Mehdi SNENE
Senior Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies; Head of Program at the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies
Question: The network has made a long multilateral journey from a recommendation of the UN High-level Advisory Body on AI to its formal launch in Geneva. From the United Nations perspective, what does this launch mean for the global AI governance landscape, and can the network fill gaps left by existing multilateral mechanisms?
The UN-supported network for AI capacity building is not a single initiative capable of filling every governance gap; it is an essential starting point for turning global cooperation into action. By bringing together member-state-nominated centers, public institutions and technical organizations, the network enables scientific, technological, policy and use-case experience to inform global governance from the bottom up. The Global South should not be treated as a fixed geographical category, but understood dynamically according to countries' actual AI capabilities. Closing the divide requires practical arrangements for open compute, open data, open models and open collaboration, together with mechanisms that match available resources to real needs. Countries with advanced AI capabilities are often working to translate abstract governance principles into laws, policies and operational mechanisms, while less-resourced countries must build shared rules and common understanding from concrete needs such as compute and data access. These paths may appear to move in opposite directions, but they converge on governance that is both credible and implementable. The network must therefore generate measurable projects and impact, not exist merely for the sake of networking.
