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What if AI could make prevention, not treatment, the foundation of global healthcare? At World Summit AI 2025 (October 08–09, Amsterdam), Barbara Cresti shares a vision where AI accelerates discovery in life sciences, empowers small businesses, and forces us to confront the hidden costs of the AI era.
What’s your most compelling dream scenario for AI — a breakthrough that would fundamentally improve life on a global scale?
My most compelling dream scenario for AI is an AI-driven leap in life sciences that enables truly preventive medicine for everyone, everywhere — targeting the diseases responsible for most global deaths and long-term illness.
I imagine AI models accelerating the discovery of ultra-low-cost diagnostics and preventive treatments, by decoding the earliest biological markers of cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory illness, and diabetes — often years before symptoms emerge. AI could model complex interactions between genetics, environment, and lifestyle across vast, diverse populations, revealing prevention pathways we cannot yet see.
This would lead to affordable vaccines, precision nutrition interventions, and simple, scalable therapeutics designed for low-resource settings, ensuring that prevention is not a privilege of wealthier nations but a standard of care worldwide.
Such a breakthrough could shift the trajectory of global health — reducing the burden on healthcare systems, extending healthy lifespans, and preventing millions of avoidable deaths each year.
What’s a recent project or breakthrough you're especially proud of — and what kind of impact do you hope it will have in the real world?
I’m proud of creating the Strategic AI Governance & Leadership Program for SMB Boards and C-suites — the backbone of economies worldwide. Too often, the conversation about AI is dominated by large enterprises, yet SMBs are the real growth engine in most countries. This program is designed to empower their leaders with the knowledge, frameworks, and confidence to make AI a strategic advantage. It focuses on practical governance, responsible adoption, and alignment with long-term business goals, enabling SMBs to move beyond isolated experiments to initiatives that deliver measurable value.
My hope is that it helps SMBs everywhere compete on a larger stage, accelerate innovation, and strengthen the economic and social fabric of their communities.
What’s a use case for AI that you think more people should know about — something positive that’s flying under the radar?
One powerful but often overlooked use of AI is in making high-quality education and digital skills training universally accessible, closing the gap between those who can fully participate in the digital economy and those who can’t. AI can tailor learning to each individual’s pace, language, and context, delivering personalised guidance on everything from basic literacy to advanced technical skills — even in communities with limited teacher availability or resources.
By democratising access to learning, AI has the potential to lift entire regions into the modern economy, equip the next generation of leaders, and ensure that technological progress benefits everyone, not just the digitally privileged.
If you had to choose one nightmare scenario that keeps you up at night — whether realistic or speculative — what would it be, and what warning signs should we be watching for today?
What keeps me up at night is the widening gap between the builders — pushing the frontiers of ever more powerful technology — and the adopters: businesses, governments, and citizens who either lack the understanding to challenge it or make choices by conveniently aligning with the builders. When that happens, ethics, people, and governance risk being treated as afterthoughts.
My deeper concern is for the generations to come — Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and those who will follow — who will inherit the long-term consequences of decisions made today without full knowledge or foresight. If we allow technological momentum to outrun informed, principled leadership, we risk leaving them a world designed by default rather than by conscious choice.
Who or what do you think has the power to prevent your nightmare scenario above?
Preventing that scenario will require informed, accountable leadership at every level — in business, government, and civil society. Boards and C-suites must build genuine AI literacy, so they can question, guide, and govern technology decisions rather than simply endorsing the builder’s agenda. Governments need to set clear, enforceable frameworks that balance innovation with ethics and public interest.
Equally, builders themselves have a responsibility to embed transparency, safety, and long-term impact into their work — not as a compliance exercise, but as a core measure of success. The most powerful safeguard will be collaboration between these groups, with shared incentives to align AI’s trajectory to human and societal benefit rather than short-term gain.
What are we not talking about enough in the AI conversation today — something you believe could be hugely important five years from now?
We’re not talking enough about the energy equation of AI — not just the environmental cost of training and running increasingly large models, but the strategic implications of who controls the energy supply that powers them. As AI capabilities scale, so will the demand for compute, and with it, electricity. In five years, energy availability, cost, and resilience could become a critical competitive factor — determining which countries, companies, and communities can fully participate in the AI economy.
If we ignore this now, we risk a new form of digital divide where access to AI is limited by access to affordable, reliable energy. The winners will be those who design AI systems and infrastructure to be radically more energy-efficient, diversify their energy sources, and integrate AI adoption into broader sustainability and energy security strategies. This isn’t just a climate issue — it’s about the stability, equity, and sovereignty of the AI era.
If you look ahead 10 years, what do you think will be the biggest change in our daily lives?
If I look ahead ten years, I believe the biggest change in our daily lives will be how much healthier we are — and how much longer we can expect to live well. AI has already begun unlocking discoveries in diagnostics, drug development, personalised prevention, and early detection that were once thought impossible or decades away.
In a decade, I see health becoming more predictive and personalised, with interventions tailored to each of us long before illness takes hold. That shift could mean not just added years to life, but added quality to those years — freeing more of our time, energy, and potential for work, creativity, and connection. The real breakthrough will be when these benefits reach people everywhere, not just in the most developed markets.
Do you think AGI is near? When will we have AGI?
I was inspired to join this AI summit to highlight a message I believe is essential: governance and innovation must advance hand in hand. Without that balance, we risk either slowing progress or eroding trust.
For me, this is also about connecting with leaders across industries, learning from diverse perspectives, and expanding our collective understanding of what lies ahead. AI is evolving at extraordinary speed, and no single organisation or country has all the answers. Summits like this create the space to share insights, challenge our assumptions, and explore together how we can guide AI in ways that serve both progress and people.
World Summit AI global Summit series
World Summit AI
08 - 09 October 2025
Taets Art & Event Park, Amsterdam
worldsummit.ai
World Summit AI Qatar
09 – 10 December 2025
Doha Exhibition & Convention Center
