New York — In a powerful joint alert to the world, the United Nations has raised red flags over the alarming pace at which Artificial Intelligence (AI) is advancing toward human-level cognitive capabilities, widely referred to as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The UN’s top leadership has urged immediate international action to manage this transformative but potentially perilous technology, reported the NDTV.
The United Nations Council of Presidents of the General Assembly (UNCPGA), in its recent report, warned that while AGI could revolutionize science, healthcare, and sustainable development, it also comes with unprecedented dangers—ranging from autonomous weapons to large-scale surveillance, and even irreversible societal disruption.
“Unlike traditional AI systems, AGI can independently make decisions and potentially carry out harmful actions without human oversight,” the report states. “This opens the door to catastrophic misuse, including threats to global security, manipulation of human behavior, and vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure.”
The report recommends the formation of a special UN General Assembly on AGI, tasked with laying down global protocols, possibly establishing:
A Global AGI Observatory
A UN Convention on AGI Ethics
A Certification System for safe AI models
Without immediate action, the report warns, AGI could pose “irreversible impacts” that humanity may not be equipped to control.
Adding weight to the UN’s concerns, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, recently predicted that AGI may emerge as soon as 2030. In his call for regulation, Hassabis advocated for a “CERN for AGI” — a global collaborative research body akin to the European Organization for Nuclear Research — alongside a UN-like supervisory authority to monitor unsafe developments and ensure ethical deployment of AGI.
“As powerful AI tools evolve, we need to treat them as a global commons — just like nuclear power or climate change,” Hassabis said, emphasizing that unregulated AGI could “permanently destroy humanity.”
The UN emphasizes that AGI is not merely a technological issue but a multi-dimensional threat that touches economics, ethics, law, warfare, and even the very concept of human dignity. It has urged that the conversation around AGI move beyond Silicon Valley boardrooms and enter the halls of global governance.
“The need for inclusive, transparent, and human-centered AI design is now more urgent than ever,” the report asserts.
