The heads of several major AI firms told the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) their industry urgently needed global oversight to avoid dangers that could threaten the whole world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,\u201d Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of Anthropic, told members of the body on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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Sam Altman, the head of rival company OpenAI, echoed his concerns, telling the 15-member council tasked with tackling major crises globally that humanity could \u201close control of the future of AI\u201d.<\/p>\n
The meeting, which coincides with the UN General Assembly (UNGA) gathering in New York City, was convened by France and comes at a time when experts are increasingly warning that the rapid development of AI needs more human oversight to ensure it does not slip out of control and cause a global catastrophe.<\/p>\n
Altman and Amodei called on world leaders to take action.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone,\u201d Altman told members. \u201cThey must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments accountable to the people they serve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their concerns were shared by several representatives on the council, including the foreign ministers of France and the United Kingdom, who said the international community needed to step in and create common frameworks for how the technology should be controlled.<\/p>\n
Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue, whose company has come under attack by out-of-control AI models in recent months \u2013 incidents used by the other companies as evidence of the need for more safety measures \u2013 told the UNSC his company had relied on the technology to defend itself in those same incidents.<\/p>\n
Delangue said Hugging Face had relied on a Chinese AI model to help defend against the attack by OpenAI\u2019s AI agents, because it faced fewer restrictions than comparable US tools.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were attacked by AI, but more importantly, we defended ourselves with AI,\u201d he told the council.<\/p>\n
US and China reluctant to impose restrictions<\/p>\n
In the United States, though, where the largest and most influential companies developing AI are based, the administration of US President Donald Trump has baulked<\/a> at imposing new guardrails on the industry.<\/p>\n The administration\u2019s representative at the UNSC meeting, Michael Kratsios, told members, \u201cWe totally reject all efforts by international bodies to assert centralised control and global governance of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n