Minasama. Distinguished colleagues.

Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen.Thank you to our Japanese hosts, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication and to the co-hosts, OECD and the World Bank. For bringing us together; and for taking the initiative to establish the Hiroshima AI Process Friends Group.

Norway values Japan’s leadership and foresight in gathering countries around a shared effort to ensure the responsible development and use of AI.

Through this program, we have gained a deeper understanding of Japan's own work on AI governance, and of the seriousness and diversity of perspectives in this room.

The question is not whether AI will transform our societies. It will. The question is whether that transformation happens to people, or with them.

Both Japan's AI Basic Plan and Norway's own strategy rest on the same conviction: human dignity is not a constraint on AI. It is the point of it.

We meet at a moment of strategic consequences.


The global race in AI is intensifying, and the decisions made in rooms like this will shape our societies for generations. Japan has created something rare here, a forum where bilateral trust and multilateral ambition reinforce each other.

In realizing the ambitions of the Hiroshima AI Process, we see three key challenges.

  1. First, public trust, the infrastructure everything else depends on 

AI is now embedded in decisions that affect people's health, livelihoods and safety. Transparency, accountability and responsible data use are therefore not optional features. But the foundation upon which everything else is built.

Trust is fragile. Organized criminal networks now weaponize AI to target our citizens. AI-enabled fraud and disinformation are already eroding the social fabric that makes good governance possible.

High trust, high digitalization, high prosperity, these become attack surfaces. Criminals are not after our money alone. They are after our trust. And when trust erodes, governance erodes with it.

In 2025, losses from AI-enhanced "special fraud" / tokushu sagi reached record levels in Japan. Digital fraud now generates more revenue globally than the narcotics trade. This is not a nuisance. It is an industry, and AI is its most powerful tool yet.

Norway is launching a strengthened national effort. But we cannot do this alone.


We hear that fragmented national requirements create compliance burdens for global platforms. Having worked in international digital business, I understand that concern is genuine. But fraud travels across those platforms does not respect borders.

The platforms that carry it have both the technical capability and the social responsibility to act. The answer to fragmentation cannot be less accountability, it must be smarter, shared accountability between governments and industry.

Teaching citizens to swim is important. But we also need to stop someone from flooding the pool.

  1. Second, keeping pace with technological change: 

The answer is not less governance, it is smarter, faster, more technologically neutral governance. Because governance is not a burden for innovation. It is the condition for it.

In Norway, our Data Protection Authority runs a regulatory AI sandbox, innovators test real systems under real supervision, and the lessons are published. It is not a perfect model. But it is a working one and working models are what this process exists to share.

3. Third, from principles to practice:
Principles without implementation are decoration. The real test is what happens when AI systems meet real people in real situations. a benefits decision, a medical assessment, a hiring process.

Responsible AI is a design choice, made before the first line of code. And increasingly, it is a competitive advantage for those who embrace it.

Governance cannot be left to governments alone.

What matters most is what happens when we leave this room, and partnership between government, industry, research and civil society produces solutions that carry legitimacy.

HAIP can be the forum where principles become practice — developing common tools, sharing what failed and what works, and building the mutual accountability this moment demands.

The question is: will AI be something that happens to humanity, or something humanity shapes for the better?

In this room, on these days, the answer is ours to give.


Thank you and thank you to Japan for making this possible.

ARIGATO