Risks of artificial intelligence

On 3 July in New York, and then 6 July 2026 in Geneva, at the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, the United Nations launched the Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI created by the General Assembly, providing an evidence-based assessment of opportunities, risks and impacts of artificial intelligence (AI). While the report presents a balanced analysis of the risks and opportunities of AI, the catalog of the dangers of ungoverned AI is frightening, confirming many earlier warnings and calling for urgent action before it is too late.

The report says that potential benefits of AI are enormous. Deployed and applied thoughtfully, AI can support progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, advance health science and increase access to education. At the same time, the rapid pace of technological development and the breadth of potential applications present policymakers with significant challenges. The rapid, unchecked deployment of the technology at scale also presents considerable risks, including harms to the mental health of users, potential use as a destructive tool, impacts on social, economic and environmental systems, and challenges associated with controlling the technology.

What does the evidence show? Artificial intelligence capabilities are advancing faster than the ability to measure or govern them. Only a handful of actors have trained frontier AI models. The inputs and outcomes of AI are geographically and linguistically uneven. The AI divide is not just about access, but about capacity to influence AI development. For AI to be useful, it must be supported by an enabling environment. Agentic artificial intelligence is a governance step change. AI can erode the shared reality. AI is transforming human rights, including children’s rights.

Seven working groups reported on the findings by domain:
- Artificial intelligence science, advances and trajectories
- Societal applications: science, health, education and agriculture
- Economic implications
- Security, systems and environmental implications
- Human rights, information and democracy
- Cultural and individual flourishing, autonomy and child safety
- Management, governance and reliability.

The report shows that environmental impacts are growing significantly and are heterogeneous. Scaling laws in model training increase compute demand; inference workloads are expanding rapidly; hardware life cycle effects generate e-waste. Consequences include increasing energy and water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, pressure on critical minerals and downstream e-waste, with disproportionate environmental and socioeconomic impacts in the global South. The geopolitics of critical mineral supply chains are underexamined and potential rebound effects may offset efficiency gains.

Overall the report highlights many significant risks from Artificial Intelligence as capacities are evolving rapidly and are widely being taken up without a proper understanding of the risks. By the time these risks are evident, it may be too late to prevent great damage to society and the economy. The report includes recommendations on the preventive action needed now.

SOURCES: Executive Summary: https://www.un.org/independent-international-scientific-panel-ai/sites/…
Preliminary Report: https://www.un.org/independent-international-scientific-panel-ai/sites/…