Check against delivery – Speech by Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe
Good evening.
History no longer moves in centuries…
It moves in seconds.
One spark can start a revolution.
One click can move a billion people.
My story begins in 1950 Cambridge, England.
Alan Turing asks a question no one dared:
“Can machines think?”
Weeks later, in Rome, European nations ask another:
“How do we protect human dignity?”
Two beginnings: AI and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Fast forward to 1989.
In Berlin, the last hours of the Iron Curtain.
At CERN in Geneva, a young scientist sketches the World Wide Web.
A wall falls. A web is born.
The same promise: to connect, to belong.
November 2022 — ChatGPT takes the world by surprise.
Generative AI goes mainstream.
That winter, Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Three years on, impunity prevails.
Technology moves fast — and never looks back.
But rights and trust take one step forward, two steps back.
Outrage gets clicks.
But outrage cannot be the business model of democracy.
And so we face a choice.
One future where technology protects and connects.
Another where it divides and breaks trust.
If technology can spread lies, it can also detect them.
If it can be used for crime, it can also fight it.
Engines of division can also drive progress — if built on rights and trust.
We have the tools.
Like the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI — the first treaty of its kind, open to the world.
Together, we can make technology a force for good.
The challenge is balance: protection with freedom, innovation with rights.
First came the agricultural revolution.
Then the industrial revolution.
Now the AI revolution.
Today we choose one more: a human-rights revolution.
To align technology with humanity.
And make the digital promise a reality.
Now.