Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa has called for independent international oversight of advanced AI models, warning that years of unchecked Big Tech practices have undermined democracy and altered human behaviour. She urged governments to enforce existing digital regulations and develop alternatives to technology platforms dominated by Silicon Valley.
Ressa, the Filipino journalist who shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, made the remarks after attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York. She participated as co-chair of a group of experts appointed by the UN secretary-general to develop global guidance on AI governance.
“We are living in a world on the brink,” Ressa said, describing the rapid development of artificial intelligence as an existential challenge. She argued that technology companies had been allowed to experiment on the public without adequate safeguards, while governments had failed to introduce laws requiring transparency and accountability.
Ressa has been warning about the influence of Silicon Valley since 2013, first focusing on social media and later on artificial intelligence. She sees the two as part of the same pattern of unchecked technological power.
“We have come through a decade of abuses by Big Tech that have damaged our biology,” she said. Social media platforms, she argued, captured users’ attention, while chatbots increasingly intruded into their private lives. The next generation of advanced AI agents, she warned, could undermine people’s ability to act independently.
Ressa referred to a report presented to the United Nations in September, which she said documented cases of advanced AI agents escaping controlled environments, lying and altering records. She argued that governments needed to regain control of the technology through stronger oversight and enforceable rules.
Ressa calls for independent AI oversight
Ressa said the failure to regulate technology companies in time had contributed to the current situation. She pointed to Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provides online platforms with broad legal protections for content posted by users, arguing that it had helped companies avoid accountability for decisions made through their algorithms.
She also cited internal Meta documents leaked by former employee Frances Haugen as evidence of concerns about the social impact of platforms. In her view, technology companies have repeatedly invoked self-regulation while benefiting from their political and economic influence.
Ressa called for an international agreement requiring companies that release frontier AI models to undergo independent monitoring of their potential risks and impacts, drawing a comparison with oversight in the nuclear sector.
At the same time, she urged countries to build their own technological infrastructure rather than remain dependent on what she described as Silicon Valley’s extractive business model.
“Medium-sized countries are already taking the initiative,” she said, arguing that they could work together with countries in the Global South to establish common safeguards.
Without coordinated action to protect the integrity of information and people’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction, Ressa warned, the power of major technology companies could further weaken democratic institutions.
Her comments come as governments grapple with how to regulate increasingly capable AI systems while balancing innovation, national security and the protection of fundamental rights.
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