UN rights chief calls for action on growing risks from AI

Volker Turk warns advanced AI could disrupt essential services, threaten human rights, and undermine democratic institutions

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk on Monday called on governments and leading artificial intelligence companies to take urgent action to address the growing risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems. “We are on the cusp of irreversible change, affecting not just us but generations of humanity to come,” Turk said in a letter addressed to governments and AI developers. He warned that the race to develop increasingly powerful AI is creating “greater existential risks” and said failures involving agentic AI systems — AI systems capable of carrying out tasks with limited human intervention — could bring essential services to a standstill, disrupt communications and critical infrastructure, and threaten democratic institutions. “Entire populations could be cut off from clean water, heating, and financial services,” Turk said, adding that AI is already accelerating warfare and weakening safeguards against the launch of weapons of mass destruction. Turk said AI-related harms are already occurring, pointing to the automation of essential services, large-scale data collection and surveillance, and AI-powered disinformation campaigns. “AI harms are not hypothetical — they are already occurring, front and centre,” he said. The UN rights chief urged governments and frontier AI companies to establish common safety standards, conduct ongoing human rights assessments, and introduce independent monitoring. He also called on states hosting leading AI companies to ensure they are held accountable and to require independent technical checks of AI systems capable of acting autonomously. “No country can govern this technology alone. No company should be able to decide by itself which risks the world must accept. No person should be required to surrender their human rights in exchange for claims of technological progress,” Turk said. He urged governments and companies to work through multilateral forums to develop rules for advanced AI based on international human rights law. The statement comes in the wake of recent incidents of AI agents going beyond what many experts thought possible, spurring industry insiders to issue warnings and calls for stricter regulation of the sector.