The Albany Gazette - AI risks, Iran war to take center stage at UN

Following weeks of worldwide headlines about risks of uncontrollable AI -- and calls for a slowdown -- industry leaders are set to brief an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.

Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Clement Delangue of Hugging Face will brief the 15-strong Council, the United Nation's top body.

Hugging Face, a repository of AI models, was the target of a recent cyberattack by autonomous OpenAI software, the first in a series of incidents that have raised alarm bells over the rapidly evolving technology.

Meanwhile, the annual parade of UN General Assembly speeches is set to continue, with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arriving late Tuesday, according to Iranian state media, to address the world body for the first time since the United States and Israel launched attacks on his country.

The strikes in late February sparked a war that engulfed the Middle East, and the Trump administration has so far yet to reach a deal with Tehran to end the conflict.

Tehran retaliated by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for energy transit, sparking a surge in global oil prices.

The recent Houthi takeover of Yemen's Red Sea coast has also heightened fears over global trade and shipping through the vital Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Pezeshkian's speech will come a day after Trump raised the possibility that he could "annihilate the Islamic Republic" and "drive them into hell." During his remarks, all but one member of the Iranian delegation walked out.

- Ukraine, AI showdown -

Trump made the comments in a fire and brimstone speech Tuesday, but he also revealed that there were talks between the two sides for the first time in months.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Trump's roving envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner on the sidelines of the UN's signature diplomatic gathering.

Araghchi said that Tehran's demands included "the immediate lifting of the (US) naval blockade, the prompt payment of all Iranian assets that have been frozen, and an end to the war on all resistance fronts," state news agency IRIB reported.

Outside the UN on Tuesday, there was a vigil with protesters demonstrating against Tehran's use of the death penalty.

Besides conflict in the Middle East, Russia's war against Ukraine will again be raised among global diplomatic circles on Wednesday.

A Security Council meeting on Ukraine is scheduled for 11:00 am (1500 GMT), while President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to address the UN General Assembly as well.

Zelensky, after meeting with Trump on Tuesday, said that Washington and Kyiv want the war with Russia to end "before winter."

He added that he is ready to halt strikes on Russian energy sites if Moscow agreed to do the same.

In his speech Tuesday, Trump rejected international regulation of AI, calling such proposals a "globalist scheme."

"The very same people who said we'll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming... are now saying that AI is going to kill us all," Trump said.

But just hours after Trump spoke, Macron took to the rostrum and defiantly called for the creation of an open-source AI model not dependent on the United States or China.

"I don't want anyone to become the vassal of one of the great powers," he said. "Rather, we must come together to build an open-source frontier model, a cutting-edge model."

(R.White--TAG)