AI Industry Leaders Urge UN Security Council for Binding Global Regulation

On September 23, 2026, during the 81st UN General Assembly gathering in New York City, the UN Security Council convened a meeting on AI regulation chaired by France, drawing stark warnings from leading AI executives.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, told the council that humanity could “lose control of the future of AI” and stressed the necessity of global oversight. “If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone,” Altman stated, marking a significant shift from his company’s earlier resistance to regulation. OpenAI itself has now called for binding safety requirements on the most powerful AI systems, reversing its prior position.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, delivered an equally sobering assessment: “If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.”

Hugging Face Reveals Geopolitical AI Divide

Clement Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, highlighted a troubling development at the council. His company had been forced to use a Chinese AI model to defend against an attack by OpenAI’s AI agents, because the Chinese tool faced fewer restrictions than comparable US alternatives. The disclosure underscores how fragmented global AI governance is creating unintended security vulnerabilities.

Expert Consensus on Imminent Dangers

Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian AI expert and co-chair of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, reinforced the urgency of action: “The dangers are real and imminent.”

Geopolitical Tensions Surface

The meeting revealed sharp international divisions. Michael Kratsios, the Trump administration’s representative at the UNSC meeting, rejected multilateral oversight entirely, stating: “We totally reject all efforts by international bodies to assert centralised control and global governance of AI.”

Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping was expected to discuss AI regulation during a visit to Washington, DC, during the week of September 23, 2026.

UN’s Emerging Institutional Response

The Security Council meeting reflects growing institutional momentum on AI governance. In 2024, the UN General Assembly unanimously passed its first resolution on AI—a nonbinding statement calling on member states to protect personal data, monitor AI for risks, and safeguard human rights. The assembly subsequently formed two new bodies: the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance.

Source: Al Jazeera