RIYADH: Tee Wee Ang, program specialist for bioethics and ethics of science and technology at UNESCO, says it is too early to conclude that artificial intelligence has already outpaced governments’ ability to regulate it.
“AI is advancing extremely quickly and many governments are still adapting,” he said during an appearance on Arab News’ current-affairs program “Frankly Speaking,” which digs deep into the insights of some of the most important Middle East and global policy makers and business leaders.
That does not mean governments can afford to move slowly, Ang said, “but I would be cautious about concluding that policymakers have already lost control.”
His comments come as AI continues to advance at a pace that is testing governments’ ability to understand, regulate and ultimately take responsibility for the technology’s growing impact.
From AI safety concerns inside the technology industry to warnings that governments are unprepared for the disruption ahead, pressure is mounting on policymakers to catch up with systems evolving faster than traditional regulatory processes can accommodate.
The urgency of that debate was underlined this week when Jacob Coxon, a researcher who had worked on AI pretraining at OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned from Anthropic.
Coxon accused both companies of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives,” warning that future systems could become superhuman, hack almost anything, transform industries overnight and acquire real-world power.
Ang also said many people working on AI privately believe it could kill everyone by the end of the decade.
Against that backdrop, the question is not simply whether governments are regulating quickly enough, but whether they can develop effective safeguards while the technology continues to accelerate.
For Ang, the accelerating pace of innovation makes effective governance more important. That task extends well beyond simply passing legislation.
“Governance is not only about legislation,” he said. “It also involves standards, institutional capacity, regulatory guidance, impact assessments and international cooperation.”
The debate is particularly significant as countries compete to develop AI capabilities while trying to establish rules for a technology with consequences extending from health care and education to employment, security and political decision-making.
“The pace of innovation may be accelerating, but that makes governance more important, not less,” Ang said. He added: “The question is not whether governments can stop technological change.
The question is whether they can create the conditions for innovation to develop responsibly and in the public interest.”
That challenge is complicated by the absence of a single global rulebook governing AI.
UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, adopted by its member states, is deliberately nonbinding. For critics, that raises questions about what happens when governments or companies simply choose not to follow international principles.
Ang argues that its flexibility is one of its strengths, saying: “It actually provides a more flexible framework because when member states were moving toward adoption of this instrument, AI was just emerging, really exploding into the market at that point.”
A more adaptable framework, he said, allows governments to evaluate and adjust their approach as the technology develops rather than locking them into rules that could quickly become outdated.
Whether countries eventually need binding international agreement, potentially a global treaty, remains unresolved.
Ang said that decision “really would be up to member states,” which must determine whether they are ready for binding regulation or still require the flexibility provided by softer approaches.
“I think this is a continuing dialogue,” he said. “It needs to be a continuing dialogue in the global space.”
That international debate is becoming harder to separate from the geopolitical competition surrounding AI. A small number of countries and companies currently possess much of the most advanced AI technology, computing capacity, data and expertise.
That concentration raises a separate question: Who gets to shape the rules governing technology that will affect societies far beyond those already at the center of the AI race?
The private sector, Ang said, has an essential role but cannot be allowed to become the sole voice in determining how AI is governed.
“The governance of technologies that affect entire societies cannot be shaped by any single stakeholder group,” he said. “Governments, industry, academia, civil society, international organizations all have a role to play.”
The challenge is particularly acute because policymakers are trying to strike a balance between two competing fears — that weak regulation could expose people to serious risks, and that excessive regulation could send investment and innovation elsewhere.
Ang rejects the idea that governments must choose one objective over the other.
“This is often presented as a choice, but I don’t believe it actually is,” he said. “Innovation is most sustainable when people trust the technology.”
If AI systems are unsafe, biased or deployed irresponsibly, public confidence can deteriorate and ultimately undermine adoption.
“UNESCO’s perspective is that ethics and innovation are not competing objectives. In fact, they work best together,” Ang said.
“The objective of governance is not to slow innovation. It is to ensure that innovation remains trustworthy, safe, and aligned with societal values.”
That argument is increasingly relevant in Saudi Arabia, where the government is investing heavily in AI as part of a broader drive to establish the Kingdom as a major global technology hub.
Saudi Arabia has also been developing institutions and policy frameworks to support that ambition, including through the Saudi Data and AI Authority, or SDAIA.
