In a UN General Assembly-week blog call, OpenAI urged the United States to lead global technical standards for frontier AI — including measurements, incident reporting, and recursive self-improvement pacing — as Sam Altman prepares a Wednesday UN Security Council briefing.
OpenAI on Monday called for the United States to lead an international effort to develop global technical standards for frontier AI, including recursive self-improvement, where systems can autonomously enhance their own capabilities, Reuters reported from the United Nations.
The ask lands as AI becomes a key topic at the high-level UN General Assembly this week, after several industry leaders — including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — have called for coordinated pacing of increasingly powerful systems. In a blog post published as world leaders gather in New York, OpenAI said a mechanism to facilitate complementary national and international frontier standards is essential, along with common measurements and incident-reporting protocols for better collective action.
“Leading now will determine whether the United States shapes the global AI framework or watches a fragmented, uneven, and conflict-ridden system take hold around it. This will also determine whether advanced AI strengthens the networks that the United States and its allies already have; failing to lead may weaken them,” OpenAI wrote, as quoted by Reuters.
On pacing, OpenAI said the point is not a predetermined speed. “Technically, it is about ensuring that alignment research and deployment of that research stay ahead of capabilities,” the company said in the same post, per Reuters. Alignment means ensuring AI acts in line with human values.
Altman is due to brief the 15-member UN Security Council on Wednesday on AI and international security. France, September president of the council, convened the meeting, which will be chaired by French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot. The council first met on AI risks in 2023. AI Tech Daily previously covered the briefing announcement.
President Donald Trump’s administration has rejected calls to slow AI development, wary that any pause would hand China room to close the gap. Trump said earlier this month the U.S. already has guardrails in place and that China would benefit from doubt cast on AI development. He is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping this week in Washington.
This brief covers OpenAI’s Monday UN-week US-lead standards call as reported by Reuters. It is not a rewrite of mid-September reporting on industry talks about a shared standards body, and it does not treat the Wednesday Security Council session as already delivered.