UN creates new scientific AI advisory panel: what will it do?

• NEWS

• 26 February 2026

UN creates new scientific AI advisory panel: what will it do?

The panel has been compared to the IPCC – the international panel whose research helped to shape landmark climate agreements.

Elizabeth Gibney

Elizabeth Gibney

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[United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivers a speech at a podium beside a flag bearing the United Nations emblem.]

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres announced a new Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence on 12 February.Credit: Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty

Dozens of researchers from around the world are now part of a scientific group that will analyse the impacts of artificial intelligence. Observers have compared the group, called the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence and convened by the United Nations, to the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which informs governments about the latest climate-change science. For more than 35 years, it has amassed evidence showing that current global warming is caused mostly by human activity.

The AI panel’s 40 members, approved in a vote by the UN’s General Assembly on 12 February, are from 37 nations. The UN says the panel will act “as an early-warning system and evidence engine, helping distinguish between hype and reality” and produce “policy-relevant” reports.

Only the United States and Paraguay voted against their appointment.

The panel is not the first prominent group to study AI impacts; the Global Partnership on AI and the International AI Safety Report are some of the most significant so far. But the UN group is “much bigger in scope and is truly global”, says Wendy Hall, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton, UK. Hall was a member of the panel’s governance-specific precursor, the UN High-level Advisory Body on AI, which ran between 2023 and 2024.

Create an IPCC-like body to harness benefits and combat harms of digital tech

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