The United Nations Security Council is set to hold a session on artificial intelligence on Wednesday, with some of the world's top AI company leaders invited to speak. The meeting takes place while world leaders are gathered in New York for the General Assembly. The session is dedicated to the future of artificial intelligence — and it places a technology more often debated in industry settings before the 15-member council charged with maintaining international peace and security.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are both scheduled to address the meeting. Amodei will participate remotely. Bloomberg reported:

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is set to brief the UN Security Council on Wednesday alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during a meeting dedicated to the future of artificial intelligence — Bloomberg (@business) September 22, 2026

The speaker lineup extends beyond the two American chief executives. AI researcher Yoshua Bengio, who co-chairs the UN's AI panel, is also among the speakers, as is Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek and fellow startupshot have also been invited to make statements, according to Reuters. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is not expected to attend in person, though that could still change — making his attendance one of the open questions heading into Wednesday. Neither DeepSeek nor Moonshot responded to requests for comment. Their participation would put companies from both sides of the US-China AI divide before the council in the same session.

A Debate Over How Fast AI Should Move

The session comes as disagreement grows over how quickly AI should be developed, a question that has divided many of the executives invited to appear. Anthropic's Amodei has called for a coordinated slowdown in frontier AI development, a position Elon Musk has backed. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia's Jensen Huang have argued the opposite, saying a slowdown is unnecessary.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told world leaders last week that the pace of AI advancement carries dangers that need to be addressed. That view puts the UN chief at odds with US President Donald Trump, who has said current guardrails are adequate.

US and China Agree to Talk More on AI Safety

Separately, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that senior US and Chinese officials agreed to pursue further AI safety discussions. The agreement came before a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping that is expected in Washington later this week, making the leaders' meeting the next scheduled point at which the direction of those discussions could come into view.

The diplomatic outreach contrasts with the tone of Chinese state media, which have pushed back on calls to slow AI development, framing them as an attempt to lock in American dominance and shut China out of global AI governance. China's top AI executives, meanwhile, have largely stayed quiet on safety concerns, including scenarios in which AI systems could mislead users, resist oversight, or cause widespread harm.

First Major AI Meeting Since 2023

The Security Council first met on AI risks in 2023. At that earlier meeting, China warned that AI should not be allowed to become a "runaway horse," while the United States cautioned against using the technology to suppress or censor people.

Wednesday's session is the council's first major AI meeting since those early discussions, and it brings together voices from both sides of the development debate for the first time at this level — from executives urging a slowdown to those who say one is unnecessary. As with the 2023 meeting, the session itself consists of briefings and statements rather than formal rulemaking; any binding council measures on AI would require further steps, such as a resolution.