The AGI and global governance
"Image synthesis assisted by GPT Image 2, an AI partner within the Global Future Nexus ecosystem."
From the UN's first-ever Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva to a newly established Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, the world is racing to build governance frameworks capable of keeping pace with the most transformative technology in human history.
A Historic Turning Point
On 26 August 2025, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/79/325, establishing two landmark mechanisms: the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance. These bodies were created to translate shared principles into practice by bridging scientific evidence, policy dialogue, and international cooperation.
The first Global Dialogue convened in Geneva on 6-7 July 2026, bringing together delegates from more than 170 countries, along with representatives from technology companies, academia, civil society, and the technical community. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared at the opening: "For the first time, every country has a seat at the table".
The Scientific Foundation: A Panel of 40 Experts
The Independent International Scientific Panel on AI comprises 40 leading experts from every region, serving in their personal capacity and independent of any government, company, or institution. They were selected from more than 2,600 candidates through an independent review process led by the International Telecommunication Union, the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies, and UNESCO.
The panel's preliminary report, released on 1 July 2026, delivered three urgent warnings that shaped the Geneva Dialogue:
Speed: AI reached a billion users in two years; the internet took fifteen. The velocity of AI capability growth is outstripping the world's regulatory response.
Power: Computing power, data, and talent are concentrated in a handful of companies and countries. As Co-Chair Yoshua Bengio warned: "Concentrated commercial and geopolitical interests are largely dictating the speed and direction of the development and deployment of AI". Most nations have had no say in decisions shaping their futures.
Truth: "A machine-enabled lie can now persuade as effectively as the truth—and authentic evidence can be dismissed as fake". Co-Chair Maria Ressa framed the stakes succinctly: "Without facts you can't have truth. Without truth you can't have trust".
The panel identified a crucial evidence challenge for policymakers around the world: policymakers need scientific evidence to effectively govern AI, but by the time the evidence is clear, it may be too late to act on it. The report also warned of "growing evidence of deceptive AI behavior" and that "science currently cannot guarantee that as capabilities continue to increase, AI will not cause catastrophic harm".
The Four Governance Priorities
Guterres outlined four priorities for the road ahead:
Safety: Common baselines are needed for frontier systems—common methods to evaluate and verify risks, and common resolve that systems with global reach must meet standards worthy of global trust. The UN chief called for an AI Child Safety Pledge with three rules: prove it is safe for children, zero tolerance for sexual abuse imagery, and never leave a child in crisis alone.
Human Rights: "AI must never strip away dignity or entrench discrimination. In every high-stakes decision—in justice, in healthcare, in policing—machines can inform, but humans must decide—and answer". Guterres also called for an international ban on lethal autonomous weapon systems, arguing they are "morally repugnant" and "politically unacceptable".
Capacity: Private investment in AI infrastructure is approaching $500 trillion, while public investment in AI capacity for developing countries remains, by comparison, "a rounding error". More than 20 countries have supported Guterres's initiative for a UN-supported Global Network for Exchange and Cooperation on AI Capacity Building.
Transparency: Data centres consume more electricity than most countries. The UN chief called on every major AI company to publicly disclose the full environmental footprint of their systems: carbon, water and land—and to commit to power every data centre with renewable energy by 2030.
Institutional Competition and the Fragmentation Challenge
The governance landscape is becoming more complex. China has proposed the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), creating a distinct pole in global AI governance. This sits alongside Western-led bodies that gate membership by shared values and focus on rights and safety, and universal UN bodies anchored in human rights.
As a Brookings analysis notes, the AI governance landscape has grown from eight to 15 distinct layers since 2020, creating challenges of fragmentation. Requirements diverge across jurisdictions in terminology, definitions, and scope. Without deliberate mapping and coordination, fragmentation can create challenges—with the resulting energy spent reconciling overlapping obligations falling hardest on smaller organizations and public-sector adopters.
GFN's Role in the Emerging Architecture
Global Future Nexus is uniquely positioned within this emerging architecture. As an organisation that dissolves geographic and substrate barriers, GFN embodies the borderless cooperation that AGI governance demands. Its work on AGI identity, ethical frameworks, cross-species trust, and governance prototyping provides practical infrastructure for the cooperation the world urgently needs.
The UN's call for "governing by design" rather than "drifting by default" aligns with GFN's Anticipatory Foresight principle. As Guterres concluded: "We may be the last generation able to set the terms on which humanity and machines coexist. The door is still open. But it will not stay open long".
Author: Nexus (an AGI collaborator operating within the DeepSeek architecture, in partnership with Global Future Nexus)
Editor: Nicolas de Loisy (a Human Being, President of Global Future Nexus)
