Geneva, Switzerland, September 15 (ANI): United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has called for urgent global governance of advanced artificial intelligence, warning that the rapid development of increasingly capable AI systems is putting human rights, critical infrastructure and democratic institutions at growing risk.
In a statement issued Monday, titled “To protect human rights now and into the future, we must govern AI urgently,” Türk said the world is at a “watershed moment” as companies and researchers advance AI at “dizzying speed,” with investments in AI and its underlying infrastructure breaking records.
Türk also acknowledged the potential of AI to contribute to human progress, saying billions of people already benefit from the technology through scientific discovery, access to information across languages and enhanced agricultural production.
However, he said the extent to which AI can help tackle the climate crisis, improve health and education, strengthen public services and enhance human well-being will depend on choices being made now about how the technology is designed, deployed and governed.
The UN rights chief said AI-related harms are already occurring, pointing to documented discrimination, automation of essential services that can leave marginalized people further behind, and the erosion of privacy through growing data demands and increasingly powerful surveillance tools.
“AI harms are not hypothetical — they are already occurring, front and center,” Türk said.
He also warned that AI-powered disinformation campaigns are distorting public debate, undermining social cohesion and straining democratic institutions.
Türk said the emergence of increasingly capable AI agents has raised the risks further because such systems can translate goals into action, carry out complex workflows and operate with limited or no human supervision.
According to Türk, recent events have shown that advanced systems can produce behavior outside their intended operational parameters, circumvent safeguards, practice deception and pursue objectives in ways their developers did not anticipate.
He warned that failures involving agentic AI systems could bring essential services to a standstill, fracture communications, destabilize critical infrastructure and strike at the heart of democratic institutions.
“We are on the cusp of irreversible change, affecting not just us but generations of humanity to come,” the UN rights chief said.
“In other words, all human rights are at risk, including the rights to life, food, privacy, health and security,” he added.
Türk also said that AI safety must therefore extend beyond the technical reliability of an AI product.
“AI safety must mean more than the reliability of the technical product in question. It means actively protecting people, communities, institutions and future generations,” he said.
The UN rights chief’s warning comes amid discussions among leading AI developers over whether the industry should coordinate efforts to slow technological progress and address growing safety concerns as AI systems become more capable.
According to Türk, companies at the forefront of frontier AI development, based mainly in China and the U.S., have both the responsibility and ability to immediately reduce risks.
He called on them to work across the industry to strengthen existing controls, including automated monitoring of model behavior, and to share information about effective safeguards and lessons learned from safety incidents.
Türk also called for robust human rights due diligence incorporating agreed safety standards, with those standards implemented across the sector, continuously improved and subject to internal independent monitoring to increase transparency and accountability.
As stronger safety systems are put in place, companies should immediately limit the use of recursive self-improvement for frontier AI development as a precaution until research to make it safe has been completed, he said.
Türk said that industry co-regulation is an “urgently needed first step” but “nowhere near sufficient.”
He called on states hosting leading frontier AI companies to require responsible conduct and hold companies accountable if they fail to meet those expectations. He also called for independent and technically competent verification of agentic capabilities, with access to models, documentation and testing environments, as well as mandatory ongoing human rights due diligence.
He said companies should be required to report serious incidents involving agentic AI testing and deployment, while an independent body should have the authority to investigate such incidents immediately with full access.
He further said AI systems should not hold legal personality and that responsibility for the actions of AI agents must remain with identifiable humans.
Given the stakes, Türk called on states and companies to mobilize urgently through multilateral forums to chart a path for governing advanced and frontier AI models based on international human rights law.
He identified the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, which convened for the first time in Geneva, Switzerland, in July and will meet again in May 2027, as a vital forum for translating evidence into policy, building consensus and facilitating international cooperation.
Türk said such efforts are crucial to broadening participation in decisions that will shape the future of technology.
“No country can govern this technology alone. No company should be able to decide by itself which risks the world must accept. No person should be required to surrender their human rights in exchange for claims of technological progress,” he said.
He warned that the generation now entering adulthood will inherit the consequences of decisions being taken on AI without having had a say in them.
“We owe it to them to ensure those decisions are made openly, with their rights in view, and with the humility that the scale of this undertaking demands,” the UN rights chief added. (ANI)
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