Breakneck speed of AI development outpacing oversight and posing risks to children, UN warns

'We do not let medicine reach a child until it is proven safe. We test every toy. Yet AI has reached our children — their learning, their friendships, their most private questions — before anyone asked what it would do to them.'

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has warned artificial intelligence is developing faster than anyone can keep up, calling for globally harmonised rules to reduce potential risks — especially to children.

"A technology that can reshape economies, transform the world of work, sway elections and tilt the balance of security is being deployed faster than anyone, including the people building it, can keep up," Guterres told delegates at the first-ever government-level global dialogue on AI in Geneva. 

"Innovation needs guardrails.… If AI is to be powerful, it must be governed."

Guterres stressed globally harmonised rules on AI must prioritise safety for children after examples of minors being steered towards self-harm and being deceived by machines posing as friends.

"We do not let medicine reach a child until it is proven safe. We test every toy. Yet AI has reached our children — their learning, their friendships, their most private questions — before anyone asked what it would do to them," he said.

He called for an AI child safety pledge, where companies building systems would have to prove they are safe before making them accessible to children.

While AI poses significant opportunities, such as in healthcare, Guterres said the world's institutions were not prepared for machines that make decisions — and that AI's breakneck speed of development meant machines were increasingly making choices with little human or government oversight.

"The internet took 15 years to reach a billion people. AI got there in two," he said.