Altman and Amodei Urge UN Security Council to Coordinate Globally on AI Safety Risks

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appeared before the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, calling for international coordination on artificial intelligence safety as debate over the technology's risks intensifies. Altman argued that the most consequential decisions about AI cannot rest with a handful of technology companies, saying: "If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone."

Amodei framed the stakes in stark terms, warning that AI "could be a risk to humanity as a whole" if managed poorly, and identified two primary dangers: misuse of AI capabilities, including their potential application to biological weapons development, and a loss of control as model capabilities advance faster than developers can govern them. He pledged that Anthropic would slow its releases as needed to ensure safety, while acknowledging the problem exceeds any single company's reach.

The appearances came against a politically charged backdrop. The Trump administration has previously criticized international AI governance efforts as a globalist attempt to control the technology, adding tension to the executives' push for multilateral action. Both CEOs framed global cooperation not as a constraint on innovation but as a shared interest comparable to prior moments when competing nations aligned around a common challenge.