The UN secretary general, António Guterres, addresses the delegates at the general assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on 30 May 2024.The UN secretary general, António Guterres, addresses the delegates at the general assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on 30 May 2024.technology multiplies the threat of nuclear war, and that humanity is now “on a knife’s edge” as dangers to its existence coalesce.
In the video, the secretary general makes his most impassioned plea to date for the nuclear weapons states to take their non-proliferation obligations seriously, and in particular, agree on a mutual pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. More than 30 years since the end of the cold war, the US and Russia keep many of their intercontinental ballistic missiles on a hair-trigger alert, ready to launch at a few minutes’ warning. There are fears that in the drive to bolster each nation’s deterrent, launch procedures are being streamlined potentially with the help of AI.
“All countries must agree that any decision on nuclear use is made by humans, not machines or algorithms,” Guterres insisted.on the need to “maintain human control” of nuclear launches. Russia and China have yet to issue any comparable declaration., the number of nuclear weapons has declined dramatically since the cold war from a 1986 peak of about 70,300 weapons in 1986 to an estimated 12,100 this year.