UN leaders are concerned about AI’s potential harms. Could an AI forum prevent the worst?

Published on 27/09/2025 - 8:00 GMT+2

Artificial intelligence (AI) took  halfway shape astatine this week’s yearly high-level United Nations (UN) gathering successful New York.

Leaders astatine nan UN Security Council addressed AI’s imaginable benefits and harms successful security, subject usage and misinformation.

“The mobility is not whether AI will power world bid and security, but really we will style its power utilized responsibly,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said successful opening remarks astatine Wednesday’s meeting.

“AI tin fortify prevention and protection, anticipating nutrient insecurity and displacement, supporting de-mining, helping place imaginable outbreaks of violence, and truthful overmuch more. But without guardrails, it tin besides beryllium weaponised,” Guterres added.

Wednesday's wide statement centred astir really nan Council tin thief guarantee nan responsible exertion of AI to comply pinch world rule and support bid processes and conflict prevention.

How person world leaders reacted?

Several European leaders stressed nan request for nan Council to lead nan measurement connected ensuring that AI is not utilized by militaries without quality oversight to avert perchance devastating escalations aliases misfires.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called connected nan Council to “rise to nan juncture – conscionable arsenic it erstwhile roseate to meet nan challenges of atomic weapons aliases peacekeeping, truthful excessively now it must emergence to govern nan property of AI.”

British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy stressed heavy AI study of business data  holds a committedness for peace, saying AI is tin of keeping “ultra-accurate, real-time logistics, ultra-accurate real-time sentiment analysis, ultra-early informing systems”.

UN sets up caller bodies for AI

Last month, nan UN General Assembly (UNGA) announced that it will group up 2 cardinal bodies connected AI - an independent technological sheet of experts and a world forum.

The UN said successful a connection that nan caller governance architecture will beryllium a overmuch much inclusive shape of world governance and reside nan issues surrounding AI, and guarantee that it benefits each people.

The Scientific Panel, for which 40 experts will beryllium appointed done nominations, will coming yearly reports astatine nan forum named Global Dialogue connected AI Governance to return spot successful 2026 successful Geneva and 2027 successful New York.

The caller constitution is seen arsenic nan latest and biggest effort to rein successful AI. Experts person called it “a symbolic triumph”.

They are “by acold nan world’s astir globally inclusive attack to governing AI,” Isabella Wilkinson, a investigation chap astatine nan London-based deliberation vessel Chatham House, wrote successful a blog post.

Britain, France, and South Korea person each held world AI summits but nary of them person resulted successful binding pledges for AI safety.

However, Wilkinson is sceptical that nan UN's lumbering management tin modulate a fast-moving exertion specified arsenic AI.

“But successful practice, nan caller mechanisms look for illustration they will beryllium mostly powerless,” she added.

The UN main will clasp a gathering to officially motorboat nan 2 caller bodies connected Thursday. It will beryllium nan first clip that each 193 Member States of nan UN will person a opportunity successful nan measurement world AI governance is developed, according to nan UN.

Previously, starring AI experts and Nobel Prize winners, including elder figures from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic, had issued a telephone for nan United Nations to spearhead a binding world pact mounting “minimum guardrails” for AI designed to forestall nan “most urgent and unacceptable risks”.

Among those who signed nan telephone were European lawmakers, including Italian erstwhile premier curate Enrico Letta and erstwhile president of Ireland Mary Robinson, who is presently a United Nations precocious commissioner for quality rights.