UN General Assembly Resolution A/78/L.49 ("Seizing the opportunities of safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems for sustainable development"

• Authority: United Nations
• Jurisdiction: Multinational
• Collections: Multinational
• Most recent activity: Enacted
• Most recent activity date: 2024-03-11

Risk subdomain coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the risk subdomain are explicitly described.

• Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
• Compromise of privacy
• AI system security vulnerabilities
• False or misleading information
• Loss of human agency and autonomy
• Power centralization and unfair distribution
• Increased inequality and decline in employment
• Governance failure
• Lack of capability or robustness
• Lack of transparency or interpretability

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the risk subdomain are described.

• Unequal performance across groups
• Pollution of information ecosystem
• Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale
• Cyberattacks, weapon development or use
• Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
• Overreliance and unsafe use
• Economic and cultural devaluation of human effort
• Competitive dynamics

All other risk subdomains had no coverage in this document.

Risk Coverage Summary

The document has good coverage of approximately 10-12 subdomains, with strong focus on discrimination and bias (1.1, 1.3), privacy and data protection (2.1), misinformation (3.1, 3.2), malicious use (4.1, 4.2, 4.3), human agency (5.2), socioeconomic impacts (6.1, 6.2, 6.5), and system robustness (7.3, 7.4). Coverage is concentrated in human rights, governance, and equitable development domains.

Sector coverage

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the sector are described.

• Information
• Scientific Research & Development Services
• Educational Services
• Public Administration (excl. National Security)

All other sectors had no coverage in this document.

Sectors Summary

This UN resolution does not govern specific economic sectors but rather establishes cross-cutting principles for AI governance applicable to all sectors. It is a horizontal governance framework focused on sustainable development, human rights, and international cooperation rather than sector-specific regulation. The document addresses AI systems broadly across all domains in the non-military sphere.

Legislative Status

Soft Law

Legislative Status Summary

This is a UN General Assembly resolution that uses predominantly voluntary language ('encourages', 'invites', 'calls upon') without binding enforcement mechanisms or legal penalties for non-compliance. It establishes principles and recommendations for AI governance but relies on voluntary adherence by Member States.

Actors

Proposer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Entities: United Nations General Assembly
• Summary: The document is a UN General Assembly Resolution (A/78/L.49), proposed and adopted by the General Assembly as indicated by the resolution number and format.

Target

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor, AI_Developer, AI_Deployer, AI_Infrastructure_Provider
• Entities: Member States; private sector; international and regional organizations; civil society; media; academia and research institutions; technical communities
• Summary: The resolution explicitly targets Member States as primary actors, while also inviting multi-stakeholders including private sector entities (AI developers/deployers), infrastructure providers, and governance actors to implement the governance approaches throughout the AI lifecycle.

Enforcer

• Summary: The resolution does not establish any enforcement body or mechanism. It relies on voluntary adherence by Member States and stakeholders without designated enforcement authorities.

Monitor

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Entities: specialized agencies, funds, programmes, other entities, bodies and offices, and related organizations of the United Nations system; Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology; High-level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence
• Summary: The resolution calls upon UN system entities to assess and monitor progress, and references existing UN bodies like the Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology and High-level Advisory Body on AI that have monitoring and reporting functions.

AI Lifecycle Stages

Lifecycle stages covered by the documents, as defined in the OECD Framework for the Classification of AI Systems

• Plan and Design
• Collect and Process Data
• Build and Use Model
• Verify and Validate
• Deploy
• Operate and Monitor

AI Lifecycle Summary

The document explicitly covers all AI lifecycle stages comprehensively, with particular emphasis on design, development, testing, deployment, and operation/monitoring. It repeatedly references 'throughout the life cycle of artificial intelligence systems' and explicitly lists all stages in its definition.

Technical Scope

Terms relating to technical scope that are mentioned or implicitly referenced in the document

• AI Systems
• Open Weight / Open Source

Technical Scope Summary

The document explicitly mentions AI systems throughout but does not define or distinguish between AI models and AI systems. It does not explicitly reference frontier AI, general purpose AI, task-specific AI, foundation models, generative AI, predictive AI, open-weight models, or compute thresholds. The focus is on 'safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems' as a general category.