The Editor's Post: You don’t need a cannon to kill a mosquito – ethical AI in the spotlight at Euclid Summit

“Greta hates AI” was the gag which preceded Greta Rossi from ChangemakerXchange’s presentation at this week’s Euclid Network Summit in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The event, which focussed on mainstreaming the social economy, brought together social economy leaders and practitioners with investors, academics, politicians and more from across Europe for two days of conference and social enterprise tours. 

Greta’s supposed dislike of the technology was a slightly surprising start point for a session on AI for Impact, but was, of course, an exaggeration. Rather, Greta and ChangemakerXchange are advocating a human-centric, cautious approach to the technology, emphasising that “the social impact sector must share the onus of shaping the present and future of AI, to ensure it serves humanity and the planet”.

ChangemakerXchange is a global support network for young social innovators and entrepreneurs. The organisation has developed a ‘Mindful AI Manifesto’, which emphasises decision-making must remain not just as “a human in the loop” of decision-making, but “human at the core”. 

I was invited to join the session to talk about The AI Dilemma, the film I made for Pioneers Post with tech ethicist James Gauci, exploring how social enterprises can make use of the technology without compromising their commitments to serve people and planet.

Also on the panel was Jenny Romano, co-founder of The Newsroom. This social enterprise’s AI tools to assist journalists with fact-checking and information transparency were of obvious interest to me. 

I was pleased that many of the points made by our interviewees in The AI Dilemma were reinforced by the experts on the panel. Romano emphasised that The Newsroom always makes use of the smallest, least resource-intensive AI tool possible, as also recommended by Audrey Tang and Nikoline Arns in our film.

“The big models are fancy, they're shiny, they're fast, they do cool stuff,” she said. But, they’re vastly overpowered to achieve the specific jobs The Newsroom wants to use AI for, and environmental and social harms are directly associated with that unused capacity. 

As she pointed out: “If you want to kill a mosquito, you don’t need a cannon.” 

Impact consultant Katerina Chantzi challenged the idea that using AI will always make work easier, particularly as greater efficiencies don’t necessarily mean less work, but rather a greater volume of tasks being completed in the same time. As such, she questioned who will really see the benefits of AI. 

Further questioning the power structures behind AI was Cynthia Reynolds, founder of the Circular Economy Coalition. Reynolds is an advocate for a universal basic dividend, an unconditional cash payment made to all citizens, drawn from big tech firms. 

Reynolds said: “We have these massive companies who are using our data, our resources, the global commons, to be able to have extractive business models. Should they be feeding a fund that supports each and every one of us as our jobs disappear?”

Also riffing on the theme of economic transformation and AI was Hans Stegeman, chief economist at Triodos Bank, who broke off from the main thrust of his keynote speech at the Summit to talk about a specific societal challenge AI may cause for Europe. Stegeman pointed out that the economic growth that AI promises will drive profits for companies mainly based in the US, but the predicted job losses will hit internationally. Where then does that then leave Europe’s tax base, he asked. 

You can read more on ideas and insights from the Summit about mainstreaming the social economy and economic systems transformation in our top story this week. 

In his address to open the Summit, Euclid president Neven Marinovic joked that he’d asked AI to write his speech for him, but it had churned out something “stale” about stakeholder alignment and synergies.

“I think there is still some work that we as humans need to do as ourselves,” said Marinovic. So, let’s get to it.

This week's top stories: 

‘Forget impact measurement’ and stop the semantics: Europe’s impact leaders urged to wake up the social economy

Match Trading: how grants are unlocking commercial opportunities for social enterprises

Homelessness emerges as high-impact area for social investors in new research from Better Society Capital

The Impact World this Week: 13 March 2026

Top image (L to R): Christian Vietz (Euclid), Cynthia Reynolds (Diamond Economics), Greta Rossi (ChangemakerXchange), David Lyons (Pioneers Post), Jenny Romano (The Newsroom) and Katerina Chantzi talk during the AI for Impact panel at the Euclid Network Impact Summit 2026 (credit: Euclid Network and Holland Park Media).