DUBAI-- President Yoon Suk Yeol called on the international community to pool their strengths in science and technology to tackle global challenges such as climate change, pandemics and aging societies.

Yoon issued the call during the Future Vision Forum in Dubai on the last day of his four-day state visit to the United Arab Emirates.

"We must now overcome humanity's common crises of climate change, pandemics, aging and low growth through solidarity and cooperation based on science and technology," he said.

"We must together design a future where human dignity is respected as the highest value and realize it through global solidarity," he added.

Yoon called attention to the importance of choosing and controlling technology, saying the right to do so is as important as the right to live.

"In order to correctly use the authority given to us, we must first design the right future that we must head toward, and for that we need design criteria," he said. "The value that we cannot and must not give up under any circumstances is human dignity."

Yoon warned against the risk of relying too heavily on artificial intelligence, saying humans could end up transferring all of their decision power to AI.

"Science and technology must continually evolve through innovation, but fully contribute to realizing the values we strive for," he said.

Source: Yonhap News Agency