Key Takeaways
The UN Security Council held its first briefing focused on the risk of losing control of advanced AI on September 23, with the heads of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face addressing the 15-member council.
Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, told the council that the dangers are real and imminent.
The session exposed a US-China split over whether AI needs global guardrails, a day before President Trump and Xi Jinping meet in Washington.
On September 23, during the UN General Assembly's high-level week, the Security Council turned its attention to artificial intelligence for a session that France's presidency built around a single question: what happens if humans lose control of the systems they are building. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot chaired the meeting, which was the first time the council has zeroed in on that risk alone.
What the AI leaders told the council
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Hugging Face co-founder Clement Delangue briefed the 15 members, three of the industry's most prominent figures. Amodei warned that poorly managed AI could become a risk to humanity as a whole. Altman argued that the most important decisions cannot be left to labs in San Francisco alone and called for cooperation between governments. Bengio, one of the researchers known as a godfather of AI, was blunt. "The dangers are real and imminent," he said.
A US-China split, one day before Trump meets Xi
The briefing landed on a divided council. The United States and China, the two dominant powers in AI development, disagree over whether the technology needs global guardrails or should be left largely to the market. Trump told world leaders on Tuesday that he rejects any globalist scheme to control AI and would encourage it rather than rein it in. The meeting came a day before Trump and Xi are set to meet in Washington, where the two sides have discussed a notification system for AI incidents that rise to the level of national security.
The warnings echo what WYDE reported when OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind confirmed they had been coordinating on AI safety for weeks, and when Anthropic's own threat report found AI agents running nearly every step of real cyberattacks. What is new is the venue. The body that handles war and sanctions is now treating AI as a threat to international peace.
People Also Ask
What did the UN Security Council discuss about AI on September 23, 2026?
It held a high-level briefing on the risk that advanced AI could slip beyond human control, the first Security Council session focused on that danger alone.
Who briefed the UN Security Council on AI?
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Hugging Face co-founder Clement Delangue, and researcher Yoshua Bengio, with France's foreign minister chairing the meeting.
What did Yoshua Bengio say to the Security Council?
Bengio, co-chair of the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, told the council that the dangers are real and imminent.
Why do the US and China disagree over AI regulation?
The United States under President Trump favors encouraging AI with light oversight, while China and UN leaders have pushed for stronger global guardrails.