Today’s AI Decisions Could Shape Generations, UN Rights Chief Warns

Türk described humanity as approaching a point of irreversible change, with increasingly powerful AI creating risks that reach far beyond individual users or businesses.

The decisions shaping artificial intelligence today could determine how future generations access essential services, protect their privacy and exercise their rights, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk warned on Monday. In a letter to governments and companies developing the most advanced AI systems, he called for urgent action to bring meaningful oversight into step with technological development, stressing that choices with consequences for everyone cannot be left to a handful of developers.

Türk described humanity as approaching a point of irreversible change, with increasingly powerful AI creating risks that reach far beyond individual users or businesses. His appeal puts everyday human needs at the centre of the debate: reliable water supplies, secure financial services, trustworthy information and democratic institutions that people can depend on.

The Risks Reach Into Homes, Services and Public Debate

Türk raised particular concerns about agentic AI, systems capable of carrying out tasks with greater autonomy, warning that failures or deliberately harmful designs could disrupt essential services, communications and critical infrastructure. Entire populations could lose access to clean water, heating or financial services, he said, illustrating how decisions about advanced technology could translate into immediate hardship for families and communities.

The High Commissioner also warned that agentic AI is accelerating the pace and reach of warfare and weakening safeguards against the launch of weapons of mass destruction. His concerns extend to harms already unfolding, including automated services that deepen exclusion for marginalised people, surveillance tools that erode privacy and AI-driven disinformation that distorts public debate, damages social cohesion and places democratic institutions under pressure.

Developers Must Answer for the Systems They Build

Companies developing frontier AI have both the responsibility and the ability to reduce risks immediately, Türk said. He called for strong human rights due diligence, meaning an ongoing process to identify and address the harm their systems could cause, supported by agreed safety standards that are implemented across the sector and continuously improved as capabilities develop.

His letter called for independent internal monitoring of those standards to strengthen transparency and accountability, alongside government requirements for technically competent, independent verification of agentic capabilities. Such scrutiny would require access to models, documentation and testing environments, giving assessors the evidence needed to examine what systems can do and the risks they present. States hosting leading AI developers have a particular responsibility to require responsible conduct and hold companies accountable when they fail to meet it.

A Global Technology Needs Decisions Everyone Can Scrutinise

Türk urged governments and companies to work urgently through international forums on governance for advanced AI grounded in international human rights law. He stressed that no country can manage the technology alone, no company should decide which risks the world must accept, and technological progress should never require people to surrender their rights. The narrowing opportunity to establish effective oversight makes present decisions especially consequential.

Young people entering adulthood will inherit the results of choices they have had little opportunity to influence, the High Commissioner said, calling for decisions to be made openly and with their rights in view. His appeal places responsibility on today's governments and developers to consider people beyond their immediate users, markets or borders, including generations whose lives will be shaped by the systems being built now.