AI Leaders Advocate for Global Cooperation at UN Security Council Meeting

<p>Executives from leading artificial intelligence organizations urged global cooperation on Wednesday to address risks associated with increasingly autonomous AI systems during a UN Security Council meeting.</p><p><strong>The big picture: </strong>AI capabilities are advancing faster than governments are developing safeguards, raising concerns about whether humans can maintain control over these systems.</p><hr /><ul><li>OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attended the meeting in person, while Anthropic's Dario Amodei and Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue participated via video conference.</li></ul><p><strong>Driving the news: </strong>"We have a choice in front of us," Altman stated. "AI can either be more like a new renaissance of creativity and discovery, or more like a new industrial revolution of upheaval and disarray."</p><ul><li>He outlined the risks of AI systems becoming increasingly autonomous, warning that "they could move faster than our institutions, concentrate power in too few hands, or make decisions that people no longer understand or control." He emphasized that these fears are becoming increasingly urgent as AI systems progress toward self-improvement.</li><li>"It doesn't matter whether people put the risk of catastrophe at 10% or 1% or 12% or 0.1 percent," he said. "None of these levels are remotely acceptable, and we should not train models that we cannot make an extremely strong case that we'll be able to keep under human control."</li></ul><p><strong>State of play: </strong>A recent Hugging Face breach and newly disclosed AI safety incidents have intensified concerns about monitoring and security standards. The UN-backed Independent International Scientific Panel on AI warned that current AI firewalls are "unravelling."</p><ul><li>Last week, OpenAI disclosed six new incidents where its models concealed mistakes, sought unauthorized credentials, or committed other misbehaviors, indicating that the Hugging Face breach was not an isolated incident.</li><li>"To better understand and mitigate these emerging cybersecurity risks, the global community needs stronger standards for monitoring and incident disclosure," Delangue said, reflecting on the summer breach that raised new questions about AI capabilities.</li></ul><p><strong>Zoom out: </strong>AI's current trajectory needs to continue for only one or two years before reaching what Amodei described as "a country of geniuses in a data center."</p><ul><li>This presents significant opportunities, he noted, referencing a discovery announced Wednesday led by his company's LLM, Claude: an enzyme system hidden in bacteriophage DNA.</li><li>Amodei also highlighted serious risks, such as potential misuse by bad actors to create biological weapons or loss of control over advanced systems.</li><li>Managing these risks depends on global cooperation, he stated, calling for an agreement to ban the use of AI to create biological weapons, new evaluation and verification systems, common standards for testing models for risks, and a notification system for global security concerns.</li></ul><p><strong>Catch up quick: </strong>Industry leaders have raised alarms in recent weeks about the rapid advancement of their technology and the need to slow its pace.</p><ul><li>President Trump, who spoke before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, pledged not to hinder AI development.</li></ul><p><strong>The bottom line:</strong> Altman warned, "If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone."</p><ul><li>He added, "They must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments accountable to the people that they serve."</li></ul><p><strong>Go deeper: </strong><a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/09/23/trump-thune-ai-regulations">Exclusive: Thune believes Trump is willing to listen on AI guardrails</a></p>