The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday, Sept. 8, edition that UN rights chief Volker Turk warned that artificial intelligence could threaten humanity and pledged to urge AI firms to mitigate risks, including disruptions to services and democratic systems. A Reuters dispatch to The Globe reports that Mr. Turk said: "I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity. ... I am calling here, today, for an all-out effort to put cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI, before it is too late.' Mr. Turk did not elaborate on the nature of the risks, but a spokeswoman for his office said failures involving powerful AI systems could disrupt critical infrastructure and democratic institutions. She referred to the "dangerous agent-training behaviours" in July's so-called Hugging Face incident where a swarm of Microsoft-backed OpenAI agents hacked an open-source platform, saying it suggested that frontier AI capabilities are advancing faster than the safeguards. Mr. Turk warned that just a handful of men held "almost unlimited power over AI" without naming any. Top AI companies include Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI and Alphabet's Google.