Women4Cyber Bulgaria / UNICEF Bulgaria Youth Council

For me, the success of the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance isn't measured by complex technical papers, but by ensuring that no one is left behind. As someone who grew up in a small village and fights for digital safety, I believe true success looks like this: First, we must hear the voices of small communities and young people. AI isn't just for big tech companies or wealthy nations. Success means the dialogue creates a bridge between innovation and tradition, ensuring that technology helps people in remote areas without erasing their identity. Second, ethics and security must be at the center. In my work with Women4Cyber, I see how vital it is for people to feel protected in the digital world. A successful dialogue would mean reaching an agreement on rules that protect human rights and prevent discrimination. AI should be a tool for freedom, not for silencing our voices. Finally, success is leaving with concrete steps for education. It isn't enough to just have the technology; we must teach young people how to use it responsibly. If this dialogue inspires leaders to invest in the education of every child, no matter where they come from, then we have truly built the foundation for a peaceful and fair future. The goal is for AI to unite us, not divide us—just like the community I believe in.

• Safe, secure and trustworthy AI
• AI capacity-building
• Protection and promotion of human rights
• Social, economic, ethical, cultural, linguistic and technical implications of AI

My selection of these four priorities is deeply rooted in my personal journey from a small Bulgarian village to working within national security and international policy. AI Capacity-Building is my top priority. Coming from a rural area, I know that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. I want to ensure that AI doesn't create a new "digital divide." My mission is to bring these technologies to young people in small settlements, giving them the tools to stay in their homelands and thrive. Protection and Promotion of Human Rights is a value passed down to me by my ancestors. Having heard stories of lost identities and silenced voices, I believe AI governance must be a shield for human dignity. Technology should never be used to marginalize or monitor; it must be a tool that guarantees every person's right to be who they are. The Social, Cultural, and Linguistic Implications of AI are vital to me because of my Turkish-Bulgarian heritage. We must ensure that AI models respect and preserve local languages and traditions rather than erasing them. For a "peaceful future," technology must understand our unique differences, not just follow a global average. Finally, Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI reflects my professional work with Women4Cyber and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We cannot have progress without trust. By focusing on cybersecurity and ethical standards, we can protect the most vulnerable users-especially women and youth-from digital harm. Ultimately, I chose these areas because they represent a future where innovation and tradition walk hand in hand, and where technology serves as a bridge to equality, not a barrier.

From my perspective, there is a critical cross-cutting issue that often gets lost in high-level AI discussions: the Rural-Urban Intelligence Gap. While we talk about "capacity building" at a national level, we rarely discuss the specific psychological and technical barriers for youth in small, isolated villages like Kukuryak. In these communities, AI is often seen as a "city luxury" or something that belongs to another world. True AI governance must include hyper-local accessibility. It isn't enough for a country to have an AI strategy; that strategy must reach the child in a mountain village who speaks a minority language and has limited internet. If we don't bridge this gap, AI will unintentionally become a tool for further urbanization and the abandonment of our traditions. Another emerging issue is Intergenerational Digital Peace. In my experience, there is a growing disconnect between the older generations, who hold our cultural history and recipes, and the younger generations, who live in the digital world. I believe AI governance should explore how technology can archive and protect oral histories and cultural identities that are at risk of being lost. We need ethical frameworks that encourage AI to serve as a bridge between the wisdom of our great-grandparents and the tools of the future. Finally, we must address Environmental Synergy. As someone studying structural engineering and "Green Roofs," I believe AI governance should be tied directly to local sustainability. AI shouldn't just be about data; it should be about helping us build smarter, greener homes in the very communities where we were born.

The biggest challenge is AI Capacity-Building. In places like my home village, Kukuryak, we have talented youth, but without a clear governance framework, they are being left behind. There is a risk that AI will only benefit the "tech hubs" in the capital, leading to more "brain drain" from rural areas. Another major concern is Linguistic and Cultural Identity. Most AI models are trained on global data, often ignoring the unique nuances of the Bulgarian language and our specific traditions. Without rules to protect our cultural heritage, I worry that our history—the stories of our grandparents—will be "filtered out" or misrepresented by algorithms that don't understand our background. However, there are incredible opportunities. Through my work with Women4Cyber, I see how Safe and Trustworthy AI can actually empower women and youth in my region. If we create strong, ethical rules, we can build a "digital shield" that allows even the most remote student to participate in the global economy safely. By integrating AI into our structural engineering and green initiatives (like my "Green Roofs" project), we can use technology to make our local communities more sustainable. The goal is to move from being just "consumers" of technology to being "creators" who use AI to protect our freedom and lift our communities.

Through my work, I've seen that cyber threats don't stop at borders. The AI Dialogue can create a unified language for Safe and Trustworthy AI. By sharing best practices, countries can ensure that security protocols protect everyone—especially vulnerable groups and women—regardless of which country's technology they are using. International cooperation usually focuses on global markets, but the AI Dialogue has the power to protect Cultural and Linguistic Diversity. It can facilitate a global commitment to "Inclusive AI," where smaller nations like Bulgaria can share their unique traditions and languages. This prevents a future where only a few dominant cultures shape the logic of AI, ensuring that our grandparents' stories are preserved in the digital age. Cooperation shouldn't just be between governments; it should be between communities. The Dialogue can be a platform where a "Green Roofs" project in Sofia or a cybersecurity workshop in a small village can be shared as a blueprint for other regions. It turns local innovation into global solutions. Ultimately, the AI Dialogue can ensure that international cooperation isn't just about big tech profits, but about guaranteeing freedom and opportunity for the student in a remote village just as much as the engineer in a major city.

The Dialogue should connect with established youth platforms like the UNICEF Youth Council and the European Youth Dialogue. These groups already have the pulse of the next generation. The "added value" here is moving beyond just "listening" to youth and actually integrating their lived experiences—especially from rural areas like my home—into formal policy. Initiatives like Women4Cyber are already doing the hard work of closing the gender and skills gap in digital safety. The AI Dialogue can bring these specialized networks to the global stage, ensuring that "Trustworthy AI" isn't just a corporate slogan, but a practical reality that protects women and marginalized groups from algorithmic bias and cyber threats. The Dialogue should align with the EU AI Act and the work of the European Commission (where I recently discussed youth housing and policy). However, its unique value lies in its global reach. While the EU sets strong regulations, the Global Dialogue can ensure these standards are interoperable with the needs of developing regions and smaller nations, preventing a "fragmented" internet. The greatest strength of the AI Dialogue is its ability to ensure Human Oversight. While technical experts focus on code, this platform can focus on the human story. It can turn high-level "international cooperation" into local "community empowerment," making sure that a student in a small Bulgarian village has the same digital rights and safety as a developer in Geneva.

To make the AI Dialogue truly effective we must move away from top-down lectures and toward an inclusive multistakeholder ecosystem that mirrors the interdisciplinary nature of my own studies. Different stakeholders bring unique strengths that are essential for a peaceful future. Governments should provide the legal safety net while actively investing in AI capacity-building for rural areas to ensure that national security never compromises individual freedom. Civil society and youth organizations like UNICEF and Women4Cyber should act as ethical auditors bringing the human stories of those most at risk of being left behind such as women and youth in small villages. Meanwhile academia and technical experts have the responsibility to translate complex algorithms into plain language so that everyday citizens can understand the real-world impact of these tools. Regarding the format I recommend a decentralized hub-and-spoke model that starts with regional listening sessions in places like the Balkans before the main event in Geneva. This ensures a student in a small Bulgarian village has a direct line to a policy-maker in Switzerland. The structure should also include intergenerational roundtables where digital natives and traditional experts co-design AI solutions to protect cultural identity while embracing innovation. Finally the dialogue should incorporate interactive red-teaming simulations where stakeholders role-play AI crisis scenarios to test safety and trustworthiness in a practical way rather than just a theoretical one. By mixing technology policy and grassroots activism the AI Dialogue can become a platform where every voice no matter how small the village it comes from helps shape our global digital future.

In my opinion the voices of youth from small and rural communities like my home village of Kukuryak are still deeply underrepresented in global discussions on AI governance because technology is often viewed only through the lens of big cities and developed nations. We also rarely hear from the people who hold our traditional and cultural knowledge like the elders in my community who worry that their languages and identities will be filtered out by a digital world that doesn't understand them. Women from smaller regions are another group that needs to be at the table because our perspectives on cybersecurity and safety come from a place of protecting our communities rather than just writing code. To include these voices we must move beyond symbolic participation and create a structure that brings the dialogue directly to these local areas through regional workshops and digital platforms that don't require someone to be in Geneva to be heard. We could also implement intergenerational mentorship programs where young tech-savvy people and traditional community leaders work together to co-design AI rules that respect both innovation and local heritage. Inclusion means making sure that the student from a mountain village has the same power to shape the future as a developer from a tech hub because true peace and progress can only happen when we ensure that no one is left behind in the digital shadows.

To truly break the mold of traditional conferences we should introduce a "Tech-Heritage Hackathon" where participants don't just write code but collaborate to solve real-world community challenges like using AI to preserve a dying local dialect or mapping sustainable "Green Roofs" in historic rural districts. I also believe a "Policy Simulation Lab" would be incredibly powerful where a student from a small village like mine swaps roles with a high-level diplomat to navigate a digital crisis and see how AI governance impacts a person's daily life and freedom. Instead of standard panels we could use "Human Library" sessions where delegates "borrow" the life stories of people from underrepresented backgrounds to understand the ethical stakes of AI through a human lens rather than a technical one. We could also integrate "Live Crowdsourced Policy Drafting" using an open-source platform that allows young people across the globe to suggest real-time amendments to the discussion papers during the sessions in Geneva. Another dynamic format would be "Interdisciplinary Speed-Dating" which forces a structural engineer an AI developer and a human rights activist to find common ground on a single governance gap in under five minutes. By blending the creativity of a startup with the weight of global diplomacy we can transform the AI Dialogue into a living laboratory where innovation meets identity. This approach ensures that the energy of the youth and the wisdom of our traditions aren't just background noise but the very heart of the conversation.

To move from theory to action we should look at decentralized digital safety models like the one I support at Women4Cyber which focuses on building a neighborhood watch for the internet by training local leaders in remote villages to act as cybersecurity mentors. Another powerful approach is the "Algorithmic Identity Protection" framework which some smaller nations are testing to ensure that minority languages and cultural recipes are legally protected from being exploited or erased by global AI training models. We also have successful platforms like "Civic-Tech Sandboxes" where young developers and structural engineers can test AI tools for green urban planning-like my own sustainable roof projects-in a controlled environment that prioritizes local environmental laws over quick profits. I am also inspired by "Intergenerational Tech-Vaults" which are digital archives managed by youth councils to record the oral histories of elders using AI-driven translation that respects their original dialects and linguistic nuances. These practices show that when we treat AI as a tool for community resilience rather than just an industrial product we can create a "Digital Shield" that protects individual freedom while driving innovation. By connecting these grassroots solutions with national institutions we can build a governance system that is as strong and adaptable as the communities it is designed to serve.