AI Companies are Hiding Behind "The Market's Invisible Hand"

UN General Assembly Digital Cooperation Day: Opening Remarks - September 21st, 2026

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the United Nations General Assembly’s Digital Cooperation Day. I want to thank the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies for making this happen. I’m grateful to be speaking to all of you, including Under-Secretary-General Amandeep Singh Gill.

Today is about coming together and collectively recognizing that when it comes to how frontier digital technology is designed, and deployed. The decisions we make in this moment are going to have a massive impact on everyone’s lives, and on the whole future of humanity.

My name is Joe Gordon-Levitt, and I was recently named the UN’s first Global Advocate for Human-Centric Digital Governance. Which is a mouthful, trust me I know, so what is “Human-Centric Digital Governance”? It’s actually pretty simple. It just means that Digital Technology should be governed by people, and for people. Almost sounds obvious, right? Of course technology should be governed by people and for people. But this idea can actually be controversial.

There are some folks who say that today’s digital technology should not be governed by people. It should be governed purely by the Market. They say that private businesses should be allowed to develop and sell their digital technology without any externally imposed rules, and that the simple drive to beat out competition and maximize profits will guide us to the best outcomes.

And there’s even a sort of magical character to symbolize these business incentives — they call it the Market’s “Invisible Hand.” The story goes that the Invisible Hand is not human; it’s smarter than humans. And, conveniently, whenever any digital technology ends up causing harm, this magical character can take the blame. Business leaders can shrug their shoulders innocently, off-loading any responsibility. “It wasn’t us, it was the Invisible Hand.”

But we know from history that free markets work best for everyone when they’re balanced with good governance. We saw this in the 20th century, as democracy evolved to curb the excesses of the Industrial Revolution. This didn’t happen through some invisible force; it happened through human beings stepping up and building new solutions to meet the moment.

So now it’s the 21st century, and we find ourselves in the middle of a new technological revolution. And in today’s digital landscape, there’s a new way that businesses are looking to shrug off responsibility and attribute it to another sort of magical character — this time, they’re calling it Artificial Intelligence. Once again, the story is that AI is not exactly human; it’s smarter than humans, or it will be soon.

When a piece of software is built and run without effective security protocols in place, and this leads to the committing of serious cyber-crimes, software companies are saying: “It wasn’t us, it was a rogue swarm of autonomous AI agents.”

When AI companies steal the intellectual property of entire industries and the personal data of entire populations — including our kids — and use all of that valuable digital information to build their products and drive their growth, they say: “We didn’t steal anything. Our AI models should have the Freedom to Learn.” They actually say that.

And when AI enthusiasts prognosticate the end of human civilization as we know it with the coming of what they call Super-Intelligence, they say: “There’s nothing we can do. AI is out of our control. Let’s just hope it’ll be nice to us.”

All of these narratives take humans out of the center. And in each case, that de-centering of humanity is a choice. But we can choose to do it differently. We can choose to put humans at the center of our story. That’s what we mean by Human-Centric Digital Governance.

We can choose to govern this new, revolutionary technology, for the benefit of people, and held accountable by people. We can hold tech companies liable for running software outside of proper security protocols. We can set up systems to compensate people for their intellectual property and personal data. We can implement limits on how AI businesses target young people. And we can criminalize anything that might qualify as “Super-Intelligence.”

Believe it or not, I firmly believe that AI can lead to all kinds of good, can help solve all kinds of problems, it can contribute to the betterment of so many people’s lives all around the world. But in order to achieve that bright future, we need to remember who is at the center of our story. It’s us. We’re it.

I want to thank each and every one of you for being here today. Now we have a lot of work to do. So let’s get to it. Thanks again <3