AI Leaders to Brief UN Security Council Amid Warnings Over Loss of Human Control

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Hugging Face co-founder Clément Delangue are due to address the 15-member council during the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

Altman is expected to urge world leaders to adopt benchmarks for measuring AI capabilities and evaluating the safeguards put in place by companies developing the technology, an OpenAI executive told reporters on Tuesday.

Security Council members, including the United States and China, are also expected to speak at the meeting, which will be chaired by French Foreign Minister Jean Noël Barrot.

A European diplomat said the meeting would focus on practical risks linked to AI losing control in ways that could affect international and national security.

The diplomat raised the possibility that interactions between AI algorithms could eventually trigger a conflict, saying the issue falls within the Security Council’s mandate.

The meeting comes ahead of a planned meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington on Thursday. The United States and China have discussed establishing a notification system covering AI-related incidents that reach the level of national security threats.

Trump Says US Will Encourage AI

Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said the United States would encourage the development of AI rather than impose broad restrictions on the technology.

Trump said he opposed efforts to establish a global system to control AI and argued that the United States should maintain its lead over China. He said the US would closely monitor AI through the Department of Justice.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, has warned that the rapid development of artificial intelligence poses risks that require international attention and has advocated global governance of the technology.

The UN General Assembly established an Independent International Scientific Panel on AI last year. Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian AI researcher and co-chair of the panel, is also expected to brief the Security Council.

The Security Council first discussed the risks posed by AI in 2023. China warned at the time that the technology should not become a runaway system, while the United States raised concerns about potential use of AI for censorship and repression.

The council also held a meeting on AI in 2024, chaired by then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.