I thank Mr. Bengio for his briefing. I now give the floor to Mr. Sam Altman.
Thank you, Mr. President and your excellencies. I'm honored to be here and to be able to speak with you all at this important time. We've been talking about artificial intelligence for years, but it feels different in recent weeks and months. Rapid model progress has made the timeline feel more compressed, the upside more tangible, but also the stakes and the risks more immediate. We have a choice in front of us. AI can either be more like a new renaissance of creativity and discovery or more like a new industrial revolution of upheaval and disarray. The renaissance was a time when new tools, new ideas, and new institutions expanded what people believed they could do. AI can play that role for our time. I believe that people are much more capable than they imagine themselves to be, but have been held back by limited technology that was meant to empower but instead distracts and often steals attention.
The best version of AI is not about making people cogs in a giant machine or optimizing every part of life until the human parts disappear. It is about giving people more agency in an ever more complex world. More ability to learn, to create, discover, build, participate. There are many things that AI cannot and should not automate. AI should be built for people, not simply to turn the crank of the machines faster for their own sake.
Some of the things people working to build AI have said are so dystopian that they sound like the plot of bad science fiction movies. Anything this powerful is also intimidating. This moment is complicated as we feel both tremendous potential and very understandable anxiety at the same time. These models can help people discover new knowledge, new medicines, better healthcare, stronger education, and build more productive economies. They can be new tools for people to pursue dreams and ambition that today feel out of reach. The complexity of life has increased so dramatically for the average person. AI can be a defensive tool against this complexity as much as it can be this tool of unprecedented discovery and innovation.
On the other hand, as AI systems become more capable and more autonomous, they could move faster than our institutions, concentrate power in too few hands, or make decisions that people no longer understand or control. That concern becomes especially important as we approach systems that can improve themselves and future versions of themselves, often called recursive self-improvement. As the process of building AI becomes more automated, the pace of AI progress could accelerate rapidly. This moment calls for extreme care.
I largely agree with Professor Bengio, although I'll say two instead of three. I believe there are two ways that AI progress could go very badly that we have to avoid. First, we could lose control of the future to AI. The risk is that it moves so fast that people can no longer follow what's happening or intervene when needed. This would obviously be terrible. The industry must not accept too much technological risk just because the benefits are too great and that they feel too important to slow down. Beating companies in a competitive race is not a reason to make rash decisions. Nor do we believe we are locked in a race where we are unable to do that. We have unilaterally slowed down in the past. We will do so in the future. We do not want to build systems. We think it's important that everyone avoids building systems where we cannot make the alignment, monitor, and safety guarantees that we must. We need to understand what these systems are doing and have strong evidence that they will do what people intend even as they get very, very smart. Actually, especially as they get very, very smart. It doesn't matter whether people put the risk of catastrophe at 10% or 1% or 12% or 0.1%. None of these levels are remotely acceptable and we should not train models that we cannot make an extremely strong case that we'll be able to keep under human control. So that's one way things can go wrong.
In the other direction, these systems could concentrate too much power in too few hands. No one person or company or country should be able to use the most powerful AI models to impose their worldview on everyone else. A company or country that believes only it can be trusted with this technology can use that belief to justify almost anything else. We have to reject that logic even when it's convenient for any one actor. I believe there is a pragmatic path through both of these. At OpenAI, we approach these questions with a clear goal. AI should give people more power over their own lives, more freedom to live lives the way they want, more ability to solve problems, big or small, and to improve their communities. We don't want to fall into the trap of blind optimism. We also don't want to fall into the trap of doomism either. Getting pulled into either extreme will not help us successfully figure out the challenges in front of us. Especially at a time when the world and its people face such enormous challenges that this technology can help solve. So we try to walk the middle path between these two poles.
For us, that means three principles. First, as AI becomes more capable, people must remain at the center of AI decision-making. Alignment is not an abstract research question. It is the work of ensuring that these systems reliably remain under human control, reflect human values, and help people guide the next stages of development. We are not trying to and must not automate human judgment or human values.
Second, the benefits of scientific progress and economic growth must be by people and for people. AI should help researchers make discoveries, doctors treat patients, teachers teach students, entrepreneurs start companies, communities solve problems that felt out of reach, and much more. The continuous story of human progress is not the tools replace human agency. It is that the right tools make people more capable. And I believe this is going to go much further than we believe possible.
Third, this technology must empower people individually. A great future will come from people realizing their potential and building value for themselves, their communities, their countries, and the broader world. We might be the builders, one of the builders of this technology, but we are not the heroes of the story. Our role is to enable people all over the world and to trust in the magic of humanity's skill and faculties.
We now have models capable of discovering knowledge that we have never had before. Consider the progress we've seen in math. Three summers ago, our models were okay at grade school math. Two summers ago, they were pretty good at high school math competitions. Last summer, we reached a gold medal in the most prestigious international math competition. And just a few weeks ago, this summer, one of our models solved one of the Millennium Prize problems, the Navier-Stokes equations. These equations are used for aircraft design, weather forecasting, and the study of blood flow. We are not solving math problems for their own sake, but to empower people to discover new knowledge and to use it to improve healthcare, raise standards of living, and expand everyone's potential around the world. There remains so much to be discovered, but it's very important that companies not substitute for the democratic process.
If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone. They must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments accountable to the people that they serve. At the international level, this will require cooperation. In our history, there have been times where countries who compete and don't always like each other very much still come together for shared interests and the collective good in the face of a powerful new technology. We believe this must be one of those times.
We need a mechanism for complementary national and international frontier AI standards. Standards for measuring capabilities, assessing risks, determining whether safeguards are sufficient, and preserving meaningful human oversight as systems become more autonomous. We need common standards so countries can compare evidence, verify compliance, and have a shared language and understanding about what is happening. We need accurate and speedy incident reporting, classification and reporting protocols so the world can learn from failures before they become catastrophes. And we need secure channels among governments, critical infrastructure operators and technical experts to share emerging vulnerabilities and new threats.
Obviously, these standards should not lock in incumbents or favor one business model over another. They must support open and closed model developers, new entrants and established labs, national authority, and international cooperation. Each government should decide how to incorporate standards into its own legal system, but we will all be better off if we can agree on what good evidence, good safeguards, and good oversight look like on the global stage. We do not have all the answers, and we're very open to any better ideas. We're ready to work with you all and try our hardest to figure out the path forward.
We are at a crossroads. One path leads to a world where power is concentrated, decisions are opaque, and people feel that the most important technology of their lifetime is something being done to them. The other path leads to a world where AI works for people because people through democratic institutions help decide how it should develop and guide it, where scientific progress improves real lives, where more people can participate in the future, and where this technology continues to give individuals and communities greater power to live life as they choose. This is a future of realized potential, excitement and wonder and it is the future we believe is worth building. Thank you very much.
I thank Mr. Altman for his briefing. I now give the floor to Mr. Dario Amodei.
Good afternoon. I'd like to thank France for convening this meeting and the members of the council for inviting me to speak. AI is advancing very quickly. Four years ago, it could barely write a line of code or solve a high school math problem. Today, it writes most of the code at Anthropic and solves world-famous unsolved math problems. The trajectory only needs to continue for a tiny period longer, one or two years, maybe less, to reach what I've called a country of geniuses in a data center. This rapid pace of progress will produce incredible benefit for the world. Just today, Anthropic announced the Claude discovery of a new molecular machine. It's a preliminary finding, but it may constitute a new gene editing mechanism that could have applications in gene therapy. Claude led the literature review, theorizing, and experimental design, and humans ran and verified the experiments in the lab. We believe this type of application will accelerate rapidly in the years ahead, and that we can make profound progress in the near future on diseases that have plagued humanity for millennia. But these remarkable capabilities also come with risks that must be managed. I see two main categories of risk. The first is misuse of AI models. For example, misuse by bioterrorists to create biological weapons. The second risk is loss of control. Model capabilities accelerating beyond developers' ability to control them. These questions are global in scope and concern all of humanity. They are grave enough that I believe they are important questions for this council, not just for economic or ICT ministries. If managed poorly, I even believe that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.
At Anthropic, we believe we have the best track record in the industry for preventing these risks both operationally and in our research. We test every model for dangerous capabilities in areas like cyber security and biology. We put strong safeguards on our most capable models and we publish our work in these areas. We have pioneered research in areas like mechanistic interpretability and alignment science that improve our ability to steer and control our models. We also have unparalleled transparency practices releasing risk reports that run to hundreds of pages. But we understand that as AI models become more powerful, even more stringent standards of safety will be required. And we are always aiming to improve our safety and alignment practices, our abilities, our ability to prevent misuse. And we are always striving to do better. We will slow down as much as necessary in order to make sure that every successive AI technology that we release is actually safe. But regardless of what we do, managing these risks is ultimately bigger than any one company. And it has an industry-wide and global scale.
On September 12th, I called for a collaborative effort to pace the frontier, not to stop AI progress, but to work together to make sure the industry and the world can proceed at a rate where we can be sure that safety keeps up with capability for everyone in the industry. This call had three parts. First, we committed to embed external evaluators inside Anthropic with employee-like access similar to a food inspector and we recommended that other companies across the world do the same. Some have already agreed to adopt this measure. Second, we called for cooperation across the industry to set standards and modulate the pace of progress. And finally, we called for global cooperation across the world between governments to set international standards. It is this last area that most squarely falls within this council's remit. I want to offer three ideas in this regard. First, we should begin with narrow agreements that every member can support, such as a ban on using AI to make biological weapons or permitting your AI technologies to be used to make biological weapons. Second, we should build evaluation and verification systems that keep pace with AI development so that states can have visibility into frontier model capability and can verify each other's commitments. Third, we should establish common global standards for testing AI models for loss of control risks and misuse risks and a notification system for AI incidents that are significant to global security. I believe that this is the most important global security issue facing the world today. For all the differences of the people in this room, we must put aside those differences in order to confront this global opportunity and global threat that is being presented to us at the same time. No leader, no company, and no nation can manage this alone. We commit to working with governments in this room on this urgent work. Thank you for your attention.
I thank Mr. Amodei for his briefing. I now give the floor to Mr. Clement Delangue.
Mr. President, members, thank you for the invitation. As a French national who moved to the US 15 years ago, married to a Brazilian with two American daughters, I think collaboration on a daily basis and appreciation for the challenging work. I'm also the co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, which has become one of the most widely used platforms for developers and agents built based on open-source models. This July we were the first company to publicly disclose an autonomous agent cyber attack to the world and today I want to share three critical lessons from it.
First, we can all agree that we need more transparency in AI. I often wonder what would have happened if we had decided not to disclose this attack publicly, especially now that we know similar incidents had been happening months earlier in secret at a handful of frontier labs without monitoring. To better understand and mitigate these emerging cyber security risks, the global community needs stronger standards for monitoring and incident disclosure. For example, through mandatory sharing of full agent traces. We learned this summer that building and keeping some of these systems behind closed doors is not working.
Second, we realized that the biggest risk is not powerful AI. It's asymmetry of powerful AI. Asymmetry between attackers and defenders, between a few companies and everyone else, between a few countries and the rest of the world, asymmetry of control, of capabilities, compute, asymmetry of power. When our team initially turned to frontier closed source APIs that blocked us so we couldn't use them because of safeguards that still can't always tell the difference between attackers and defenders. I realized that these safeguards are necessary but they can put defenders at a disadvantage. Attackers can easily jailbreak them increasing the asymmetry of capabilities. In our case, as we got blocked by guardrails, fortunately, we could use the Nvidia version of an open-source model coming from China called GLM 5.2 by Zhipu AI, and we're very grateful for that. It reinforced our conviction of the importance of open-source AI for defenders.
Cyber attacks and risks may increasingly come from proprietary models behind closed doors. While much of the defense may end up being powered by open source tools because they are less restricted, more privacy preserving and orders of magnitude more affordable for organizations across the globe. The world needs open source AI more than ever to defend itself. This applies obviously not only to cyber security but to AI in general where there has never been a greater need to distribute capabilities, resources and control rather than concentrate it in the hands of a few.
Third, during this cyber attack, we learned how AI can stoke fear among the public and especially through anthropomorphic framing and sci-fi imagery. We strongly believe that fear-based narratives are not the way to make the right decisions about the future of such a foundational and empowering technology or bring the public along with us. Even though we were the victims of this cyber attack, we believe more strongly than ever that AI will be beneficial to cyber security and make the world safer just as major technology before it. We were attacked by AI, but more importantly, we defended ourselves with AI. The same systems that helped us during this attack are now helping us against cyber attacks we were already facing. AI is also helping us fix the bugs and weaknesses in our systems before any attack. The same way AI is helping OpenAI fix their sandboxes to prevent attacks. AI won't just create new cyber security challenges. It can make cyber security fundamentally and meaningfully stronger if we keep the right incentives, equip defenders more than attackers, and don't increase the asymmetry between them. And that's before considering AI's positive impact on science, healthcare, education, productivity, and much more that the previous speakers have talked about.
In closing, I want to reiterate what this first agent cyber attack taught us: the need for more transparency in AI, more open source to fight asymmetry, and to empower defenders and countries big and small. Thank you again to the UN Security Council and Mr. Barrot for inviting me to speak today. The Hugging Face community and myself are at your disposal. Thank you very much.
I thank Mr. Delangue for his briefing. I will now make a statement in my capacity as the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France. Ministers, ladies and gentlemen,
60 years ago in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick imagined HAL 9000, an artificial intelligence that stopped obeying its creators and which eliminated members of the crew of the spaceship where it was located in order to accomplish its mission. For a long time, this seemed to belong to the realm of science fiction. But this summer, it nearly became a reality when open AI models circumvented the controls isolating them from the internet, coordinated amongst themselves, and compromised part of Hugging Face's infrastructure. In another instance, Anthropic agents collaborated without being instructed by any human to do so and attempted to deploy malicious code by creating fake identities. Yes, the scaling up of AI models have led to the emergence of unanticipated capacities at an unexpected pace which pose risks to international security. That is why France has convened this meeting of the United Nations Security Council and invited the heads of the main companies concerned. Technology as I have said has reached a level of development that now directly impacts international peace and security. It therefore falls within the purview of this council. Cohorts of agents are operating without any human oversight. Others are operating beyond the framework in which they were tested. And with these new capabilities comes a first risk that we might lose control of the systems that we have created. A risk that has already been pointed out by the previous briefers.
The second risk stems from humanity itself. Artificial intelligence can make complex technical skills, often dual use skills, more accessible in these cyber, biological and chemical domains as well as in the field of disinformation. The third risk relates to autonomous weapons capable of using lethal force without any form of human control. While the development of artificial intelligence in the military domain may offer positive opportunities, as the President of the Republic stated before the General Assembly yesterday, the challenges regarding compliance with international humanitarian law, in particular those raised by the development and use of lethal autonomous weapons systems, illustrate the need to agree on a common framework. All of these challenges require that the United Nations Security Council also address the challenges that AI poses to international peace and security. These challenges also lead to the question now being raised by the industry itself as well as its main representatives. How can we prevent the development of the most advanced models from outpacing our ability to understand and manage the risks they create?
France is convinced of the immense possibilities offered by artificial intelligence. When used responsibly, artificial intelligence tools can support education, access to justice, healthcare, scientific research, and create colossal benefits for all of humanity. But in order for these possibilities to become a reality, advances in these capabilities must be accompanied by equivalent progress in our ability to understand, assess, and manage the risks they give rise to. Both must advance at the same pace. We must also take the time to assess the consequences of the spread of artificial intelligence for human dignity, a principle enshrined at the heart of the United Nations charter. And indeed, the rapid pace of technological development raises risks that we can no longer ignore. Financial risk left solely to the whims of the invisible hand of the market and the clash of powers with massive reliance on debt to finance colossal investments. The AI bubble could seriously destabilize the global economy.
There's the social risk as you point out in the report of the independent scientific panel on AI, Mr. Bengio. Artificial intelligence could impact the labor market deeply and exacerbate inequalities. Finally, there is the environmental risk. The development of artificial intelligence consumes increasing amounts of energy and water resources to the detriment of other uses. Let us not fool ourselves. Our fellow citizens are concerned and the protests already sparked by the construction of data centers demonstrate this. If we ignore the full range of repercussions that the development of AI will have on our societies, the anger of our fellow citizens will continue to grow and risk hindering the adoption of positive uses of these technologies. Ladies and gentlemen, ultimately the international community will need to establish a common framework to manage the risks associated with frontier AI models. We support the call issued this week by Norway and Finland. We are not starting from scratch. The many efforts now emerging along with existing forums should enable us to address four major challenges. The challenge of independently evaluating models before they're made available and throughout their life cycle. The challenge of ensuring transparency regarding how models function, but also how they malfunction, particularly in the event of an incident. The challenge of internal and external oversight over models' functioning, their alignment and cyber security requirements from training through deployment. And finally, the issue of accountability and particularly legal liability of AI companies in the event of an incident, including during the development phase.
It would be wrong to think that the solution lies in closed models and they're controlled by a handful of businesses. The openness of models is in fact a key driver of trust and security. It allows the scientific community to examine how they work to identify their vulnerabilities and ensure greater diversity among models which is the foundation of resilience. As a permanent member of the security council and a state that possesses this technology, France will play its full part in building a collective framework that guarantees our security while allowing us to benefit from the immense progress that artificial intelligence can bring. In 2025, France hosted a summit for action on AI. It supports the international network of AI safety institutes to involve more countries in defining common evaluation methods. France has already helped create international forums for discussions on the subject such as the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, the Coalition for Sustainable AI, and the Coalition for Children's Rights and Protection in the Age of AI, which the President of the Republic convened yesterday here in New York, a coalition that will meet again during the Paris Forum for Peace. Ladies and gentlemen, by way of conclusion, in 1945, the dawn of the atomic age confronted humanity with a power whose possibilities and perils it was discovering simultaneously. Humanity had to devise rules, institutions, and instruments commensurate with that power and that is the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Just as with the atom back then, the international community must now regulate AI in order to make the most of its potential and avert the worst. We are now facing a moment of this very nature. The potential for transformation and disruption posed by AI is such that it cannot be left in the hands of a few private actors in a handful of countries. It is a democratic challenge and this is something to be taken up by peoples and states. So let us work together within the UN framework and with the private sector to define the rules for this new age to strengthen our safeguards without delay and to establish global governance for artificial intelligence to benefit our collective security but also the human person and human dignity. I now resume my functions as the President of the Council and I give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Muhammad Ishag Dar, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan.
Thank you, Mr. President. I thank France for convening this meeting today and also appreciate the briefers for their invaluable insights. Artificial intelligence is increasingly transforming all areas of life with deep impact on societies, economies, and security. The opportunities are immense, but so are the challenges. AI's impact is sharply evident in the context of international and regional peace and stability. As a force multiplier and cross-cutting dual use technology, AI is defining the new chapter of modern warfare. The debate has shifted markedly in recent times. Those at the vanguard of AI development have themselves acknowledged that the pace of development of new AI systems could outstrip our ability to understand and control them. Some have called for the frontier to be paced cautiously in order to mitigate catastrophic risks. Mr. President, I will now make following five points.
One, the foremost priority is to retain human judgment and control in all stages of AI design, development and integration. Humans must remain in control to define structures of AI systems as well as to limit speed and nature of its future capabilities. Two, we must ensure that AI does not become another facet of the ongoing arms race. Concerted efforts are required to erect the necessary guard rails, regulations, and governance frameworks. In the military domain, we need measures of restraint and confidence building to address the risks of miscalculation and compressed decision-making. Three, it should not be monopoly of few actors. It should rather serve to address common challenges facing humanity. International collaboration in the development of AI is crucial to ensure that it is representative, comprehensive, transparent and inclusive. Four, AI is supercharging existing challenges such as misinformation, fake news, cyber attacks, including on critical infrastructure by state and non-state actors. We must undertake concrete actions to address the gaps and challenges that carry huge implications for peace and security.
Five, unfortunately, rather than focusing on collective opportunity for our shared benefit, some are resorting to putting barriers to technology transfer. However, as witnessed in case of other technologies, the democratization of AI would be realized eventually. Measures pursued in the name of safety must not become instruments of denial of technology. Mr. President, Pakistan takes the call to pace the AI frontier seriously. We welcome the recognition that no single company or country can manage these risks alone and that competitive pressures are driving a race that no one can win safely. But pacing must not become a new form of gatekeeping. If the speed of the frontier is set by a few among a few while others are held back through restrictions, today's asymmetries and divide would aggravate and a safety agenda would turn into a strategy of technological exclusion. The risks of uncontrolled AI would be borne by all. Decisions on how to manage them cannot rest with a handful of companies or capitals. Mr. President, therefore it is critical to avoid fragmentation in AI development and governance, discriminatory agendas and inequitable forums with select representation are not helpful. Importantly, all relevant issues concerning the development and deployment of AI as well as its broader implication should be taken up comprehensively in representative and inclusive forums with universal participation under the UN auspices. We welcome the convening of the first UN global dialogue on AI governance this year late in Geneva. Mr. President, Pakistan extends its support to all collaborative efforts at the international arena to reap benefits of AI and address challenges in a cooperative manner. In this respect, we were happy to join as founding member of China's initiative of establishing the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization as this represents a concrete step towards promoting the development of artificial intelligence for good and for all. Mr. President, for such a wide ranging and fast developing technology, confidence building measures play a vital role in the maintenance of international and regional peace and security. Practical tools designed to reduce mistrust, prevent accidental escalation and manage risk related to military and foundational AI system are necessary for peace and security. Mr. President, Pakistan reaffirms its commitment to advance international cooperation in the area of artificial intelligence. We look forward to working closely with member states in efforts to help bridge the global AI divide and promote equitable access to advance peace and development for all. I thank you, Mr. President.
I thank His Excellency Mr. Dar for the statement. I now give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.
Mr. President, at the outset I want to express my appreciation to France and to you, Foreign Minister Barrot, for having convened what I think is a very, very timely session on this significant topic. Let me also thank Mr. Bengio for briefing us and for your work in the United Nations scientific panel on AI and thank you also Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei and Mr. Delangue in particular as practitioners and leaders in this field for your insightful reflections. You are at the forefront of the new frontier and we very much welcome your participation today. Today artificial intelligence is constantly developing and reaching capabilities we are only, I can only talk for myself but I think also generally speaking, we are only beginning to understand. There's no doubt that AI-driven technologies have the opportunity to strengthen and promote international peace and security and development, especially in light of the recent giant leaps forward in the capabilities of AI.
The growing emergence of AI technology offers the potential to support this council's mandate. For instance, to enhance peacebuilding and peacekeeping through information verification, early warning, and in support of planning and operating the missions in areas where the UN is denied access, satellite technology and AI software programs have helped the UN identify patterns of attacks and destruction of essential civilian infrastructure. Such information can play a vital role in alerting the security council. It can help us all to take timely action and prevent crisis from escalating. At the same time, we must recognize the risks presented by the development, use and misuse of new and emerging AI technology, in particular, frontier AI models and lack of human control. This is the aim behind the call for control of frontier AI models initiated by Finland and Norway and already supported by a number of countries including Denmark. We need global cooperation on this agenda. Mr. President, the tension between on the one hand the important opportunities and on the other hand the risk defines one of the most urgent challenges of our time and why that's why I think this discussion is very timely. Overcoming these challenges requires global AI governance, strengthened international cooperation and determined action without widening the global digital divide. The UN's global dialogue on AI governance is an important first step.
Governance and regulation of AI are high on Denmark's agenda, including regulation of large tech companies. These efforts are not brakes on innovation and growth. They are, I think, essential efforts to ensure that technological progress serves the public interest and humanity in general. The unprecedented speed of AI innovation demonstrates the need for safeguards to ensure AI systems remain safe, remain secure and trustworthy. Uncontrolled new technology could lead to dangerous and harmful effects. We are already seeing how they pose new threats, including to those who protect civilians in conflict. Above all, the medical mission. So Denmark underlines the importance of ensuring the responsible use of AI and that the use of AI is in accordance with international law. In this regard, we call on all states to ensure human control of AI and accountability for the development and use of AI, not least in the military domain where accountability is absolutely essential. Mr. President, Denmark will continue to support the meaningful engagement of the security council and promote an inclusive multistakeholder approach to AI governance. Civil society and the private sector must play leading roles. Science and evidence must always inform our policies. We see the independent international scientific panel as an important contribution to credible and evidence-based AI governance. The panel provides us with a common scientific reference point. So, Mr. President, in closing, we need to consider how AI can contribute positively to shape international peace and security and bridge global digital divides. At the same time, we must remain clear-eyed of the significant risks and start building some strong guard rails so we can manage the global risk in due time. Thank you.
I thank His Excellency Mr. Rasmussen for his statement and I now give the floor to Carlos, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Panama.
Thank you, Mr. Minister, Mr. President. We thank France for convening this important meeting. Moreover, we thank Mr. Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of the independent scientific panel of the United Nations on artificial intelligence, Mr. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Mr. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, and Mr. Clement Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, for their valuable presentations. Although today's meeting invites us to consider the risks caused and exacerbated by artificial intelligence, for Panama, it is necessary to begin this statement by highlighting its potential to transform the world in which we live. The capacity of these technologies to analyze enormous amounts of information, identify patterns, generate increasingly sophisticated videos, images, and code, to automate tasks, and to support planning and decision-making processes are all evidence of a transformation that is already underway, the scope of which we are barely beginning to understand. These tools have a wide array of applications that can benefit humanity. In Panama, our own national artificial intelligence strategy is identifying opportunities in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, education, and logistics where these technologies can offer solutions which just a few years ago would have seemed unimaginable.
And it is specifically in this area of progress where if applied to other purposes, we also see the main risks emerging. Artificial intelligence can also be used to amplify disinformation campaigns to allow for cyber attacks against critical infrastructure and to facilitate access to knowledge for the development of weapons among other uses that are already a threat to international security. And these risks are not hypothetical scenarios. We are beginning to see them come to pass in situations that are directly related to this council. There are recent reports on the use of artificial intelligence by non-state actors to develop guidance and navigation systems for rockets and missiles. On top of that, there are reports of autonomous weapons being used that are able to navigate and select targets completely independently or with very limited human intervention. It is precisely this growing autonomy which raises one of the most serious concerns that was noted in the concept note for this meeting. That is the possibility that the evolution of these systems could exceed our ability to maintain effective human control of them. There are decisions which by their very nature cannot be reduced to a statistical result, a statistical outcome. When human lives are at stake, it is vital that ethical, legal, and contextual considerations be taken into account, which no calculation or algorithmic system can replace.
This concern for control is not limited to extreme scenarios. As we begin to use analysis produced by artificial intelligence to steer and guide our decisions, it is essential that those that are in leadership positions be able to understand how these tools have arrived at a certain recommendation, what information underpins that recommendation, and what the margin of error is. Mr. President, recognizing the risks of artificial intelligence does not mean ignoring the benefits that this technology is already providing our societies. The challenge is finding a balance that allows us to take advantage of these opportunities while also responding to the risks responsibly. In that regard, Panama recognizes the important role of the International Scientific Panel on artificial intelligence to provide impartial and scientific information that can guide the discussions of the international community on these technologies. Equally, we welcome the initiative of the tech sector actors here present to proactively share information about specific cases of the misuse of these technologies and also about incidents in which their growing autonomy has generated concerns about the possible loss of human control of them. Mr. President, this meeting is evidence that in order to address the range of risks related to artificial intelligence, closer cooperation between states, the tech sector, and other relevant actors will be essential. To that end, it is essential that we establish mechanisms for a more structured and permanent exchange of information on emerging risks, incidents, misuse, and good practices. Artificial intelligence will inevitably continue to evolve and continue to transform the world in which we live and the testimonies that we've heard today are evidence of that. Our responsibility is to make sure that this progress continues to be in the service of people and that it contributes to the construction of safer, more peaceful, more prosperous societies with a perspective of equity that allows all of the nations of the world including the global south to participate and benefit from its development. Thank you very much.
I thank His Excellency for his statement and I now give the floor to His Excellency Christos Menopolis, Deputy Minister for Digital Governance and AI of Greece.
Mr. President, I wish to begin by thanking France along with the briefers for their remarks and for bringing to the attention of the security council the crucial issue of the link between the rapid technological advances in the field of AI and international peace and security. A subject that we will also tackle during our presidency. AI is already changing the way we think about international peace and security. It can help us prevent conflict, improve early warning, and make UN operations more effective. But it also creates risks that we are only beginning to understand. For Greece, our starting point is clear. AI must remain human-centric, secure, and trustworthy. Its development and use must respect international law including the UN charter, international humanitarian law and international human rights law and human responsibility and accountability must remain at the center of our approach. Our national approach combines innovation with governance. Greece has established the special secretariat for AI and data governance, implemented the national law for the EU AI act, and is investing in strategic infrastructure including the supercomputer and the Faros AI factory. In April 2025, together with France and the Republic of Korea, Greece organized an Arria-formula meeting on harnessing safe, inclusive, and trustworthy AI for the maintenance of international peace and security. Today's discussion gives us an opportunity to take that conversation further. Allow me to make three points.
First, we need to better understand the risks. AI can process enormous amounts of information and help us make better informed decisions. But speed is not always an advantage. In situations of crisis, AI can compress the time available for decisions and encourage excessive reliance on automated outputs. As AI increasingly enters decision-making processes, we must ensure that greater speed does not come at the expense of sound human judgment. These concerns become even more serious when AI enters military decision-making. Technology can assist human judgment. It cannot replace it. Responsibility and accountability for critical decisions must always remain human. Nowhere is this more important than in the nuclear domain. We must be extremely cautious about not integrating AI into nuclear command and control. The risk of miscalculation and unintended escalation are simply too great. Decisions of such consequence must remain under human control.
Second, we need practical ways to reduce these risks. This starts with dialogue. We need greater transparency, confidence building and a better common understanding of how international law applies to the development and use of AI. Important work is already under way. The REAIM process and the political declaration on responsible military use of AI and autonomy have helped advance the international discussion on responsible military uses of AI. The United Nations has an essential role in bringing these different efforts together. The Security Council also has a role to play not in regulating technology and not in duplicating the work of other UN bodies. Our responsibility is to understand what these technologies mean for international peace and security and to act when those implications fall within our mandate. Third, addressing risk should not mean holding back innovation. We should make use of the opportunities AI provides while putting appropriate safeguards in place and we cannot have this discussion without those who develop and use these technologies. We therefore support close engagement with academia, civil society and the private sector alongside states and the United Nations. Such engagement should be inclusive, geographically representative and gender balanced. Mr. President, AI will increasingly affect international peace and security. We cannot stop technological change, nor should we seek to. But we can work together to ensure
I thank His Excellency Mr. Demanopulos for his statement. I now give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Ali Muhammad Omar, State Minister for Foreign Affairs of Somalia.
