OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs call for global AI regulation at UN

Leaders of prominent AI companies urged the United Nations Security Council to establish international oversight for artificial intelligence, warning that the technology could pose risks to humanity if managed poorly. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, told council members that AI could become an existential threat, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned of the possibility that humanity could lose control over AI’s future. The meeting, organized by France to coincide with the UN General Assembly in New York, drew voices from industry and the scientific community calling for democratic and government-led decisions about AI governance rather than leaving major choices to a handful of research labs. Several council representatives, including foreign ministers from France and the United Kingdom, backed the need for common international frameworks to steer development and use of the technology. Speakers also recounted recent incidents used to justify tighter safety measures. Clement Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, told the council that his company had been attacked by AI and had relied on a Chinese AI model—which had fewer restrictions than comparable US tools—to help defend against the incident. Experts at the meeting, including Yoshua Bengio, described the dangers as real and transnational, arguing that no single country can address them alone. Despite the calls for multilateral rules, major powers signalled reluctance to accept sweeping external constraints. The United States’ representative, Michael Kratsios, explicitly rejected efforts by international bodies to assert centralized global governance of AI. Observers noted the broader context of a technological rivalry between the US and China, which complicates prospects for rapid, binding international limits. The UN has already taken steps in recent years—passing a nonbinding 2024 resolution on AI and creating two new bodies to assess and discuss AI governance—but participants at the council said more international cooperation will be needed as adoption accelerates.