When AI hurts people, who’s to blame? Global experts grapple with accountability

Published 7 July 2026 · tech

“Across 11 Global South countries, up to one child per classroom reported that AI was used to make sexually explicit deepfakes of them. Reports of

“Across 11 Global South countries, up to one child per classroom reported that AI was used to make sexually explicit deepfakes of them. Reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material to the US CyberTip line, NCMEC, are rising exponentially,” said Sonia Livingstone, from the Independent International Global Scientific Panel on AI. Highlighting other key findings from the panel’s first preliminary report mandated by the UN General Assembly, Ms. Livingstone insisted that the evidence for AI-linked violations against individuals, vulnerable and disadvantaged groups was “much more compelling” than the benefits. This is because the technology is being used “to create and amplify persuasion and deceit, to spread disinformation, distrust”, with personal data “taken, manipulated, abused, exploited” by self-learning systems, she maintained. UN Photo/Elma Okic Universal issue Tweet URL It is precisely because AI can be used for harm – and for good – that the UN believes all countries should be involved in deciding how the technology should be governed. The first Global AI Dialogue in Geneva – on the sidelines of the AI for Good Summit hosted by the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – will be followed by a second summit next May in New York.

One way to ensure that AI serves humanity rather than works against it is by hardwiring equality, accountability and human oversight into its design, development and deployment, insisted Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. “We don’t consider safety standards for medicines, cars or aircraft as obstacles to progress. They are the reason why people trust those technologies in the first place,” he stressed. Power-grab Among the many unresolved governance issues, one of the biggest is the energy-hungry data centres that power today’s AI platforms – prompting an industry-wide transparency call from the UN Secretary-General. “Anyone with a cell phone, with mobile service, a laptop can connect to the cloud and profit from AI to some extent. But the impact, the negative impacts that we see are very, very local,” said Sasha Luccioni, co-founder of Sustainable AI Group. Some of the world’s most marginalized are already suffering “in terms of water and energy and emissions, in terms of the health impacts that are getting more and more dire”, she said. Besides the challenge of deciding how to measure the environmental impact of AI, digital policy expert Jhalak Kakkar, from the Centre for Communication Governance at Delhi’s Law University, worried that it risked making existing inequalities in the Global South worse.