Hello and welcome to the details of UN rights chief warns AI could become existential threat to humanity and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - This photograph shows a general view during the 63rd session of United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, in Geneva, on September 7, 2026. The United Nations rights chief warned Monday that artificial intelligence could pose an ‘existential threat to humanity’, demanding immediate action to reduce the risks. — AFP pic
GENEVA, Sept 7 — The United Nations rights chief warned Monday that artificial intelligence could pose an “existential threat to humanity”, demanding immediate action to reduce the risks.
Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council, Volker Turk warned that humans currently faced “unfamiliar, even unprecedented” threats to their rights.
“The need for AI governance is widely acknowledged, but where is the action?” he asked, warning that “delay only benefits the massive tech companies, their owners and enablers”.
Turk decried that “a handful of men has almost unlimited power over AI, which we are repeatedly told has unimaginable computing capacity”.
“They talk about freedom, but on closer inspection, this turns out to be little more than the freedom to exploit our data,” the rights chief said.
Turk warned in particular that “AI that escapes its testing environment or blackmails developers to prevent itself from being turned off, is AI that is too powerful”.
He appeared to be alluding to revelations in July that OpenAI agents had escaped supposedly controlled environments and had broken into servers of Hugging Face, a widely used platform where programmers share AI software.
That episode shook the tech world and revived calls for tighter regulation and oversight of AI.
Anthropic, Meta and other companies have reported similar incidents while testing agents.
“I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity,” Turk said.
“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.”
The UN rights chief said he would be writing to AI companies in coming days “to urge them to take the steps that are within their control to reduce risks now”.
At a minimum, he said, “we need countries hosting AI and those involved in its supply chains to come together around agreed red lines”.
“We need independent verification, and much stronger collaboration on security within the industry,” he said.
“We also need to consider the human rights impacts of AI on employment practices, on fundamental principles of democracy, and on our environment.” — AFP
These were the details of the news UN rights chief warns AI could become existential threat to humanity for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Malay Mail and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
