- Artificial intelligence will be the central element of change in the world.

It must be available to all countries of the world.

(bright music) - Hello and welcome to "GZERO World".

I'm Ian Bremmer, and I'm coming to you from inside the United Nations headquarters in New York.

This week, diplomats and heads of state from 193 countries around the world gathering together for the annual United Nations General Assembly.

It's a critical moment for the world and the United Nations itself.

Ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, security crises in Sudan and Haiti, and climate disasters threatening the lives of tens of millions.

Can UN members come together to meet today's political and economic realities?

And what role will technology, particularly generative AI, have in fostering human development or in driving us further apart?

Today, I'm sitting down with the man tasked with leading the United Nations through all of this, Secretary General António Guterres.

With his term set to expire in 2027, what are his priorities for his last two years in office?

Will security council reform finally happen?

And how can the 78-year-old institution, not the Secretary General, address the challenges of our digital future?

That's a lot to discuss.

We'll get into all of it.

Don't worry.

I've also got your Puppet Regime.

- Netflix is still banned in Russia?

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Announcer] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Announcer] Every day all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Announcer] And by, Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York and.

(lighthearted music) (upbeat music) - [Ian] There's a giant broken chair in the middle of Geneva, Switzerland right across from one of the United Nations main offices.

Apparently, it officially symbolizes the campaign against landmines.

But, given rising global conflict and polarization, it's also come to represent the state of multilateralism itself: one big push could come toppling down.

Multilateralism, multiple countries working together for common goals, has had a difficult time recently, especially in the United Nations, that's the world's largest multilateral organization.

Security Council couldn't exactly stop Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a resolution in Gaza remains elusive, the United Nations own sustainable development goals aren't just off track, they're failing.

- The SDGs need a global rescue plan.

Today, only 15% of the targets are on track and many are going in reverse.

- If only 15% of the sustainable development goals are met, that is a failure.

- The UN's values of peace and security feel very far from today's geopolitical realities.

What can the UN accomplish in a world where countries can't agree on basic ideas?

In the words of former Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld, "The United Nations was not created to bring us to heaven, but to save us from hell."

But this year could be a turning point.

This week, the General Assembly will hold its first ever Summit of the Future.

It's a test of the United Nations ability to tackle one of the world's biggest challenges and opportunities: artificial intelligence.

AI carries a lot of promise and, yes, a lot of risk too.

No government knows how to handle it, and major powers like the US, EU and China are busy trying to figure out their own domestic rules and drive their own competitiveness.

And that's where the UN comes in.

Instead of a patchwork of fragmented regulation, it can lead the global conversation and include voices from countries without big tech firms.

Those across the Global South can help ensure standards are rooted in international law in human rights, much like what the Paris Agreement did for climate change.

In 2021, Secretary-General Guterres called for a Global Digital Compact to regulate AI, fight misinformation, and connect the entire world to the internet.

Last year, the United Nations convened a group of experts, full disclosure, I'm one of them, to make recommendations for what the compact should include.

If countries agree, it'll be adopted at the Summit of the Future.

I've spent the last year talking to people around the world about what kinds of AI governance can work, and I'm optimistic that the UN will make inroads to a safer and more open digital future.

The United Nations has the determination and the tools to adapt to meet the challenges of its next era of its existence.

As Guterres warned last year.

- The alternative to reform is further fragmentation.

It is reform or rupture.

- At a time when the world is splitting into coalitions and blocs, at this year's General Assembly, it's time to prove that multilateralism still has a place amid all the fragmentation.

Can the UN reform before it ruptures?

Can countries still come together to solve global problems?

I sat down with Secretary-General António Guterres, on the sidelines of the General Assembly, and we talked about ongoing security crises, global cooperation, and safeguarding our world for the digital future.

Here's our conversation.

Secretary General António Guterres, nice to have you back on GZERO.

- It's an enormous pleasure, as always.

- It's a busy week for you.

I want to start with one of the biggest questions.

Something I'm troubled by, which is, when I grew up as a kid, I thought that democracy and a regulated free market were the ideas for how we should run the world.

People today don't see those ideas as motivating them.

When you think of your role as Secretary-General and you represent people all over the world, what are the ideas that we can look to to the future?

- I think the most important idea, when you are as I am in the United Nations, is to make people understand that we need to live in a rules-based world.

We have the values of the Charter, but we need to have international law, and people need to respect international law and international humanitarian law.

And there must be accountability.

Because the main problem of today's world is total impunity.

There are no rules, or nobody respects the rules that exist.

And as the geopolitical divides are so deep, there is no respect.

Nobody believes that one of the big powers will intervene if a situation is created by a troublemaker anywhere.

And so, troublemakers have multiplied.

Spoilers have multiplied.

We have seen conflicts more and more.

And as I said, a sense of impunity.

Every country, or every organization, or militia, or whatever, thinks that they can do whatever they want because they know that they will not pay a price for that.

- And the United Nations was founded on the exact opposite of that principle.

- And that is why we believe it's time to look seriously into how global governance is not working and what kind of reforms are necessary in international institutions, be it the Security Council, be it the Bretton Woods System, be it whatever is relevant in today's multilateral institution to at least try to put some order in today's world and to avoid this chaotic development in which we see conflicts multiplying, inequalities growing, climate change without an adequate answer and artificial intelligence without effective way for the international community to deal with it.

- It does appear that Security Council reform is getting a little more traction than it has historically.

I see your calls to have African states as permanent members of the Security Council.

The United States government is saying, in principle, they're interested in this.

Do you think that there is enough momentum to make a durable reform of the Security Council happen?

- Probably not immediately, but there is a huge difference in relation to the recent past.

When I started my function, to talk about the reform of the Security Council was undoable.

That was unacceptable.

Now, everybody recognizes that the reform of the Security Council is necessary.

I mean, the African situation, it is an historic injustice.

Africa has been a double victim of colonialism.

First of all, because of colonialism itself, and second, because of colonialism, they were not present when institutions were built.

And obviously, we see today emerging economies that are very relevant in the international arena, and it makes absolute sense to take seriously into account their candidacies.

For the first time, the five permanent members recognize that they are ready to accept at least an African permanent member in the Security Council, or two, like the United States just announced yesterday.

- [Ian] And to be clear, we're not talking about extending the veto to African countries.

- No.

That, I don't think is realistic.

The five vetoes will be maintained even if the five vetoes are one of the reasons why the Security Council doesn't work properly.

But that will be very difficult.

Of course, the African countries want to have the veto, and all the other candidates want to have the veto.

Probably it will not happen.

But this reform of the Security Council is today a central issue in the discussions in the United Nations.

And it will be a central issue, I'm sure, in the Summit of the Future.

And I hope that there will be a clear indication that it must be done.

- Now, another place where the UN is playing a big role, and the rest of the world has not yet been represented, is artificial intelligence.

And I've been very grateful to be a part of your high-level panel on AI.

We've seen seven major efforts at international governance of AI.

The G-7, the advanced industrial democracies are members of all of them.

And the majority of the Global South are members of none of them.

- Yes.

- Talk about this.

- There are a few initiatives, seven or eight initiatives.

In these initiatives, there are seven countries that are in all of them, and 118 countries that are in none of them.

- Not one.

- So, I think that we are facing two dangers.

One is in a non-regulatory framework in which nobody is ready to assume responsibilities in this regard, we will witness a huge concentration of power in a very small number of private companies because the costs are growing so fast that the idea that there will be a proliferation of enormous amount of start-ups, that will be the new pattern.

The costs are so high, it's becoming very, very difficult.

So, that concentration of power is there.

And that is a threat to our institutions.

And the other risk is that a small group of developed countries consider that artificial intelligence is their business, and that the majority of the countries of the world have nothing to do with it.

And that would be totally unacceptable because artificial intelligence is the opportunity of our generation.

But it is an existential threat.

And to be an opportunity of our generation, it must be available to all countries of the world and to all areas of the world population.

And it is possible to do it.

The investments are not so high.

One of the central aspects of the high-level advisory body that has produced its report is to say that we must have a network for capacity building in artificial intelligence in developing countries, and we must have a fund to support those activities.

- For the data.

For the training of the people.

- For everything.

- For the education.

- Because if not, artificial intelligence will increase the level of inequality in the world in which inequality is today a dramatic factor of instability and a source of conflict.

- Now, you've said it's both an opportunity and an existential threat.

But I know that you and I agree that it is first and foremost an opportunity.

- Yes.

- And unlike climate change, where you have powerful actors that are trying to stop people from even talking about the existence of this, the opportunity of artificial intelligence is not something that companies or governments want to stop, they just don't care enough about it.

Is this an essential role, a unique role, that the United Nations needs to play?

- The United Nations has one important characteristic.

It's its legitimacy.

It's a platform where everybody can be together.

And one of the crucial aspects, when we look at the future of artificial intelligence, knowing that regulation, detailed regulation will be done on a country by country basis, that there will be competition among countries, among companies, but we need to have a global platform where everybody can come together, governments, companies, academia, civil society, and at least follow scientifically what's happening.

The reason of the proposal of a creation of an international scientific council.

- Panel on AI.

- On AI.

- Like we've had on climate change.

- Like we have on climate change.

- Multi-stakeholder.

- To have open information accessible to everybody about how AI is evolving.

Then the central question of standard setting.

I mean, we need to have cooperation of all the agencies that are setting standards, and we need to have one system of standard setting.

Because if not, that will undermine the capacity of AI being an opportunity for all.

I believe again, the UN that has a convening capacity to bring people together can play a very important role.

Others have the power, others have the money, but they have not the legitimacy and they have not the convening power the UN has.

- What the United Nations is proposing to do is stand up the first global architecture for artificial intelligence so that the world can come together and understand.

- But not a rigid architecture, something that is able to evolve, and something that is able to accompany what will be, I would say, an unpredictable evolution of what artificial intelligence will become in the next decades.

But we know artificial intelligence will be the central element of change in the world in the near future.

One thing is clear, with the present rules.

Most of the world is lagging behind.

You can divide countries, the rich, the big, and the others where we have all kinds of extreme difficulties in the lives of people, and that is where we need something new.

We need something to allow them not to lag behind.

We need something to allow them to have a quantum leap.

And that quantum leap can come exactly from artificial intelligence if it is properly democratized.

But this will be the beginning.

Let's have no illusions.

This Summit will be the beginning of a process and we must pursue that process in a determinate way, which means we need to make people understand that we are facing totally new problems and we need to have deep reforms in the way we work, in the way we organize ourselves, in our societies, and in the way we manage the international community.

- Okay.

Let's move to the traditional conflicts.

We are almost at the one year of the October 7th terrorist attacks, and then of the war in Gaza.

Seems like everyone in the world wants this war to be over except the leadership of Hamas and except the Israeli Prime Minister.

What role can the United Nations play, if any, to help bring the war to a close?

- I don't think we have many possibilities to convince the leadership of Hamas or to convince the prime minister of Israel.

That is clear.

What we can do, and we do very clearly is first of all to condemn what was the abhorrent terror attacks of Hamas.

And to say that this is totally unacceptable in the modern civilized world.

And at the same time, to tell Israel that the way they are conducting this war is also totally unacceptable.

It is a violation of international humanitarian law.

I have never seen in my time as Secretary General such a high level of death and destruction in a conflict like the one that we are witnessing in Gaza.

And if what Hamas does is totally intolerable, it can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

- We have a General Assembly where the Palestinians are going to be given a symbolic seat.

They're not a member.

Many call for a two-state solution.

We're not close to that.

It appears.

Has there been constructive efforts that matter on the part of the member states of the United Nations to improve the long-term future for peace in the region?

- There is growing consensus on the need of a solution based on two states.

- You're optimistic.

- You know, there is a sentence I usually use in these circumstances, which is copying Jean Monnet, "I'm not optimistic, I'm not pessimistic, I'm just determined."

- Let's move to Russia.

Here is an environment where not only is the war persisting, but it's being fought by a country with an immense amount of destructive capability.

And it appears that there is escalation.

You work with the Russians.

Not many Americans can say that right now.

What do you think the mood of the Russian leadership is vis-a-vis the rest of the international community?

- I think, at the present moment, there is a clear opposition that is very obvious.

But we did our best to solve some small problems, even if they were relevant, namely in relation to the release of the- - Prisoner change.

- Prisoners of Azovstal.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative.

But the UN was never wished by the parties to play a key role in relation to a peace process.

And so, our position is very clear.

I mean, we must stick to principles.

And to stick to principles is to say that we want peace, but we want a just peace.

We want a peace based on the UN Charter, based on international law.

And one of the key aspects of international law is the respect for the territorial integrity of states.

Obviously, that limits our capacity to be part of any negotiation.

But I think it's very important to have a voice that sticks to principles and tells the world that the day international law is neglected, and the day territorial integrity of countries is forgotten, we will have chaos in the world.

- Do you think that role of not just the West, but China, India, countries that are doing much more business with Russia today, have they been constructive?

Have they been useful in trying to limit the escalation, the damage that can be done in this war?

- Well, I hope so.

I do not know the intricacies of the diplomacy among those countries.

But I hope so.

I hope that they have a positive influence to help convince Russia that this war is a war that is undermining the interest of Russia itself and it is undermining peace in the world.

- António Guterres, thanks so much for joining us today.

- Thank you.

(bright music) - Now, let's check in on one world leader who wasn't at the General Assembly this week.

Heads of state are rubbing elbows in New York City.

But what's Vladimir Putin up to?

I've got your Puppet Regime.

- Hi there, Vladimir Putin here.

You know, a lot of people are asking if I will attend this year's United Nations General Assembly.

No, you idiot.

Why would I?

Who wants to sit around in New York traffic all day just to spend time with people I hate?

Instead, I will spend week with person I love, me.

Invading myself with much deserved self-care.

I'm looking forward to sleeping in, catching up on latest television shows.

Crap.

Netflix is still banned in Russia?

Well, I guess it's time for another North Korean soap opera.

Listening to favorites of music.

This is kind of a deep cut, but it's called Soviet National Anthem.

Consulting my top advisors on key issues.

Cat, what should I do if NATO allows Ukraine to fire missiles into Russia?

But of course, me being me, I can't resist temptation to make my presence felt in New York somehow.

Hi, is that pizza place on Second Avenue?

Great.

I would like to order 10,000 pizzas to United Nations.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

They'll pay when you arrive.

♪ Puppet Regime ♪ - That's our show this week.

Come back next week and if you like what you see, or even if you don't, but you think the United Nations is a cool place to hang out, why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com?

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (lighthearted music) - [Announcer] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Announcer] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Announcer] And by, Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York and.

(lighthearted music) (upbeat music)