UNITED NATIONS — The heads of OpenAI and Anthropic warned the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that advanced artificial intelligence could pose a risk to humanity if governments and technology companies fail to set safeguards and keep humans in control.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who spoke remotely, addressed the 15-member council at a special meeting on AI convened by France during the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
“We could lose control of the future to AI,” Altman said. “The risk is that it moves so fast that people can no longer follow what’s happening or intervene when needed.”
Amodei said: “If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.”
The warnings come as AI systems grow more autonomous, raising questions about whether governments can keep pace and who controls systems capable of consequential decisions. They also came a day after President Donald Trump told the General Assembly he rejected what he called a “globalist scheme” to control AI, highlighting a divide over international oversight.
Calls for cooperation
Both executives said AI governance cannot be left to individual companies or countries.
“For all the differences of the people in this room, we must put aside those differences in order to confront this global opportunity and global threat that is being presented to us at the same time,” Amodei said. “No leader, no company and no nation can manage this alone.”
Altman said governments should play a central role in deciding how AI develops. “If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone,” he said.
“We have a choice in front of us,” Altman said. “AI can either be more like a new renaissance of creativity and discovery, or more like a new industrial revolution of upheaval and disarray.”
Amodei urged countries to adopt common standards for testing AI systems, assessing their capabilities and identifying risks of misuse or loss of control. He also warned against the use of AI to develop biological weapons. Both executives urged governments to prevent AI power from being concentrated in a single company or country.
Governments divided
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, who chaired the meeting, likened the moment to the dawn of the nuclear age and said the international community must regulate AI to capture its promise while avoiding its worst outcomes.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres opened the General Assembly’s high-level week on Tuesday by warning that life-and-death decisions must never be handed to machines and that “killer robots” have no place in the future.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the council that governments cannot leave the prevention of catastrophic AI risks to the companies building the technology. He said Britain plans to put AI governance at the center of discussions when it takes over the G20 presidency next year.
White House science adviser Michael Kratsios struck a different tone, arguing that concerns about AI risks should not become a reason to halt development or impose a new global governance structure.
The United States and China, the world’s two leading AI powers, have taken different approaches to regulation and oversight.
