The panel, created at the recommendation of UN Secretary‑General António Guterres and formally appointed by the General Assembly in February, brings together 40 leading experts from academia, government, civil society, the private sector and the technical community. Its mandate is to examine how AI is reshaping economies, governance and daily life, while ensuring that innovation remains aligned with human rights and ethical principles.
“We are not just focusing on AI as a mathematical or algorithmic field,” said panel member Menna El‑Assady, an Assistant Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. “We are making sure that humans remain central to decision‑making.”
El‑Assady, an Egyptian national, is one of the panel’s founding members. Her research focuses on “augmented intelligence”, an approach that uses AI to enhance human capabilities rather than replace them. She argues that the most effective systems are those where humans and AI evolve together, a process known as the co‑adaptation loop.
“We are trying to understand when humans and their expertise are essential, and when processes can be safely automated,” she said.
The panel’s work spans key sectors including healthcare, labour markets, public services and governance. Members are also examining how AI systems can better reflect global diversity.
“We need public digital infrastructure so that access to AI development is not limited to a few countries,” El‑Assady said. “And we must integrate different cultures and languages into models.”
The panel was established amid growing concern about the risks of unregulated AI. Guterres has warned that “humanity’s fate cannot be left to an algorithm”, while UN human rights chief Volker Türk has cautioned against deploying AI systems without ethical grounding.
Trust and transparency are central themes for the panel. El‑Assady points to AI watermarking as one possible tool to distinguish between human‑created and AI‑generated content.
The panel’s first report is expected to be released at the Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva on July 6-7, marking a significant step toward global, human‑centred oversight of AI.
–UN/ChannelAfrica–
