Insights

AI systems do not create bias but inherit it from historical data reflecting social inequalities, institutional practices, and past decisions. Fairness in AI is complex, context-dependent, and involves trade-offs among competing definitions and metrics. Challenges arise from structural inequalities embedded in training data, which cause AI to perpetuate disparities in areas such as hiring, credit access, and criminal justice. Intersectional discrimination is often overlooked in evaluations due to small subgroup representation, masking harms to marginalized individuals. Ensuring fairness requires more than technical solutions; it demands inclusive, participatory approaches involving affected communities and ongoing attention to social context and change.
Education
AI doesn’t create bias, it inherits it – how do we ensure fairness when it comes to automated decisions?
The rapid growth of AI data centers is straining energy infrastructure, exemplified by PJM Interconnection's historic shortfall in electricity reserves due to AI load growth. Key constraints include long lead times for power transformers, gas turbines, and transmission lines, which lag behind the swift pace of AI development. Supply chains rely on few specialized manufacturers, creating bottlenecks and emphasizing the need for early capacity planning and vertical integration. The mismatch between AI's rapid software progress and slow infrastructure development risks power shortages or stranded assets, highlighting critical long-term planning challenges. Crucially, electricity priorities must balance AI demands with essential public services to avoid widespread disruptions.
Education
AI’s Supply Chain Problem
Josh Tyrangiel’s book challenges the dramatic narratives about AI by spotlighting practical uses that improve everyday life. Focusing on teachers, doctors, bureaucrats, and others who use AI to solve concrete problems in government, medicine, education, and human connection, the book reveals AI as a tool amplifying human judgment rather than replacing it. Through stories of a pragmatic AI counterculture, it highlights the slow, difficult, but meaningful impact of AI in real-world settings, emphasizing careful and thoughtful application despite inherent challenges and uncertainties.
Education
AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter
Europe's main financial issue is insufficient equity investment rather than a "flight" of savings abroad. The euro area runs a large current account surplus, indicating excess savings over investment, but portfolio flows show strong domestic home bias and no significant capital outflow. Euro area residents mainly hold savings in bank deposits, with a notable shortfall in equity allocation, leading to scarce and costly equity financing. Despite large U.S. equity holdings benefiting from market outperformance, the euro area’s net external equity position remains negative. Addressing the underdeveloped equity markets could enhance investment and innovation financing within Europe.
Belgium, France, Germany | Financial services
Europe Suffers Not So Much from a ‘Flight’ of Savings as from Insufficient Allocation to Equities
Big oil companies use investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms to sue governments that ban fossil fuels, demanding large compensation and thus slowing the green transition. Since 1998, fossil fuel companies have received over $87 billion through ISDS cases, many challenging fossil fuel phaseouts. Despite international legal opinions mandating fossil fuel phaseout, thousands of treaties still enable ISDS, causing regulatory chill and deterring climate action. Efforts at the 2025 Santa Marta conference advocate abolishing ISDS, with countries like Colombia committing to exit this system. Political and legal reforms are urgently needed to align international law with climate goals and accelerate the fossil fuel phaseout.
How big oil companies can slow the green transition by suing governments that ban fossil fuels
Dollar-pegged stablecoins are rapidly expanding the global influence of the US dollar by creating a new form of “digital dollarisation” that links traditional finance with cryptocurrency. Stablecoin transaction volumes have surged from $565 billion in 2020 to $11 trillion in 2025, accounting for 65% of Visa’s network transaction volume. Dominated by two issuers, Tether and Circle, stablecoins mainly circulate in emerging markets, especially Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East, where local currencies are weak or unstable. This digital dollar expansion challenges capital controls and monetary policy sovereignty in vulnerable economies by shifting demand away from domestic currencies and increasing reliance on dollar-backed digital assets.
Latin America | Financial services
How stablecoins are extending the monetary power of the United States
The Eurovision Song Contest is renowned for its innovative performance design and has launched many creative careers, offering a platform for cultural expression across Europe. However, Eurovision also faces significant political and ethical challenges, especially regarding participation controversies and human rights concerns. The event must balance fair staging among diverse broadcasters while navigating geopolitical tensions, notably the ongoing disputes surrounding Russia and Israel’s involvement. These issues raise questions about whether Eurovision 2026 will be overshadowed by politics rather than music and creativity.
Will Eurovision 2026 be overshadowed by politics?
Artificial intelligence is driving one of the largest modern infrastructure expansions, deeply interconnected with energy, water, minerals, and land resources. The growth of AI depends heavily on significant energy consumption, water for cooling data centers, critical mineral extraction for chips and batteries, and land use changes for facilities and transmission infrastructure. The sustainability and resilience of AI's future rely on coordinated efforts by governments and industries to develop infrastructure that supports long-term prosperity and environmental balance, avoiding systemic risks from uncoordinated expansion.
Education, ICT
Building Resilient and Scalable AI Value Chains: A Nexus Strategy
Asia and the Pacific face a critical nursing shortage projected to reach 4.7 million by 2030, undermining health systems strained by aging populations and chronic illnesses. Many nurses migrate overseas for better pay, depleting local healthcare capacity and investments, with women disproportionately affected as nursing is predominantly female. Investing in nursing education, safe workplaces, fair pay, and retention policies is essential to improve health outcomes and economic growth. Technology and nurse-led primary care models can enhance service delivery, but sustained, structured funding aligned with national strategies is crucial. Nurses are vital assets central to the region’s health and economic future.
Africa, Latin America | Education, Health
We Cannot Build Strong Health Systems on a Weak Nursing Foundation
Large Language Models (LLMs) forge socially mediated connections between users and the numerous authors of their training texts, blending human and machine interactions into a single experience. These AI systems function as sophisticated social technologies, compressing complex social realities into manageable abstractions that enable large-scale coordination in economics, administration, and politics. By viewing AI through the lens of "sciences of the artificial," LLMs are both technical tools and social information processors, intertwining with existing social institutions and reshaping how information and relationships are structured.
AI as Social Technology
Our beliefs on topics from religion to politics are deeply influenced by hidden forces beyond reason and evidence, including history, geography, biology, and culture. For example, descendants of rice farmers hold different values than grain farmers, physical appearance affects worldview and economic preferences, and environmental factors influence political and religious leanings. These insights reveal that beliefs are often shaped by predispositions, emphasizing the importance of disagreement and argument as essential tools for overcoming biases and advancing understanding in society.
Why We Think What We Think
John Kampfner highlights ten countries tackling global challenges with bold innovation and courage. Taiwan’s efficient health system achieves 90% patient satisfaction at low cost, Morocco’s Sahara solar panels power two million homes, Estonia leads digital government with 97.6% online service use, and Costa Rica triples its economy while doubling forest cover. These nations reject defeatism, demonstrating that difficult problems can be solved by those willing to innovate under pressure. Their successes offer urgent lessons for the world’s future.
Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Chad, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Guinea, Ireland, Jordan, Kuwait, Lithuania, Mali, Malta, Mongolia, Morocco, Norway, Panama, Qatar, Slovenia | Financial services, Health
Braver New World: The Countries Daring to Do Things Others Won’t
AI infrastructure has become a strategic priority due to geopolitical tensions, complex financing, and public service digitization, alongside growing demands for computing and data storage. To build resilient AI systems, economies must prioritize flexibility and future readiness. The World Economic Forum and Bain & Company propose sovereign AI infrastructure strategies that balance domestic control with trusted international partnerships. The framework details core AI infrastructure components, essential prerequisites, and introduces an AI sovereignty spectrum to tailor strategies to local capabilities. It also highlights digital embassies as a new option, establishing trust dimensions critical for their success.
ICT, Education
AI Infrastructure in the Age of Sovereignty: Requirements, Strategies and a Trusted Framework for Digital Embassies
Russian attacks and threats are increasingly targeting space, posing significant risks to Europe's satellite-dependent infrastructure, affecting both civilian services like navigation and military capabilities. Germany and its European partners face an asymmetry: their forces rely heavily on space systems, while Russia incorporates them less in its military. Consequently, resilience of satellite systems should be prioritized over deploying space-based weapons, especially since Germany opposes kinetic anti-satellite weapons due to debris concerns. Instead, non-kinetic defensive and deterrence measures, combined with international diplomacy and alliances, form Germany’s strategy to counter Russian threats in space without escalating conflict.
Resilience as a Response to Russian Threats in Space
Visible decline in local high streets, marked by rising vacant shops and lost social spaces, significantly impacts political attitudes in England. The closure of businesses and erosion of communal venues signal economic, psychological, and social deterioration, influencing perceptions of local and national progress. This visible decline correlates with increased support for populist parties like UKIP, as individuals interpret these changes as signs of broader social and economic failure. Simplified narratives from populist movements exploit this perceived decline, framing complex structural issues in ways that fuel political polarization and support for anti-establishment parties.
Latin America
How empty high streets contribute to support for populist parties in England
Infrastructure is evolving from merely physical connectivity to systems that intelligently sense, communicate, learn, and act, making it a key factor in national competitiveness. Intelligent infrastructure integrates system-level intelligence and autonomy across industrial production, energy, urban services, supply chains, and national security, requiring coordinated policy, investment, and governance. The DNA+ framework—comprising Devices, Network, Artificial intelligence, and cyber resilience—provides a practical architecture to implement intelligent infrastructure across companies, clusters, cities, and countries. This evolving capability offers strategic value that grows over time, emphasizing a systemic approach rather than isolated technology adoption.
ICT, Education
Intelligent Infrastructure: A Primer
Companies have struggled to meet their climate commitments made after the Paris Accords, with many walking back or abandoning net-zero pledges. Despite promising goals, businesses face significant challenges, such as the high costs and feasibility of solutions like carbon capture, especially for oil companies. The pressure to deliver on climate promises is often weak or optional, leading firms to reassess their goals more as PR than firm commitments. Varied types of pressure influence company behavior, but without strong accountability, many emissions reduction promises remain unmet.
Podcast: Why Companies Can’t Keep Their Climate Commitments
Nature restoration is essential for national health, wellbeing, and security, yet often overlooked due to its complexity and long-term nature. The UK faces acute risks from ecosystem collapse, being one of the most nature-depleted developed countries, which threatens food, security, and finances. Governments struggle to prioritize nature restoration over immediate crises. Wales exemplifies a successful model by adopting sustainable development as a central government mission for two decades, integrating environmental, social, and economic policies. This approach has led to significant achievements in carbon reduction, recycling, and wellbeing, inspiring global sustainable frameworks. National nature restoration could unify political efforts and address existential ecosystem risks effectively.
Financial services
Nature restoration isn’t often top of the political agenda – here’s how Wales does it
AI is increasingly integrated into scientific research, streamlining tasks like protein structure prediction and medical diagnosis. However, overreliance on AI risks eroding critical thinking, independent judgment, and creative problem-solving, especially among early-career scientists. AI’s immediate, nonjudgmental responses can lead researchers to trust it more than human colleagues, potentially undermining vital scientific discourse, mentorship, and collaboration. The emotional dependency on AI companions may further replace nuanced human interactions essential for rigorous research. To address these challenges, the scientific community must educate researchers on AI risks, develop safeguards against unhealthy reliance, and promote balanced, healthy relationships between scientists and AI tools.
Education
What happens when scientists trust AI more than colleagues?
Venture capital has grown into a cornerstone of the global innovation economy, managing $3.5 trillion and supporting over 250,000 companies in the last 20 years. The industry now faces key challenges including slower capital recycling, uneven scale-up distributions worldwide, and transformative impacts from artificial intelligence on venture economics. The Future of Venture Capital initiative, developed with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, gathers industry leaders to address these structural shifts. The report outlines five strategic priorities aimed at reforming the ecosystem to sustain venture capital’s essential role in driving global innovation.
Financial services, Education
The Future of Venture Capital: Unlocking Liquidity and Growth

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