On 19 September 2024, the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence (HLAB-AI) released its final report, “Governing AI for Humanity.” The advisory body had been established in October 2023 and comprised 39 AI experts from 33 countries, serving in their personal capacities and selected from over 2,000 nominations. The report built on an interim report published in December 2023 and on consultations involving more than 2,000 participants.
The report argued that no global framework existed to govern AI even as its development was concentrated in a few companies in a few countries, noting that of 193 UN member states, only seven were party to recent prominent AI governance initiatives while 118, primarily in the Global South, were missing entirely. To address these gaps it offered seven recommendations: an International Scientific Panel on AI to provide impartial scientific knowledge and annual reports; a policy dialogue on AI governance; an AI standards exchange; a global AI capacity-development network; a global AI fund; a global AI data framework; and a small AI office within the UN Secretariat to coordinate these efforts.
The report was notable for framing AI governance as a matter of global equity rather than only safety or competitiveness, and several of its proposals were folded into the UN’s Global Digital Compact. For businesses and the public, it signaled that international institutions were moving toward a more inclusive and coordinated approach to AI oversight, even as binding global rules remained distant.