António Guterres

António Guterres (born 1949), a former prime minister of Portugal and UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has served as secretary-general of the United Nations since 2017. In his second term he made AI governance a central pillar of the UN agenda, arguing that a technology deployed faster than even its builders can track cannot be left to markets and rival states.

The campaign for binding rules

His 2023 New Agenda for Peace set a 2026 deadline for a legally binding treaty prohibiting lethal autonomous weapons — “killer robots” that select and kill targets without human control. The 2024 Pact for the Future and Global Digital Compact then mandated the machinery he had pushed for: an independent international scientific panel on AI and a recurring Global Dialogue on AI Governance. The first such dialogue convened all UN member states in Geneva in July 2026 — where Guterres noted his treaty deadline had arrived with negotiations never formally begun, some 127 nations backing a ban while the United States, UK, Russia and Israel favored non-binding frameworks.

Critics note the UN’s structural weakness — its AI bodies advise rather than bind, and the great AI powers have so far declined every binding commitment he has sought. Guterres himself concedes AI’s promise for development and science; his quarrel is with ungoverned deployment, not the technology.