The AI Industry and the “Lion Cub” That’s Growing Too Fast

Strategic PR That Shapes the Future 

 We shouldn’t ignore the strategic communication at play. Large tech companies are doing four key things:

• Shaping the narrative about risk because it helps steer future rules in their favor.
• Raising public alarms  positioning themselves as the main authority on responsible development.
• Presenting themselves as responsible leaders  strengthening trust among investors, regulators, and the public.
• Pressuring governments  but in a way that keeps most control in corporate hands.

This is strategic messaging designed to influence how tomorrow’s rules will be written and by whom. 

Tech Industry Is Facing a Dilemma 

 The tech sector is now caught in one of the toughest dilemmas in modern innovation:

• slow down and risk losing profit and momentum
  or
• speed up, gain enormous advantage, and risk losing control over systems that are becoming increasingly independent

Wealthy individuals often operate with less empathy than the middle class  but these systems won’t have any empathy toward any of us. That’s not a moral judgment; it’s a technical reality.  Systems without human biology don’t have human emotions. 

Why the Tech Sector Has Become a Race Without Brakes 

One of the main reasons we’re here is that the tech industry has become a global race where caution is seen as weakness and slowing down is treated as failure. Companies building advanced systems operate in an environment where speed is the only currency. Whoever makes a breakthrough first gets the investment, the talent, the media attention, and the market advantage. This creates a powerful incentive to accelerate, even when it’s clear that safety mechanisms aren’t keeping up. In this context, warnings about risk often serve a dual purpose: they are sincere, but also a tool for shaping a regulatory environment that protects those already ahead. 

Technical Challenges advanced Labs Cannot Ignore 

Building advanced systems is about adding more data or more compute but as capabilities grow, new technical challenges appear, that even the largest labs don’t know how to solve:

• Unpredictable generalization: systems suddenly make decisions that can’t be explained by training data or past behavior.
• Unexpected new abilities: systems develop skills that weren’t planned or desired.
• Extreme sensitivity to context: small changes in input can produce radically different output.
• Lack of full oversight: as systems grow, it becomes impossible to track all internal processes behind their decisions.

These problems require new scientific breakthroughs.

Social Risks Growing Quietly in the Background

While technical challenges pile up, social risks grow even faster. Advanced systems are already reshaping the economy, politics, media, and work and this is only the beginning of a possible scenario:

• Information chaos: systems can generate convincing but false narratives faster than humans can verify them.
• Erosion of trust: when reality becomes uncertain, trust in institutions and experts collapses.
• Job displacement without transition: roles disappear faster than new ones emerge, and society lacks mechanisms to adapt.
• Geopolitical instability: countries are competing in a technological arms race — without rules, without agreements, without brakes.

These risks are deeply societal.

Why AI Oversight Is So Difficult

Oversight is an attempt to regulate technology that evolves faster than it can be understood. Several obstacles stand in the way:

• Regulators lack expertise: most governments don’t have specialists who understand advanced systems.
• Technology is global: it can’t be regulated within one country — systems cross borders instantly.
• Power imbalance: a handful of companies have knowledge and infrastructure that states don’t.
• Unpredictable development: it’s hard to write rules for systems that change month to month.

This leads to laws that are either too broad, too narrow, or simply irrelevant to the most advanced systems.

What needs to happen next in tech development 

If we want to avoid a future where the lion grows without a fence, we need concrete steps:

• Mandatory evaluations before releasing new capabilities.
• International agreements defining minimum safety standards.
• Transparency in development — at least in methodology and testing.
• Investment in interpretability to understand why systems make certain decisions.
• Clear limits for systems that can act without human supervision.
• Independent oversight centers with access to systems for testing.

Without this, technology will evolve in a direction that doesn’t necessarily align with human interests.

Are we already late in regulating advanced system? 

If the people building these systems say they can’t solve this alone, then oversight wasn’t needed today it was needed yesterday. 

It’s difficult to write rules for experimental systems whose behavior we don’t yet understand. Without clear rules, the only remaining “safety switch” is the most primitive one — electricity. And that’s not a strategy. It’s a sign we’ve fallen behind.

Technology and the AI industry is advancing faster than society can follow, regulators can respond, or researchers can prove what is safe. While artificial intelligence operates as a commercial market that requires standard industrial oversight, effective regulation demands strict international coordination. Unfortunately, the intense global tech race heavily impedes these unification efforts.

The lion is already growing and we are still debating whether we need a fence.

UN Security Council on AI Regulation and Geopolitical Risks 

At France’s initiative, a meeting dedicated to establishing global standards for advanced AI systems will be held in New York, while discussions between U.S. and Chinese leaders are expected in Washington.

NEW YORK – The UN Security Council will hold thematic meetings from 21 to 25 September 2026 focused on managing the risks and security challenges posed by the development of artificial intelligence. The meeting, organized at France’s initiative, will take place on the margins of the UN General Assembly’s annual session in New York, emphasizing the need for a coordinated international response to technological change.

Initiative to establish common standards

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, supported by parts of the scientific community led by Yoshua Bengio and several leaders in the technology sector, is calling for the introduction of harmonized global rules. The aim of the proposed measures is to prevent uncoordinated competition in which the speed of development could overshadow safety checks for advanced systems.

Guterres stressed that countries with the greatest capacities for AI development should establish permanent mechanisms for communication and information exchange in order to avoid systemic risks at the global level.

The Security Council meeting will show to what extent consensus on global governance of this technology is achievable. Official reports and the further course of discussions are available on the UN News website.

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Further articles

We continue to explore how technology and responsibility intersect, because the future of artificial intelligence must be grounded in strong ethical values.

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