‘The science is here’: UN chief welcomes first global AI assessment

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

Fresh scientific evidence and options for harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) were unveiled Wednesday following the launch of the first global, independent scientific assessment of opportunities, risks and impacts by a pioneering UN expert panel.

Key takeaways

The report outlines findings across seven key domains:

• AI science, advances and trajectories
• Societal applications in science, health, education and agriculture
• Economic implications
• Security, systems and environmental implications
• Human rights, information and democracy
• Cultural benefits, autonomy and child safety
• Management, governance and reliability

“The science is here,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said at the report launch. “We can no longer say we did not know. What we do with it is now up to all of us.”

The more AI advances without shared rules, the less say governments and people will have in the outcome, the UN chief said, adding “my message to governments is simple: do not wait.”

Aiming to build a shared understanding and evidence at this critical juncture, the Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI: Evidence-based assessment of opportunities, risks and impacts of AI was penned by the first global, fully independent scientific body dedicated to assessing its real impacts across economies and societies.

Read the full report here.

Why it matters

Globally, over one billion people now use conversational AI weekly, while governments are making consequential decisions in the face of great uncertainty with rapidly changing, often conflicting sources of evidence and perspectives that do not necessarily reflect local realities.

“Used well, AI could be the most powerful engine for development, speeding the world’s progress on everything from health and hunger to learning and climate,” the UN chief said, “but the panel is just as clear-eyed about the harm artificial intelligence can cause.”

Indeed, as the capabilities of AI continue to grow, so do the stakes – the core challenge the panel aims to address.

Read our AI explainer here.

Better world or catastrophic harm?

Composed of 40 leading scientists and experts from every region, the panel outlines AI trends and warns that current safeguards cannot keep pace, said its co-chair Yoshua Bengio.

“AI capabilities are outpacing both scientific understanding and governments’ ability to adapt,” Mr. Bengio said. “With growing evidence of deceptive AI behaviour, science currently cannot guarantee that as capabilities continue to increase, AI will not cause catastrophic harm, either on its own or due to malicious users.”

To act effectively, he said, global policymakers must understand these systems, and the panel provides exactly that: a rigorous, shared scientific foundation “to guide our collective way forward”.

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Key findings

Detecting breast cancer earlier, accelerating vaccine development and improving healthcare services are just a few ground-breaking AI accomplishments, but limitations and challenges remain, among them:

• AI adoption has accelerated broadly, but unevenly across countries and sectors
• Access and usage vary widely, with adoption across the global south lagging far behind the global north
• Significant differences in compute infrastructure and models exist between advanced economies, reflecting existing inequalities

Moreover, development is highly concentrated, with recent estimates finding that the United States accounts for 75 per cent of the computing power among the world’s top 500 AI supercomputers, with China accounting for 15 per cent, and that both countries’ companies develop almost all leading general-purpose models.

Understanding risks

Understanding and managing AI risks is essential, the report stated, with panel co-chair Maria Ressa adding that risks to societies, security and the human species are already “too high”.

“The technology is transformative, but if the world keeps moving along this trajectory, humanity will fail to realise the gains it promises,” she warned.

Here are some of the panel’s warnings:

• There are no scientific guarantees that AI agent systems will not violate instructions, and evidence is accumulating of cases where they already are
• AI agent systems will soon complete tasks that currently take human programmers days or weeks, but their deployment raises urgent questions for labour markets, cybersecurity and the controllability of future AI systems
• Sycophantic AI behaviour, where responses reinforce users’ existing beliefs regardless of accuracy, has been linked to several severe mental health incidents, including documented deaths
• Criminals and bad actors have been documented using AI systems to assist in cyberattacks
• Advanced technical abilities may allow novice private actors to use AI in malicious ways across a range of applications such as fraud and disinformation
• Reliable methods for retaining control over highly autonomous AI systems are lacking

Many of these harms fall disproportionately on already disadvantaged populations, the report stated.

Unlocking benefits, mitigating risks

Minimising AI risks and benefiting from this technological tool requires good governance.

Concrete next steps to close current gaps exist, but each requires sustained investment in Member State capacity to shape, evaluate and deploy AI.

Realising these opportunities safely requires dedicated investments and policies to incentivise equitable access and reward innovation while preventing the exploitation of the vulnerable. 

‘AI will not close divides itself’

Dozens of distinct governance instruments that seek to embed ethics and human rights in AI systems are already in use across jurisdictions, but they are fragmented, concentrated among a few corporations and rarely measure real-world effectiveness, the report found.

Amandeep Gill, Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, said the new report delivers shared scientific language that decision makers can now use going forward.

“AI will not close divides by itself,” he said.

The benefits land where institutions, skills and data already exist, and where they do not, the same technology can displace workers, widen inequality and leave communities dependent on systems built without them in mind, he explained.

“Those realities are now on the record, independently verified, and impossible to set aside.”

The report’s findings will be presented to governments at the inaugural UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance, convening in Geneva on 6 and 7 July.