Global Efforts to Govern AI Accelerate
A new international effort is underway to manage the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence. The United Nations has established an independent scientific panel to advise on AI's global impacts, similar to the IPCC for climate change. This comes as Dartmouth researchers convene to chart AI's future, 70 years after the original conference that defined the field.
The European Union's AI Act, which entered into force in 2024, is the world's first comprehensive legal framework for AI. It takes a risk-based approach, outright banning systems that pose an "unacceptable risk," such as social scoring, with these prohibitions taking effect in early 2025. Major nations are implementing their own AI rules. China now mandates the labeling of AI-generated content, while South Korea and Japan have passed new AI legislation to address safety and transparency. In the U.S., an October 2023 executive order established an AI Safety and Security Board and tasked the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with developing safety guidelines. A key motivation for the UN's involvement is ensuring global inclusivity in AI governance. Prior international initiatives have been largely driven by G7 members, leaving 118 countries, mostly from the Global South, without representation in major AI frameworks. The UN's 39-member advisory body includes executives from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, alongside international academics and government officials, such as the UAE's Minister of State for AI. Its mandate is to provide recommendations that anchor AI governance in international law and the UN Charter. The original 1956 Dartmouth workshop was an eight-week brainstorming session that coined the term "artificial intelligence." Its conveners brought together ten researchers with the ambitious goal of making machines use language, form abstractions, and solve problems then reserved for humans. Seventy years later, the upcoming "Dartmouth Conference, Revisited" in October 2026 has a shifted focus. The new objective is to determine where AI can assist human judgment and creativity, where ethical guardrails are essential, and where accountability must ultimately lie.
