World wants AI regulation, but global rules difficult without USA

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Global governments are struggling to find a path forward on AI without buy-in from the United States.

World leaders and tech CEOs are using the U.N. General Assembly this week to call for a global approach to rein in AI, particularly following cyberattacks against other technology firms in recent weeks. But that’s against the backdrop of President Donald Trump flatly rejecting in his own speech to the assembly any “globalist scheme of control” on AI.

That’s putting those countries that want to move forward in a tough spot.

“If the U.S. is not participating — where the U.S. has a lot of the labs — and also is not focusing on this as a policy matter, it limits their effectiveness,” said Christopher Painter, former cybersecurity coordinator at the State Department under both the Obama and Trump administrations.

That’s not to say they aren’t trying.

On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council welcomed the heads of some of the U.S.’ top AI companies, who expressed their urgent fears about the future of securing these models, and called for international cooperation to confront these challenges.

“In our history, there have been times where countries who compete and don’t always like each other still come together for shared interests and collective good in the face of a powerful new technology,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told the Security Council. “We believe this must be one of those times.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pushed for “common global standards” for testing AI models, and soberingly warned that “if managed poorly, I believe that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.”

Their comments came a few days after 22 countries, led by Finland and Norway, adopted a declaration pushing for the establishment of a global supervisory regime focused on AI safety and security, and declaring that AI “must remain under human direction, oversight and control.”

But two extremely key nations did not sign on to this declaration: the United States and China. The world’s leading AI companies — such as Anthropic, OpenAI and DeepSeek — are headquartered largely in the U.S. or China.

And Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to discuss AI only in passing during Xi’s visit to Washington this week.

“The people who make 90% of AI don’t want to play,” said James Lewis, a former State Department official who led work on cybersecurity under the Obama administration, and also helped draft U.N. reports for responsible behavior in cyberspace. “If you get Botswana and Tonga not to use AI as a weapon, it’s meaningless, you’ve got to get the big players in the room.”

That said, there is some hope that China will get on board. Fu Cong, Beijing’s permanent representative to the U.N., said at Wednesday’s Security Council meeting that China supports the formation of “a consensus-based global governance framework at an early date so as to build institutional guardrails that preserve international peace and security.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was pointed about the need for the U.S. and China to take action in his own address to the assembly on Tuesday, saying “governments with the greatest AI capabilities have the greatest responsibilities to humanity.”

The fears are widespread across many regions, with a recent POLITICO Poll finding that the majority of adults in the U.S., Canada and Europe want to pause AI development over fears of threats to humanity.

But the nations behind the AI declaration were largely silent following Trump’s speech to the assembly on Tuesday, and spokespeople for the Finnish and Norwegian embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment on the U.S. administration’s stance. Alix Maisonnave, spokesperson for the French Embassy in Washington, stressed that France plans to “take action in that framework and will participate and support upcoming U.N. works on cybersecurity.”

French President Emmanuel Macron used his speech at UNGA on Tuesday to call on the world to push back against being “vassals of either of the two great world powers” on addressing AI concerns, instead stating that he hopes “all sovereign States attached to their independence will come together to develop an open-source frontier model.”

But other officials acknowledged the awkwardness of proceeding further.

“There are very interesting AI topics that urgently need to be discussed and agreed upon among countries, and without a doubt these agreements must include the two nations leading the AI race,” Paula Bogantes Zamora, head of the Costa Rican Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications, said in an interview.

One European official said anger at the U.S. rejection of a global AI body is more widespread than is being let on in public statements by many leaders.

“Most European governments share these concerns, although I doubt many would dare to openly criticize Trump on this issue,” said the diplomat, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The U.N. has been trying — since well before a former Anthropic and OpenAI staffer warned about AI potentially ending humanity within the next decade — to establish itself as the venue for these discussions. After all, both the U.S. and China sit on the Security Council.

One of the key bodies at the U.N. formed in recent years to confront new AI challenges is the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, which released a preliminary report on AI risks at a U.N. AI summit in Geneva in July. The report will be the foundation of the U.N.’s Global Dialogue on AI Governance , set to take place in New York next May.

Maria Ressa, co-chair of the panel, said this week that the world is close to “falling off a cliff” if global leaders don’t take action on AI, and criticized the U.S. for being one of only two nations to vote against the formation of her panel last year.

“I feel like Cassandra and Sisyphus combined. It’s getting worse, don’t let them tell you it’s just now, it started a decade ago when we documented the harms, and … very little has been done to protect you,” Ressa said Tuesday at an event on the sidelines of the General Assembly.

But the Trump administration has downgraded support for the U.N. and for global cooperation generally over the past two years, and even if the U.S. reversed course, creating policies and treaties at the U.N. level is a difficult, and often long, process.

The U.N.’s controversial cybercrime treaty was first formally proposed in 2017 , but not finalized until 2024. AI policy faces an even tougher road ahead.

And high-level discussions of the risks of AI are moving to Washington, where Trump welcomed Xi on Wednesday evening. On Thursday, tech industry bigwigs — including Altman — will be attending the state dinner Trump is holding for the Chinese leader.

Daniella Cheslow contributed to this report.