Leaders from across the tech sector, academia, and beyond gathered to explore how to implement responsible AI and ensure safeguarding while fostering innovation, at a roundtable convened by TIME in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan 21.

In a wide-ranging conversation, participants in the roundtable, hosted by TIME CEO Jess Sibley, discussed topics including the impact of AI on children’s development and safety, how to regulate the technology, and how to better train models to ensure they don’t harm humans.

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Discussing the safety of children, Jonathan Haidt, professor of ethical leadership at NYU Stern and author of The Anxious Generation, said that parents shouldn’t focus on restricting their child’s exposure entirely but on the habits they form. He suggested that children don’t need smartphones until “at least high school” and that they don’t need to be exposed to the technology to be able to learn how to use it at the age of 15. “Let their brain develop, let them get executive function, then you can expose them.” 

Yoshua Bengio, professor at the Université de Montreal and founder of LawZero, said that scientific understanding of the problems posed by AI is necessary to solve them. He outlined two mitigations: first, designing AI that has built-in safeguarding to avoid harming a child’s development. This could be brought about by demand, noted Bengio, who is known as one of the “godfathers of AI.” Second, he said, governments should play a role; they could potentially implement mechanisms such as using liability insurers to indirectly regulate AI developers by making insurance mandatory for developers and deployers of AI. 

While the U.S. AI race with China is often cited as a reason to support limiting regulation and guardrails on American AI companies, Bengio argued: “Actually, the Chinese also don’t want their children to be in trouble. They don’t want to create a global monster AI, they don’t want people to use their AI to create more bio-weapons or cyberattacks on their soil. So both the U.S. and China have an interest in coordinating on these things once they can see past the competition.” Bengio said international cooperation like this has happened before, such as when the U.S. and the USSR coordinated on nuclear weapons during the Cold War. 

The roundtable participants also discussed the similarities between AI and social media companies, noting that AI is increasingly in competition for users’ attention. “All the progress in history has been about appealing to the better angels of our nature,” said Bill Ready, CEO of Pinterest, which sponsored the event. “Now we have, one of the largest business models in the world has at its center engagement, pitting people against one another, sowing division.” 

Ready added: “We’re actually preying on the darkest aspects of the human psyche, and it doesn’t have to be that way. So we’re trying to prove it’s possible to do something different.” He said that, under his leadership, Pinterest has stopped optimizing to maximize view time and started optimizing to maximize outcomes, including those off the platform. “In the short term, that was negative, but if you look long term, people would come back more frequently,” he said.

Bengio emphasized the importance of finding a way to design AI that will “provide safety guarantees as the systems become bigger and we have more data.” Setting sufficient conditions for training AI systems to ensure they operate with honesty could also be a solution, Bengio posited. 

Yejin Choi, professor of computer science and senior fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) at Stanford University, added that AI models today are trained “to misbehave, and by design, it’s going to be misaligned.” She asked: “What if there could be an alternative form of intelligence that really learns … morals, human values from the get-go, as opposed to just training LLMs [large language models] on the entirety of the internet, which actually includes the worst part of humanity, and then we then try to patch things up by doing ‘alignment’?” 

Responding to the question of whether AI can make us better humans, Kay Firth-Butterfield, CEO of the Good Tech Advisory, pointed to ways we can make AI a better tool for humans, including by talking to the people who are actually using it, whether that’s workers or parents. “What we need to do is to really think about: how do we create an AI literacy campaign amongst everybody and not have to fall back on organizations?” she said. “We need that conversation, and then we can make sure AI gets certified.”

Other attendees at the TIME100 Roundtable included Matt Madrigal, CTO at Pinterest; Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare; Jeff Schumacher, Neurosymbolic AI Leader at EY-Parthenon; Navrina Singh, CEO of Credo AI, and Alexa Vignone, president of technology, media, telco and consumer & business services at Salesforce, ​​where TIME co-chair and owner Marc Benioff is CEO.

TIME100 Roundtable: Ensuring AI For Good — Responsible Innovation at Scale was presented by Pinterest.

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he had reached what he called a “framework of a future deal” with NATO over Greenland, easing a standoff with European allies and backing away from plans to impose new tariffs that had rattled global markets for days.

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The announcement, delivered first in a post on his Truth Social platform and later amplified in brief remarks to reporters, followed a meeting with Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary general, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Trump said the understanding would avert tariffs that had been scheduled to take effect on Feb. 1 on goods from eight European countries that had resisted his demands over Greenland.

“We have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region,” Trump wrote, adding that “based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect.”

The American President offered few details about what the framework entails. When asked whether the agreement involved the U.S. gaining ownership of Greenland, an outcome he has repeatedly framed as essential to national security, Trump paused before replying, “Uhh… it’s a long-term deal.”

He described the arrangement as a “work in progress,” saying the “deal is going to be put out soon” and that it “gets us everything we wanted, including real national security.”

Denmark, which governs the semi-autonomous island, had earlier ruled out negotiations over ceding Greenland to the United States. Trump did not claim that Denmark had reversed that position. 

Despite the lack of specifics, financial markets reacted swiftly. U.S. stocks jumped after the announcement, extending gains that followed days of volatility triggered by Trump’s tariff threats.

The Greenland dispute has loomed large over Davos this week, dominating conversations among diplomats and executives after Trump threatened countries including Denmark and the United Kingdom with a 10% tariff in February—and rising to 25% by June—unless they acceded to U.S. control of the island. The threats prompted European leaders to prepare countermeasures and pushed markets lower earlier in the week.

In a speech earlier on Wednesday in Davos, Trump made his most explicit case yet for the need for the U.S. to acquire Greenland, while noting he would not use military force to seize it. Instead, he called for “immediate negotiations” with Denmark, even as Danish officials reiterated that they would not “enter into any negotiations.”

Administration officials had signaled throughout the day that a climbdown was possible. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged allies to “sit back” and “take a deep breath,” while Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a Davos panel that the confrontation was “going to end in a reasonable manner.”

Trump’s post suggested that Rutte, the NATO Secretary General who once called him “daddy,” played a central role in defusing the crisis. Rutte did not elaborate on the deal, but told reporters they had a “very good meeting” and confirmed they reached an agreement.

Read more: Mark Rutte—The Man Who Wants to Save NATO

“His Truth Social post is exactly to the point, and I totally agree with that,” Rutte said.

Trump said that Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and other officials would lead further discussions on Greenland and related Arctic issues, including the “Golden Dome” missile defense system that Trump has argued would benefit from U.S. control of the island.

“This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations,” Trump wrote.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

President Donald Trump assured nervous European allies on Wednesday he “won’t use force” to take Greenland while adding a not-so-subtle threat that the world’s largest island will eventually be under the U.S. flag, one way or another.

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“All the U.S. is asking for is a place called Greenland,” Trump said in a wide-reaching appearance that hopscotched from Somali fraud to former President Joe Biden’s mental acumen to his Treasury Secretary’s football draft potential. The stemwinder emanated from an American leader who has conflated fealty to his agenda with dodging “World War 3” in the Arctic orbit. He accused Denmark—which controls Greenland as a semi-autonomous part of its kingdom—of being “ungrateful,” branded NATO a lopsided ally for the United States, and repeatedly painted Greenland as a de facto part of North America dating back to the Nazi era.

Still, one line stood out, as if it were a cutting-room-floor discard from Goodfellas:

“We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won’t give it,” Trump said. “You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.” 

Another way to read that familiar frame? We can do this the easy way or the hard way.

It was a flummoxing flex to Trump’s frenemies who are low on patience for his bellicose language. Amid the World Economic Forum’s confab in Davos, Switzerland—where coalition building and global cooperation are usually central themes—Trump unfurled a Western Hemisphere First school of thought that has roots in a Cold War understanding of geopolitical stasis. 

He also sometimes confused Iceland for Greenland. “I’m helping Europe, I’m helping NATO, and until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me,” Trump said.

But he did tell them—about Greenland, not Iceland—and the response from those allies has been anything but positive. In fact, they greeted Trump with near-unanimous animus.

“Greenland is a vast, almost entirely uninhabited and undeveloped territory that’s sitting undefended in a key strategic location between the United States, Russia and China,” Trump said. “It’s exactly where it is right smack in the middle. It wasn’t important nearly when we gave it back. We need it for strategic national security and international security.”

At the same time, Trump said force was not on the table.

“We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable,” Trump said. “But I won’t do that. That’s probably the biggest statement, because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

Yet it was hard to square that promise of pacifism with his repeated vows that the U.S. would end up with Greenland, one way or another. It was exactly the style of ping-pong messaging that left some diplomats gnashing as they watched the American imperialist threaten their gates. When he wasn’t brandishing the overwhelming power of America’s military and economy, Trump was denigrating virtually all of the allies in the room with him.

“Without us, most of the countries don’t even work,” Trump told the elites in that Swiss ski town.

Americans might like the idea of controlling an Arctic neighbor, but the idea of mob-like negotiations is a tougher sell. Trump knows it, but still took a stab from his privileged bully pulpit in Switzerland with the zeal of neocolonialism. Trump says he won’t storm Greenland but that does not mean it is safe from his gangster-like whims.

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President Donald Trump said Wednesday he would not use force to acquire Greenland, the first time he has ruled out using military action to acquire the territory.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump lamented that the United States “probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable.”   

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“But I won’t do that,” he added. “That’s probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

Read more: The Five Ways Europe Could Respond to Trump’s Greenland Threat

“All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland,” he continued.

The comments come amid a prolonged campaign by Trump to annex the island, which is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

That campaign has become increasingly confrontational in recent weeks, as Trump has insisted that there was “no going back” on his push to acquire Greenland, which he has insisted is essential for U.S. national security.

In recent weeks, Trump has posted a meme showing pictures of the island draped in an American flag, and raised the example of the U.S. military’s removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro when discussing his designs on Greenland, prompting fears that he may use military action to seize the territory.

Trump’s aggressive posture prompted angst among European officials, and his appearance was preceded by a series of speeches condemning his ambitions to take the territory. On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he described as a “new imperialism,” without mentioning Trump by name.

“We do prefer respect to bullies,” Macron said. “And we do prefer rule of law to brutality.”

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, similarly, did not say Trump’s name, but announced that the “rules-based order is fading.”

“Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid,” Carney said.

Trump’s pressure campaign over Greenland had ramped up ahead of Davos, escalating from words to action.

Over the weekend, he announced tariffs on eight European countries—and NATO allies— for taking part in military exercises on the island.

That in turn prompted threats of retaliatory economic measures from those countries, which were already subject to tariffs of 10% and 15%. European Union (E.U.) officials convened an emergency meeting to discuss a coordinated response. Some officials raised the prospect of abandoning the U.S.-E.U. trade deal struck last summer. The agreement includes $750 billion worth of energy purchases from the U.S., $600 billion in E.U. investment, and billions of dollars in reduced tariffs on imports from European countries.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned during her speech at the World Economic Forum that the E.U.’s response to the tariff threats will be “unflinching, united and proportional.”

“In politics as in business—a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something,” von der Leyen said.

This is a developing story.

President Donald Trump delivered a defiant and combative address at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, using the annual gathering of world leaders and business executives to tout America’s role as the world’s main peacekeeper and economic engine, and make his most explicit case yet for the U.S. to acquire Greenland from Denmark.

Calling for “immediate negotiations” with Denmark, Trump asserted that Greenland was essential to American and global security, even as he insisted he would not use military force to obtain it—his clearest effort yet to somewhat soften the threat behind a demand that has already unsettled NATO allies.

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“We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable,” Trump said. “But I won’t do that.”

He added: “I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.” Yet the President made clear that he still envisioned full American ownership of the semiautonomous Danish territory, arguing that “you need the ownership to defend it” and that “you can’t defend it on a lease.”

“This enormous unsecured Island is actually part of North America, on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere,” Trump said. “That’s our territory.”

The comments underscored Trump’s willingness to wield raw power and transactional threats in pursuit of territorial and strategic gains—even at the risk of tearing at alliances that have anchored Western security since World War II.

While Trump insisted he did not intend to use force, he coupled that assurance with a thinly veiled warning: “You can say yes and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no, and we will remember.” That combination of conciliation and coercion came up repeatedly throughout Trump’s remarks. He boasted of forcing NATO members to increase defense spending, even as he questioned whether they would come to America’s aid if the United States were attacked. He described Europe as dependent on American protection but insufficiently grateful for it. “The problem with NATO is that we’ll be there for them 100%,” he said. “But I’m not sure that they’d be there for us.”

Read more: The Most Startling Line From Trump’s Davos Speech

Trump’s speech, which lasted more than an hour, emphasized how dramatically his maximalist foreign policy has shifted the footing of those attending the annual World Economic Forum. Once a bastion of multilateralism and consensus-building, the forum this week revolved around a single question: how to navigate a world increasingly shaped by one leader’s willingness to pressure allies as aggressively as rivals.

Trump began his remarks focused on delivering a triumphant verdict on his first year back in office, calling it “the fastest and most dramatic economic turnaround in our country’s history” and claiming inflation had been “defeated,” the border rendered “virtually impenetrable” and growth set to surpass any previous benchmark. He contrasted his record with what he described as the “nightmare of stagflation” under former President Joe Biden whom he repeatedly derided as “the autopen.”

But what unfolded over the course of his lengthy speech was less a celebration of economic revival than a sweeping assertion of American dominance—and of his own role as its chief architect—over allies, adversaries and institutions alike.

“The USA is the economic engine of the planet,” Trump declared. “And when America booms, the entire world booms.”

“Without us, right now you’d all be speaking German and a little Japanese, perhaps,” Trump said to the room full of billionaires, government officials, and diplomats.

Trump warned that “certain places in Europe are not even recognizable anymore,” blaming “unchecked mass migration,” environmental policies, and the outsourcing of heavy industry for what he called the continent’s decline. He criticized Europe multiple times, even as many of its leaders sat in the audience.

“The more windmills a country has,” he said, “the more money that country loses.”

He urged other nations to “follow what we’re doing” while making clear that noncompliance would carry costs. He boasted of slashing regulations and cutting tariffs on domestic producers while raising them on foreign goods, and he claimed to have reduced the U.S. trade deficit dramatically while securing deals covering 40% of American trade.

The message resonated uneasily in Europe, where leaders have spent the past year struggling to navigate a more transactional and confrontational Washington. Emergency summits, retaliatory tariff planning, and quiet efforts to insulate European industries from American pressure have become a staple of the diplomatic calendar since Trump returned to office.

Nowhere was that tension clearer than when Trump turned to Greenland. “No nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States,” he said, recounting how American forces defended the island during World War II before returning it to Denmark, a decision he now questioned. “How ungrateful are they now?” he added. At various points, Trump appeared to confuse Greenland with Iceland. “Iceland has already cost us a lot of money,” he said, a reference to the stock market’s recent dip. By the end of his address, the U.S. stock market had risen following his assurances that no military action would be used to acquire Greenland.

The comments came amid a growing rift with Denmark and other European governments, which have rejected any suggestion that the island could be sold or transferred. In recent weeks, Denmark has increased its military presence in Greenland, joined by Germany, Sweden and Norway.

The President’s posture stood in sharp contrast to the thinly veiled condemnations of U.S. policy delivered on Tuesday in Davos by key European figures. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada warned of a “rupture” in the world order, declaring that the rules-based international system was eroding and that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” French President Emmanuel Macron decried the use of coercion and tariffs to advance territorial ambitions, asserting that Europe would not accept the “law of the strongest” or be intimidated by “bullies.”

Trump responded to their comments by singling out both leaders. He mocked Macron’s sunglasses before recounting how he said he forced France’s leader to narrow the gap between French and American drug prices by threatening sweeping tariffs. “Emmanuel, you’re going to do it, and you’re going to do it fast,” Trump said he told the French leader, recalling a threat to impose a 25% tariff on French goods and a 100% tariff on French wine and champagne if he did not comply. French officials have previously disputed aspects of his account. 

​​“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us,” Trump said, adding that it “should be grateful” to the United States. Referring directly to Carney’s appearance at Davos, he said, “I watched your Prime Minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful.”

“Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump added. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”

The episodes served as a broader illustration of Trump’s approach to diplomacy: not as a matter of quiet negotiation among allies, but as a series of public confrontations in which leverage is applied through the blunt use of American economic power.

At Davos, such remarks landed with particular force. Halfway through the speech, a senior Western European official told TIME: “We can’t react to everything he says. We have our values and our interests, and we have to work with the U.S. to protect them. We have to talk. We listen; then we talk.”

Trump’s speech also revisited long-standing grievances and disputed claims: that his 2020 election loss was “rigged,” that he had single-handedly settled eight wars in the past year, and that the war in Ukraine would never have happened had he remained in office.

He touted a deal with Venezuela over oil production, took credit for wiping out Iran’s nuclear program, praised the expansion of U.S. nuclear and artificial intelligence infrastructure, and spoke admiringly of allowing private companies to build their own power plants. Throughout, Trump returned to a central theme: that American power, unapologetically wielded, was the ultimate guarantor of global stability.

“We did a lot of big things, all perfectly executed,” Trump said.

—With reporting by Nikhil Kumar/DAVOS

Business leaders considered the future of AI at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, during the TIME100 Impact Dinner Tuesday night.

The panel, ”From Vision to Velocity — Deploying Innovation at Scale,” delved into the ways AI has been integrated into industries from health care to energy, and some of the biggest challenges it may present down the road.

Noubar Afeyan, the co-founder and chairman of Moderna and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, said that Moderna has been using machine learning techniques to make medical advancements for quite some time, citing the development of COVID mRNA vaccines.

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“In tech, we always watched with envy the ability to move quickly, because pharmaceuticals have never been programmable,” Afeyan said. “For the first time in 2020 the world saw programmable medicine. But we haven’t stopped at that.”

He also asserted that AI will become crucial in understanding the nature in and around us—but cautioned that people may not be ready for what that insight “will do to our humanity and to our self image.”

“​​I would contend that what we’re about to find out, based on the application of artificial intelligence to nature, is that nature is a whole bunch of forms of intelligence, and we never realized it. Every tree, every virus, every immune cell, these are forms of intelligence,” he said, adding, “I think the safety, maybe security challenge to humans—or, let me put it this way, insecurity challenge to humans—is going to be that we’re going to have to adjust our image of ourselves and realize that with machine intelligence and with nature’s intelligence, we can improve how we can manage nature, how we can extract value from food … new medicines, how to prevent disease.”

Executives of two of India’s leading renewable energy companies, ReNew Energy co-founder Vaishali Nigham Sinha and Greenko Group President Mahesh Kolli, spoke about the changing energy industry amid AI’s growing demand for power.

Kolli discussed the developing role of what he called “electro-states,” countries that have shifted to electrical energy and clean sources, like solar or wind, and away from traditional methods such as oil. 

“What we’re seeing in India is that kind of electro-state revolution,” he said about the country’s use of clean energy going from “a power source for electricity to households” to “now becoming a source to make materials, molecules, and AI,” a shift he said is driving India’s competitive position within a global market and that of other advanced electro-states like China.

Speaking about the potential implications of AI’s rise on the effort to combat climate change, Sinha urged collaboration between countries.

“When we talk about the climate agenda, we’re talking about the world at large. And for that, countries will have to work together because climate really doesn’t know boundaries,” she said, adding that public and private partnerships are “required” to make strides across sectors, “especially in clean energy.”

Siemens Chief Technology and Strategy Officer Peter Koerte ended the panel discussion by offering a warning about the threat AI could pose to the job market. He referenced the ways technology has already taken human jobs throughout history, and noted that this is not the first time rapidly advancing tech has stoked fear in countries’ workforces. 

“AI is doing to the brain workers, meaning the white collar workers, what robots did to the blue collar workers,” he said. 

TIME100 Impact Dinner: From Vision to Velocity — Deploying Innovation at Scale was presented by Andhra Pradesh.

Eight years ago, when President Donald Trump arrived at the World Economic Forum in his first term, the alpine gathering of billionaires and heads of state waited nervously to hear how a self-described nationalist would address a temple of globalization. He told the audience that “America First” did not mean “America alone,” boasted about tax cuts and deregulation, and charmed many in the room into seeing him as a pro-business disrupter rather than a threat to the postwar order.

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On Wednesday, as Trump prepares to take the Davos stage for the third time, the world is once again waiting nervously—but for very different reasons.

His return to the World Economic Forum comes amid an extraordinary standoff with U.S. allies over his threats to seize Greenland from Denmark, a widening trans-Atlantic trade dispute, and growing alarm among world leaders that the United States has become an unpredictable and coercive power. 

Trump’s address will be the first major speech of the second year of his second term, coming as his approval ratings have slipped at home and backlash has grown over proliferating immigration raids by federal agents. It is also shaping up to be a defining moment for a presidency that has alienated U.S. allies to an unprecedented degree. It will test whether Trump still sees value in reassuring allies—as he did in 2018—or whether he now intends to formalize a doctrine of coercion, using tariffs and threats of territorial acquisition to bend partners to his will. 

Asked on Tuesday for a preview of his address in Davos, Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room that he plans to project American dominance. “I think more than anything else what I’m going to be speaking about is the tremendous success that we’ve had in one year,” he said.

World leaders began the week in Davos with thinly veiled denunciations of Trump’s conduct. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada warned on Tuesday of a “rupture” in the world order and the end of a “pleasant fiction” in which great powers were constrained by rules. President Emmanuel Macron of France said that Europe would not submit to “bullies” and preferred “the rule of law to brutality.” Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, argued that Europe must build a new form of independence and deepen trade ties with partners beyond the United States.

None of them mentioned Trump by name. None needed to.

Their remarks came hours after Trump posted an AI-generated image showing himself hoisting an American flag in Greenland, labeled “U.S. Territory. Est. 2026,” and shared what appeared to be private text messages from Macron and Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, praising his leadership and seeking a way forward on the crisis.

“Greenland is imperative for National and World Security,” Trump wrote in one post. “There can be no going back.”

The Greenland standoff has upended the opening days of a forum that had been expected to largely focus on artificial intelligence, economic growth, and climate change. European leaders have scrambled to update their Davos talking points to try and contain a confrontation that threatens to rupture NATO.

“Nostalgia will not bring back the old order,” von der Leyen said on Tuesday. “If this change is permanent, then Europe must change permanently too.”

In recent days, Denmark and its NATO partners have taken visible steps to reinforce their presence in Greenland, sending hundreds of soldiers to the island. Greenland’s leaders said they were reviewing civil preparedness plans, including advice that households might need five days of food supplies. 

Speaking in Davos on Tuesday, world leaders appeared to brace for Trump’s address. Carney said medium-size countries would have to band together because “if you are not at the table, we’re on the menu.” Macron warned against “vassalization” and said Europe would not accept the law of the strongest.

Those remarks landed against the backdrop of Trump’s increasingly mocking posture toward allied leaders. He dismissed Macron as irrelevant, predicted he would soon be out of office, and threatened tariffs of up to 200% on French wine and Champagne. He ridiculed Britain for agreeing to cede sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius—a deal his Administration previously praised, but now cites as another reason the U.S. must acquire Greenland.

The confrontations have made Trump the inescapable topic of a gathering that bills itself as “Committed to Improving the State of the World.” Some 3,000 participants from 130 countries have descended on the Swiss resort town, including 65 heads of state and 850 major corporate executives, according to forum organizers.

The Trump Administration is touting this year’s U.S. delegation as its largest and most senior delegation in Davos history, with five Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, alongside Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff. A sprawling “USA House” has taken over storefronts along the main promenade, offering a visual display of American power.

A White House official said the President would emphasize that the United States and Europe must leave behind “economic stagnation” and the policies that caused it, and that housing affordability would remain a chief focus—a message aimed at domestic audiences struggling with the cost of living.

But Trump will likely also boast about projecting U.S. power abroad, including the recent capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his efforts to stop foreign wars.

He is also expected to expand the remit of his “Board of Peace,” a new organization initially billed as overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction, into a more expansive global body that some allies fear is designed to rival the United Nations—with Trump holding veto power over its decisions. The charter-signing ceremony is scheduled for Thursday at Davos, with invited leaders facing a choice that has become emblematic of their week at the conference: align with Trump or risk being targeted by him. France has already said it will not join the board, and other European governments are deeply skeptical, worried the initiative could undermine the U.N. system.
Democratic governors, including Gavin Newsom of California, have accused world leaders of failing to stand up to Trump and warned Europeans not to capitulate. “You mate with him or he devours you,” Newsom said from Davos.

Leaders from Dow Chemical Company, EY, and NTT Data Inc. shared their perspectives on the impact of scaling up new technologies like AI during a TIME100 Talks panel discussion in Davos on Jan. 20. 

The panel took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, which kicked off on Jan. 19 in Davos, drawing around 3,000 high-level participants from business, government, and beyond, in addition to many more observers, journalists, activists, and others.

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During the panel, titled “Innovation in a Multipolar Era,” the participants discussed the benefits of integrating AI, and its potential in areas such as health care and education, as well as some of the challenges of integrating the technology at scale within businesses. 

“We…see enormous benefits, whether it’s discovery of new materials, new drugs, or tech-driven productivity,” said Abhijit Dubey, CEO and chief artificial intelligence officer at NTT Data. “But at the same time we really have to watch out for what we’re doing.” 

He added that, unlike all other innovations before it, AI is the “first technology that will actually be non-human driven.” Not only can this lead to unexpected outcomes, but the technology requires vast amounts of energy and water, in addition to mining of rare earth minerals that are in some cases leading to tensions over resources. 

Another concern is the “paradox of massive abundance at the same time [as] a massive market labor dislocation,” said Dubey, noting it is “something that we really have to watch out for.”

“The pain is not the destination, it is in the transition,” added Debra Bauler, chief information and digital officer at Dow, who explained how the company is approaching its workforce during the AI transition. “We think about the way we work with our team members. We also want to move them from doers of tasks to directors of systems,” she said. “There will be job impacts, but we also think where we’re going, the destination is worth this transition period.”

In any tech transition, when it comes to jobs, “you lose one, you generate one-to-two,” noted Dubey. Protecting those who are negatively impacted can’t be entirely left up to the private sector, he argued. In addition to publicly backed mechanisms like universal basic income, he noted that a solution to generate funding that has been discussed would be imposing a tax on AI agents, the same way people are taxed. “There have to be structural mechanisms that need to be thought through right now, because we can’t do this reactively on the spot,” he said, adding, “There’s no government in the world that’s set up to do this.”

Raj Sharma, global managing partner for growth and innovation at EY, said that in order for AI to usher in an era of what he has called “super-fluid enterprises,” the key ingredients would be trust, tools, and talent. “You have to balance the equation between [the] three to make sure that AI is adopted.” 

TIME100 Talks: Innovation in a Multipolar Era was presented by Philip Morris International.