GENEVA – UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on Monday called on States and the world’s ‘frontier’ artificial intelligence companies to act urgently to ensure meaningful AI governance keeps pace with its accelerating development and the unprecedented risks to human rights.
“We are on the cusp of irreversible change, affecting not just us but generations of humanity to come,” the High Commissioner said in a letter addressed to States and AI developers.
“The current race towards ever more powerful AI is a step change towards greater existential risks to every aspect of our lives. Failures involving agentic AI systems – let alone systems deliberately so designed – could bring essential services to a standstill, fracture communications, destabilize critical infrastructure, and strike at the very heart of democratic institutions,” he wrote.
“Entire populations could be cut off from clean water, heating, and financial services, and agentic AI is already accelerating the pace and reach of warfare and eroding safeguards that stand between us and the launch of weapons of mass destruction.”
The High Commissioner underlined the narrow window of opportunity to regulate AI and wrote how our fate will centrally depend on the deliberate choices being made now about how AI is designed, deployed and governed.
“AI harms are not hypothetical — they are already occurring, front and centre,” Türk added. “Essential services are being automated in ways that leave people at the margins even further behind. The appetite for data and powerful new surveillance tools are eroding privacy at scale – potentially irreversibly. AI-powered disinformation campaigns are already distorting public debate, undermining social cohesion, and straining democratic institutions in insidious new ways.”
The High Commissioner said companies that are at the forefront of developing frontier AI have both the responsibility and the ability to move immediately to reduce risks.
“Robust human rights due diligence incorporating agreed safety standards needs to be developed, implemented across the sector and continuously improved. And implementation of those standards needs to be subject to internal independent monitoring to increase transparency and accountability,” he wrote.
The High Commissioner also emphasized that States hosting leading frontier AI companies have a particular obligation to require those companies to act responsibly and hold them accountable if they do not. He called on States to ensure independent, technically competent verification of agentic capabilities, with access to models, documentation and testing environments, and mandate ongoing human rights due diligence.
“Given the stakes, and where we stand today, I call on States and companies to mobilize urgently through multilateral fora to chart a path for action to govern advanced, frontier AI models, grounded in international human rights law,” he wrote.
“No country can govern this technology alone. No company should be able to decide by itself which risks the world must accept. No person should be required to surrender their human rights in exchange for claims of technological progress.”
“The generation now entering adulthood will inherit the consequences of the decisions being taken on this issue without having a say in them. We owe it to them to ensure those decisions are made openly, with their rights in view, and with the humility that the scale of this undertaking demands.”
See the open letter (PDF)
