Insights

Frederick Winslow Taylor pioneered extracting tacit knowledge from factory workers through systematic observation in the early 20th century. Similarly, today’s employers face challenges capturing the specialized, often unrecorded expertise held by employees to train AI models effectively. Unlike software coding, many professions lack publicly available, codified data, making it difficult for general AI to perform tasks requiring deep domain and institutional knowledge. For instance, investment firm Bridgewater Associates found large language models only about 50% accurate when parsing financial news for decisions, highlighting AI’s current limitations in replicating nuanced human judgment.
Education
Training AI models might be the chance for a workplace power play
Leaders from the West and American AI firm heads recently met at the G7 summit, highlighting AI's geopolitical importance. The U.S. has imposed restrictions on foreign access to advanced AI models, prompting concerns about technology exclusivity. China is also considering similar limits. Governments worldwide are investing heavily—over $70 billion collectively—in "sovereign AI" to reduce dependence on U.S. and Chinese technology by developing domestic AI capabilities. However, true AI sovereignty remains costly and challenging, as countries still rely on American chips or Chinese models. The U.S. uses its AI dominance as a strategic tool, implementing export controls and trade leverage related to AI technologies.
Sovereign AI, independent of America and China, is a pipe dream
The Islamabad Memorandum, signed on June 17 to end military operations and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, collapsed less than a month later as renewed strikes paralyzed maritime traffic and escalated U.S. attacks on Iranian infrastructure. While Iran initiated the first armed breach by attacking vessels, the U.S. response—reinstating a blockade, ending oil export waivers, and intensifying bombings—exceeded legal justification and dissolved the agreement. In both Tehran and Washington, internal political struggles now shape the conflict’s trajectory, dividing factions between pursuing negotiation and sustaining hostilities, complicating prospects for peace and regional stability.
Latin America
Iran and the United States: Prospects After the Failure of the Islamabad Memorandum
AI-assisted public consultations can accelerate large-scale engagement but risk producing summaries that unevenly represent participant views. Participatory provenance is introduced as a framework to audit how semantic content from submissions is reflected in summary sentences. Applied to Canada’s 2025 AI Strategy consultation data (5,253 records; 2,861 participants), official summaries showed higher semantic coverage than random controls, though coverage varied by topic and embedding model. Criticisms of educational technology and distrust of oversight were underrepresented, while some views received substantial coverage. Improved extractive summarization methods demonstrated that better semantic coverage is achievable without longer summaries. Evaluations of consultation summaries should consider not only coherence and accuracy but also the equitable distribution of coverage across submitted perspectives.
Participatory provenance as representational auditing for AI-mediated public consultation
Pakistan, the only Muslim nuclear-armed country, has recently moved from international isolation to a central role in a new regional "Great Game" due to Middle East conflicts and rapprochement with the U.S. Islamabad aims to end regional conflicts harming its economy and pursues a multi-layered strategy focused on its neighborhood, including managing tense relations with India and Afghanistan. Pakistan fears India’s regional influence and counteracts through nuclear deterrence and support for Islamist groups. However, rising tensions with the Taliban-led Afghanistan, which resists Pakistani influence and fosters ties with India, have led to conflict, exemplified by Pakistan’s 2026 military strikes against Afghan targets following attacks by Pakistan-based militants.
[Pakistan’s Great Game]-From Iran to Afghanistan: Islamabad Faces the Challenges of Its Neighborhood
Global trade imbalances have re-emerged, but current global imbalances are increasingly driven by financial income flows rather than just trade deficits or surpluses. While traditional concern focused on trade imbalances and external deficits requiring foreign financing—leading to painful adjustments as seen in European countries after 2008—today’s imbalances reflect large cross-border financial asset holdings. These financial asset imbalances expose countries to significant geopolitical and economic risks, including wealth losses from currency depreciation and asset freezing. Moreover, profits from these international investments significantly contribute to current account imbalances, making them more "financialised," as seen in countries like Germany and Japan where investment income, rather than trade alone, drives surpluses.
Latin America | Financial services, Health
Global trade imbalances are back – and increasingly financialised
The Draghi report, introduced in September 2024 to enhance EU competitiveness against the US and China, marks a shift prioritizing producer interests, European preference, and targeted investments. About 30% of its recommendations have been legally implemented, mostly driven by the European Commission, while only a small fraction of ambitious reforms involving Parliament and Member States are completed. Over 60% of proposals are set for upcoming legislative negotiation. Key areas include establishing a European preference favoring domestic producers, expanded through defense and green transition policies, and shaping the 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework to focus on techno-industrial priorities. Overcoming national divisions and institutional inertia remains Europe's critical challenge to fully realize these reforms.
Financial services
Draghi: Europe is Entering its Moment of Truth
The OECD report examines opportunities and challenges in using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance citizen participation. It analyzes 50 AI use cases from 22 OECD member and partner countries, proposing a typology of AI applications to guide government officials and practitioners based on their needs. The report highlights emerging trends, identifies associated risks, and recommends mitigation strategies to ensure the trustworthy implementation of AI tools in citizen engagement processes.
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Citizen Participation
Social Security’s main trust fund is projected to be depleted by early 2033, after which payroll taxes will cover only about 86% of scheduled benefits. Declining birth rates and increased life expectancy are key factors contributing to this funding shortfall. Delaying reforms will complicate future solutions. Potential policy options include adjusting benefits or taxes to strengthen the program and ensure its sustainability for current and future retirees.
Social Security’s Funding Crisis and the Future of Retirement
Travel abroad remains appealing despite geopolitical uncertainty and rising costs, but travelers now seek reassurance and expertise from trusted travel operators. Tour operators add value by reducing complexity, offering flexible booking, clear refund policies, and protections like Atol cover. Emphasizing all-inclusive packages, flexible payments, and authentic cultural experiences also enhances value by reducing uncertainty and appealing to travelers' desire for meaningful trips. Clear communication and highlighting customer experiences build trust. The key to success lies in meeting cautious travelers’ needs for security and emotional fulfillment, fostering lasting relationships beyond price competition.
Financial services
Worried about booking a holiday abroad? Here’s how travel operators can provide reassurance
AI companies, including SpaceX, Google, and Amazon, plan to move data centers into space to leverage constant solar energy and reduce Earth’s environmental impact. However, the overall environmental benefits are questionable once considering rocket fuel consumption, satellite cooling challenges, hardware degradation, atmospheric pollution, and space debris risks. Launches emit significant CO₂ and soot that damage the ozone layer, while cooling in space requires large ammonia radiators, increasing launch weight and emissions. Satellite hardware has limited lifespans and contributes to uncontrolled debris, raising concerns about long-term orbital hazards. The full life cycle environmental costs currently challenge the sustainability of off-world AI data centers.
Why AI’s environmental footprint won’t disappear into orbit
AI’s rapid growth involves substantial industrial infrastructure and high energy consumption, with electricity demand for AI projected to increase fourteenfold in the next decade. Competitive advantage in AI will increasingly depend on access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy rather than just algorithmic or compute power improvements. Sustainable AI requires a shift toward energy efficiency, clean energy integration, and greater transparency. Advances in neuromorphic chips, optical computing, AI-specific integrated circuits, and quantum computing represent promising paths to reduce energy per computation. Nuclear energy, including small modular reactors, is experiencing renewed interest as a stable, carbon-free power source to meet AI’s growing electricity needs. Aligning digital strategy with sustainable energy planning is critical for long-term competitiveness and environmental impact.
An ambitious call to build sustainable AI
Decentralization enhances access to education, healthcare, and water by empowering local governments, but effectiveness depends on clear rules, adequate funding, and capabilities. Many subnational governments in Asia-Pacific face resource gaps, weak revenue systems, fragmented financial management, and skill shortages. Policy-based lending tied to reform milestones addresses systemic constraints by promoting legal, institutional, and digital improvements. Examples from India, Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan demonstrate these reforms improve fiscal discipline, transparency, risk management, and service delivery. Key priorities include fiscal system clarity, credible budgeting, digital governance, local revenue mobilization, merit-based administration, and climate resilience integration. This approach helps transform decentralization into improved local services.
Latin America | Financial services, Health
Loans Tied to Reform Milestones Can Help Local Governments Deliver Better Services
The world faces complex challenges such as rising conflict, displacement, political polarization, and social fragmentation. PeaceTech involves the intentional use of technology and data to prevent violence, protect civilians, promote accountability, and support resilient, dignified societies. Despite significant investment in war technologies, fewer resources target peacebuilding efforts. A study identified 100 PeaceTech use cases across the conflict cycle, categorized by maturity: 20 established, 20 growing, 20 conceptual, and 40 unexplored. Key observations include PeaceTech’s current emphasis on conflict response over prevention, emerging applications of AI throughout conflict stages, and innovation gaps in coordination, governance, and trusted institutions.
Education
100 Use Cases of PeaceTech: How Technology Can Support Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding, and Upholding Human Dignity
Renewable energy sources vary significantly in their effectiveness at reducing CO2 emissions across countries. Analysis of 27 OECD countries from 1965 to 2020 shows that geothermal/biomass and hydropower achieve the largest long-term emission reductions, followed by solar energy. Wind and biofuels also reduce emissions but to a lesser extent, partly due to life-cycle impacts and land-use trade-offs. Nuclear energy shows no significant emission reductions. The causal relationship between renewables and emissions differs by source, with hydropower, solar, and wind unidirectionally lowering emissions, while geothermal/biomass and biofuels have a bidirectional relationship. Policymakers should prioritize renewable technologies that align with local natural resources and conditions to maximize emissions mitigation.
Not all renewables cut emissions equally everywhere
Civil society organizations (CSOs) play a vital role in combating digital violence against women and girls, offering trusted support, local insight, and practical help such as counseling and evidence collection. Digital violence includes online harassment, image-based abuse, deepfakes, stalking, and threats, disproportionately affecting women worldwide. Engaging CSOs early in policy and project design ensures responses reflect real risks, while their involvement in data collection and service delivery improves coordination and effectiveness. Supporting CSOs with training, funding, and partnerships is crucial to adapt to evolving digital threats. Collaboration among CSOs, governments, and tech companies can create safer online environments and comprehensive support systems.
How Civil Society Groups Can Help Fight Digital Violence Against Women and Girls
Artificial intelligence is democratic when it empowers democracy by redistributing power and fostering symmetrical power relations rather than centralizing authority. Rooted in participatory democracy, democratic AI emphasizes citizen involvement and equitable power distribution across society. Using frameworks from participatory democracy, Foucauldian theory, and Actor-Network Theory, democratic AI is analyzed through how AI is developed (design, governance, political economy) and how it operates in areas like education, healthcare, information, and politics. This approach critically assesses AI's role in shaping power dynamics and offers guidance for developers and policymakers to promote AI that supports democratic empowerment.
When is AI democratic? Artificial intelligence and democratic empowerment
Companies like Starbucks and Ford are rethinking rapid AI implementation after costly errors revealed the technology's limitations. Unreliable AI systems can undermine employee trust and harm customer experience and brand reputation. Human judgment remains crucial in AI-driven processes, and premature scaling risks operational failures. Firms need to ensure AI investments provide real customer value and measurable returns before full deployment.
Why Companies Are Rethinking the Rush to Implement AI
Cities and regions significantly shape people's daily lives through policies and services, yet most citizens lack meaningful influence over these decisions. Citizens’ assemblies, when established as permanent democratic institutions rather than one-off events, can address this gap by embedding participatory decision-making into civic infrastructure. Building ongoing assemblies requires long-term commitment, supportive legal frameworks, and cultural shifts that transform them into enduring sources of power. Insights from DemocracyNext's work with cities and regions worldwide highlight how sustained assemblies catalyze broader democratic innovation and institutional change, fostering deeper citizen engagement and impact.
From Projects to Permanence: citizens’ assemblies as new democratic institutions in cities & regions
Colombia, under President Gustavo Petro, has emerged as an international leader in climate action by pursuing a just transition away from fossil fuels, implementing supply-side policies to limit fossil fuel exploitation—a rare approach among fossil fuel-exporting Global South countries. However, domestic progress has been limited, and with the election of opposition candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, the future of these reforms is uncertain. The success of Colombia’s transition without compromising economic stability, supply security, and social cohesion is critical for similar nations and depends significantly on the support from Germany and the European Union. Failure could have broader political ramifications beyond Colombia.
Latin America
Colombia as a Leader in Climate and Energy Policy

Forum Spaces

© 2026 All rights reserved
Privacy Policy & Terms of Service