UN approves 40-member scientific panel on influence of synthetic intelligence

The UN Normal Meeting has voted overwhelmingly to approve a 40-member world scientific panel on the impacts and dangers of synthetic intelligence, with the US strongly objecting.

UN Secretary-Normal Antonio Guterres, who established the panel, known as the adoption “a foundational step towards world scientific understanding of AI”.

“In a world the place AI is racing forward,” he mentioned on Thursday (February 12, 2026), “this panel will present what’s been lacking — rigorous, impartial scientific perception that allows all member states, no matter their technological capability, to interact on an equal footing.” He has described it as the primary totally impartial world scientific physique devoted to bridging the information hole in AI and assessing its real-world financial and social impacts.

The vote within the 193-member meeting was 117-2, with the US and Paraguay voting “no” and Tunisia and Ukraine abstaining. America’s allies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere voted in favour together with Russia, China and lots of creating nations.

Objection from United States

U.S. Mission counsellor Lauren Lovelace known as the panel “a major overreach of the UN’s mandate and competence” and mentioned, “AI governance will not be a matter for the UN to dictate.” Because the world chief in AI, the US is resolved to do all it may possibly to speed up AI innovation and construct up its infrastructure, she mentioned, and the Trump administration will assist “like-minded nations working collectively to encourage the event of AI in step with our shared values”.

“We won’t cede authority over AI to worldwide our bodies which may be influenced by authoritarian regimes searching for to impose their imaginative and prescient of managed surveillance societies,” Ms. Lovelace mentioned, including that the Trump administration is worried about “the non-transparent method” the panel was chosen.

Mr. Guterres mentioned the 40 members had been chosen from greater than 2,600 candidates after an impartial evaluation by the Worldwide Telecommunications Union, the UN Workplace for Digital and Rising Applied sciences and UNESCO, the UN Academic, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. They are going to serve for three-year phrases.

Members are predominantly AI specialists but additionally come from different disciplines and embody Maria Ressa, a Filipino journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2021.

There are two People on the panel: Vipin Kumar, a College of Minnesota professor specializing in AI, knowledge mining and high-performance computing analysis, and Martha Palmer, a retired College of Colorado professor and linguistics professional whose analysis consists of capturing the that means of phrases for complicated sentences in AI.

There are two Chinese language specialists on the panel: Tune Haitao, dean of Shanghai Jiao Tong College and the Shanghai Synthetic Intelligence Analysis Institute, and Wang Jian, an professional in cloud-computing know-how on the Chinese language Academy of Engineering.

Ukraine mentioned it abstained as a result of it objected to Russia’s Andrei Neznamov, an professional in AI regulation, ethics, and governance, being on the panel.