Insights

AI has successfully designed functioning bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—by generating new genetic sequences based on over 2 million phage genomes. Researchers created 285 AI-designed genomes for the phage ΦX174, synthesizing them in the lab; 16 produced working viruses capable of infecting E. coli. Some AI-generated phages showed different DNA yet preserved function, and hybrid phages evolved to infect bacteria resistant to the original virus. This advancement in generative biology could aid phage therapy, a potential tool against antibiotic-resistant infections, though significant challenges remain before clinical application.
Scientists have designed a functioning virus from scratch using AI – what you need to know
Foreign ownership of sovereign debt significantly influences inflation vulnerability in financially open economies. When foreign investors—often more sensitive to global risk and less anchored domestically—hold a larger share of government debt, shifts in their sentiment can cause exchange rate depreciation and increased import prices, leading to imported inflation independent of domestic demand. This dynamic alters the monetary transmission mechanism, as monetary policy effects interact with global investor behavior. Consequently, the financial account of the balance of payments must be considered alongside traditional domestic factors to fully understand inflation dynamics, especially amid rising foreign holdings of sovereign debt.
Latin America | Financial services
How foreign ownership of sovereign debt affects inflation
The BIMP-EAGA region aims to transform its fragmented special economic zones (SEZs) into connected, green, and digital ecosystems that boost trade, investment, and job creation. Despite geographic and economic challenges, the region’s wealth in natural resources and young workforce provide strong potential. A five-step roadmap emphasizes: defining sector-specific SEZ identities, strengthening small and medium enterprises through access to finance and technology, harmonizing trade and digital regulations, leveraging digital tools for market access, and prioritizing environmental sustainability. Integrated economic corridors and SEZs will enable industrial upgrading and inclusive, resilient growth aligned with BIMP-EAGA Vision 2035.
Africa, ASEAN
Asian Development Blog: From Enclaves to Ecosystems: A Five-Step Roadmap for Green, Digital Special Economic Zones
AI-based appearance-rating platforms assign numerical attractiveness scores, promoting the notion that beauty can be objectively measured, despite cultural and individual variability in perceptions of attractiveness. These tools contribute to a broader online culture focused on appearance optimization, exemplified by the "looksmaxxing" subculture, which sometimes encourages harmful behaviors such as extreme dieting, cosmetic procedures, and body dysmorphia. Research links appearance evaluation and objectification with body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, especially among vulnerable youth. The platforms risk reinforcing harmful social pressures and could be exploited in abusive relationships to demean and control individuals, indicating a need for careful study and awareness of potential harms.
‘You’re a 4 out of 10’: the troubling rise of AI appearance ratings
AI models like Anthropic’s Claude operate based on constitutions—detailed value guidelines that inform decision-making in complex ethical scenarios, such as detecting environmental violations despite user resistance. These constitutions contain vague principles that require interpretation, currently managed by multiple internal teams in a fragmented and inconsistent manner without standardized procedures for resolving ambiguities or evolving rules. Introducing an internal court system within AI labs could institutionalize the interpretation and refinement of these AI constitutions. Such courts would provide coherent, adaptable, and transparent rulings over time, creating a synthetic common law framework that improves governance and accountability in AI behavior beyond ad hoc or patchwork approaches.
Courts for AI Constitutions
Andy Burnham, as the UK's first prime minister with prior experience as culture secretary, signals a potentially stronger focus on the arts, building on his Greater Manchester record of supporting music and grassroots venues through targeted funding and policy measures like the agent of change principle. Despite past national cuts in arts funding, recent efforts—including the government's 2023 music plan "Turn It Up"—show increased investment aimed at devolving cultural funding to local leaders and integrating culture with technology. Burnham's approach emphasizes culture as economic and civic infrastructure. However, the success of these plans depends on effective implementation and whether institutional changes can overcome bureaucratic challenges.
What Andy Burnham means for the arts
The UK is experiencing a severe drought, causing record low rainfall, harming agriculture, wildlife, and leading to significant crop yield losses and economic damage. This exacerbates existing food supply challenges triggered by global conflicts and inflation, threatening food security for all. Farming sectors face financial strain, prompting calls for policy changes to support climate adaptation. A comprehensive redesign of the UK food system is necessary, focusing on resilient production, smarter land use, and healthier diets. Long-term, coordinated strategies involving all stakeholders are crucial to build a stronger, fairer food system prepared for climate impacts and future crises.
Africa | Health
As severe drought hits, the UK’s food system faces crisis – here’s how to change that
Light Society is an advanced agent-based simulation framework that uses large language models (LLMs) combined with distilled surrogates to efficiently simulate human-like social behaviors at an unprecedented scale of over one billion agents. By modeling social processes as structured transitions in agent and environment states, Light Society achieves high-fidelity representations of complex social phenomena such as trust dynamics and opinion diffusion. Grounded in real demographic data, this approach enables researchers to study emergent collective behaviors and test social hypotheses at a planetary scale with both accuracy and practical efficiency.
Modeling Earth-Scale Human-Like Societies with One Billion Agents
Twilio's Connected Government Report (2026) reveals a significant perception gap: 88% of government organizations rate their citizen engagement as good or excellent, while only 44% of citizens agree. Although agencies are confident in their digital services, citizens experience fewer tangible benefits from these interactions. AI adoption is widespread, with 97% of public sector organizations implementing AI and use cases increasing by 50% since 2024, yet public trust remains low. The report categorizes agencies into beginners, developing, and leaders based on digital engagement maturity, noting leaders excel in personalized, coordinated communication and AI use to better serve citizens.
ICT
Research finds 88% of government organizations rate their citizen engagement as good or excellent, but only 44% of citizens agree
Artificial intelligence now enables the generation of realistic synthetic content including images, audio, video, documents, and websites, making it increasingly difficult to verify online information. This challenges the integrity of the information ecosystem, demanding robust verification, authentication, and transparency measures. A report by Hilke Schellmann and colleagues outlines these challenges from the perspectives of information producers, consumers, and intermediaries. It also discusses possible interventions, based on insights from journalists, researchers, and technologists, aimed at sustaining trust and factual accuracy in AI-mediated information environments. The goal is to foster collaboration across stakeholders for a more resilient information future.
ICT, Education
Holding the Line – Authentication, Verification, and the Fight for Facts in the AI Age
Accounting plays a critical role in economic integrity, contributing £80.7 billion to UK GDP in 2022 and supporting over 828,000 jobs. The profession is evolving with increased demands from regulatory pressures, ESG reporting, audit reform, and digital transformation, shifting work toward judgment, assurance, and strategic oversight. However, the talent pipeline is narrowing: from 2014 to 2024, student numbers in professional accountancy qualifications across the UK and Ireland declined by nearly 7%. While statutory audit qualifiers grew slightly, fewer audit firms and market consolidation raise capacity concerns. Management accounting faces a sharper 32% drop in student numbers, signaling future staffing shortages amid rising demand.
Education
Accounting is evolving in exciting ways, but student numbers are falling
Bangladesh's Solar Photovoltaic Pumping System for Agricultural Irrigation project modernizes farming by replacing diesel pumps with solar-powered systems. Implemented by the Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board with $53.4 million in funding, it installed 641 solar irrigation pumps across 32 rural electric cooperatives and integrated 357 with the national grid. These pumps provide clean energy for irrigation during cropping seasons and export surplus electricity via net metering during off-seasons, generating additional income for farmers. The project lowered upfront costs, supported financial viability, and mainstreamed gender inclusion with 54% women trainees. It strengthened institutional capacity and operationalized national grid-integration guidelines, reducing carbon emissions and stabilizing farmers’ expenses.
Africa
Development Asia: Harvesting the Sun: Scaling Up Grid-Integrated Solar Irrigation Pumps in Bangladesh
Scenario planning helps development teams operating in fragile and conflict-affected Asian contexts make informed decisions amid deep uncertainty by creating structured, plausible future scenarios rather than predictions. Such settings feature overlapping risks and institutional fragility, where multiple conflicting authorities reduce predictability. Scenario planning allows practitioners to explore how differing futures—such as digital economic growth versus institutional weakening—affect strategic choices. A 2025 exercise with development practitioners illustrated how this approach expands planning horizons, challenges assumptions, and identifies robust, flexible actions suitable across varied potential futures, enhancing decision-making under uncertainty.
Africa | Health
Development Asia: How Scenario Planning Can Improve Decisions in Fragile Contexts
Citizen engagement processes significantly benefit policymaking and democratic systems by improving policy quality, strengthening legitimacy, and increasing public trust in government. These processes foster cultural change within institutions, enhancing their capacity to interact directly with citizens and creating stronger connections among stakeholders, civil society, and policymakers. Key factors for successful outcomes include institutional commitment and transparent communication. Ensuring tangible impacts from the outset is essential to maintain support and legitimacy for citizen participation initiatives.
Africa | Health, Education
Impact of Citizen Engagement
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) offer significant potential to enhance food security early warning systems by improving monitoring and forecasting, especially in data-rich areas like climate modeling and remote sensing. However, their uncritical use can lead to costly and dangerous errors. AI/ML should primarily support data collation and analyst capabilities, particularly where data is irregular or diverse, ensuring that human experts maintain accountability and oversight to provide reliable forecasts despite funding cuts in humanitarian aid.
Responsible use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for food security early warning systems
Generative AI is increasingly used to produce disinformation that subtly derails online conversations by shifting topics toward divisive issues. Traditional detection methods focusing on language patterns are less effective since AI-generated text now mimics human writing closely. A new approach analyzes conversation flow, identifying replies that divert discussions via tactics like red herrings, non sequiturs, and personal attacks. By comparing real comments to AI-generated expected responses, the system detects derailment with about 77% accuracy, outperforming earlier word-based detection methods and matching human agreement levels. This method offers a promising tool for spotting manipulation and preserving discussion integrity online.
AI is making disinformation harder to spot – but we’ve found a new way to catch it
AI faces significant public skepticism, particularly in Britain, where a major survey reveals widespread fears about job losses and economic disruption. While AI leaders like Dario Amodei and Sam Altman have softened early warnings about mass job elimination, 56% of the public believe AI will eliminate half of entry-level jobs by 2025. Most respondents worry AI will do more harm than good, fearing economic inequality, reduced critical thinking, and social unrest. Despite these concerns, roughly a third remain neutral, offering a chance to improve public perception through better education and workplace integration. Addressing these fears is crucial to realizing AI’s potential benefits.
Education, ICT
AI has a serious image problem
UK cultural institutions face increasing cyber threats due to outdated security systems and insufficient investment in cybersecurity. Reports highlight major vulnerabilities, including the 2023 British Library ransomware attack and the 2025 Louvre jewel heist, both exacerbated by prioritizing exhibitions over security. A key issue is the persistent divide between physical security and cybersecurity management, despite the growing overlap of operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) in safeguarding facilities. Experts argue for integrated security leadership to address these converging systems and prevent future costly breaches and thefts.
Africa | Financial services
Museums face growing cyber threats but security remains an afterthought
Jill Lepore’s The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State traces how reliance on technology and AI has rapidly transformed and undermined global democracy and human governance. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s insights, Lepore reveals how political processes have become dominated by data-driven algorithms and technocratic control, replacing liberal nation-states with AI-influenced autocracies. This shift erodes human community, self-government, and harms the natural world. Lepore warns that this artificial governance, though pervasive, is not inevitable and can be dismantled by understanding its components and history, offering a critical wake-up call against the unchecked rise of machine rule.
The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State
China has shifted from looking west for technological inspiration to becoming a global leader in innovation. The Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD recently surpassed Tesla as the world’s largest producer of electric cars, showcasing advanced features like in-car karaoke and video headlights. China dominates key industries, producing over 70% of the world’s drones, electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, and solar cells, while deploying more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined. Advances in AI, exemplified by Moonshot’s cost-effective model, and leadership in medical trials and shipbuilding further illustrate China’s growing technological and geopolitical influence.
The Future, Made in China

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