UN AI Dialogue co-leads urge safety baseline by May

The push for coordinated AI governance follows a week in which several leading AI CEOs publicly called for a slower pace of development, citing risks from loss of control to cyberattacks and bioterrorism. Days earlier, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, chairing the Financial Stability Board, warned G20 finance ministers and central bankers that the global financial system faces a new threat from AI, as many institutions depend on the same handful of AI models and cloud providers. The co-leads, writing from their role at the first UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance held in Geneva this past July, argue that these warnings confirm the need for common rules.

The Geneva dialogue, which brought together 170 countries alongside industry and civil society, produced a roadmap that the co-leads say the UN can build on immediately through “no regret” actions. They point to existing frameworks—the OECD AI Principles, the G7 Hiroshima code of conduct, the Frontier AI Safety Commitments from the 2024 Seoul Summit, UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, and ISO and NIST standards—as the foundation for a common safety baseline. They also highlight Costa Rica's National AI Strategy as a model for anchoring national policy in international frameworks.

Whether these recommendations translate into action hinges on the UN's ability to maintain political will through this fall and into next year's talks. The co-leads warn that if a handful of powerful actors decide how AI is governed, the rest of the world loses out.