happens, then we’ll think about it,” Mittal said.

He emphasised that the time to decide on these issues is now.

Mittal said AI system cannot be in isolation and must be part of a global system.

Pointing to the aviation sector, which he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had spoken about a day earlier, Mittal noted that the industry runs on an international framework governing how slots are allocated and how flights operate across countries, regardless of nationality or flag.

The same logic, he said, should apply to AI systems, whether they originate in China, the US or elsewhere. “Unfortunately, that conversation is not happening at the pace it should,” he added.

(Disclaimer: Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by HDFC Sky editorial team and is auto-generated from PTI feed.)