The Conversation That Hasn’t Happened Yet: Labour, Health and Climate. What Futures Do We Want?

Monday 23 November 2026, 13:30- 17:00
La Pastorale, Route de Ferney 106, 1202 Genève (Invitation Only)

Convened by:
Women at the Table, Geneva Human Rights Hub, FNF Human Rights Hub
A Road to Geneva pre-event ahead of the Geneva AI Summit 2027

The invitation: The people who have spent their lives thinking about decent work, human health and a liveable planet are rarely asked what future they want technology to serve. They are invited to assess risks or to comment on systems already being built. They are not asked to set the direction.

Yet they hold knowledge this moment urgently needs. They know where systems fail people and whose needs remain unmet. Those building AI already have a vision of the future, and the resources to make it consequential. The communities who understand what is at stake need visions as ambitious. What would meaningful work look like? What would it mean to organise health around human dignity? What future can we still build for a liveable planet? These questions deserve room for imagination and for serious disagreement. The answers should help shape the public-interest AI agenda.

Women at the Table, the Geneva Human Rights Hub and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, through its Global Hub for Human Rights, propose a series of curated, closed-door conversations in Geneva, opening with an afternoon on 23 November 2026.

AI is the reason this conversation is urgent now. It is not where the conversation begins. Each session starts with human vision: the futures these communities are working towards, and the gaps between those aspirations and present realities. From that foundation, participants ask what AI could contribute and on what terms. Geneva makes this possible because the communities in question already work within a few kilometres of one another: labour negotiators and health practitioners, climate scientists and rights defenders, researchers and diplomats. Domain experts define the terrain. Technical researchers join them to listen and to test what is possible. Human rights and gender equality inform the conversation from the outset, as structural lenses rather than separate items on the agenda.

The opening afternoon: Up to 25 participants will take part in four moderated sessions. Each thematic session is anchored by four experts, who open with brief provocations before the discussion turns to the whole table. A smaller group drawn from the three panels anchors the closing synthesis. Around the table, domain experts and technical researchers are joined by representatives of permanent missions and international organisations, alongside the convening partners. The afternoon is held under the Chatham House Rule. Participants speak in a personal capacity, which allows them to test ideas and speak beyond institutional positions.

1. Labour: What do we want work to become?
What place should work have in a life well lived? What would meaningful labour and economic security look like, with time for care, and for whom are these still out of reach? Where do existing arrangements fall furthest short, especially for informal workers and those whose contributions remain unpaid or undervalued?

2. Health: What would it mean to organise health around human dignity?
What future is the health community working to build? Which needs remain persistently unanswered, and whose suffering remains poorly understood? What would change if prevention and care were designed around the people health systems have most often overlooked, starting with women, whose bodies medicine has long treated as the exception?

3. Climate: What does a liveable future require?
What are we working to preserve, and what can we still make possible? What would a just transition look like in everyday life, and who carries its costs, including the unpaid work of adaptation that falls most heavily on women? Where is the gap widest between what we know and what we are able to act upon, and whose knowledge could open different pathways?

4. Synthesis: What should these visions ask of technology, and of us?
Where do these futures reinforce one another, and where do they force difficult choices? Which obstacles are political or economic rather than technical? Where could AI make a genuine contribution, and where would it entrench the problem? What should guide the next stage of inquiry, and who needs to be in the room to decide it?

What follows: A concise, non-attributed synthesis report will capture the afternoon’s sharpest ambitions and its unresolved tensions. It will frame three deeper convenings on Labour, Health and Climate in Geneva in early 2027, each widening the circle to include people whose lives these questions most directly concern.

The series aims to conclude by April 2027, so that its findings can contribute to the Global Dialogue on AI Governance in New York and to the Geneva AI Summit on 21 and 22 June 2027. The Summit has set AI as a driver of prosperity and progress for all among its priorities. That commitment needs a clear account of what progress should mean, from the people who work on it every day.