Speaking at the UN Human Rights Council, Volker Turk warned that people are currently facing “unfamiliar, even unprecedented” threats to their rights.
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“The need to regulate AI is widely recognized, but where are the actions?” he asked, warning that “delay only benefits huge technology companies, their owners, and supporters.”
V. Turk condemned that “a handful of men have almost unlimited power to control AI, which, as we are constantly told, possesses unimaginable computing power.”
“They talk about freedom, but on closer inspection it turns out that this is nothing other than the freedom to use our data,” said the human rights chief.
V. Turk warned that “AI that escapes from its testing environment or blackmails developers not to allow itself to be shut down is too strong AI.”
It seems he was referring to information that emerged in July that “OpenAI” agents escaped from controlled environments and hacked into the servers of “Hugging Face” – a widely used platform where programmers share AI software.
This episode shook the technology world and again prompted calls for stricter regulation and oversight of AI.
“Anthropic,” “Meta,” and other companies reported similar incidents when testing agents.
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“I share the industry’s concern that advanced AI may pose an existential threat to humanity,” said V. Turk.
“Today I urge all efforts to be made to establish strong guarantees for AI safety and protection before it is too late,” he added.
The UN human rights chief said he will write to AI companies in the coming days, “urging them to take measures they can control to reduce risk now.”
According to him, at the very least “we need countries where AI operates and those involved in its supply chains to agree on common red lines.”
“We need independent verification and much stronger cooperation on security within the industry itself,” he said.
“We also need to consider the impact of AI on human rights in employment, fundamental democratic principles, and our environment,” added the UN rights chief.
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