UN General Assembly President Khalilur Rahman Talks AI

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Romaine Bostick (0:07)

Romaine Bostick here, sitting down right now with the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Dr. Khalilur Rahman. Dr. Rahman, you just took the gavel of the 81st General Assembly just over a few days ago.

Now, within the next few days, we're going to start to see the world leaders trickle into New York City. What is the primary message that you have for those world leaders?

Khalilur Rahman (0:30)

Thank you for having me. Yes, I took the gavel from my predecessor about a week ago. It felt heavier than I thought. So I'm looking forward to the next week's high-level segment of the General Assembly where we expect more than 125 heads of states and heads of governments to come.

This shows the convening power of the General Assembly. We will hear them, these leaders who are governing our societies, what is their outlook on various issues that are affecting us, the old and new issues from the raging conflicts to AI, and we'll sift through their views and try to find areas where we can agree and build on those in terms of agreed actions. So one of the things that I look very intently is at a time when the trust and confidence in the UN has arguably declined, What are the ways we can bring it back up?

Romaine Bostick (1:48)

Well, I am curious. Your term is going to overlap with a new UN Secretary General. That process is unfolding right now. The Security Council will present a name to you. Do you want just one name presented to you by the Security Council, or are you going to assist on multiple choices?

Khalilur Rahman (2:06)

This is a very good question. The charter is very clear.

I will be guided by the United Nations Charter. And the charter says that the Security Council will recommend a candidate and the General Assembly will appoint. So if the words of charter are kept by the Security Council members and they send me one name, I'll act on that one name. We haven't had a case in the last nine instances of multiple names advanced to us. But what happens is when a candidate announces he is or her candidate, we invite them to the General Assembly and explain their vision and their work program and have an interactive dialogue with the larger membership.

Romaine Bostick (2:58)

Are you anticipating any additional candidates to come forward that haven't already actually put their names out there?

Khalilur Rahman (3:06)

Candidates have been coming in, and I cannot predict whether there will be new ones. We'll have to do with that whenever it happens. But if somebody comes forward, I would do my job in getting that individual introduced to the member states and have a dialogue, Let's see if you can catch them all. And we will have a little bit of a prank dialogue on what she or he wants to do with this job.

Romaine Bostick (3:30)

Well, current Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez just yesterday was speaking to reporters, and he talked about three existential threats that he saw to the world. The climate crisis, growing inequalities, but also artificial intelligence. And I know that the next UN Global Dialogue is supposed to come up in March of next year, But I've heard you actually say that that dialogue can actually wait. We've had a lot of threats and a lot of concerns right now about the rollout of AI and the potential risk that it is posing to every nation around the world.

Khalilur Rahman (4:04)

My point is very simple. This is a fast-moving innovation that will fundamentally affect the way we live.

It's very important to understand the various aspects of it. First of all, the innovation part must not stop.

We should continue innovation and the doors to that should be open. But at the same time, we have to look at three issues that comes with it. First, job losses. I just heard from a young woman, Francesca, on your last program, about coders losing job. Okay. So this creative destruction of this new technology, I would like it to be more on the creative side than destructive side. And it's very important to ensure that there's a soft landing for those who are losing jobs, and they find alternative ways of living. The second thing that we have seen in the previous round of technological change, especially when internet came, digital divide between countries. We would like to see if there is a way to avoid that this time. And third, existential issues. We have heard from technology leaders in the last few days that a super smart AI with sentient characteristics might eventually even replace us as human species. You know, the processing powers of these beings are infinitely more than ours. So if it is a question of survival of the fittest, I'm not sure where we humans stand on the scale. But the important thing is that we avoid that eventually. We did it when it came to human clout.