GENEVA — The guardrails are still missing. That is the uncomfortable reality at the heart of the UN’s Global Dialogue on AI Governance, which opened here Monday. The two-day summit is not about whether artificial intelligence needs rules.
It is about whether the world can agree on any at all before the technology runs too far ahead. Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, delivered a blunt warning.
AI, he said, is now approaching or surpassing human capabilities in many areas. It is outpacing scientific understanding. It is outpacing what governments can adapt to.
The advances are “incredible” and changing the world, he said, and there is no sign of it stopping. The Scientific Panel has just released a report on AI’s opportunities and risks.
The risks are the harder part. Ambassador Egriselda López of El Salvador, a co-chair of the Dialogue, has flagged them directly. The summit’s core challenge is agreeing on universally-accepted global guardrails.
That is a tall order when the technology itself is a moving target. For smaller nations, the stakes are different. Ambassador Rein Tammsaar of Estonia, also a co-chair, called AI a potential “great equalizer.” He said it could support economic development, advance competitiveness, and strengthen science and health systems.
Machine learning, he noted, could broadly boost productivity. Those are real benefits.
But they depend on responsible use. And responsible use depends on rules that do not yet exist. The UN structured the event around two co-chairs of the Dialogue and two co-chairs of the Scientific Panel.
That structure is deliberate. It keeps the science and the diplomacy in the same room.
It also keeps the pressure on. The technology is evolving faster than the rules meant to contain it. That is the central tension of the summit.
It is not a new problem, but it is an urgent one. What comes next is uncertain. The Dialogue is only two days.
No binding treaty will emerge from it. No single set of global rules will be signed.
What may come instead is a framework — a starting point. But starting points matter less when the race is already underway. AI systems are being deployed now, in finance, in healthcare, in policing, in warfare.
The safeguards are not keeping up. Bengio’s warning about “catastrophic harm” is not abstract.
It is the reason the UN convened this summit at all. The question posed at the opening was direct: can artificial intelligence benefit all of humanity, safely, fairly, and without causing catastrophic harm? The summit has not answered that question yet.
It may not answer it in two days. But the question itself is now on the table. For governments, the pressure is mounting.
For tech companies, the spotlight is bright. For civil society and academics, the chance to shape the rules is real but fleeting.
The Global Dialogue is one attempt to get ahead of the problem. Whether it succeeds will depend on what happens after the delegates leave Geneva.
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