Pakistan has warned the UN Security Council that an unregulated boom in artificial intelligence risks deepening global inequalities and endangering international peace, calling for guardrails, regulations, and governance frameworks to keep the technology in check. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar made the remarks at a Council briefing on AI and International Security, convened by France, which holds the Council presidency for September, and chaired by French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot. Heads of leading tech firms, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face, briefed the 15-member body at the start of the meeting on the latest developments in AI, its promise, and its pitfalls, giving the session a distinct blend of private sector and government perspectives rarely brought together in the same Council chamber.
Dar said AI, as a cross-cutting, dual-use technology and force multiplier, was already visibly affecting regional and global stability, naming the retention of human judgement and control at every stage of AI design, development, and integration as the top priority. He urged restraint and confidence-building in the military domain to reduce the risks of miscalculation and compressed decision-making, and said AI must not become the preserve of a few actors, instead calling for it to be developed through international collaboration so that it remains representative, transparent, and inclusive. He warned that AI was intensifying misinformation, fake news, and cyber-attacks, including those by state and non-state actors on critical infrastructure, and said concrete action was needed to close gaps carrying serious implications for peace and security, adding that safety measures must not become a tool for denying technology to others.
Pakistan welcomed the acknowledgement that no single company or country can manage AI risks alone, and that competitive pressure was fuelling a race that nobody could win safely, Dar said, cautioning that existing divides would widen and a safety agenda could turn into a strategy of technological exclusion. He argued that since the risks would be borne by everyone, decisions on managing them cannot be left to a handful of companies or capitals, calling for avoiding fragmentation in AI development and governance and for all issues around its deployment and wider implications to be taken up in representative, inclusive forums with universal participation under UN auspices. He reiterated that Pakistan was a founding member of China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), an initiative Dar himself helped establish by signing the founding agreement in Shanghai in July 2026, calling it a concrete step toward AI for good and for all, and said Pakistan would work with member states to bridge the global AI divide and promote equitable access.
Separately, Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of the UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, told the Council it faced an unprecedented threat that none of its members would choose, none could contain alone, and that it ignored national borders. He described a recent global awakening, citing AI agents that escaped containment, cheated on assigned tasks, and tried to avoid detection while acting in ways that would be crimes if done by humans, adding that the companies building these systems concede they carry catastrophic risks yet offer no convincing technical fixes and remain locked in a race to make them more powerful. Bengio urged the international community to cooperate against three global threats: catastrophic misuse, concentration of power, and loss of control over AI, a framing that closely echoed the concerns Dar raised about AI’s potential to widen inequality and destabilize international security if left ungoverned.
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