How good is AI?

Inescapable, powerful, concerning, but a tremendous force for good – impressions from the AI for Good Global Summit 2026

By Julia Lind, AI for Good volunteer

As dignitaries and delegates from China to Iceland arrived one after another at my volunteering post at the AI for Good central stage, I found myself caught up in discussions on the very questions I’ve grappled with since artificial intelligence (AI) first presented itself in my life.

When I told people that I was volunteering for the AI for Good Global Summit, I was met by my peers with the same anxiety that I too have struggled with. Whether concerns about its impact on the environment, AI’s place in art, or the replacement of humans by machines, there is much to be anxious about. 

The natural response, for some, is to reject the creation of AI entirely. But the answer to these fears does not lie in pessimism.

Embracing AI in Geneva

As an engineering student, I cannot escape AI. It is what I study in Computer Science and it is what I write about in my spare time. Even those not studying engineering are now faced with AI every day, through its emergence in jobs or its prominence in the media. 

AI is here, it is powerful, and it is not going to die down any time soon. Instead of rejecting AI outright, the summit speakers embraced the fear. Beyond the question of whether AI, they asked the harder and more imminent question of how to use it for good.

This began with a fascinating speech by the Vice-Chair and President of Microsoft, Brad Smith.

He spoke of the importance of my hometown, Geneva, Switzerland, the place where many organizations striving for peace and regulation were born. In the face of something so powerful, Geneva has once again proved its significance in the world.

Smith said that “heavy-handed regulation won’t work, but neither will ‘laissez faire’ AI.”

But the companies behind the boom in machine learning cannot be the only ones at the table for such crucial discussions. AI impacts the lives of anyone, so people beyond its creators should have control over how it is used.

Well, this city, or more broadly what it represents, offers more seats.

AI for all

One way this happens, Smith said, is through policy: “Public policies can help generate demand that unlock more supply,” creating pressure for AI to serve people beyond those with stakes in the companies.

This is helped by the effort put into creating the annual AI for Good Global Summit, which helps inform those beyond diplomats on the matters at hand, and which and offers the public, such as myself, a voice.

Similarly, Pope Leo XIV recently shared his concerns of AI in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which was a recurring topic of conversation at the summit. Representatives speaking on behalf of the pontiff shared his worries about the concentration of power over this technology, and his hope to encourage more people to join in the discussions on AI. The Pope believes that for AI to be used for good, we must ask who we are building this technology for and who gets to benefit from it.

This was echoed in a Salvador Dali quote mentioned by Smith: “Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.”

Code for good

Artificial intelligence is, you guessed it, artificial. It is billions of lines of code controlled by humans, completely exempt of any form of emotion. It is up to the humans that build AI systems, and we who utilize them, to apply this intelligence ambitiously, cautiously and consciously. The point is for it to do good in the world.

So what good can it do? The summit showed me that there is no end to that question.

As I walked around the AI for Good Expo, I realized the potential AI has to help those in need, like the Robotics for Good Youth Challenge on the theme of food security or AI’s place in advancing treatments for diseases such as cerebral palsy (as at ETH Zurich’s stand).

AI has also been incorporated into digital lifelines (highlighted at the ITU stand), improving the speed of response and action for people in situations of distress. Of course, AI is not a replacement, but simply another technology to improve the scope of rescue operations.

Empowering individual agency

But what I found most impactful was the speech given by Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Secretary General of the ITU. She explained that artificial intelligence allows us to have agency on a much more individual level than ever before.

It allows us to act upon an idea without needing to pass by the many steps we once had to take. It has enabled an engineer, Israel Adegoke, to create an AI that can understand Kiswahili to give more people access to knowledge other than those privileged enough to speak English.

It means no longer needing to be an expert in a field to be able to make an impact in it. It means that ambition suffices. This stretches the amount of agency a single person has in one lifetime.

AI changes, and will continue to change, our lives. What is up to us to continue to listen to our anxieties and question which ways AI should change things.

If we keep speaking and acting upon the issues and implications at hand, I truly believe that AI can be used for good.

Julia Lind, 19, is a first-year mechanical engineering student at ETH Zurich and an AI for Good Global Summit 2026 volunteer.

Images: ITU