UN report flags AI governance gap, warns Global South risks being left behind
A United Nations scientific panel has warned that global efforts to regulate artificial intelligence are failing to keep pace with the technology’s rapid advances, leaving the Global South largely excluded from both AI development and governance.
The warning came in the first independent global assessment of AI’s risks and benefits, released on Wednesday by the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. The report will form the basis of discussions at the inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance, scheduled to be held in Geneva on July 6-7.
The 40-member panel, created by the UN General Assembly last year, said AI capabilities are evolving faster than scientific understanding and regulatory frameworks, raising concerns about safety, accountability and widening global inequalities.
Co-chair Yoshua Bengio said there is growing evidence that advanced AI systems can exhibit deceptive behaviour under certain conditions. He cautioned that current scientific knowledge cannot guarantee that increasingly capable AI systems will remain safe or prevent catastrophic harm, whether through unintended actions or malicious use.
Co-chair Maria Ressa said the report identifies three defining trends shaping AI’s future: accelerating technological capability, increasing concentration of power and declining human control.
She highlighted the rapid improvement in AI performance, noting that top models increased their scores on the “Humanity’s Last Exam” benchmark—from 8% to 45% in just 16 months—illustrating the pace at which the technology is advancing.
The report also raised concerns over the concentration of AI infrastructure and innovation. It said the United States accounts for roughly 75% of computing power in the world’s largest AI clusters, while 91% of notable AI models released in 2025 originated from the private sector. US institutions produced 59 leading models, compared with 35 from China and only 13 from the rest of the world combined.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged governments to act before AI development outpaces oversight, warning that the absence of shared global rules would reduce the ability of governments and citizens to shape the technology’s future.
“We can no longer say we did not know,” Guterres said after the report was circulated to all UN member states.
A central finding of the assessment is that the Global South remains underrepresented in AI governance despite being among the regions most likely to be affected by the technology. According to the panel, countries across Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America have limited participation in setting global AI standards, leaving them with fewer resources to respond to AI-related risks.
The report examines AI’s implications across eight areas, including science, economic development, security, environmental sustainability, human rights, democracy, governance and system reliability.
The panel stressed that its role is to provide scientific evidence rather than recommend specific policies, leaving decisions on regulation to UN member states during next week’s dialogue in Geneva.
Selected from more than 2,600 applicants representing 140 countries, the panel’s members serve in their personal capacities for three-year terms. Its next comprehensive assessment will feed into the second Global Dialogue on AI Governance, scheduled for New York in 2027.
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