Altman and Amodei Urge AI Cooperation at UN as Trump Warns Against Global Control

The leaders of two rival AI labs urged countries to work together on AI risks at the UN Security Council on Wednesday. Their appeal came a day after President Donald Trump rejected attempts to build what he called a “globalist scheme of control” for AI. The difference puts a question before governments: what would cooperation require?

Rivals make a shared appeal

OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei addressed an emergency meeting of the 15-member council. Altman said the current moment in AI development “calls for extreme care.” His warning was about accepting risk in pursuit of AI’s benefits, not giving up on those benefits.

He described OpenAI’s intended approach as a “middle path” between blind optimism and what he called “doomerism.” The phrasing captures a balance in his case to the council: AI’s potential benefits should not be a reason to accept excessive technological risk.

The appearance followed an earlier shared position on speed. Amodei proposed slowing AI development this month; Altman publicly agreed that development at the frontier—the most advanced systems—should be paced. Speaking to the council took that concern to an international audience, but agreement on caution is not an agreed speed limit.

The industry must not accept too much technological risk just because the benefits are too great and important to slow down.

Sam Altman, addressing the UN Security Council

Trump’s boundary at the General Assembly

Trump drew a different line at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. In remarks published by the White House, he said the United States “totally rejects” attempts to construct what he called a “globalist scheme of control” for AI. He also said the country would encourage the technology’s progress rather than rein it in.

The positions are in tension, but not exact opposites. The CEOs asked countries to coordinate against risks; Trump rejected what he described as a scheme of control. Their remarks leave room for countries to disagree over which shared precautions count as cooperation and which would cross that line.

From an appeal to a standard

Altman argued that competing countries have come together for shared interests when powerful new technologies emerged. “We believe this must be one of those times,” he told the council. His argument asks governments to act despite rivalry; it is not a description of an agreement already reached.

OpenAI had recently called for the United States to lead a global effort to establish AI standards. That is a more specific aim than an appeal for cooperation, but a U.S.-led effort would still need other countries to participate. The unresolved step is whether governments will turn the executives’ call into shared standards—and what those standards would ask of AI developers.