AI leaders warn UN of security risks
Executives from three of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies have briefed the UN Security Council amid warnings that increasingly powerful AI systems could soon improve themselves, slip beyond human control and pose a threat to international security.
Among those addressing the 15-member council during the annual General Assembly gathering were OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Hugging Face co-founder Clément Delangue, three of the industry’s most prominent executives.
“If managed poorly, I even believe that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” Anthropic’s Amodei told the Security Council.
Governments have grappled with how to oversee AI systems that are advancing faster than regulators can keep up while the United States and China – the two dominant players in AI development – remain divided over whether the technology needs global guardrails or should be left largely to market forces.
“If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone. They must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments accountable to the people they serve,” Altman told the council. “At the international level, this will require cooperation.”
“In our history, there have been times where countries who compete and don’t always like each other very much still come together for shared interests and the collective good in the face of a powerful new technology. We believe this must be one of those times,” he said.
Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian considered one of the “Godfathers of AI” and co-chair of the Independent International Scientific Panel — created by the UN General Assembly last year — told the Security Council: “The dangers are real and imminent.”
“This council faces an unprecedented threat, one that none of its members would choose, that none can contain alone, and that does not respect the borders we defend,” he said.
Council members, including leading AI rivals the United States and China, were also set to speak. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot chaired the meeting.
Trump wants to encourage AI, not rein it in
Ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington, the US and China have discussed setting up a notification system for common goals and common threats that would cover AI-related incidents that rise to a national security level.
Trump told world leaders at the UN General Assembly earlier this week that he “rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control” AI, describing the technology as amazing, but noted that the US would be careful.
“We’re leading now over China by a lot, and everyone else, and we’re going to keep it that way,” Trump said. “I’m not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution.”
“We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in. We’re going to watch it closely through the Department of Justice,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has long pushed for global governance of AI, has warned that rapidly advancing artificial intelligence poses risks that cannot be ignored, putting him at odds with Trump.
The Security Council met for the first time on the risks of AI in 2023, when China said the technology should not become a “runaway horse” and the United States warned against its use to censor or repress people. Then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken chaired a Security Council meeting on AI in 2024.
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