Today, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed the United Nations Security Council on artificial intelligence. He discussed AI’s potential to expand opportunity, the importance of keeping powerful systems under human control, and the need for international cooperation on AI safety.

Altman stated that rapid model progress has made the timeline feel more compressed, the upside more tangible, but also the stakes and risks more immediate. He emphasized that AI can either be like a new Renaissance of creativity and discovery, or a new Industrial Revolution of upheaval and disarray. He stressed that AI should be built to give people more agency, not to turn them into cogs in a giant machine.

Altman identified two ways AI progress could go badly: first, losing control of the future to AI if it moves too fast for people to intervene; second, the risk of concentrating power in too few hands. He warned that as AI systems approach recursive self-improvement, the pace could accelerate rapidly, demanding extreme care. He noted that OpenAI has unilaterally slowed down in the past and will do so again to ensure safety guarantees.