The future of AI cannot be decided by handful of countries or left to whims of few billionaires: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

New Delhi: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Thursday said the future of artificial intelligence must not be shaped by a handful of countries or controlled by a few billionaires, as he addressed the India AI Impact Summit2026 in the national capital.

Thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the invitation, Guterres congratulated India for its leadership in organising what he described as the first AI summit in the Global South.

"Prime Minister Modi, thank you for your kind invitation and congratulations for India's leadership in organising the first AI summit in the Global South. The meeting in India has special meaning," the UN Secretary General said in his address.

Guterres stressed that artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming societies and economies, and that its governance must be inclusive and globally representative.

"The future of AI cannot be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires," Guterres said.

Guterres underlined that Artificial Intelligence is transforming economies, societies and governance structures at an unprecedented pace, and stressed the need for multilateral cooperation to ensure equitable access and responsible use.

"The message of this summit is simple. Real impact means technology that improves lives and protects the planet. So let's build AI for everyone with dignity as the default setting," Guterres said.

The UN says that AI has significant potential to support the UN by promoting inclusivity, reducing inequalities, helping to accelerate nearly 80 per cent of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and strengthening the work of the United Nations system.

The UN has also committed to taking a proactive, ethical, human rights-based and mandate-led approach to adopting AI internally in its work. UN system organisations use AI to support all steps of the innovation process, to address gender inequality, discrimination and bias in artificial intelligence data models, and to invest in predictive and prescriptive analytics, enhanced with machine learning and artificial intelligence.