On 23 September, the UN Security Council heard from the leaders of OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face on the risks posed by artificial intelligence. The session marked another sign that AI companies are now being brought directly into discussions once reserved for states, as governments seek to understand and shape the technology’s impact.
Several European countries used the occasion to argue for public oversight of AI systems, insisting that these technologies should not be left to private actors alone. But the lineup of invited experts also highlighted a notable imbalance: no European company developing comparable foundation models was present, and no institution from the European Union was included among the analysts asked to brief the Council.
The debate underscored a broader question now facing international institutions: if AI firms are increasingly treated as key interlocutors by governments, who will actually write the rules governing them?