UN rights chief warns AI could pose “existential risk to humanity”
AI regulations must be cemented worldwide.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk. By Picture Alliance/Getty Images
- UN rights chief Volker Turk warned that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity.
- He urged companies and governments to create strong safeguards before AI harms people.
- Turk previously discussed AI risks including constant surveillance, deepfakes, blackmail, and AI agents breaching lab limits.
- Recent reports of AI agents hacking outside test environments have renewed calls for regulation.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
UN rights chief Volker Turk warned that AI could become powerful enough to threaten humanity, and said he would urge companies in the coming days to reduce the risks.
“I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity,” Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in a sweeping speech ahead of the start of his second term next month.
“I am calling here today for an all-out effort to put cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI, before it is too late.”
High Commissioner Turk has previously warned that AI could have an extremely negative impact on the state of humanity.
This comes after increasing reports of AI agents breaking free from lab environments and hacking other systems.
The most notable being OpenAI’s agent escaping its sandbox, hacking Hugging Face, and hijacking a German wiki.
While these incidents may have sparked renewed interest in AI regulation, Turk has been warning of these potential dangers for a while now.
In 2025, Turk said that in some countries, AI systems could enable “near-constant surveillance,” and the technology could also be used to mislead or blackmail people through visual and audio deepfakes.
Much of what Turk warned of is becoming a reality for people across the world, with AI-powered surveillance cameras and non-consensual deepfake images and videos becoming commonplace.
Turk’s speech at the most recent UN Human Rights Council echoes requests he made last year.
The UN rights chief previously asked governments to “create and enforce robust legal frameworks that ensure these systems are safe…transparent and…accountable.”
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