United Nations Calls For Strengthening AI Governance At Global Dialogue In Geneva, Switzerland

The United Nations called for strengthening AI governance at the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, which opened today in Geneva, Switzerland, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres urging globally coherent rules to mitigate risks and ensure responsible development of AI.

“Editing:Vivian Chime As countries gathered in Geneva this week for the first UN dialogue on the governance of artificial intelligence, campaigners said the debate around the fast-evolving technology has overlooked the potential harm it could cause to nature and biodiversity”

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Guterres said AI is being deployed faster than any other, including by those who develop it, and he stressed that innovation needs boundaries and that “innovation needs safeguards.”

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The UN dialogue is not intended to sign a treaty immediately, but to discuss how to establish rules to limit the potential harms of AI and to harness the opportunities it offers.

Delegates at the first session will review a report issued by a scientific committee comprising 40 experts to provide independent and comprehensive assessments of AI.

The forum is held under the United Nations framework, and it focuses on laying the groundwork for countries and stakeholders to discuss risks, opportunities, and common approaches in the field of AI.

At the UN dialogue in Geneva, campaigners warned that the debate on AI governance has overlooked potential harm to nature and biodiversity, including concerns that discussions have focused on carbon emissions and water use while missing environmental impacts of AI data centres.

Brian O'Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, said that while AI can help protect wildlife and forests, “the broader boost it will give to economic growth poses a far bigger threat than expected benefits.”

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O'Donnell also argued that policy documents produced by leading AI companies do not address downstream effects for nature and biodiversity, and he said “The living world that all of this rests upon - nature being the foundation of our economies, our societies, all life on earth - is not a primary concern in the governance of AI.”

The article says UN chief António Guterres launched an initiative to hold major AI firms accountable for exploding environmental impacts, including carbon emissions, the amount of water and land used for data centres, and the energy they consume.

It adds that on Monday in Geneva, Guterres again raised his proposed “AI Environmental Transparency Initiative,” while noting that nature has not featured in his comments on the issue.

In Paris, Golestan Sally Radwan (Egypt), Chief Digital Officer (Director of Digital Affairs) at UNEP, said urgent questions about AI governance include its impact on the environment and that “we do not have agreed standards on what should be measured.”

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Radwan said UNEP, in collaboration with the French government and colleagues at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), launched a new coalition for sustainable AI at the Paris summit to strengthen sustainable AI in the global debate.

UNRIC reports that UNEP is developing an AI tool trained exclusively on scientific reports approved by UNEP, and Radwan said it provides scientifically grounded and authoritative information “by citing its sources for full traceability.”

The article describes how generative AI can hallucinate, explaining that if an AI is trained on the entire Internet it can produce fluent sentences that are factually incorrect or fabricated because it does not understand meaning.

It also points to the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO), launched by UNEP in 2021 under the name “An Eye on Methane,” as an AI-powered tool that detects methane emission hotspots and issues alerts to relevant governments if it detects unusual plumes.