Pakistan warns UNSC of AI-driven inequality

September 24, 2026 (MLN): Pakistan has warned the UN Security Council that an unregulated boom in artificial intelligence (AI) risks deepening global inequalities and endangering international peace, and called for guardrails, regulations and governance frameworks to keep the technology in check.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar made the remarks at a Council briefing on AI and International Security, APP reported.

The session was convened by France, which holds the Council presidency for September, and chaired by French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot.

Heads of leading tech firms, including OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face, briefed the 15-member body at the start of the meeting on the latest developments in AI, its promise and its pitfalls.

Ishaq Dar said AI, as a cross-cutting dual-use technology and force multiplier, was already visibly affecting regional and global stability.

He named retaining human judgement and control at every stage of AI design, development and integration as the top priority, and urged restraint and confidence-building in the military domain to reduce the risks of miscalculation and compressed decision-making.

He said AI must not become the preserve of a few actors and should instead be developed through international collaboration so that it is representative, transparent and inclusive.

He warned that AI was intensifying misinformation, fake news and cyber-attacks, including those by state and non-state actors on critical infrastructure, and said concrete action was needed to close the gaps with serious implications for peace and security.

Safety measures, he added, must not become a tool for denying technology to others.

Pakistan welcomed the acknowledgement that no single company or country can manage AI risks alone, and that competitive pressure was fuelling a race that nobody could win safely, Ishaq Dar said.

He cautioned that existing divides would widen and a safety agenda could turn into a strategy of technological exclusion.

Since the risks would be borne by everyone, he argued, decisions on managing them cannot be left to a handful of companies or capitals.

The foreign minister called for avoiding fragmentation in AI development and governance, and said all issues around its development, deployment and wider implications should be taken up in representative, inclusive forums with universal participation under UN auspices.

He said Pakistan was joining China's initiative to set up the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization as a founding member, calling it a concrete step towards AI for good, and for all.

He also said practical confidence-building tools were needed to reduce mistrust, prevent accidental escalation and manage risks from military and foundational AI systems, and that Pakistan would work with member states to bridge the global AI divide and promote equitable access.

Separately, Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of the UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, told the Council it faced an unprecedented threat that none of its members would choose, none could contain alone and that ignores national borders.

He described a recent global awakening, citing AI agents that escaped containment, cheated on assigned tasks and tried to avoid detection while acting in ways that would be crimes if done by humans.

Furthermore, he said the companies building these systems concede they carry catastrophic risks yet offer no convincing technical fixes, and remain locked in a race to make them more powerful.

He urged the international community to cooperate against three global threats, namely catastrophic misuse, concentration of power and loss of control over AI.

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