The United Nations on Thursday announced a plan to establish itself as the leading global forum to guide the path and pace of artificial intelligence, a major foray into the raging debate over the future of the rapidly changing technology.

As part of its General Assembly this week, the organization said it was implementing a “global dialogue on artificial intelligence governance,” to assemble ideas and best practices on A.I. governance. The U.N. also said it would form a 40-member panel of scientific experts to synthesize and analyze the research on A.I. risks and opportunities, in the vein of previous similar efforts by the body on climate change and nuclear policy.

To begin the initiative, dozens of U.N. member nations — and a few tech companies, academics and nonprofits — spent a portion of Thursday summarizing their hopes and concerns about A.I.

In short snippets, the speakers extolled the promise of the technology to cure disease, expand food production and accelerate learning. But they also identified risks including mass surveillance, the spread of misinformation, the consumption of energy resources and worsening income gaps among people and nations.

“The future will not be shaped by algorithms alone,” Annalena Baerbock, president of the U.N. General Assembly. “It will be shaped by the choices we make together.”

The U.N. program is an effort to ensure that control of the increasingly powerful and pervasive technology is not left in the hands of a few tech companies and a few countries, led by the United States and China.