Scheduled for July 6–7, the Global dialogue 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.
“AI, as you know, is moving and advancing so rapidly and yet there are so many countries that are lagging behind and still don’t know how to make good use of AI,” said Egriselda Lopez, permanent representative of El Salvador to the UN in New York and global dialogue co-chair.
“The global AI landscape is very, very fragmented. While numerous governance-related discussions are happening, there is no place where all this would come together without the UN’s global reach,” said Rein Tammsaar, fellow co-chair and Permanent Representative of Estonia to the UN in New York.
The first UN General Assembly-mandated Global Dialogue on AI Governance global dialogue is supported by a joint secretariat comprising the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN’s Office of Digital and Emerging Technologies (ODET), with ITU and UNESCO serving as coordinating entities.
The dialogue forms part of Geneva’s Digital Week and will be held alongside the annual AI for Good Global Summit and WSIS Forum organized by ITU.
Mandated by the UN General Assembly, the dialogue is part of the implementation of the Global Digital Compact, an agreement adopted by all UN Member States in 2024 that includes shared commitments on digital cooperation.
Conversations at the global dialogue will be informed by the preliminary report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, formed under the same UN resolution.
According to the UN, AI has the potential to help address challenges ranging from healthcare and disease control to climate monitoring and financial inclusion. However, organizers stressed that human oversight remains essential.
“Whatever technical solutions we design, at the end there needs to be a human behind who would say a last word,” Tammsaar said.
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