NEW YORK — More than 600 young people from around the world gathered at United Nations Headquarters this week to press for a greater role in shaping artificial intelligence governance, as governments confront how AI could transform jobs, education, inequality and economic competitiveness.
The Youth and AI Summit, held on August 12 for International Youth Day, brought together young participants, diplomats and UN officials to discuss how AI can advance the Sustainable Development Goals while limiting risks associated with its rapid adoption.
The summit culminated in a Youth-led Declaration on AI Policy and Governance, designed to feed recommendations from younger generations into wider UN discussions on AI governance and implementation of the Global Digital Compact.
The timing is significant. The Global Digital Compact, adopted by world leaders in September 2024 as part of the Pact for the Future, established a broad framework for international digital cooperation and AI governance. The UN General Assembly subsequently established the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance in August 2025. The first annual Global Dialogue was held in Geneva on July 6–7, 2026.
For governments, the central question is increasingly not whether AI requires governance, but who participates in setting the rules and how those rules account for vastly different national capacities and development priorities.
Youth Seek a Formal Role in the Governance Debate
Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs Felipe Paullier argued that younger generations should be involved earlier in policy formation because they will live longest with the consequences of decisions being made today.
“Young people are sometimes included in these conversations, but they’re actually included only at a few moments,” Paullier said, according to UN News.
“Meaningful youth participation is not about being consulted in a tokenistic way at the end of a process. It’s about involving them at the beginning.”
That argument is gaining relevance as AI policy shifts from largely technical discussions toward questions of employment, education, public-service delivery, privacy, security and economic competitiveness.
Dominica’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Philbert Aaron, framed the debate more broadly.
“This is not simply a conversation about technology,” he said. “It is a conversation about power, dignity, opportunity, culture and the future we choose to build together.”
Developing Countries Warn of an Emerging AI Divide
A major concern raised at the summit was the risk that AI could reinforce existing inequalities between countries.
Advanced AI systems depend on more than access to software. Governments increasingly require reliable electricity, digital infrastructure, computing capacity, skilled workers, investment and data ecosystems to deploy AI effectively at scale.
Those resources remain unevenly distributed.
“Technological progress will not automatically translate into human progress if developing countries lack access to the infrastructure, computing capacity, skills, finance and knowledge,” Balochistan Governor Sheikh Jaffar Khan Mandokhail said, according to UN News.
The warning is particularly relevant for developing economies seeking to capture productivity gains from AI without becoming dependent on technology, infrastructure and models developed elsewhere.
Paullier also cautioned against excessive concentration of AI development among a limited number of corporations and higher-income economies.
“We want AI to help to reduce inequalities, not to deepen inequalities,” he said.
For governments, this places AI capacity-building, technology access and financing alongside safety and regulation as increasingly important diplomatic issues.
Youth Employment Adds Urgency
The summit also coincided with growing concern over the employment outlook for younger workers.
The International Labour Organization reported that global youth unemployment rose to 12.4% in 2025, while approximately 260 million young people worldwide were not in employment, education or training.
Separately, the ILO estimates that 6.1% of jobs held by people aged 15 to 29 are in occupations highly exposed to AI-related change.
That does not mean those jobs will necessarily disappear. The ILO has cautioned that occupational exposure may result in tasks being transformed or augmented rather than eliminated, and that the eventual employment impact of AI remains uncertain.
The findings are nevertheless significant because younger workers are often concentrated in entry-level, administrative and knowledge-based roles where automation could change hiring patterns and required skills relatively quickly.
The policy implications extend beyond labor ministries.
Governments may increasingly need to coordinate education policy, workforce development, industrial strategy and AI regulation to ensure that technological adoption does not outpace workers’ ability to adapt.
What Governments Should Watch
The Youth-led Declaration itself is not binding, but the summit reflects several issues likely to become more prominent in international AI diplomacy.
Governments should watch whether youth participation becomes more institutionalized within emerging UN AI-governance mechanisms rather than remaining largely consultative.
They should also monitor how the debate over the global AI divide evolves. Developing countries are increasingly likely to push for financing, computing access, infrastructure investment, skills development and technology transfer alongside discussions of AI safety and standards.
Labor-market impacts will be another pressure point. As AI adoption accelerates, governments will face growing demands to demonstrate how education and employment systems are preparing populations for structural changes in the economy.
Questions of market concentration are also likely to become more politically significant. A global governance system dominated by countries and companies already leading AI development could face resistance from governments concerned about technological dependency and unequal economic gains.
Strategic Outlook
The New York summit reflects a broader shift in the international AI debate.
What began largely as a conversation about technological safety is becoming a much wider diplomatic agenda encompassing economic sovereignty, development finance, workforce resilience, infrastructure, inequality and political representation.
For governments, the emerging challenge will be balancing domestic competitiveness with international cooperation while ensuring that the benefits of AI are distributed more broadly across countries and generations.
The more than 600 young people gathered at the UN this week added another constituency to that negotiation.
Their message was straightforward: the architecture governing AI is being built now, and those who will live longest under those rules want a role in designing them.
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