{"id":771442,"date":"2026-09-15T12:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T12:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/771442\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T12:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T12:58:11","slug":"un-calls-for-ai-to-be-reined-in-as-china-and-trump-downplay-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/771442\/","title":{"rendered":"UN calls for AI to be reined in as China and Trump downplay threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.<\/p>\n

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.<\/p>\n

Your support makes all the difference.Read more<\/p>\n

The UN has asked artificial intelligence<\/a> companies to rein in development of the technology, as both China<\/a> and the US played down the growing concerns of industry leaders.<\/p>\n

In a letter sent to countries and AI developers, UN human rights chief Volker T\u00fcrk cautioned that the world was \u201con the cusp of irreversible change, affecting not just us but generations of humanity to come\u201d.<\/p>\n

“The current race towards ever more powerful AI is a step change towards greater existential risks to every aspect of our lives,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call on states and companies to mobilise urgently through multilateral fora to chart a path for action to govern advanced, frontier AI models, grounded in international human rights law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concerns about the potential harms of AI grew last week<\/a> after two researchers with \u200cAnthropic<\/a> issued warnings that the rapidly progressing technology could lead to the extinction of the human race in the not-too-distant \u2060future.<\/p>\n

The US and China are at the front of the race to develop and deploy frontier AI, but Washington and Beijing are at odds over each other\u2019s AI policies and industry practices.<\/p>\n

These issues are slated to feature prominently in bilateral talks later this month during president Xi Jinping’s visit to the US.<\/p>\n

\"OpenAIOpenAI logo and AI Artificial Intelligence words are seen in this illustration taken (Reuters)<\/p>\n

China on Monday slammed the \u201cthreat narratives” over AI governance and warned against “engaging in confrontation and malicious competition”.<\/p>\n

Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a briefing that “narratives of threat, confrontation, and malicious competition serve only to disrupt the process of global AI governance and are not in anyone’s interest”.<\/p>\n

“All parties should work together to advance AI in a manner that is open, inclusive, beneficial to all, and oriented toward the good,” he said.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump<\/a>, who maintains that his priority is making sure the US develops the tech faster than China, also downplayed the alarm sounded by the researchers.<\/p>\n

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” he said in a post on Truth Social. <\/p>\n

He added that \u200bChina \u2060would benefit from the doubt being cast on AI development. “We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY \u2060power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy \u200bgoing \u2060on against AI and Data \u200cCenters, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, Anthropic chief Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in AI development. He outlined a three-step framework intended to pace development and create more time to manage its risks. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe must slow the pace at which we improve \u2060the capabilities of AI models,\u201d he wrote in a long essay.<\/p>\n

The proposal was immediately endorsed by other executives at major AI companies, including Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and OpenAI chief Sam Altman.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump said the \u200ctools intended to keep AI safe had \u200balready been used on Mr Amodei. <\/p>\n

“The Trump Administration has stopped \u200cAI ‘people’ from doing bad, or \u2060potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending \u2060to be a ‘perfect little angel’ – and we will continue to do so,” \u200che said.<\/p>\n

In spite of the race to develop increasingly powerful AI systems, regulatory frameworks and public \u200bstatements from Beijing underscore how Chinese authorities regard the possibility of advanced AI escaping effective human oversight as serious enough to plan for.<\/p>\n

China’s state security minister Chen Yixin wrote on Sunday that advanced US models could pose serious risks to his country\u2019s critical information infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Chinese AI developers have promoted open-weight models partly on the grounds that cybersecurity teams can inspect, modify and deploy them for defensive work.<\/p>\n

At the World Artificial Intelligence \u2060Conference in Shanghai in July, Mr Xi said authorities should pay close attention to both intrinsic and derivative risks arising from AI.<\/p>\n

He said AI should “always remain under human control”.<\/p>\n

The UN Security Council will reportedly hold a meeting next week to address the threat from AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-771442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}