AI executives urge UN safeguards as US resists new global controls

Leaders of major artificial intelligence companies urged the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to establish safeguards for increasingly powerful AI systems, while the United States opposed creating new global governance structures.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that poorly managed AI “could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the world “could lose control of the future to AI.” Along with Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue, they called for measures to prevent AI from becoming too powerful to control and to keep its capabilities from being concentrated in a single company or country. The executives also emphasized potential benefits, including what Altman described as giving people greater control over their lives.

British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the warnings showed that preventing disaster could not be left to technology companies. He said Britain would put AI oversight at the center of discussions when it leads the G20 next year, seeking common global safety standards.

White House science adviser Michael Kratsios rejected the case for new international controls, saying concerns were not a reason to pause AI development or constrain it through a new governance system. Chinese Ambassador Fu Cong urged countries to support open-source models and warned against blocs that force nations to choose sides.

Separately, climate activists protested outside technology-company offices in New York, arguing that AI data centers’ energy, water and pollution impacts pose a more immediate threat and calling for restrictions on further construction.