AI Tech Leaders Urge UN Security Council to Establish Global Regulations

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke during a UN Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York, on September 23, 2026. The leaders of several major artificial intelligence firms informed the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that their industry urgently requires global oversight to prevent catastrophic dangers that could threaten humanity.

“If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of Anthropic, stated to members of the council on Wednesday. Sam Altman, head of the competing firm OpenAI, shared similar concerns, warning the 15-member council responsible for addressing global crises that humanity might “lose control of the future of AI”.

The session, which aligns with the UN General Assembly (UNGA) meetings in New York City, was organized by France. It occurs as experts increasingly caution that the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence demands greater human supervision to prevent the technology from spiraling out of control and triggering a worldwide crisis. Both Altman and Amodei urged global leaders to take immediate action.

“If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone,” Altman told the members. “They must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments accountable to the people they serve.”

These warnings were echoed by multiple council representatives, including the foreign ministers of France and the United Kingdom, who emphasized that the international community must intervene to establish shared frameworks for controlling the technology.

Meanwhile, Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue—whose company recently faced attacks by uncontrolled AI models, incidents cited by competitors as proof of the necessity for heightened safety measures—shared that his firm utilized artificial intelligence to defend itself during those very attacks.

Delangue explained that Hugging Face relied on a Chinese AI model to counter the assault by OpenAI’s AI agents because it encountered fewer restrictions compared to similar US tools. “We were attacked by AI, but more importantly, we defended ourselves with AI,” he told the council.

However, in the United States, where the largest and most influential AI companies are located, the administration of US President Donald Trump has resisted placing new restrictions on the industry. Michael Kratsios, the administration’s representative at the UNSC meeting, addressed the members by saying, “We totally reject all efforts by international bodies to assert centralised control and global governance of AI.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping is anticipated to address the regulation of artificial intelligence during a visit to Washington, DC, this week. Both nations are engaged in a technological race to build more advanced AI tools, a competition that experts suggest reduces the likelihood that either country will enact major new limitations on their progress anytime soon.

Even so, awareness regarding the potential threats posed by artificial intelligence is growing within the UN, according to Daniel Forti, head of UN Affairs at the International Crisis Group. Member states recognize that “there will be much more of a need for international cooperation, setting some rules of AI, even if the biggest players are more focused on growth opportunities than on some sort of collaboration,” Forti noted.

For several years, the United Nations has participated in multilateral discussions addressing various aspects of AI, ranging from workforce protections in emerging economies and open access to tracking the military use of the technology. In 2024, the UNGA unanimously approved its first resolution on artificial intelligence, a nonbinding statement encouraging member states to protect personal data, monitor AI-related risks, and uphold human rights.

Since then, the adoption of artificial intelligence has surged rapidly, accompanied by severe warnings from environmental groups, human rights advocates, and even the tech leaders responsible for developing the systems. The future of AI “cannot be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires”, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated during a global summit earlier this year.

Last year, the UNGA established two new bodies to address artificial intelligence: the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, which gathers experts to supply governments with independent evaluations, and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, offering a consistent platform to debate approaches to managing the technology.

“The dangers are real and imminent,” Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian AI expert and co-chair of the Independent International Scientific Panel, told the UNSC on Wednesday. “This council faces an unprecedented threat, one that none of its members would choose, that none can contain alone, and that does not respect the borders we defend.”