United Nations secretary-general António Guterres has urged countries to ramp up establishing shared international rules for artificial intelligence with the First UN AI Report, warning that the longer the technology advances without a global framework, the less control nations and citizens will have over it.

A UN panel, for the first time, released a preliminary report on promises and risks of artificial intelligence just before the first global dialogue on AI governance to be held in Geneva between July 6–7. The report while stating the immense capabilities of AI, also warned against its rapid, unchecked development and uneven adoption with Global South missing the access and resources to AI compared to North.

Speaking at a press conference at UN headquarters in New York on Thursday, Guterres unveiled a new UN initiative on artificial intelligence approved by the general assembly, an Independent Scientific Panel on AI.

“It is an extraordinary and unique group – the first global, fully independent scientific body dedicated to helping close the AI knowledge gap and assess the real impacts of AI across economies and societies,” the UN secretary- general said while addressing the event.

We are here to present an extremely important UN initiative on artificial intelligence — the Independent Scientific Panel on AI.

It is the first global, fully independent scientific body dedicated to helping close the AI knowledge gap.

– @antonioguterres pic.twitter.com/GTOFG0OaM1

— UN Spokesperson (@UN_Spokesperson) July 1, 2026

The panel which comprises 40 distinguished individuals from around the world is a first global, fully independent scientific body dedicated to bridge the AI knowledge gap and assess the impact of AI across economies and societies.

“The panel is intended to help the world separate fact from fakes, and science from slop” he added.

The upcoming global dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva will focus on four key areas: AI opportunities and impacts, capacity building and bridging AI divides, safe and trustworthy AI, and human rights and human oversight.

Guterres described the report by the independent scientific panel on AI as transparent and honest. He highlighted that the assessment is open to governments and the public.

“The report is honest about the extraordinary promise of this technology. Used well, AI could be the most powerful engine for development – speeding the world’s progress on everything from health and hunger to learning and climate. But the panel is just as clear-eyed about the harm artificial intelligence can cause,” he said.

The report seeks to present a balanced analysis of the risks and opportunities of UN AI report.

What does UN Preliminary Report on AI Say?

According to the report the potential benefits of AI are enormous. If deployed and applied thoughtfully, the technology can support progress towards achieving the sustainable development goals, advance health science and increase access to education but it noted that at the same time, the rapid pace of technological development and the breadth of potential applications present policymakers with significant challenges.

“The rapid, unchecked deployment of the technology at scale also presents considerable risks, including harms to the mental health of users, potential use as a destructive tool, impacts on social, economic and environmental systems, and challenges associated with controlling the technology,” the report highlighted.

The report mentioned that in recent years AI has improved rapidly, specially in some areas. Advances in computing power, new AI techniques and access to large amounts of training data have enabled AI to become better at tasks, these include fluent conversation, functional code generation, expert level reasoning in mathematics and science, large-scale data analysis, and the generation of image, audio and video content.

However, the report pointed out that despite these advances AI still has limitations such as reliability, it struggles to perform consistently across different languages and cultures, has difficulty interacting with physical systems and often finds it challenging in executing complex or multi-step projects and producing factual outputs.

Even though the report stated that technical progress in many important domains has increased rapidly such as in the field of science, health, agriculture, accessibility, knowledge work and information technology, including in the development of AI itself.

The report stressed that though AI adoption has accelerated but the access towards AI is uneven across countries and sectors. “Globally, over a billion people now use conversational AI weekly. Yet AI access and usage vary widely globally, with adoption across the global South lagging far behind the global North,” the report said.

“There are significant differences in compute infrastructure and models between advanced economies. This disparity reflects, and may even reinforce, existing inequalities,” it further claimed.

The report drew attention towards a recent survey according to which, the US accounts for 75% of the computing power among the world’s top 500 AI supercomputers, with China accounting for 15%. Companies in the United States and China also develop almost all leading general-purpose models and a small number of countries control critical inputs for the supply chain of AI computer chips.

The report also laid stress on the rapid development taking place in agentic AI systems. “While the shift towards AI agents is under way, their future adoption and economic impacts will likely be shaped by continued improvements in their ability to accomplish knowledge work with little or no human oversight,” the report observed.

The report however argued that their deployment raises urgent questions for labour markets, cybersecurity, the information ecosystem, and the governance and controllability of future AI systems.

It also raises concerns on the risks AI poses for example AI-generated child sexual abuse material and deepfake-enabled sexual violence which circulate frequently on the internet, harming women and children.

“AI makes it easier to produce and target persuasive content at scale, including content designed to mislead, contributing to a gradual erosion of information integrity that can weaken the shared reality required for public trust, social cohesion and democratic deliberation,” the report asserted.

The report suggested that in order to get the benefits of AI while reducing its risks governments, business, and society need strong rules and policies. The economic and employment gains of AI will not happen automatically. Investments in skills, workflows, infrastructure and labour-market institutions, technology can create new jobs instead of only replacing existing ones.

It claimed that without these investments AI could increase inequality, replace workers and will focus more on creating wealth in the hands of the companies and investors rather than employees.

“AI can profoundly expand human capabilities through personalized education, accessible mental health tools and improved assistive technologies, but realising these opportunities safely requires dedicated investments and policies to incentivize equitable access and reward innovation, while preventing the exploitation of vulnerable populations,” the report said.

Also Read: As AI Reaches Courts: UNESCO Issues Global Guidance for Judiciary