A U.N. panel on artificial intelligence has been launched to implement global governance of the emerging technology at its sole direction, the body’s chief António Guterres announced Thursday.
AFP reports the U.S. delegation immediately pushed back against centralised U.N. control of the generative AI field, highlighting the difficulties of reaching consensus over how it should be handled by an unelected and unaccountable body.
“The future of AI can not be decided by a couple of countries, or left to the whims of a few billionaires,” Guterres told the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.
The annual global artificial intelligence summit is taking place for the first time in a country that is part of emerging economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America, after previous summits in the U.K., South Korea and France.
It is the fourth annual global meeting focused on AI policy, with the next to take place in Geneva in the first half of 2027.
“AI must belong to everyone. We must replace hype and fear with sharing evidence,” Guterres said.
The veteran Portuguese socialist urged countries, experts and industry to contribute and obey directions from the newly established U.N. Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.
AFP outlines Guterres said the U.N. General Assembly has confirmed 40 members will be part of the group.
It was created in August, aiming to mirror the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its efforts to direct global environmental policy.
“Science-led governance is not a brake on progress,” Guterres said. “When we understand what systems can do — and what they cannot — we can move from rough measures to smarter, risk-based guardrails.”
“Our goal is to make human control a technical reality — not a slogan.”
White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios, head of the U.S. delegation in India, disagrees.
He warned, “AI adoption cannot lead to a brighter future if it is subject to bureaucracies and centralised control.”
“As the Trump administration has now said many times: We totally reject global governance of AI,” he said.
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