New York – United States faced world leaders for artificial intelligence in the United Nations General Assembly this week, rejecting the calls for global supervision, since many promoted the new collaborative frameworks.
While many heads of state, corporate leaders and prominent figures supported the need for urgent international collaboration in AI, the United States delegation criticized the UN role and retreated the idea of centralized governance of AI.
Representing the United States at the Wednesday Security Council meeting on AI, Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said: “We totally reject all the efforts of international organizations to affirm centralized control and global governance of AI.”
The road to a flourishing future driven by AI is not found in “bureaucratic management,” Kratsios said, but in “independence and sovereignty of nations.”
While Kratsios knocked down the idea of the combined governance of AI, President Donald Trump said in his speech before the General Assembly on Tuesday that the White House “is” a pioneer in a verification system of AI in which everyone can trust “to enforce the convention of biological weapons.
“With luck, the UN can play a constructive role, and it will also be one of the first projects under AI,” Trump said. Ai “could be one of the best things in history, but it can also be dangerous, but it can be of tremendous use and a tremendous good.”
In a statement to NBC News, a state department spokesman said: “The United States supports the nations of related ideas that work together to promote the development of the AI in line with our shared values. The position of the United States in international organizations is to vigorously advocate the international governance approaches that promote innovation, reflect the US values and authoritative influence.”
The comments that reject the collaboration efforts on the governance of the AI remained in marked contrast with many of the initiatives that were launched in the General Assembly.
On Thursday, the UN presented the global dialogue on the AI government, the first UN agency dedicated to the governance of the AI that involves all Member States. The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, said the body “would place the pillars of a global ecosystem of AI that can follow the rhythm of faster movement technology in human history.” Speaking after Guterres, the Nobel Prize receiver, Daron Acemoglu, described the growing bets of the rapid development of AI, arguing that “AI is the greatest threat that humanity has faced.”
But in an interview with NBC News, Amandeep Singh Gill, the UN special envoy for digital and emerging technologies, News told NBC that the critical perception of the United States on the role of the UN in the International Governance of AI was misunderstood.
“I think it is a misrepresentation to say that the UN is getting into some way in the AI regulation,” Gill said. “These are not power captures from top to bottom in terms of regulation. Regulation remains where regulation can be done in sovereign jurisdictions.”
Instead, UN mechanisms “will provide platforms for international cooperation for AI governance,” Gill said.
In the comments immediately after the comments of Kratsios, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, Ma Zhaoxu, said: “It is vital to jointly promote an open, inclusive, fair and non -discriminatory environment for technological development and firmly opposes unilateralism and protectionism.”
“We support the UN playing a central role in AI governance,” Ma.
A day after Kratsios’s comments in the Security Council, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez seemed to go back to Kratsios and provided complete support for international cooperation on AI and UN role in the governance of AI.
“We need to coordinate a shared vision of the Global level, with the UN as the legitimate and inclusive forum to forge a consensus on common interests,” said Sánchez. “Now is the moment, when multilateralism is more questioned and attacked, which we need to reaffirm how appropriate it is to address challenges such as those represented by AI.”
Reacting to the developments of the week, Renan Araujo, director of programs of the Institute of Politics and Strategy with headquarters in Washington, DC, told NBC News that “nobody wants to see a currupt and a bureaucratic governance structure, and the United States has managed to begin bilateral and minilateral layers. Advanced.”
This is not the first time that the UN is aimed at AI, after the global digital compact has passed last year. The compact laid the foundations for the dialogue of AI and an independent international scientific panel to evaluate the skills, risks and ways of AI. Guterres announced that nominations for this panel are already open.
While Thursday’s event marked the launch of dialogue and the global panel, the dialogue will have its first complete meeting in Geneva in the summer of 2026, together with the Annual AI of the International Telecommunications Union for Good Summit. The exact functions of the dialogue and the first actions will be drawn in the coming months.
