Essay by Eric Worrall
Out with the old scare, in with the new.
Antonio Guterres at AI Impact Summit: ‘Less hype, less fear’ – IPCC-style UN panel aims for ‘human control’ of AI
At the India AI Impact Summit 2026, UN chief Antonio Guterres emphasised the need for a balanced approach to AI, advocating for less hype and fear while promoting human oversight.
Written By Gulam Jeelani
Published20 Feb 2026, 11:57 AM ISTIndia AI Impact Summit: UN chief Antonio Guterres on 20 February called for ‘less hype, less fear’ over Artificial Intelligence (AI) as he said that a new expert panel aimed to make human control ‘a technical reality’, news agency AFP reported.
Guterres said the United Nations General Assembly had confirmed the 40 members proposed for the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence.
“Science-led governance is not a brake on progress” but can make it “safer, fairer, and more widely shared”, he said at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.
‘Less hype, less fear. More facts and evidence’
“The message is simple: Less hype, less fear. More facts and evidence,” he said. The advisory body – aiming to be to AI what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to global warming – was created in August.
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“We are barrelling into the unknown. Our goal is to make human control a technical reality — not a slogan,” he said.
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Read more: https://www.livemint.com/technology/tech-news/antonio-guterres-at-ai-impact-summit-less-hype-less-fear-says-ipcc-style-un-panel-aims-for-human-control-of-ai-11771566064031.html
The United Nations aren’t the only group dumping climate change and jumping on the AI bandwagon.
‘Slow this thing down’: Sanders warns US has no clue about speed and scale of coming AI revolution
After meeting with unspecified tech leaders, senator calls for urgent policy action as companies race to build ever more powerful systems
Lauren Gambino at StanfordSat 21 Feb 2026 15.26 AEDT
Bernie Sanders has warned that Congress and the American public have “not a clue” about the scale and speed of the coming AI revolution, pressing for urgent policy action to “slow this thing down” as tech companies race to build ever-more powerful systems.
Speaking at Stanford University on Friday alongside congressman Ro Khanna after a series of meetings with industry leaders in California, Sanders was blunt about what he called the “most dangerous moment in the modern history of this country”.
“The Congress and the American people are very unprepared for the tsunami that is coming,” he said.
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During his remarks, Sanders reissued his call for a moratorium on the expansion of AI data centers to “slow down the revolution and protect workers” while policymakers catch up.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/ai-revolution-bernie-sanders-warning
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I predicted back in 2017 that AI would replace the climate crisis, and this seems to be happening now.
The fake climate crisis is no longer useful as a political lever. Only people who already planned to vote left wing are still worried about global warming.
But fear of artificial intelligence taking our jobs and making rich people more powerful – that has potential bipartisan appeal.
So expect to see a lot more AI fear in the near future. But please keep in mind, the AI scare is just as fake as the climate scare. Jobs will be created just as quickly as they are destroyed – expect cleaning up the messes created by AI to become a major economic activity.
Artificial intelligence is a tool. AI mistakes are comical rather than scary, or sometimes deeply embarrassing for whoever used the AI generated content without checking it. Concern about AI job losses is just another lever for politicians to manipulate your voting intentions. Fear of AI is like being afraid of your toaster.
