U.S. rejects international AI oversight at U.N. General Assembly

The United States clashed with world leaders over artificial intelligence at the United Nations General Assembly this week.

NEW YORK — The United States clashed with world leaders over artificial intelligence at the United Nations General Assembly this week, rejecting calls for global oversight as many pushed for new collaborative frameworks.

While many heads of state, corporate leaders and prominent figures endorsed a need for urgent international collaboration on AI, the U.S. delegation criticized the role of the U.N. and pushed back on the idea of centralized governance of AI.

Representing the U.S. in Wednesday’s Security Council meeting on AI, Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said, “We totally reject all efforts by international bodies to assert centralized control and global governance of AI.”

The path to a flourishing future powered by AI does not lie in “bureaucratic management,” Kratsios said, but instead in “the independence and sovereignty of nations.”

While Kratsios shot down the idea of combined AI governance, President Donald Trump said in his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday that the White House will be “pioneering an AI verification system that everyone can trust” to enforce the Biological Weapons Convention.