The United Nations is calling for global safeguards to protect children from artificial intelligence. Secretary-General António Guterres urged governments and tech companies to ensure AI is safe, transparent and responsibly regulated.
GENEVA — United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday called for a global agreement to protect children from the risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI), warning that no child should become “a guinea pig for unregulated AI.”
Speaking at the opening of the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, Guterres proposed an international pact built on three key principles: requiring companies to prove AI systems are safe for children before deployment, adopting zero tolerance for AI-generated child sexual abuse material, and ensuring AI systems direct children to human support when they detect signs of emotional distress or self-harm.
The summit is part of the 2024 Global Digital Compact, an initiative aimed at strengthening international governance of AI technology, which is currently dominated by a small number of major companies.
Guterres warned that AI development is advancing faster than governments and institutions can regulate, describing the current situation as “an experiment” taking place without adequate planning or public consent.
He noted that while the internet took 15 years to reach one billion users, AI achieved the same milestone in just two years. He also warned that increasingly advanced AI systems are now capable of writing code, operating online and making decisions with diminishing levels of human oversight.
The U.N. chief also unveiled an AI Environmental Transparency Initiative, urging technology companies to disclose the full environmental impact of their AI systems, including carbon emissions, water consumption and land use, while calling for all AI data centers to operate on renewable energy by 2030.
According to Guterres, data centers already consume more electricity than most countries and, by 2030, could use more energy than all but five nations worldwide while consuming as much water as the entire population of sub-Saharan Africa would need in one year.
He also announced plans to present a proposal to the U.N. General Assembly to establish a Global AI Fund aimed at financing AI infrastructure, computing capacity and data access in developing countries.
The Global Dialogue on AI Governance brings together representatives from all 193 U.N. member states following the release of the first report by the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.
