From Graz 2019 to WSA 2025: A Continuous Journey with AI and Responsibility
This Sunday I had one of those days when time simply disappears. I sat down in the morning to go through and judge the projects submitted to World Summit Awards (WSA) 2025, and before I realized it, evening had come. I spent hours surfing, analyzing, and scoring digital solutions from all over the world, across a wide spectrum of domains and impact models.
In this deep immersion, my thoughts went back to EYA, 2019, Graz, to my in-person participation at WSA – probably the strongest and most memorable experience I’ve had so far in this kind of context. It was the first international event where I spoke publicly about artificial intelligence and about how I see it integrated into our everyday lives.
Over the years, that relationship with WSA didn’t stop in Graz. In 2022, I joined the online jury of the WSA European Young Innovators – another intense experience of reviewing digital impact ventures from across Europe, this time fully remote and focused on young innovators. (wsa-global.org).
So, when I found myself again in the jury in 2025, it didn’t feel like a coincidence at all. It felt like a natural continuation of a journey: from being on stage with my first AI pitch in 2019, to contributing online as a juror in 2022, to spending an entire Sunday in 2025 immersed in evaluating new digital solutions with global impact.
Today, at the end of 2025, I reread the transcript and rewatch the recording of that first pitch. What I find fascinating is that, although the world has changed enormously in the meantime, the essence of my message about AI has remained the same.
EYA – Graz 2019: my first public pitch about artificial intelligence
The context back then was completely different: the hype around AI was huge, but conversations about responsibility, sustainability, real impact, and energy footprint were only just starting to take shape. We were in the middle of an intense event full of pitches, debates, ideas, and people from all over the world.
On stage, in a more spontaneous moment, I said a few things that still represent me today. From the transcript of that intervention, the central statement that remains relevant is:
“I think the most important thing is that today we use artificial intelligence to save time and probably also money.”
In the rest of the pitch, I tried to put my relationship with the field into context:
“For me, when I say AI, it’s not just ‘artificial intelligence’. With my background in automatics, I see it as one of the most important tools we all use these days and will keep developing in the future.”
In short, the message was clear: AI is an extremely powerful tool, and its main role is to save us time and money, so that we can shift our focus and resources toward the things that truly matter.
How I translate that message in 2025
Looking back from 2025, I would phrase that idea today roughly like this:
“For me, AI doesn’t just mean ‘artificial intelligence’.
With my background in automatics, I see it as one of the most important tools we already use and will continue to develop.
I think the most important thing is to use artificial intelligence to save time and probably also money.”
The difference is that, in the meantime, I’ve added a few essential layers of context:
- It’s not enough to save time and money. We have to look at how and in what direction we redirect that time and money.
- The conversation about AI can no longer be separated from ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) and from the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).
- It’s becoming mandatory to ask more and more often:
“The energy that powers our models, our servers, our infrastructure – is it clean? Or are we just moving the problem around, contributing to global warming while we talk about the ‘digital future’?”
Today I would put it this way:
AI is acceptable and truly valuable only if its net impact is positive – for people, for society, for the planet.
A whole day with WSA 2025: AI with meaning, not just AI with a “wow” effect
Coming back to that Sunday spent judging WSA 2025 projects, I had the pleasant feeling that I didn’t speak in vain back in 2019 and that my involvement in 2022 wasn’t a one-off either. Together, 2019, 2022, and 2025 form a continuous story of how I relate to digital innovation and AI within the WSA community.
Many of the solutions submitted today:
- use AI for concrete social impact, not just to tick a trendy technology box;
- have integrated, from the design stage, components of sustainability and inclusion;
- talk openly about their carbon footprint and how they can optimize resource consumption.
In the judging process, we don’t just look at “how smart” the technology is, but at:
- what real problem it solves,
- who actually benefits from the solution,
- how ethical and responsible the use of data and technical infrastructure is.
In 2019 I said we use AI to save time and money.
In 2025 I would continue that sentence:
“…and to use the time and money saved to build more equitable systems, more accessible services, more resilient communities – and to protect the planet throughout this process.”
AI, clean energy, and global warming
One element I feel much more acutely now than in 2019 is related to energy.
If we want to be honest with ourselves, we can no longer separate the discussion about AI from the discussion about energy sources:
- Large AI models are energy intensive.
- Data centers have a real, not just theoretical, carbon footprint.
- The decisions we make now, at the level of architecture and infrastructure, will matter in the long run.
That’s why, for me, today, the full message is:
“Yes, let’s use AI to save time and money.
But let’s do it in such a way that the result is powered by clean energy,
in line with ESG and the SDGs, avoiding contributing to global warming.
Otherwise, we risk accelerating exactly the crisis we claim we want to solve.”
From a pitch on stage to a personal guiding line
That pitch in Graz, in 2019, was more than just a moment on stage for me. It was a public statement of intent: the way I choose to relate to artificial intelligence and to technology in general.
Being part of the online jury in 2022, link here, and then again in the jury process in 2025, link here, shows that this is not a random sequence of appearances, but an ongoing commitment to how digital innovation – and especially AI – can serve people and the planet.
Today, after a full day with WSA 2025, after years of seeing, testing, and discussing projects, I believe even more strongly in the following idea:
AI is not about replacing people,
but about giving them time and resources
so they can build a better, more equitable, and more planet-friendly world.
Between Graz 2019, the online jury in 2022, and WSA 2025, the red thread remains the same for me: technology – and especially AI – must be a means, not an end in itself.
A means through which we save time and money, but also through which we take responsibility for people and for the planet.
And if that means looking critically at how we produce energy, how we build models, and who has access to them, then that is exactly what we need to do.
Paul Bonea, 23.11.2025