AI leaders warn UN Security Council of existential risks from unchecked AI

Leaders of three major AI firms warned the UN Security Council on Wednesday that rapidly evolving artificial intelligence could soon self-improve, evade human oversight, and pose a global security risk, urging international cooperation to manage the technology. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Hugging Face co-founder Clément Delangue addressed the 15-nation body during the UN General Assembly. Amodei said AI "could be a risk to humanity as a whole," while Altman stated "we could lose control of the future to AI," emphasizing that decisions must involve democratic processes, not just San Francisco labs. The United States and China remain divided on whether international regulation is necessary, with President Donald Trump rejecting "any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control" AI. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a governance advocate, has warned risks cannot be ignored, while AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio told the council "the dangers are real and imminent."