AI leaders set to brief UN amid intensifying concerns that technology could slip beyond human control
AI has become a crucial topic at the UN General Assembly following incidents of the technology falling out of the control of humans
AI leaders are set to brief the UN Security Council on Wednesday over the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the possibility that advanced systems could become difficult for humans to control and threaten international security.
Anthropic CEO Darion Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Hugging Face co-founder Clement Delangue are reportedly due to brief the 15-member council during the annual General Assembly gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.
According to reports, Altman established standardized metrics for measuring AI capabilities and evaluating tech governance frameworks companies put in place as they develop the technology.
Meanwhile, council members including leading AI rivals, the United States and China are also expected to share their thoughts at the meeting.
In this connection, a European diplomat said the most important target of the meeting was to highlight operational risks of AI losing control in ways that affect state security of individual states.
On Thursday, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping said that the US and China have aligned on establishing shared goal alerts and common threats that would cover AI-related incidents that escalate to a national security threat. Trump told world leaders at the UN General Assembly that he opposes the establishment of a centralized global authority underlining 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.”
“We're going to encourage it, not rein it in. We're going to watch it closely through the Department of Justic, said Trump.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gave his final address to the General Assembly, urging policymakers to set rules for advanced artificial intelligence to end conflicts, focus on climate change and reform UN institutions, emphasizing a stern warning about potential risks.
The speech marked the conclusion of a ten-year term in which Guterres attempted to position the UN as a mediator in a multilateral regulatory regime even as major powers bypassed the organization and Washington reduced its funding. Furthermore, the UN already created a 39-member advisory body on AI with tech executives, government officials and academics from countries such as the US, Russia and Japan.
