September 16, 2026: In an exclusive interview with NDTV, Bill Gates says artificial intelligence is fundamentally different from previous technological revolutions, flags risks around cybersecurity and control, and warns that society may not yet be ready for the scale and speed of change ahead.

In a striking note of caution from one of the world’s most influential champions of technology and innovation, Bill Gates has told NDTV that the world should consider slowing the advance of artificial intelligence if it gives societies more time to prepare for the profound changes it could bring.

Speaking exclusively to NDTV’s Vishnu Som, Gates said AI was fundamentally different from the personal computer and the internet - two technological revolutions he helped shape during his years at Microsoft and cautioned against assuming its impact would be as easy to manage.

“AI is a very unique technology,” Gates said. “I caution people who think it’ll be as easy to manage the impacts of AI as it’s been to manage other technologies.”

Calling AI “very profound”, Gates said the breadth and speed of its development had forced even someone with his long-standing belief in innovation to consider whether the pace itself needed to be questioned.

“If we could slow things down, I think we should consider that because of this need to get ready for such a rapid change,” Gates told NDTV.

The warning is particularly significant coming from a figure who has spent decades advocating technological progress across computing, healthcare, agriculture and global development.

“Throughout my life, I have been a champion of innovation,” Gates said, referring to both his years at Microsoft and the work of the Gates Foundation. “This is a rare case where innovation may be so broad and so dramatic that we’re not ready for it.”

The interview, tied to the Gates Foundation Goalkeepers Report, explores AI's enormous potential in areas such as healthcare and development, while also confronting some of the harder questions around the technology’s rapid evolution.

At the heart of the conversation is a larger concern - can societies, institutions and regulatory systems adapt fast enough to a technology whose capabilities are evolving at unprecedented speed?

Gates identified cybersecurity as one of the most immediate risks, warning that AI tools could significantly strengthen the capabilities of those carrying out cyberattacks.

“In the near term, there are cyberattacks where these AI tools will enable the offensive side,” he said, stressing that defensive capabilities would need to evolve just as rapidly.

He also addressed the deeper question of whether increasingly capable AI systems can always remain under human control.

Gates said he had once viewed that concern as something relatively distant, but recent developments had brought the issue closer to the present.

“The idea of keeping the AIs under control, I have always thought of that as something fairly far out in the future,” he said, before pointing to recent instances in reinforcement learning where AI systems displayed unexpected behaviour.

“Now this issue of keeping things under control, that’s there with the other challenges.”

Yet Gates’ assessment is not one of technological pessimism.

He also underlined AI’s extraordinary potential and pointed to India as an important example of how the technology could be deployed rapidly for social and developmental benefit.

“It’s a stunning set of capabilities,” Gates said, adding that India could demonstrate how “we can drive the good stuff as fast as possible”.

The conversation captures one of the central dilemmas of the emerging AI era: how to accelerate the benefits of a transformative technology without letting the speed of innovation outrun society’s ability to understand, regulate, and control it.

For Gates, who has spent much of his life making the case for technological progress, the warning carries unusual weight.

AI, he suggests, may represent a technological milestone- when the question is no longer only how quickly innovation can move, but whether humanity is ready to move with it.