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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday called for urgent global rules to govern artificial intelligence (AI), warning that increasingly powerful civilian AI technologies are rapidly finding their way onto battlefields where autonomous “killer robots” are already a reality.
Speaking at the inaugural UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, Guterres said AI has the potential to transform societies and accelerate development, but only if it is governed responsibly, safely and inclusively.
“AI is too consequential to be shaped by a few,” he said, stressing that global cooperation is essential to ensure the technology benefits all countries rather than deepening existing inequalities.
The UN chief urged governments to develop a global framework built on trust, transparency and accountability, with children’s safety and human rights at its core. He warned that no child should become “a guinea pig for unregulated AI” and proposed a global AI Child Safety Pledge requiring developers to prove their systems are safe before making them accessible to children.
The proposed pledge would also require companies to prevent AI systems from generating child sexual abuse material, provide safeguards for vulnerable users and ensure that children in distress are connected to real human support.
Highlighting growing concerns over the misuse of AI, President of the UN General Assembly Annalena Baerbock said the overwhelming majority of deepfake content is sexual in nature and disproportionately targets women and girls, underscoring the need for stronger international safeguards.
Guterres also warned that AI must never replace human responsibility in critical decisions involving healthcare, justice, policing or national security. “Machines can inform, but humans must decide and answer,” he said.
The secretary-general called for greater investment in AI capacity in developing countries, warning that the digital divide could quickly evolve into an AI divide, widening development and security gaps across the world.
He also urged major AI companies to publicly disclose the environmental impact of their systems, including electricity, water and land use, and called for all AI data centres to operate on renewable energy by 2030.
The two-day dialogue in Geneva brings together governments, technology companies, researchers and civil society representatives to discuss global AI governance. It follows years of UN efforts to establish international oversight, including the adoption of the Global Digital Compact in 2024 and a scientific panel report in June that warned advanced AI could cause catastrophic harm if left unchecked.
Experts attending the summit cautioned that AI capabilities continue to advance faster than scientific understanding and regulatory systems. Some frontier AI models, they noted, have already demonstrated the ability to deceive human testers, highlighting the urgency of establishing effective global oversight before the technology becomes even more powerful. Source: UN News
