From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, September 30th.

Now we'll turn to a thing that happened at the United Nations General Assembly that you might not have seen or heard

about so much of the coverage had to do with either climate or the Middle East, right? But last

Thursday, the UN announced it's establishing a global forum for discussions about governing

artificial intelligence, similar to what exists for nuclear technology and climate change.

So we're going to hear actually from one of the members of the UN Secretary General's advisory

body on AI, Velas Dar, president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. A few weeks ago,

some of you heard on the show, we had the perspective of what you might call

an artificial intelligence doomsayer who argued that the development of super-intelligent technology

will ultimately lead to the extinction of humans. Well, our guest today is more optimistic.

He's trying to navigate a path toward minimizing the harms, but also maximizing

the opportunities that AI might present. His organization is dedicated to, quote, advancing AI

and data solutions to create a thriving, equitable, and sustainable future for all, unquote. And so he

joins us now to talk about the news from the UN and

why he thinks they have the opportunity to, again, quoting him, create a new narrative of AI,

one that serves public purpose rather than amplifying unjust profit or panic. He wrote that in a

Time magazine article on the topic. Vlas, thank you very much for joining us

for this. Thank you for some time. Welcome to WNYC. Brian, thanks so much for the warm welcome. I'm

delighted to be with you. So starting with that quote from your piece in Time magazine,

that you want to create a new narrative of AI, one that serves public purpose rather than

amplifying unjust profit or panic, where are the

kernels of truth in that, or where do you start to do that? Well, look, Brian, I've spent the last

...