AI-generated from cited sourcesTransparency information
AI-generated content: This report was produced from the cited sources using artificial intelligence and underwent automated source and consistency checks. It was not substantively reviewed by a human editor.
Artificial intelligence may be built with data, computing power and code, but deciding how it should serve humanity requires a much wider range of voices. At the United Nations’ first Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance, questions of dignity, truth, cultural identity and responsibility moved close to the center of the international conversation.
Held July 6–7, 2026, in Geneva, the inaugural dialogue brought governments together with representatives of civil society, academia, industry and the technical community. The gathering grew out of the UN’s Global Digital Compact and was designed to give countries at every level of technological development a meaningful place in discussions about AI governance.
Marianna Richardson, director of communications for the G20 Interfaith Forum and head of its AI working group, attended as an IF20 representative. Her four-part account of the dialogue offers an important perspective on how religious and ethical concerns entered a meeting largely conducted in the language of policy, science and technology.
Religion was not always named directly. Instead, participants frequently spoke about culture, heritage and human flourishing. That vocabulary nevertheless opened a door to questions that religious communities, humanists and Indigenous traditions have considered for generations: What makes a life fully human? Who is responsible when powerful tools cause harm? How should societies protect truth, memory and the vulnerable?
A Global Table for a Global Technology
The UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance was established as a recurring platform for international cooperation, shared learning and open discussion. Its creation reflects a growing recognition that no country can govern a border-crossing technology alone.
At the opening session, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described AI as a technology capable of transforming economies, work, elections and security. He warned that governance is struggling to keep pace, while also pointing to AI’s potential contributions to medicine, education, agriculture and disaster preparedness.
The constructive challenge, therefore, is not to choose between innovation and restraint. It is to create conditions in which innovation is accountable to people. Speakers repeatedly called for common safety standards, stronger human oversight, greater transparency and support for countries that lack the infrastructure or expertise needed to shape their own technological futures.
This concern was especially urgent for smaller nations and communities whose languages remain poorly represented in major AI systems. Language is more than a technical interface. It carries stories, spiritual traditions, relationships and ways of understanding the world. When an AI system cannot work meaningfully in a community’s language, that community risks becoming a consumer of technology built around someone else’s assumptions.
Education Before Adoption
Access to AI tools, participants argued, does not automatically produce opportunity. People also need the knowledge and confidence to evaluate what those tools generate.
As Richardson’s second report from the dialogue explains, an education-focused side event emphasized AI literacy, critical thinking and human agency. Ambassador Professor Muhammadou Kah argued that education should be understood as a foundation of responsible governance, not merely as one sector in which AI might be deployed.
That distinction matters. A nominal “human in the loop” provides little protection if the person overseeing a system does not understand its limitations or lacks the authority to challenge its output. Responsible adoption requires institutions that prepare teachers, public officials, workers and young people to recognize errors, bias and manipulation.
Education also offers one of the clearest areas for cooperation with faith communities. Religious organizations operate schools, universities, youth programs and community networks around the world. Used responsibly, those networks can help communities develop digital literacy without reducing education to technical training. They can keep questions of character, judgment, compassion and responsibility in view.
Protecting Truth and Children
The second day turned particular attention toward information integrity. According to the third installment of Richardson’s account, participants warned that generative AI can make fabricated material cheaper and faster to produce, weakening trust in journalism, institutions and one another.
Children face distinctive risks because they are adopting AI rapidly while often having less ability to recognize manipulative design, synthetic media or unreliable answers. Speakers called for safety to be built into systems by default, supported by independent testing and meaningful standards.
Here, too, religious and secular ethics can find substantial common ground. Truth should not be treated merely as a technical problem of labeling content. It is also a public good sustained by honesty, trustworthy institutions and respect for the people affected by falsehoods. Protecting children similarly requires more than asking families to manage every risk individually. Developers, governments, educators and community institutions all carry responsibilities.
From Access to Genuine Capacity
The dialogue’s closing discussions focused on turning broad principles into practical support. The UN AI Resource Hub was introduced as a way to bring together tools and knowledge currently dispersed across the UN system. Germany also announced plans for a European Union Center for Human-Centered AI intended to strengthen expertise, accountability and cooperation.
Richardson’s final report captures one of the gathering’s most useful conclusions: capacity, rather than access alone, will determine whether AI becomes a source of empowerment or exclusion.
A country may have access to an AI application while still lacking local data, skilled workers, regulatory expertise or infrastructure. Communities may be connected to advanced systems without having any meaningful influence over how those systems represent their languages, histories or values. Bridging the AI divide must therefore include education, financing, local research and sustained participation in governance.
African representatives called attention to longstanding patterns of exclusion and encouraged approaches grounded in local knowledge, including the relational principles expressed through Ubuntu. Latin American and Caribbean participants likewise stressed regional cooperation, training and governance built from the ground up.
A Continuing Role for Faith Communities
The Geneva dialogue did not produce a final global rulebook, and it would be premature to present it as a complete answer. Its hopeful achievement was more foundational: countries and stakeholders with very different interests began identifying a shared moral vocabulary for the work ahead.
Human dignity, care for children, cultural preservation, truth, stewardship and responsibility toward marginalized communities are not exclusively religious values. They are shared by believers, nonbelievers and people whose identities cross conventional boundaries. Faith communities can contribute most effectively when they bring their experience into conversation with science, human rights and the lived knowledge of affected communities.
That contribution should remain concrete. It can include defending linguistic and religious diversity in training data, teaching critical AI literacy, advocating for communities excluded from policy discussions, examining the environmental costs of computing and insisting that decisions involving human life remain under meaningful human control.
The first UN Global Dialogue suggests that responsible AI governance will require more than faster regulation or better engineering. It will require the patient work of listening across borders and traditions, building public trust and deciding together what technological progress is for.
If that work continues, AI governance may become not only a response to risk, but an opportunity to strengthen global cooperation around a simple principle: technology should be shaped with people, for people and in service of shared human flourishing.