Remarks by Below-Secretary-Basic Miguel Ángel Moratinos,
Excessive Consultant for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC)
at UNAOC’s third Dialogue on
“AI for #OneHumanity: Human-Centered Synthetic Intelligence”
22 April 2025, Tuesday
Room XX, Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room, Palais des Nations, Geneva
Excellencies, Distinguished Visitors, Girls and Gents,
It’s a nice pleasure to welcome you to the third UNAOC Dialogue on “AI for One Humanity: Human-Centered Synthetic Intelligence”, co-organized by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and Fondación Onuart.
Your presence right here at present underscores the urgency of our collective mission: to harness AI as a pressure for good and make sure that it serves #OneHumanity in methods which might be moral, inclusive, and transformative.
Earlier than we begin, I want to invite you all to a second of silence to pay tribute to His Holiness Pope Francis, whose humility, common love and mild voice for peace will proceed to encourage us all. I actually ask for a minute of silence on behalf of His Holiness the Pope.
His Holiness had a transparent place on AI.
Within the G7 assembly in June 2024, His Holiness careworn Synthetic Intelligence, and I quote, “…is and should stay a software in human arms,’ and warned in opposition to synthetic intelligence perpetrating a throwaway tradition, favoring inequality and making choices outdoors its purview.”
He referred to as for the event of a really fascinating idea, “algor-ethics”, a sequence of worldwide and pluralistic rules which had been able to find help from tradition, faith, worldwide organizations, and main firms.
That, my expensive mates, is the principle intention of at present’s assembly right here in Geneva.
Sure, it looks like we’re residing in our personal science fiction film. Applied sciences and improvements as soon as deemed solely imaginary are actually a part of our day by day lives.
Let me paint an image.
AI follows us from the second we get up….
Our good telephones greet us with tailor-made updates — that’s AI.
The thermostats in our houses modify robotically, studying our habits — once more, AI.
Our commutes are guided by navigation apps that not solely keep away from visitors however anticipate congestion earlier than it occurs — AI.
In workplaces, AI helps transcribe conferences and translate multi-lingual conversations in actual time.
In faculties and universities, it helps teachers and researchers sift by means of large datasets in seconds.
In hospitals and laboratories, it assists docs by studying diagnostic scans with outstanding precision.
In inventive industries and studios, it fuels artists and creators by serving to to generate pictures, music, storyboards, and movies.
These are only a few examples. I can go on and on.
Certainly, AI is not within the background. It has turn into a central participant in how we dwell, work, and talk.
This isn’t science fiction. This isn’t the longer term. It’s, my expensive mates, the current.
And but, amid all this innovation, pressing questions stay: How will we make sure that Synthetic Intelligence doesn’t reinforce biases, deepen inequalities, or undermine our shared values? Will AI serve our collective wellbeing, or will it infringe on human rights and erode elementary values?
These are only a few of the questions that deliver us right here at present. Questions that demand our collective reflection, collaboration, and motion.
Recognizing each the immense potential and the challenges posed by AI, the United Nations has undertaken vital steps to make sure its moral and inclusive growth.
The International Digital Compact, adopted on the Summit of the Future final yr, units a complete framework to information digital cooperation and AI governance, highlighting 3 key targets: (1) inclusive growth; (2) truthful and equitable entry; and (3) establishing transparency pointers and accountability measures. To cite the United Nations Secretary-Basic, Mr. Antonio Guterres, “It brings the world collectively round a shared imaginative and prescient: One the place know-how serves humanity, not the opposite manner round.”
Different efforts throughout the UN System — together with the Secretary-Basic’s Excessive-Degree Advisory Physique on Synthetic Intelligence, UNESCO’s Advice on the Ethics of Synthetic Intelligence, and the Worldwide Telecommunication Union’s flagship “AI for Good” programme — equally emphasize the significance of worldwide solidarity within the growth and governance of AI.
In help of those efforts, I highlighted “the human dimension of AI” as a brand new precedence space within the UNAOC Plan of Motion 2024-2026, which I introduced to the UNAOC Group of Mates final yr. It’s in opposition to this backdrop that we’re gathered right here at present — to collaboratively form a future through which AI advances mutual respect and understanding.
Right this moment, trying round this room — the Alliance of Civilizations room on the Palais des Nations — I’m heartened by your enthusiasm for dialogue and your spirit of collaboration to form an AI ecosystem that advantages all of humanity.
Collectively, we will steer the trajectory of Synthetic Intelligence in the direction of a future the place know-how unites and empowers, quite than divides and excludes….Collectively, we will make a way forward for AI for #OneHumanity.
Thanks very a lot.
