“The Secretary-General’s role is not to replace state power, but to create political space for inclusion, safety, interoperability, and access. You don’t need all 193 States to agree on everything. The UN can identify overlapping interests through formal blocs and informal groups of friends.
We can bring in civil society and the private sector — there is a real constituency in Silicon Valley deeply concerned about safety, as we saw with the recent Pacing the Frontier letter signed by tech insiders.
But we will need strict transparency and conflict-of-interest rules to ensure that cooperation with the tech sector doesn’t turn into institutional capture.”
Nur Laiq joins Episode 4 of “World’s Toughest Job,” a podcast co-produced by Foreign Policy and the United Nations Foundation: Does the UN Have a Seat at the AI Table?