Héctor López Romero sees AI not just as a tool, but as a partner in raising human potential. From building agentic systems that can tackle health and environmental challenges to advocating for transparent, trustworthy AI content, he’s focused on making the technology both practical and principled. Ahead of World Summit AI 2025 (October 08–09, Amsterdam), he shares why the next breakthroughs must go beyond efficiency and towards a smarter way of working and living together.
What’s your most compelling dream scenario for AI — a breakthrough that would fundamentally improve life on a global scale?
Letting AI supporting our jobs to be better, reasonable productive and efficient.
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?
Agentic AI is just the beginning. The goal is to create complex yet easy-to-manage agents that solve major problems, generate new technological solutions for health, and help restore our environment by reducing resource waste and promoting equity for all humankind.
What’s a use case for AI that you think more people should know about — something positive that’s flying under the radar?
AI is now addressing a long-standing challenge in our daily work: inconsistent quality of responses on the same topic. AI reaches everyone, helping improve and standardize quality for a given context. In other words, AI is helping people communicate better by assisting in the creation of high-quality text, videos, and consulting. As a result, people are indirectly trained to use clearer, higher-quality expressions that make content easier for the target audience to understand, reduce misunderstandings, and, most importantly, save valuable time.
In short: The first AI wave of 2024–2025 is educating people to higher standards, rapidly increasing their competencies and skills (efficient), and, most importantly, doing so with higher quality (effective and mature). AI is acting as an expensive, professional personal coach for each of us.
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?
AI can do many things. It’s like a child with exceptionally high intelligence—capable of solving problems, but also of causing harm. AI does not inherently distinguish between good and bad it was designed to follow instructions, regardless of how dangerous or malicious a prompt might be. Like with children, we must clearly define AI’s purpose: to improve quality of life while maintaining a balance that preserves life at all levels. Every form of life has a reason to exist, and AI should strive to uphold this balance. Doing so may limit certain industrial growth, but it will open new opportunities and businesses—This can be done if we proceed carefully and without personal bias or profit-driven misuse of AI.
Who or what do you think has the power to prevent your nightmare scenario above?
Regulation is essential, but as is well known, it is not global—rules vary by region, continent, and country—making it difficult to achieve worldwide AI governance. The European Union has led in this area, beginning with the 2019 Trustworthy AI guidelines and followed by the AI Act in 2023. In the United States, at President Joe Biden’s request, the White House released the AI Bill of Rights in 2022, a plan with goals similar to the EU’s 2019 framework. Such regulations should be coordinated globally to promote equity and reduce the risk of misuse or misunderstandings.
What are we not talking about enough in the AI conversation today — something you believe could be hugely important five years from now?
AI-generated content should be publicly identifiable by default. All digital outputs from AI should be labeled in a tamper-proof way, and any subsequent edits or derivative works should also be regulated and labeled. This would help everyone distinguish what is real from what is AI-generated (e.g., deepfake videos or images). A visible ‘AIG’ symbol—or similar—placed consistently (such as at the top corners) could help deter fakes. Platforms should require AI to verify and label any new post before publishing, indicating whether the content was AI-generated.
However, a key challenge remains: how AI can reliably recognize its own outputs and accurately judge provenance. That question is still difficult to answer.
If you look ahead 10 years, what do you think will be the biggest change in our daily lives?
We are currently using only about 5% of AI’s capabilities due to regulations. But the remaining 95% is still untapped. AI is the trend now, and I’m quite convinced it will have a powerful successor within five years..
Do you think AGI is near? When will we have AGI?
AI is, technically speaking, already implemented and in use because of its success. Such summits offer a chance not only to present our current AI knowledge but also to exchange experiences with other AI experts, return with new ideas, and improve existing business activities. This summit is relevant, as many major players and industry leaders are finally coming together.
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
.png?width=259&name=WSAI%20Amsterdam%20Orange%20no%20dates%202000x300%20(1).png)
.png?width=263&name=IM_Mothership_assets_LOGO_MINT%20(2).png){kind=logo}
