Silicon Valley Heads to the UN: "Please Don't Let the Robots Vote" 🎤

The United Nations Security Council will hear briefings from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue, and AI safety researcher Yoshua Bengio on Wednesday, when France convenes the 15-member body to discuss the international security risks posed by artificial intelligence. Amodei is scheduled to appear remotely. Chinese AI firms DeepSeek and Moonshot have been invited to make statements, with DeepSeek expected to participate though its founder Liang Wenfeng does not plan to attend, according to a source cited by Reuters.

France holds the Security Council's rotating presidency this month and organized the session, which will be chaired by Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot. The meeting's concept note reportedly centers on AI systems slipping beyond human control, and is expected to address AI systems that could potentially run cyberattacks, sway elections, or design weapons without human oversight. The Security Council first formally discussed artificial intelligence in 2023, Reuters reported. China's Foreign Ministry and state media have already weighed in, with Beijing branding Amodei's recent export-control arguments a "Cold War playbook" aimed at containing China.

The session comes amid heightened public debate over AI safety. On September 12, Amodei published an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier," arguing the industry should deliberately slow development of the most capable frontier AI systems. He said Anthropic would give outside evaluators permanent, staff-level access to verify its safety commitments, and he called China "the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities," urging Washington to maintain chip export restrictions. Sam Altman and Elon Musk publicly agreed with the call to slow frontier development within hours of publication. President Donald Trump has pushed back, calling AI-takeover warnings a "hoax" tied to the "Radical Left" and accusing Amodei directly of wrongdoing without offering evidence.

The briefing lands two days before Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington on September 24, where AI safety is reportedly on the agenda alongside trade. Days earlier, King Charles hosted executives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, and Google DeepMind at his Scottish estate for an AI safety summit that produced conversation but no publicly known agreements. Wednesday's Security Council session is not expected to produce a binding deal either.