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Artificial intelligence is joining the list of big and complex global challenges that world leaders and diplomats will tackle at this week’s annual high-level United Nations meetup.
Since the AI boom kicked off with ChatGPT’s debut about three years ago, the technology’s breathtaking capabilities have amazed the world. Tech companies have raced to develop better AI systems even as experts warn of its risks, including existential threats like engineered pandemics, large-scale misinformation or rogue AIs running out of control, and call for safeguards.
The UN’s adoption of a new governance architecture is the latest and biggest effort to rein in AI. Previous multilateral efforts, including three AI summits organized by Britain, South Korea and France, have resulted only in non-binding pledges.
Last month, the General Assembly adopted a resolution to set up two key bodies on AI — a global forum and an independent scientific panel of experts — in a milestone move to shepherd global governance efforts for the technology.
On Wednesday, a UN Security Council meeting will convene an open debate on the issue. Among the questions to be addressed: How can the Council help ensure the responsible application of AI to comply with international law and support peace processes and conflict prevention?
And on Thursday, as part of the body’s annual meeting, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will hold a meeting to launch the forum, called the Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
It’s a venue for governments and “stakeholders” to discuss international cooperation and share ideas and solutions. It’s scheduled to meet formally in Geneva next year and in New York in 2027.
Meanwhile, recruitment is expected to get underway to find 40 experts for the scientific panel, including two co-chairs, one from a developed country and one from a developing nation. The panel has drawn comparisons with the UN’s climate change panel and its flagship annual COP meeting.
The new bodies represent “a symbolic triumph.” They are “by far the world’s most globally inclusive approach to governing AI,” Isabella Wilkinson, a research fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House, wrote in a blog post.
“But in practice, the new mechanisms look like they will be mostly powerless,” she added. Among the possible issues is whether the UN’s lumbering administration is able to regulate a fast-moving technology like AI.
Ahead of the meeting, a group of influential experts called for governments to agree on so-called red lines for AI to take effect by the end of next year, saying that the technology needs “minimum guardrails” designed to prevent the “most urgent and unacceptable risks.”
The group, including senior employees at ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Google’s AI research lab DeepMind and chatbot maker Anthropic, wants governments to sign an internationally binding agreement on AI. They point out that the world has previously agreed on treaties banning nuclear testing and biological weapons and protecting the high seas.
“The idea is very simple,” said one of the backers, Stuart Russell, a computer science professor and director of University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Human Compatible AI. “As we do with medicines and nuclear power stations, we can require developers to prove safety as a condition of market access.”
Russell suggested that UN governance could resemble the workings of another UN-affiliated body, the International Civil Aviation Organization, which coordinates with safety regulators across different countries and makes sure they’re all working off the same page.
And rather than laying out a set of rules that are set in stone, diplomats could draw up a “framework convention” that’s flexible enough to be updated to reflect AI’s latest advances, he said.

BERLIN/BRUSSELS: Europe must “grow up” and step up its support for Ukraine after comments by US President Donald Trump backing Kyiv to take back all of its territory from Russia, Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Wednesday.
Speaking to Germany’s Deutschlandfunk radio, Wadephul said Trump had realized that his own efforts had failed to persuade Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump’s remarks on Truth Social marked an abrupt and major rhetorical shift for the US leader who had previously nudged Ukraine to give up territory to end the war and had rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska just last month.
But it was not immediately clear whether Trump would back up his words with a shift in US policy, an ambiguity that could keep the onus on Europe to meet more of Ukraine’s needs through weapons and financing as Washington’s role recedes.

STEPPING UP WILL NOT BE EASY FOR EUROPE
Europeans have repeatedly said “that we really have to grow up... We have to become more sovereign,” Wadephul said.
“And that’s why we have to look at what we ourselves can achieve. We can achieve much more; not all European states have delivered what they promised Ukraine. We have to look at what other financial and military options we have.”
Trump’s comments were good for Ukraine and good for Europe, Wadephul said, as the president “must indeed acknowledge that his considerable efforts with Putin have so far been unsuccessful.” He warned, however, that Europe stepping up security efforts would not be easy.
Two officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, also cautioned that Trump may be signalling that it was up to Europe to help Ukraine now.
“He seems to be saying his goodbyes, no? But that can change tomorrow. In any case: the cards are clear for us. We know what we should be doing,” a Western European official said.
A senior Eastern European diplomat said that Trump’s Ukraine comments aimed to indicate a change of position and to show “that he is starting to disengage by sending a message that it is Europe’s question.”

EUROPE ALREADY TAKING ON A GREATER ROLE
Trump, in his social media post, said “With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option.”
The US has long been Ukraine’s biggest single backer and weapons supplier but since taking office Trump has insisted Europe take on a much greater share of its own defense burden. To some extent, that is already happened.
European members of the NATO defense alliance have raised their defense spending and also supplied Ukraine with air defense under a new system to give Ukraine weapons from US stocks using funds from NATO countries.
The European Union is also discussing a plan to repurpose the frozen assets to boost financial aid to Ukraine, as it looks to step up sanctions pressure on Russia, despite the risk of damaging foreign confidence in investing in Western bonds.
European defense stocks were the biggest early gainers on the pan European STOXX 600 on Wednesday following Trump’s remarks.
An index of aerospace and defense companies .SXPARO was up 0.8 percent at 0717 GMT, near its record highs and outperforming region-wide STOXX 60, which was down 0.45 percent.