UN Secretary-General Calls for Coordinated Global Effort to Establish AI Guardrails

NEW YORK, Sept 17 — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a coordinated global effort to establish guardrails for artificial intelligence (AI), warning that the world cannot afford a “race to the bottom” on AI safety amid deepening geopolitical divides.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of the high-level week of the UN General Assembly, Guterres emphasized the urgent need for a shared international framework to advance safe, secure, and responsible AI development while managing the risks of increasingly powerful systems.

“We need guardrails to build trust — and that make AI safe, transparent, accountable, with human dignity at the centre,” Guterres said. “At a time when the world faces three existential threats — runaway artificial intelligence, the climate crisis, and the intolerable deepening of inequalities — international cooperation is more necessary than ever.”

While acknowledging that AI holds immense potential for accelerating sustainable development, enhancing education, strengthening health systems, and boosting climate resilience, Guterres noted that technical progress is rapidly outstripping humanity’s understanding of its risks.

The UN chief cautioned that voluntary, isolated, unverifiable, and unevenly applied development pauses will fail to mitigate potential dangers. He urged national governments to fulfill their primary responsibility of protecting citizens from AI threats, while stressing that global coordination is indispensable because AI technologies and their associated risks do not stop at national borders.

–NMT