Artificial Intelligence—The Post-Davos Agenda
Artificial Intelligence—The Post-Davos Agenda
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelposner/2026/01/27/ai-the-post-davos-agenda/
Publish Date: 2026-01-27 10:33:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
DAVOS, SWITZERLAND – JANUARY 21: Infosys store is seen at Promenade Street in Davos, Switzerland on January 21, 2025. (Photo by Ömer Sercan Karku/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Anadolu via Getty Images
Last week at Davos, between discussions of Greenland and President Donald Trump, the world’s elite grappled with a more fundamental question: how to govern artificial intelligence without stifling innovation or sacrificing human welfare. Conversations exposed a stark divide: Europeans demanding government regulation and Americans championing unfettered innovation.
That choice—between innovation without oversight or regulation that stifles competitiveness—is a false one. Instead, government and tech companies must collaborate to forge a third path: one that harnesses AI’s transformative potential while establishing ethical guardrails that protect workers, communities, and democratic values.
U.S. tech companies, unconstrained by serious regulation, are racing to build artificial intelligence tools that can match or exceed human cognitive abilities across any task—known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). While pursuing this goal, they are accumulating vast sums of wealth.
The U.S. model was on vivid display on the Promenade, Davos’s main drag. In converted storefronts built like stage sets for the World Economic Forum, the largest American tech firms offered breathless promotional displays extolling the economic and social benefits of evolving AI technologies. In recent years, these companies have driven the US economy’s growth and success. They are racing to design the next generation of large language models, to monetize data collection, and to build mammoth data centers around the globe, aided by the Trump administration’s anti-regulatory approach.
The AI revolution looks very different from a European perspective. European companies operate in highly regulated economies where taxes are higher. These factors have contributed to Europe’s…
