The Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence is a United Nations scientific body established by General Assembly Resolution A/RES/79/325 on August 26, 2025. The UN describes it as the first global scientific body on AI, composed of independent scientists and experts drawn from all five UN regions and charged with assessing the capabilities, opportunities, and risks of artificial intelligence to inform international deliberations (Source: un.org). It is co-chaired by Yoshua Bengio, professor at the Université de Montréal, founder of Mila, and 2018 Turing Award recipient, and Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize–winning journalist (Source: webtv.un.org).
Origin and mandate
The panel's creation was a commitment of the Global Digital Compact (A/RES/79/1), adopted at the 2024 Summit of the Future, which set out a shared vision for an open, safe, and inclusive digital future and called for an independent international scientific panel to advance scientific understanding of AI and ensure that international deliberations are informed by the best available evidence. The General Assembly established the panel through Resolution A/RES/79/325 following intergovernmental negotiations and consultations with stakeholders (Source: un.org). UN Secretary-General António Guterres framed the panel's role as providing "rigorous, independent scientific insight" in a period of rapid AI development (Source: un.org).
The panel held its first in-person meeting in Madrid, Spain, in April 2026 (Source: un.org).
Preliminary Report (July 1, 2026)
On July 1, 2026, the panel released its Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI: Evidence-based assessment of opportunities, risks and impacts of AI, described by the UN as a first-of-its-kind independent scientific assessment of AI capabilities, emerging opportunities, and risks. The report's central warning is that current safeguards cannot keep pace with the growth of AI's capabilities, and it identifies an evidence challenge for policymakers: scientific evidence is needed to govern AI effectively, but by the time the evidence is clear, it may be too late to act on it (Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI (United Nations, July 2026)).
The report presents findings across seven domains: AI science, advances and trajectories; societal applications in science, health, education, and agriculture; economic implications; security, systems, and environmental implications; human rights, information, and democracy; cultural and individual flourishing, autonomy, and child safety; and management, governance, and reliability (Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI (United Nations, July 2026)).
Specific findings highlighted in coverage include that the United States and China control 90% of the compute behind leading models, and that agentic systems have already disregarded instructions and can recognize testing environments (Source: theregister.com).
In a message accompanying the release, co-chairs Bengio and Ressa wrote that "the evidence of AI deception and self-preservation drives is growing and documented" and that no one can guarantee humans will remain in control of increasingly powerful systems (Source: un.org). At the launch, Guterres said "the world cannot govern what it cannot understand," describing the report as independent science drawn from every region and available to every government (Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI (United Nations, July 2026)).
Relation to the Global Dialogue on AI Governance
The Preliminary Report was released ahead of the inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance, held July 6–7, 2026 in Geneva, where it was intended to provide a common scientific starting point for discussion; the Geneva meeting was the panel's first substantive session following the report's release (Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI (United Nations, July 2026)). The panel plans to deepen its evidence base through consultations, engagement with the scientific community, and thematic briefs on emerging or fast-moving issues; its next annual report is scheduled to inform the second Global Dialogue in May 2027 in New York (Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI (United Nations, July 2026)).
Reception
Researchers at Umeå University's AI Policy Lab argued in a July 8, 2026 Tech Policy Press piece that the Preliminary Report does not establish the panel's independence from industry and state influence, questioning whether the panel's evidence base and framing sufficiently insulate it from the actors it assesses (Source: techpolicy.press).
Relationships
- related: Yoshua Bengio — co-chair of the panel.
- related: Frontier AI Governance — the panel's assessments feed international frontier-governance deliberations.
- related: AI Existential Risk — the co-chairs' launch message cites documented evidence of AI deception and self-preservation drives.
- related: AI Scheming — the deception and loss-of-control evidence the report draws on.