The growing risks associated with artificial intelligence and the ongoing war between the United States and Iran are expected to dominate discussions at the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday.
Industry leaders including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue are set to brief an emergency meeting of the 15-member Security Council on the security implications of rapidly advancing AI systems.
The briefing, convened by France, comes after weeks of global headlines about uncontrollable AI, including reports of a cyberattack by autonomous AI software on Hugging Face, raising alarm over loss of human control, critical infrastructure attacks and calls for a slowdown in AI development.
The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that AI represents one of the major tests facing humanity and has called for common guardrails.
Meanwhile, the US-Iran conflict is also expected to take centre stage as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is scheduled to address the General Assembly for the first time since US and Israeli coordinated strikes on Iran in late February sparked a war that has engulfed the Middle East.
Tehran’s retaliation, including blocking the Strait of Hormuz, and the recent Houthi takeover of Yemen’s Red Sea coast have heightened fears over global oil prices, trade and shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Pezeshkian’s speech comes a day after US President Donald Trump raised the possibility of annihilating the Islamic Republic. Diplomatic talks between both sides are said to have resumed on the sidelines in New York.