Candidate for UN chief calls for AI regulation akin to nuclear weapons

A contender to lead the UN called Wednesday for artificial intelligence to be regulated like nuclear weapons, warning that a Third World War would be fought with the emerging technology.

The issue of AI looks set to dominate a week of talks and meetings between world leaders due to get underway at the UN amid dire warnings of the technology's potential danger.

"We are almost at the brink of a Third World War...and it's a more dangerous one. This time, it's not going to be just the nuclear danger, but AI as well," Ivonne A-Baki, an Ecuadoran-Lebanese diplomat nominated by Tonga to be the next UN Secretary General, told AFP.

"The things that are most important now for humanity is no nuclear and a regulated AI. It's going to be a big gap if we don't regulate it...So it has to be starting now. You have to create awareness of it.

"It's not difficult to do that, because everybody knows that now AI is the problem."

A-Baki's intervention came as the current UN chief Antonio Guterres, who will bow out at the end of the year, called for "global coordination" on the future of AI.

"The world cannot afford a race to the bottom on AI safety," he warned Wednesday.

Concerns about AI safety have escalated in recent weeks, with workers at major AI developers resigning over concerns about the dangers posed by the technology.

A-Baki said humanity was "not controlling" AI's development "because we are depending on it instead of being the ones that have been creating it independently."

Agreement on the future of the technology between tech superpowers Washington and Beijing would be essential to protecting humanity, she said.

"President Trump and President Xi Jinping, they are becoming, in a way, friends for a better world. They shouldn't be competing. They should be cooperating," she said.

A-Baki, a former Ecuadoran trade minister, acknowledged that paralysis of the UN's top body, the Security Council, was an issue but stressed "they should be working together for the benefit of everyone."

"I think that's when the Secretary General has the mandate to be able to interfere on those things and to help," she said without committing to pushing for change to the composition of the five veto-wielding countries, currently Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

"Everybody has to have a voice."

A-Baki's close ties with Trump, forged during multiple stints as Ecuador's ambassador to Washington, could help her stand out from a crowded field of eight candidates vying to lead the UN. The next round of the process to pick the UN's next leader will be held Friday.

"I'm very good friends with President Trump... (he) will be important for the United Nations, and I think he loves the United Nations," she said.

"What he's seeing is it's not being effective on preventing wars."