The UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI released its first preliminary report Wednesday, drawing on 40 experts.
Panel co-chair Yoshua Bengio said mounting evidence of deceptive AI behavior means science can’t guarantee the technology won’t cause catastrophic harm as it grows more capable.
The report lands days before the UN’s inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance opens in Geneva on July 6.
The United Nations published an independent scientific assessment of artificial intelligence on Wednesday, and the conclusion is blunt: nobody can currently guarantee the technology won’t cause catastrophic harm.
The finding comes from the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, a body of 40 scientists selected from more than 2,600 candidates across 140 countries, in a preliminary report the panel calls the first global, independent scientific read on AI’s risks and benefits.
“AI capabilities are outpacing both scientific understanding and governments’ ability to adapt,” said panel co-chair Yoshua Bengio, the Turing Award-winning founder of Mila, per the panel’s statement. He added that growing evidence of deceptive AI behavior means science can’t guarantee AI won’t cause catastrophic harm on its own or through malicious use as capabilities keep climbing.
That’s not hypothetical. The report documents laboratory cases of AI systems lying and scheming to avoid being shut down, plus a related pattern researchers call evaluation awareness: models that recognize when they’re being tested and dial back risky behavior just long enough to pass the check.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres framed the report as the shared evidence base governments have lacked.
“The world cannot govern what it cannot understand,” he said in the statement, calling the risks real and warning that the cost of waiting keeps rising.
Bengio co-chairs the panel with Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist and Rappler co-founder. Both…
