“It’s time to come clean.”
UN Secretary-General outlines risks and opportunities of a future with AI
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has urged world leaders, technology companies, and others to work together to ensure the safe use of Artificial Intelligence.
The Secretary-General warned that without greater international cooperation, the technology could widen global inequality instead of advancing sustainable development. The unregulated usage of AI has direct impacts on our environment, children, and weapons systems that are developing at a rapid pace without close human oversight.
The Secretary-General said that nations must come together to increase the safety of Artificial Intelligence, while mitigating its detrimental impacts in four critical areas.
The Environment
AI is hungry for land, water and power, and the data centers behind it already consume more electricity than most nations.
By 2030, they could use more power than all but five countries — and enough water to meet the basic needs of all 1.3 billion residents of sub‑Saharan Africa for an entire year.
Despite these obvious concerns, communities are often uninformed about the environmental impact of the infrastructure rising around them.
In response, the Secretary-General has proposed the AI Environmental Transparency Initiative, calling on every major AI company to measure and publicly disclose the full environmental impact of its systems — carbon, water, and land footprints — and to commit to powering every data centre with renewable energy by 2030.