In Ukraine, a Russian drone guided by artificial intelligence killed three civilians at a gas station, including a 19-year-old university student. In Gaza, an AI-assisted intelligence tool helped Israeli forces locate a Hamas commander. The subsequent airstrike killed him and, according to independent estimates, at least 125 other people.
Different wars. Different circumstances. But a deeply troubling question: As machines become more involved in decisions of life and death, are we losing sight of the human beings whose lives hang in the balance?
That question brought me back this month to a small white house in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met at Höfði House, representing rival nuclear superpowers divided by decades of distrust. They left without an agreement. Yet their willingness to talk, listen, and imagine what had seemed impossible helped lay the groundwork for historic nuclear arms reductions.
I remember that moment vividly. I was a young Icelandic exchange student living in the United States, watching two world leaders meet in my small home country. I could never have imagined that 40 years later, as President of Iceland, I would return to that same house to ask a new generation of leaders to find the courage to talk.
The enduring lesson of Reykjavík is not simply about nuclear weapons or diplomacy. It is about the extraordinary power of human connection and dialogue. And we urgently need to remember it.
Never have we possessed more sophisticated tools to communicate, yet our ability to understand one another seems increasingly fragile. We are connected across continents in milliseconds, but too often separated by fear, anger, and mistrust.
Our technologies can transform medicine, education, and human prosperity. Yet they can also accelerate conflict, undermine democracy, and challenge human control.
Crucial questions for the AI age
Thanks to new technologies like AI, our power has grown exponentially. But has our wisdom kept pace?
Over the past week, Iceland has explored that question not only through another conventional summit, but through a journey from remembrance to dialogue, and from dialogue to responsibility.
We began with a traveling exhibition from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the testimony of a survivor of the atomic bombing. More than 80 years later, she still vividly recalls what she describes as the sudden appearance of a thousand suns, followed by unimaginable destruction, decades of devastating illness, and the stigma endured by survivors. No discussion of nuclear deterrence should ever lose sight of the human lives behind those words.
We then confronted the promises and dangers of artificial intelligence with technology experts, including Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin. The central question was not simply what AI can do, but what we should allow it to do—and who gets to decide.
Perhaps the most important conversations, however, happened far from the conference halls.
Across Iceland, young people invited fellow citizens to put down their phones and sit together to discuss the future they want to create. Students, parents, grandparents, teachers, and neighbors talked about education, belonging, technology, nature, and peace.
The young people were not asking adults to arrive with all the answers. They wanted to be heard. To be taken seriously. To have a voice in decisions that will shape their lives long after today's leaders have left office.
They understood something we too often forget: decisions made far from the people they affect are rarely wise ones.
I found that both humbling and hopeful.
Because dialogue is more than exchanging opinions. At its best, it is an act of recognition: I see you. Your experience matters. Your future matters. Even when we disagree, we share responsibility for what comes next.
The demands of dialogue
The purpose of dialogue is not always consensus. It is connection. And connection is where trust begins. Without trust, even the most brilliant solutions struggle to take root.
We carried that spirit back to Höfði House, where leaders from politics, technology, science, business, and civil society gathered to ask what responsible leadership demands of us today.
The result was A Call from Reykjavík, signed by three women presidents and open to others who wish to join. It calls for meaningful human control over powerful technologies, insists that decisions about war and nuclear weapons remain firmly in human hands, and places peace and responsibility to future generations at the heart of leadership.
The following day, in a public conversation moderated by renowned journalist Christiane Amanpour, President Nataša Pirc Musar of Slovenia, former Irish President Mary Robinson and I reflected on the choices before humanity.
Forty years after two powerful men met in Reykjavík, three women—indeed, three world leaders—came together to continue the conversation. Not because women have all the answers. We do not. But because progress requires more voices, more perspectives, and a willingness to listen across differences. And because the future must never belong only to those who currently hold power.
I do not believe dialogue is a soft alternative to leadership. I believe it is one of its most demanding forms.
It takes courage to listen to someone with whom we profoundly disagree. Humility to acknowledge what we do not know. And strength to resist reducing complex human challenges to slogans, enemies, or simple answers.
Dialogue does not mean abandoning our values, excusing aggression, or accepting injustice. Nor is it a substitute for action. It is how we begin to build the trust and understanding that make lasting action possible.
AI-assisted warfare
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza remind us of the devastating human cost of conflict. AI-assisted warfare adds another dimension: the danger of placing ever greater distance between those making decisions and those living with their consequences.
We must not surrender human judgment, accountability, or conscience to machines.
But technology alone is not the problem, and technology alone cannot provide the answer. We also need stronger human infrastructure: relationships, institutions, shared values, and habits of cooperation that allow us to respond collectively to danger.
We must equip the next generation not only with technical skills, but with the deeply human capacities to shape our future: listening, critical thinking, empathy, courage, and collaboration. In an age of intelligent machines, these may be our most essential skills.
Iceland is a small nation. We cannot dictate the course of global affairs. But perhaps our size reminds us of something larger nations sometimes forget: no one can build a peaceful future alone.
Forty years ago, Reykjavík showed that even the deepest divisions need not determine our destiny. Today, we need a new Reykjavík moment. Not one confined to a single house, summit, or handful of world leaders.
We need it in parliaments and boardrooms, classrooms and communities, across generations and between nations in conflict. Wherever fear has replaced curiosity, wherever people have stopped listening, wherever power has outrun wisdom.
The world does not lack intelligence, information, or ambition. What we too often lack is the courage to truly connect.
Of course, dialogue alone will not save us. But without it, I struggle to see how we can save ourselves.
The future will not be shaped only by the power of our technology or our weapons, but by the quality of our conversations—and the courage of the choices that follow.
Fortunately, we still have time. And we still have each other.