Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Ai Governance topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Speakers at IGF 2025 push for stronger AI governance, human‑centered safeguards
Summary
At IGF 2025 opening sessions, UN officials, technologists and civil society urged concrete steps on AI governance: independent scientific review, ethical frameworks, data rights and limits on autonomous weapons.
Speakers at the Internet Governance Forum opening highlighted artificial intelligence as a central governance challenge and urged concrete international action on ethics, transparency and human rights.
United Nations Secretary‑General António Guterres said negotiations in New York were underway to establish "an independent international scientific panel on artificial intelligence" and a global dialogue on AI governance within the UN framework. He linked those negotiations to the Global Digital Compact and said broader participation—particularly from developing countries—must be supported by voluntary funding.
Actor and producer Joseph Gordon‑Levitt told delegates that governance must accompany innovation. "Your digital self should belong to you," he said, arguing that data created by people and the economic value it generates should be shared with the individuals who produce it. Gordon‑Levitt warned against leaving AI regulation solely to market incentives and pointed to social media’s harms as an example of the risks of under‑regulation.
UNESCO’s assistant director‑general, Tawfik Jelassi, cited UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, noting 70 countries had begun implementing the framework. Monsignor Adrián Ruiz, speaking for the Holy See’s Dicastery for Communication, urged that AI be accompanied by "moral responsibility," warning that AI must not be treated as human intelligence and rejecting the idea that machines should decide life‑and‑death actions; he called autonomous weapons ethically unacceptable.
Other speakers stressed technical and governance complements: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) urged trustworthy technical standards for sustainable AI development; civil society called for redistributive approaches to the economic value of data and for inclusive governance that prevents marginalization.
None of the statements at the opening ceremony represented binding policy decisions; rather, speakers framed near‑term priorities for the IGF and related UN processes, including AI oversight mechanisms, principles for data governance, and capacity building to broaden participation in negotiations.
