Last month, I asked hundreds of young people from all over Europe what the internet would look like in 2036. For 46%, it was “something we can’t imagine yet.” This was the most common single answer, and it reflects how the technological revolution driven by artificial intelligence is moving faster than we can imagine it, let alone govern it.
What’s worse, AI is not arriving into a stable world. From Ukraine to Gaza, each unchallenged threat or use of force pushes the international legal order closer to what Prime Minister Mark Carney has called a “rupture.” The shared rules of international order that have held for 80 years are being torn up, at precisely the time when the one technology that most needs shared rules is growing more powerful and influencing every part of our lives.
A world that cannot agree on rules will hand AI to those who answer to no one. And that should worry anyone who still believes in accountability. Nowhere is this more evident than in the manipulation of what people see and take to be true. And AI has made this manipulation easier. Before last year’s Moldovan parliamentary elections, a Russian-funded network of just over 100 fake accounts racked up 50 million viewsin under three months, in a country of 2.4 million people. Disinformation campaigns like these have been targeting elections across Europe.
You no longer need to overturn an election to damage a democracy. All you need is to flood it with fakes and noise. Algorithms reward outrage. AI turns it into a weapon and often amplifies the sexism, racism and exclusion we have tackled for decades. Outrage cannot be the business model of democracy. What is at stake is not one election or one institution. It is the trust a free society runs on. And that is why the rise of AI is now a test of democratic security, a form of security built on rights, institutions, and law.
Without law, AI answers to no one. It decides who gets a loan, a job, or a medical treatment. It picks which family is turned back at the border, whose face the cameras track, what neighborhood the police are sent to. AI can turn any of them down over a name, an address, and the color of their skin. And no one is accountable for the result. Goodwill and self-regulation will not fix this. Only law will.
The challenge in establishing these laws is that they cannot apply only to the AI we know today. It must address the evolutions of AI still to come, such as autonomous agents. It has to protect people, whatever the technology.
Meanwhile, what humans need from the law is simple. People should have the right to know when a machine is deciding their fate, to understand why, and to challenge the decision. The technology will keep changing. These rights can’t.
The good news is that the hard part of this work is already done. Two years ago, a group of countries wrote down these rules. The result was the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI, the first of its kind. This binding international treaty commits states to AI systems that respect human rights, democracy and the rule of law. With 21 signatories, including all of the G7, and a first ratification by the European Union in May 2026, it offers the common base the world gathering at the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva is looking for.
We can’t let geopolitical fragmentation claim AI governance too, with every major power and every region building its own rules and standards. It would carve the world into competing spheres and double standards, and leave behind those who stand to benefit the most.
That is the danger the AI Framework Convention was designed to address. It is open to any state in the world. This is not a bloc. The forum built around it already brings together almost a quarter of the United Nations member states from every continent, alongside partners working on responsible AI
Going forward, we face two paths. One where technology protects, connects, and lifts people up. Another where it divides, exploits, and erodes trust. The AI Framework Convention doesn’t try to slow innovation or predict every future use of AI. It takes a risk-based approach and offers practical tools. And it is built for every country that believes in human rights, democracy, and the rule of law
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The first AI for Good summit opened in Geneva in 2017, a year after AlphaGo beat one of the greatest Go players alive, Lee Sedol. When the machine made a move with a 1 in 10,000 chance of being played, Sedol said: “Surely, AlphaGo is creative.”
That creativity still promises new breakthroughs in medicine, in science, and in all the problems we cannot crack alone. It can also be turned against the people it is meant to serve
This week, the world returns to Geneva. We have a treaty. We now need the political will to use it.
This is what law does that force cannot. In a world order in rupture, international law remains the one language power still has to answer to
