The 2026 World Internet Conference global youth leaders shared their view that the open source and openness of artificial intelligence technologies would help humans to better protect themselves in global emergencies and create equality in regard to public access.
Twenty young people were selected for the World Internet Conference Global Youth Leadership Program in 2026, and some of them took part in the Youth and Digital Future Forum at the 2026 WIC Wuzhen Summit.
Natalia Mykhaylova, the founder and CEO of WeavAir, is a WIC global youth leader. She is committed to finding solutions — powered by satellite earth observation data — to enable accurate decision-making regarding climate resilience.
"We are facing one of the biggest global challenges: how do we create systems and solutions to protect our cities, to protect our regions, to protect citizens against some of the biggest global emergencies," she said.
Through her company's projects, "we learned how to build effective solutions not just to enable practical and cost-effective solutions for governments, but also to enable positive social and environmental impact, as well as positive economic outcomes," she said.
Right now, she is looking forward to collaborating more closely with government agencies, NGOs, and other companies to create a solution for a sustainable economy.
It was lucky enough for her company to be supported by several very big organizations, including the European Space Agency, on satellite imagery to solve some global challenges, she said.
"We need to make a solution that is accessible to people, easy to use, cost-effective, and also evidence-based," she said. "This is where I think collaboration comes in."
Another global youth leader, Marco Mendieta, founder and president of the Misión Ecuador Foundation, has paid close attention to the development of AI from the perspective of inclusive development, inequality, entrepreneurship, and job creation.
"We are talking about being inclusive, about cooperating, and about having open source technologies that can help everyone," he said.
Not everyone started in the same place, Mendieta said. A student in North America could have the best high-speed internet and all the latest technology, but others might not have access to such resources. "They are starting from different points," he said.
With the advancement of technology, people can create new possibilities in economic development and in inclusive development, while finding new ways to create job opportunities and lift people out of poverty, he said.
