China AI Firms Invited to UN Security Council Meeting on AI Risks

China's AI firms DeepSeek and Moonshot have been invited to attend a UN Security Council meeting on AI-related risks.

This meeting is scheduled for Wednesday. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is also slated to brief the UN Security Council on AI risks. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used his address to the 81st UN General Assembly to call for stronger international governance of artificial intelligence, warning that life-and-death decisions should not be handed over to machines.

He noted Africa remains the only continent without a permanent seat despite accounting for over a quarter of UN member states and every third child born. Guterres stated, "A 21st UN security council without permanent African seats is unjust and indefensible. This must change." He also pointed out that most of Africa was under colonial rule when the UN was created in 1945.

The Security Council has five permanent members (Russia, China, the US, the UK, and France) which hold veto powers, and ten non-permanent members elected for two-year terms. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proposed ending the UN Security Council veto power and called for sweeping structural reform. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also called for reform of the UN Security Council.

The Kremlin supports reforms to the UN Security Council that would increase the number of permanent members but rejects proposals to abolish veto powers. Russia stated that permanent members and veto powers should remain. Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama renewed calls for permanent African representation, arguing the continent’s exclusion undermines the UN’s legitimacy. The African Union's shared position calls for at least two permanent seats with the same privileges as existing members, including veto powers.