On January 15, 2026, David Munir Nabti, Co-Founder and CEO of Bloom, took the stage at the AI Policing AI event hosted by Kanwal Shahzad at the DIFC Innovation Hub in Dubai. The event brought together experts in AI safety, governance, engineering, risk, and policy to tackle one of the defining challenges of our time: how do we govern AI systems that are moving faster than our ability to oversee them?
David’s presentation cut through the usual tech optimism with a direct question: Are we building a future where our children can thrive, or are we accelerating toward collapse? Drawing on 20 years of experience bridging Silicon Valley and the Middle East, he laid out a framework that is equal parts warning and roadmap.
His talk was structured around three pillars: Values, Risks, and A Way Forward.
The Values Behind the Technology
David opened by redefining entrepreneurship. The dominant narrative treats it as the art of making maximum money for the fewest people in the shortest time. But for David, entrepreneurship is something far broader: the skills and processes of building organizations of all kinds, from venture-backed startups to nonprofits, cooperatives, civic organizations, and the public sector.
The question he posed was pointed: What values are actually embedded in the technologies we elevate?
“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”
“Digital life is the next step in evolution… [Caring only for humans is] speciesist.”
“Our enemies are ‘existential risk,’ ‘sustainability,’ ‘ESG,’ ‘social responsibility,’ ‘stakeholder capitalism’…”
“We are tool providers. That [societal impact] is not our responsibility.”
These are not fringe voices. These are the architects of the technologies shaping our world. And as David pointed out, even those who acknowledge the dangers keep building anyway.
“There’s a 25% chance that the future of AI will go really, really badly.”
“If this technology goes wrong, it’s lights out for everyone.”
“AI is far more dangerous than nukes.”
“I think it’s a 10% to 20% chance that AI will take over and lead to human extinction within the next 20 to 30 years.”
David then asked: would you put your child in a car that has a 25% chance of crashing? The answer is obvious. So why are we collectively putting our future into the hands of systems whose own creators say might go catastrophically wrong?
So What Are Our Values?
Rather than imposing his own values, David pointed to frameworks we have already collectively agreed on: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals, and Doughnut Economics, a framework by economist Kate Raworth for building economies that meet social foundations within planetary boundaries.
He also highlighted the principles of Islamic finance, noting how its emphasis on connecting money to values (not just value), risk-sharing, social benefit, and avoiding extreme uncertainty offers a model that should inform all investment and innovation.
The Collapse to Flourishing Index
This is where David introduced the Collapse to Flourishing Index (CFI), a framework he developed to help individuals, entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers evaluate whether their choices are pushing us toward systemic collapse or toward flourishing.
The CFI identifies six dimensions of existential risk:
D1: AI & Autonomous Systems
Risk: AI takeover, mass authoritarianism, AI-enabled malicious actors, systemic collapse.
Flourishing: Leverage AI to support human values and objectives. Strong safety testing, human control, transparency, misuse prevention.
D2: Climate & Nature
Risk: Climate and nature breakdown threaten food, water, health, and stability.
Flourishing: Support rapid decarbonization, restoration, circularity, and clean production.
D3: Basic Rights, Governance, Rule of Law
Risk: Potential for collapse when truth, rights, and fair rules erode.
Flourishing: Trustworthy info, privacy, fair governance, and civic safeguards.
D4: Inequality & Shared Prosperity
Risk: Extreme inequality can fuel unrest, conflict, and systemic collapse.
Flourishing: Fair wages, shared prosperity, opportunity, and fair markets.
D5: Culture, Attention & Social Cohesion
Risk: Culture fractures when attention is hijacked and trust breaks down; passivity and disengagement.
Flourishing: Agency-supporting design, wellbeing, community, and literacy.
D6: CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radioactive, Nuclear)
Risk: Mass casualties and global disruption; expanding accessibility due to AI advances and weakening of governance.
Flourishing: Access controls, safety culture, oversight, and preparedness.
David drew a striking analogy: imagine if the world had never created the International Atomic Energy Agency or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Imagine if we had simply given everyone access to nuclear weapons and said, “please just use it for good stuff.” That would be unthinkable. And yet, he argued, that is essentially what we are doing with AI.
Watch the Full Talk
A Way Forward: The Call to Action
Despite the weight of these risks, David is an optimist. He believes deeply in humanity’s capacity to come together and solve existential challenges. We have done it before. We can do it again. But it requires all of us.
He outlined four roles that everyone can play:
Consumers
Choose values-aligned tools and tech. Vote with your wallet every time you use it. Every purchase is a decision about the kind of world you are building.
Entrepreneurs
Build values-aligned products and services. If the options do not exist to buy according to our values, then start the companies that align with them. Prioritize flourishing-by-design principles.
Investors
Fund mission-driven, values-oriented startups. Ensure your investment thesis aligns with your values and supports companies that include people and planet alongside profits.
Policymakers
Enact governance frameworks and standards. Implement transparency, interoperability, and anti-monopoly policies to safeguard values and the public good.
David introduced the concept of "values-based entrepreneurship": if the products and services available to us do not reflect our values, then we need to build the ones that do. The idea is simple but powerful. Every company that prioritizes people, planet, and shared prosperity over extraction and harm shifts the balance of our economy toward flourishing. It is not about rejecting entrepreneurship or innovation. It is about redirecting that energy toward what actually matters.
Inclusive Development: Design Principles
The talk also highlighted key design principles for entrepreneurs and investors working toward flourishing:
Flourishing-by-Design
Embed values-alignment into the core of products and services, creating solutions that prioritize wellbeing, truth, privacy, and shared prosperity.
Safety-by-Design
Proactively mitigate existential risks, ensuring innovations do not pose threats to humanity or the environment.
Truth-by-Design
Build technologies that combat misinformation, manipulation, and the erosion of information integrity.
Investors as Stewards
Direct funds toward values-aligned startups and incentivize flourishing-by-design business models.
The Collapse to Flourishing Index
The CFI is a framework designed to help consumers, entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers evaluate whether their choices contribute to systemic collapse or to human flourishing. It draws on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals, Doughnut Economics, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and the Biological Weapons Convention.
Bloom is working to make the CFI adaptable, usable, and actionable for everyone.
Learn More About the CFI Framework →About the Event
AI Policing AI was hosted by Kanwal Shahzad, Founder of AISFY, at the DIFC Innovation Hub in Dubai on January 15, 2026. The event assembled experts across AI safety, governance, engineering, risk, and policy to address the growing gap between AI capabilities and our ability to govern them. The lineup included speakers from Siemens, Emvo, Hawkamah Institute for Governance, MYData Consulting, Symplfy.ai, and more.
The event explored how agent-based AI systems that can take real-world actions, such as approving requests, triggering workflows, moving money, and influencing decisions, demand a fundamentally new approach to oversight and accountability.
David Munir Nabti is the Co-Founder and CEO of Bloom, a social impact organization that runs entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education programs across the Middle East and Africa. A Lebanese-American who grew up in Silicon Valley, David has spent 20 years working to bridge technology, entrepreneurship, and values-driven innovation.