NEW YORK: Climate change and artificial intelligence may appear to be very different global challenges. But for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, they increasingly raise the same question: who holds power, and who is held accountable when that power causes harm?

Addressing the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Guterres warned world leaders that the accelerating climate crisis and the rapid development of artificial intelligence are exposing growing imbalances in the way economic and technological power is exercised.

In his final General Assembly address as UN Secretary-General, he described climate change as a profound intergenerational power imbalance and warned that exceeding the 1.5°C global warming threshold is becoming increasingly likely.

His message on responsibility was direct.

“Those who polluted the most and profited the most must do far more to repair the damage they caused. Polluters must pay,” Guterres said.

The argument reflects a longstanding tension in international climate negotiations. Many developing countries have contributed a relatively small share of historical greenhouse gas emissions but face some of the greatest risks from rising temperatures, floods, droughts and other climate extremes.

For Guterres, addressing that imbalance requires more than reducing future emissions. It also means providing vulnerable countries with the resources to prepare for climate impacts that are already becoming harder to avoid.

Adaptation finance remains a major gap

Guterres called on developed countries to triple financing for climate adaptation, highlighting the persistent shortage of resources available to countries trying to strengthen their resilience against worsening climate impacts.

Adaptation can take many forms: stronger flood protection, heat-resilient infrastructure, drought preparedness, early-warning systems, improved water management and healthcare systems capable of responding to climate-related emergencies.

For countries already facing development pressures, however, these measures can require investments that national budgets struggle to provide.

Guterres contrasted the scale of profits generated by major oil companies since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the international financing available for climate adaptation in developing countries.

The comparison was intended to underline a broader climate justice argument: those who have benefited most from carbon-intensive economic growth have greater capacity and, in the UN chief’s view, greater responsibility to help finance the response.

He also urged governments to develop credible plans for transitioning away from fossil fuels in line with international efforts to limit long-term warming to 1.5°C.

But climate change was only one example in his speech of power advancing faster than systems of accountability.

AI is creating another concentration of power

Turning to artificial intelligence, Guterres warned that control over data, computing capacity and advanced algorithms is becoming concentrated among a relatively small number of countries and companies.

AI systems are developing quickly, while international rules governing their use remain fragmented.

“The danger is not technology. The danger is technology without accountability,” Guterres said.

The distinction is important.

Artificial intelligence is already becoming part of healthcare, education, business, public administration, scientific research and national security. Its potential benefits are substantial. But the same technologies can also create new risks when decisions become difficult to explain, oversight is weak or powerful systems are controlled by only a few institutions.

Guterres called for stronger international cooperation on AI safety, including greater transparency, shared testing and evaluation, and common safeguards among countries developing the most advanced systems.

He also proposed a multilateral framework for managing AI risks, supported by credible and independent oversight.

His broader argument was that technological capability should not advance without corresponding systems of responsibility.

Some decisions should remain human

The concern becomes particularly serious when artificial intelligence moves from assisting human decisions to making decisions with consequences for human life.

Guterres warned against allowing children to become test subjects for inadequately regulated AI systems and stressed that meaningful human control must remain at the centre of high-risk applications.

“Life-and-death decisions must never be surrendered to machines,” he said.

He also renewed calls for international action against autonomous lethal weapons, arguing that machines capable of selecting and attacking targets without meaningful human control should have no place in the future of warfare.

The debate over such systems illustrates the larger governance problem surrounding AI.

Technology can move from laboratory to commercial or military use far faster than international agreements are negotiated. Once powerful systems become widely deployed, establishing common rules can become considerably more difficult.

Two crises, one question of accountability

Bringing climate change and artificial intelligence into the same speech was not simply a matter of listing two major global concerns.

Guterres connected them through the question of power.

The climate crisis reflects the consequences of an economic system that generated enormous prosperity while allowing greenhouse gases to accumulate in the atmosphere. Artificial intelligence presents a different challenge, but one in which technological capacity and control may again become concentrated faster than institutions can respond.

The consequences are different, and the two issues should not be treated as equivalent.

But both raise questions about who benefits from powerful systems, who bears their risks and what happens when governance arrives after the consequences are already visible.

For climate change, that debate has been unfolding for decades.

For artificial intelligence, it is only beginning.

Guterres’s final General Assembly address therefore carried a wider message than either climate policy or technology regulation alone. As economic and technological systems become more powerful, the institutions responsible for governing them will increasingly be judged by whether accountability grows with that power.

The climate crisis offers a reminder of what can happen when it does not.