About
This is the inaugural session of the UN's standing intergovernmental dialogue on the governance of artificial intelligence, established under the Global Digital Compact adopted in 2024. It gives all member states a shared table for discussing how AI should be governed internationally.
Held in Geneva at the start of the July digital week, it leads directly into the AI for Good Global Summit and overlaps the WSIS Forum.
What we're watching
- A process being born. This is the inaugural session of a standing UN dialogue created by the Global Digital Compact. The format and momentum matter as much as any single panel.
- Who's steering it. Co-chaired by Ambassadors Egriselda López (El Salvador) and Rein Tammsaar (Estonia), with the co-chairs of the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI (Yoshua Bengio and Maria Ressa) presenting their report.
- Divides, not just risk. The agenda gives real weight to capacity-building and access, not only frontier-model safety.
What to expect
- An opening ceremony and high-level governmental plenary segments.
- A multi-stakeholder plenary bringing in industry, academia, and civil society.
- Thematic discussions on interoperable governance, AI's societal and economic implications, and closing global AI divides.
- Participation from ministers and members of the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.
How to follow it
Sessions are webcast live and archived on UN Web TV, making this one of the more openly watchable events of the Geneva week for a remote audience.
The two days in brief
The dialogue opened to roughly 4,000 participants from 170+ countries. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that AI is being deployed “faster than anyone… can keep up” and set out four priorities: safety (including an AI child-safety pledge), human-rights red lines, capacity (a global network and a forthcoming global fund for AI), and environmental transparency. He also called for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons. The Independent International Scientific Panel on AI then handed over its preliminary report. Two concrete threads run through the day: a co-chairs’ summary that (with the panel’s report) will feed the 2027 dialogue, and a voluntary AI Partnership Hub for registering real initiatives. Day 2 turned from the what to the how, across two thematic clusters: making AI safe, secure and trustworthy (the case for interoperability over harmonisation), and human rights, where High Commissioner Volker Türk argued for “smarter, kinder, wiser” over “bigger, faster, better.” The closing plenary compared how governance is actually being built across countries and regions, and the closing turned to the way forward: a non-binding co-chairs’ summary rather than a negotiated text, the Secretary-General’s proposed global fund for AI and child-safety pledge carried forward, a new UN AI Resource Hub, and a second dialogue set for New York in May 2027.
Session coverage
SDGCounting summaries of the segments that matter: what was said, who said it, and why it counts for the governance of AI.
Opening & the scientific-panel handover
Guterres on “runaway” AI, a child-safety pledge and a global fund; the scientific panel hands its report to member states.
Read summary → 6 July · Thematic Cluster 1Opportunities & implications of AI
The environmental footprint moved out of the footnotes, and Estonia’s “AI Leap” as the worked example of doing it wisely.
Read summary → 6 July · Thematic Cluster 2Bridging AI divides
Two divides (access and adoption) and UNESCO’s capacity-building push to help countries govern AI on their own terms.
Read summary → 7 July · Thematic Cluster 3Safe, secure & trustworthy AI
Interoperability over harmonisation: how safety evidence and accountability can travel across borders when the field is this concentrated.
Read summary → 7 July · Thematic Cluster 4Human rights, transparency & oversight
Volker Türk on rights as the compass, UN Women on AI’s gendered harms, and human oversight that “cannot be just a rubber stamp.”
Read summary → 7 July · Day-2 plenaryAI governance initiatives & approaches
What actually works when countries, regions and standards bodies build AI governance, and the launch of the UN AI Resource Hub.
Read summary → 7 July · ClosingClosing: the way forward
The “Dialogue of Dialogues,” the cluster report-backs, and what carries forward: a co-chairs’ summary and New York in May 2027.
Read summary →The four thematic clusters, the Day-2 governance-initiatives plenary and the closing session are all covered above.
Key links
- Global Dialogue on AI Governance, official site & programme
- UN Web TV, live & on-demand