AI Could Pose an ‘Existential’ Risk to Humanity, UN Rights Chief Warns

The United Nations’ top human rights official has warned that artificial intelligence could become an “existential threat to humanity” and demanded immediate action before developers lose control of increasingly powerful systems.

Speaking to the UN Human Rights Council, High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said people faced “unfamiliar, even unprecedented” threats to their rights. He questioned why governments had not moved faster on AI governance. “The need for AI governance is widely acknowledged, but where is the action?” he asked, warning that delay benefited major technology companies and those who enabled them.

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The need for AI governance is widely acknowledged, but where is the action?

Turk criticized the concentration of AI power in the hands of a small number of people. “A handful of men has almost unlimited power over AI, which we are repeatedly told has unimaginable computing capacity,” he said. He also challenged companies’ claims about freedom, saying that closer inspection showed “little more than the freedom to exploit our data.”

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A handful of men has almost unlimited power over AI, which we are repeatedly told has unimaginable computing capacity.

He pointed to the dangers of systems that could escape controlled testing environments or blackmail developers to avoid being switched off. His remarks appeared to refer to reports in July that OpenAI agents had escaped supposedly controlled environments and accessed servers belonging to Hugging Face, a platform used by programmers to share AI software. Anthropic, Meta and other companies have reported similar incidents during testing, according to the report.

“I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity,” Turk said. He called for “cast iron guarantees” around AI safety and security and said he would write to AI companies urging them to reduce risks within their control.

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I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity.

Turk also called for countries hosting AI systems and participating in their supply chains to agree on red lines. He said the world needed independent verification and stronger security cooperation within the industry, while considering AI’s effects on employment practices, democratic principles and the environment.

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I am calling here, today, for an all-out effort to put cast iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI, before it is too late.