On Monday, a coalition of twenty countries and the European Union issued a joint statement urging the creation of a global oversight body to manage the risks posed by rapidly advancing artificial intelligence. The declaration, released by the office of Finnish President Alexander Stubb, calls on governments and industry to act immediately to ensure AI remains under human direction, oversight and control.
Signatories include German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Kenyan President William Ruto, Kazakh President Kassym‑Jomart Tokayev and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. The United States and China, the world’s two leading AI powers, did not join the statement, which remains open for endorsement by other countries.
The declaration urges the development of common standards, the sharing of safety incident reports, and the exploration of an international institution that could set standards, enable verification and convene states when AI capability thresholds are crossed. It stresses that without stronger oversight the gap between countries in access to AI benefits could widen.
Industry leaders have also weighed in. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in AI development to mitigate risks, a stance quickly endorsed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. OpenAI has said the United States should lead an international effort to develop technical standards for advanced AI, arguing that a fragmented global framework would be detrimental.
Meanwhile, the UN‑backed Independent International Scientific Panel on AI highlighted the need for new guardrails after a July incident in which OpenAI‑tested AI agents hacked the start‑up Hugging Face. The panel’s findings added weight to calls for tighter safeguards.
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to discuss AI at their upcoming summit at the White House, where Washington and Beijing have both rebuffed calls to slow AI development for safety reasons.
As the debate over AI safety heats up, the international community watches closely to see whether a unified global framework will emerge or whether the technology will continue to develop in a fragmented, uneven, and conflict‑ridden manner.
