The United Nations’ first scientific body on artificial intelligence (AI) launched a preliminary report on AI opportunities, risks and impacts.
The world’s first scientific body on artificial intelligence (AI) is a panel of experts and independent scientists from the five UN regions. They were established in August 2025 to outline AI trends.
“This report highlights real opportunities that rapidly advancing AI offers the world – in science, education, healthcare, agriculture, and productivity,” Yoshua Bengio and Maria Ressa, co-chairs, stated in the official statement.
“The same AI systems that make those opportunities possible now imitate how we communicate and how we reason. That is what makes their consequences for societies, for good or harm, more profound than anything we have built before.”
While the panel agreed that the rapid development of AI offers massive potential benefits to countries and people across the world, they noted that it poses big risks too.
The panel’s full report will be presented later this week at an inaugural U.N. Global Dialogue on AI governance in Geneva, July 6 to 7.
According to the official statement, the report says that rules pertinent to AI capabilities are necessary. This is so they ensure it's used safely while safeguards are still trying to keep up with the pace.
The panel cautions that the window to establish effective global governance remains open but may not stay that way for long.
Researchers say the complexity of tasks AI systems can complete has been doubling every few months.
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AI Capabilities Covered in UN Report
The UN panel's preliminary report covers the entire AI sector across five main areas. In terms of capabilities, the report showed that AI task complexity is doubling every few months.
AI agents can now plan, use digital tools, and write code with little human oversight. Leading models already perform better than human experts in fields like medicine, law, and science.
The benefits addressed in the report discuss advances in healthcare, such as earlier cancer detection and improved drug discovery through protein structure prediction.
It also highlights agriculture with food insecurity early-warning systems, education, accessibility for people with disabilities, and the potential to further the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.
Researchers outlined six specific risks in the report, including the rise of abuse material and deepfakes targeting women and children. Additionally, it discusses AI-generated disinformation undermining democracy, cybercrime and fraud, and mental health issues caused by systems that promote harmful behaviours.
The other risks allude to the increasing autonomy of AI agents that hinder human intervention, and the environmental impact of energy-consuming data centres.
Power concentration was another spotlight discussing geopolitical factors. For instance, it stated that the US and China control 90 per cent of leading compute capacity. Most advanced models come from companies in just two countries, creating barriers for the Global South, which cannot build, inspect, or audit these systems.
The governance aspect looks at the fragmented state of over 40 existing frameworks worldwide. It addresses the challenges policymakers face with evidence, the risks of companies evaluating their own safety, and the need for independent evaluations, common standards, and international cooperation, which is relevant to the Geneva summit on July 6–7.
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“Too Late to Act”
Global experts believe that policymakers require scientific evidence to effectively govern AI. However, by the time the evidence is made clear, “it may be too late to act on it.”
This is why the panel’s work is key, as it lays out a plan for nation-states for the effective yet safe use of AI and to help global leaders make informed decisions.
Yoshua Bengio, Co-Chair, Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, stated that AI capabilities are outpacing both scientific understanding and governments’ ability to adapt.
“With growing evidence of deceptive AI behaviour, science currently cannot guarantee that as capabilities continue to increase, AI will not cause catastrophic harm, either on its own or due to malicious users.”
Bengio believes that to act effectively, global policymakers must understand these systems.
“This Panel provides exactly that: a rigorous, shared scientific foundation to guide our collective way forward,” Bengio added.
Maria Ressa, Co-Chair, Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, also stated that AI technology is transformative, but if the world keeps moving along this trajectory, humanity will fail to realise the gains it promises.
“The risks to societies, to security, and to our species are too high, and the forces driving AI forward are not the forces that will deliver its benefits.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres further added that the world cannot govern what it cannot understand. The Panel’s report provides independent science, drawn from every region, and available to every government.
“The potential is great, but the risks are real, and the cost of waiting is rising. I urge all leaders to use this shared evidence to act together, and without delay.”
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