An Historic AI Summit in Iceland, and a Conversation with its President

On October 11, 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met at Höfði House in Reykjavik, Iceland, to confront the threat hanging over both their nations: the nuclear arms race. The summit was hastily arranged, light on ceremony, and ended without a deal. But today it’s seen as the moment that upended the game theory of the Cold War. A year later, the two leaders signed the first treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons.

Forty years to the day, Tristan and Aza joined 15 world leaders at Höfði House, including Icelandic President Halla Tómasdóttir, for a dialogue on global coordination around AI. It capped a weekend in Reykjavik where leaders, diplomats, and policymakers had candid conversations about the AI future we’re headed toward, and made commitments to steer toward a better one.

The 1986 Reykjavik meeting didn’t end the nuclear arms race. It made ending it imaginable. That’s exactly the moment we need today with AI. 

In this episode, Tristan and Aza sit down with President Tómasdóttir to discuss what happened in Reykjavik and what it means for our future.

Note: This episode was recorded on Monday, 10/12.

CORRECTIONS

• Tristan referred to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev as “the two presidents.” Gorbachev was Soviet General Secretary. He was not made President of the USSR until 1989.

• Tristan referred to The Day After as the largest television event in history. It is actually the second-largest non-sports TV event, after the series finale of MASH.

• The 50 petabytes figure for the OpenAI swarm investigation refers to the full archive OpenAI is searching related to the Hugging Face incident, including training and eval records, rather than just the swarm’s communication. 

• Aza mistakenly referred to the 1986 Reykjavik “accord.” The leaders did not leave the meeting with an accord. 

• The Stubb/Støre statement was signed by 22 leaders from 20 countries, not by 22 countries as Tristan said. 

• The quote from Postman is “clarity is courage,” not “clarity creates courage,” as Aza said.