Antonio Guterres, the UN's secretary-general, said the panel is a 'foundational step toward global scientific understanding of AI.'
The UN appointed a 40-member global scientific panel this week that will study the risks of artificial intelligence (AI), despite strong opposition from the United States. The move comes as former employees at AI companies sounded the alarm about the technology.
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The UN's General Assembly voted 117-2 to approve the panel, with the United States and Paraguay voting no, and abstentions from Tunisia and Ukraine. Russia, China and European allies voted in favour.
The experts on the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence (AI) will publish an annual report that synthesises and analyses AI's risks, opportunities and impacts in what the UN calls the "first global scientific body of its kind."
The panel's adoption is a "foundational step toward global scientific understanding of AI," said Antonio Guterres, the UN's secretary-general.
“In a world where AI is racing ahead,” Guterres said, “this panel will provide what’s been missing — rigorous, independent scientific insight that enables all member states, regardless of their technological capacity, to engage on an equal footing.”
The UN vote comes as employees walk out of artificial intelligence companies due to concerns over their practices.
Mrinank Sharma, Anthropic's former safety researcher, warned in an open letter that "the world is in peril," with the development of AI and other crises.
While OpenAI's former top researcher, Zoe Hitzig, told the New York Times that she has "deep reservations" about the strategy that her former company is taking.
Some of the world's most prominent figures in AI, such as Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, have also warned about the risks of AI.
'A significant overreach of the UN's mandate'
The UN's 40 members were selected from more than 2,600 candidates after an independent review by several UN bodies and the International Telecommunications Union, according to Guterres. They will serve for three-year terms.
Europe has 12 seats at the table: Joelle Barral of France, Melahat Bilge Demirkoz from Turkey, Finland's Anna Korhonen, Mark Coeckelbergh from Belgium, Latvia's Aleksandra Korolova, Russia's Andrei Neznamov, Germany's Maximilian Nickel and Bernhard Scholkopf, Spain's Roman Orus, Austria's Johanna Pirker, Poland's Piotr Sankowski and Silvio Savarese from Italy.
Lauren Lovelace, the US' representative, called the panel “a significant overreach of the UN's mandate and competence” and said “AI governance is not a matter for the UN to dictate.”
Instead, Lovelace asked the UN to focus on its "core missions," such as international peace and security, human rights and humanitarian assistance, instead of "attempting to regulate or stifle the development of cross-cutting ... technologies that will determine economic and strategic competition in the twenty-first century."
US President Donald Trump has pushed for minimal AI regulation, where he aims to cut federal red tape and avoid a "patchwork" of state laws that could slow innovation. The US and China are considered neck-in-neck in the AI adoption race.
Despite the US' opposition, they still have two representatives on the panel: Vipin Kumar, a University of Minnesota professor and Martha Palmer, a retired University of Colorado professor and linguistics expert.
