AI Regulation Needed Now Before Accidents Occur, Mittal Says

Indian tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal called for immediate regulatory frameworks for artificial intelligence, warning that governments shouldn’t wait for a serious rogue agent incident before acting.

The chairman of Bharti Enterprises Ltd. also argued that regulation should not stifle growth even as he stressed on its urgency. He pointed to aviation as a regulatory model where it’s globally coordinated, covering slot allocation, flight operations, and a universal code of conduct binding all carriers.

“It’ll 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,” he said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Read More: Moderna Founder Calls for Urgent Regulation of AI Agents

The billionaire also raised concerns that governments aren’t coordinating in the race to build new AI systems.

“The AI ecosystem cannot live in isolation, whether it’s a Chinese system or a US system,” he said. “It’s got to be a global system, and that conversation, unfortunately, is not happening at face.”

This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.