The World Is Trying to Govern AI. The UN Wants In

(Tony Oweke – Council on Foreign Relations) The United Nations’ Global Dialogue on AI Governance—born out of the 2024 Global Digital Compact (GDC) and parallel UN negotiations that also produced an Independent International Scientific Panel on AI—will convene this July in Geneva. The Dialogue arrives amid a broader proliferation: a growing ecosystem of international AI summits, including in Bletchley Park, Seoul, Paris, and New Delhi, that are attempting to shape the global governance landscape. Whether these attempts are coalescing into something coherent, however, remains to be seen. The 2023 Bletchley Declaration generated a shared international vocabulary around frontier-AI risk and established AI safety as a matter for coordinated global action. It also catalyzed the AI Safety Institute to publish an evaluation of advanced AI systems’ capabilities and risks in its annual report. The highlight of the 2024 summit in Seoul was a commitment to establish a network of AI safety institutes spanning ten countries and the European Union (EU). The 2025 summit in Paris marked a shift away from safety and toward investment and adoption, underlined by several funding pledges and deals. India’s 2026 summit, by contrast, sought to center voices from the Global South in AI governance. And early indications are that the 2027 summit in Switzerland will again focus on safety and security. – The World Is Trying to Govern AI. The UN Wants In. | Council on Foreign Relations