Carney, Macron coordinate on AI rules as UN General Assembly opens

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre sent a text message to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney earlier this week, hoping to bring Canada into what The Wall Street Journal described as “a nascent plan of Western leaders to design a new framework to regulate artificial intelligence.” Støre said that within 10 minutes, Carney had texted back: “Of course. We’re in.”

The text exchange anchored a broader coordination effort timed to the opening of this week’s UN General Assembly in New York. By Monday, Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb had jointly published a two-page paper proposing the creation of a global supervisory regime for AI. The paper’s central argument, as reported by the Journal’s Morning Risk Report, is that AI “must remain under human direction, oversight and control.”

The effort has extended beyond the paper itself. While Carney was meeting Macron on St. Pierre and Miquelon, an Atlantic archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland, the two leaders discussed AI regulation. As that meeting took place, Macron’s government called on the United Nations Security Council to focus on AI and security ahead of the General Assembly. The paper was authored by Norwegian Prime Minister Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb; the Journal did not state whether Macron’s government has signed onto the proposal.

The paper was published during a UN General Assembly week that included other AI- and security-related items. The UK will launch a new agency aimed at countering cyber threats from countries including Russia and North Korea, in an effort to tighten national security on the digital front, according to Risk Journal’s Yusuf Khan. Separately, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said in a speech at the United Nations: “In recent years we have seen an industrial-scale assault by hostile actors on the information environment in the U.K. and that of many of our allies.” “Russian agencies have used every means at their disposal to spread lies and disinformation and prey on people’s fears,” Burnham said in his UN speech, according to the Journal.

The Morning Risk Report also covered other General Assembly-week developments. In an interview with the Journal at UN Journal House, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the Trump administration would not impose an outright ban on diesel exports but would implement restrictions, describing the approach as voluntary. Wright said the administration has to keep the world supplied with diesel but needs to change the trajectory of prices in the U.S. The administration is “trying to avoid a blunt hammer of a government policy, understanding the complexity of refining,” Wright said.

In technology industry news, the Wall Street Journal observed that Meta Platforms appears to have a hit AI product on its hands, but cautioned that the company’s path to “ultimate domination” in consumer AI “is anything but assured.” Two weeks ago, Meta launched a new, easy-to-use personal AI agent called Muse. The accompanying app has sat at No. 1 on Apple’s U.S. App Store since Friday, sending Meta’s stock up 11% Monday, but it is already facing scrutiny over privacy concerns. Amazon.com has blocked Meta’s AI agent from shopping on its site in recent days, and competitors are expected to launch their own versions of Muse in the near future.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported unusual prediction-market activity on Kalshi. Traders on the prediction market have made almost one million trades in a single market since August that were in nearly identical amounts, catching the eyes of federal regulators and traders. A Wall Street Journal analysis of public trading data found that in recent weeks, more than one-third of trades on a market speculating on the price of the cryptocurrency ether consisted of rapid trades clustered around $5,500. Kalshi’s public data doesn’t disclose the identity of traders. Every Democratic member of the Senate Banking Committee has asked committee Chairman Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, for a hearing on prediction markets, citing experts’ warnings that the markets “are prone to encourage market manipulation and insider trading.”