The United Nations Security Council is preparing to hold an open meeting on artificial intelligence and international security, timed to the UN General Assembly's high-level week — the annual September gathering of world leaders at UN headquarters in New York — which is scheduled for September 21-27, 2026. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, will brief council members in person on global safety measures, the benefits AI can deliver, and the case for international coordination and shared standards. The format puts a leading private-sector voice directly before a chamber whose members all represent governments, at a moment when the UN's own membership is openly divided on how AI should be governed.

A Familiar Topic for the Council

The upcoming session will not be the Security Council's first engagement with artificial intelligence. The UNSC held an open briefing on AI's implications in July 2023, a session that was also a US-led initiative, and it was followed by another in December 2024. That makes the 2026 session the third such gathering since 2023 — and, for a chamber whose charter mandate centers on international peace and security, a sign that AI has moved from novelty to recurring agenda item.

The US Position

The United States voted against establishing a 40-member Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, a body that won approval by a vote of 117-2 in February 2026. The panel is designed to give governments independent scientific assessments of AI, but Washington's broadly stated rationale is that centralized AI governance is potentially overreaching and vulnerable to authoritarian influence. Instead of backing the multilateral panel, the US has advocated for innovation-led approaches coordinated among allied nations.

Guterres Pushes for Guardrails

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged a coordinated global approach to AI governance and has linked that effort to the need for Security Council reform itself. His argument centers on the growing risks posed by unregulated AI, from disinformation campaigns to autonomous weapons systems. The UN has launched several parallel initiatives, including a Global Dialogue on AI Governance — processes that sit outside the Security Council and draw in the wider UN membership.

The scientific panel moved forward despite US objections, a development that leaves Washington in an awkward position. It can still shape the Security Council conversation, but it is losing influence over the broader multilateral process it chose not to join.

Clearing the Veto Bar

Substantive outcomes will face structural hurdles. The fifteen-member Council operates on the basis of great power consensus, and its five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — hold veto authority over its decisions. Any meaningful resolution on AI governance would need to clear that bar. How the session navigates that constraint — dialogue and stated positions versus binding text — is the practical question hanging over the meeting.

The Broader Stakes

The meeting arrives at a moment when AI governance is fragmenting along geopolitical lines. The United States prefers bilateral and allied-nation frameworks. The European Union has moved ahead with its own regulatory approach. China has implemented its own set of AI rules. And the Global South, represented in part by the 117 nations that voted for the scientific panel, wants a seat at the table that the current power structure does not always provide. Against that backdrop, the Altman briefing gives the session its headline moment, while the contest over who sets global AI rules plays out well beyond the chamber.