Insights

Technological personalisation, driven by AI systems such as recommendation engines and predictive analytics, fundamentally reshapes economic theories by providing the framework for effective digital market coordination. These personalised algorithmic architectures govern interactions beyond prices and contracts, enhancing transparency, fairness, and trust across ecosystems. Within organisations, AI streamlines routine tasks and supports data-driven coordination, enabling dynamic adaptation to complex market conditions. Platforms like Uber, Airbnb, PayPal, and Upwork embed governance and compliance into interactions, reducing transaction costs and information asymmetries. This deep personalisation fosters durable, strategic exchanges, allowing firms to coordinate diverse stakeholders, enhance market trust, and address inefficiencies caused by similarity, overload, and ambiguity in digital markets.
Financial services, Education
AI personalisation has become the architecture of market trust and co-ordination
The American research enterprise has shifted from Vannevar Bush’s 1945 model of stable, government-led “Big Science” projects to a fragmented ecosystem involving public agencies, industry, universities, and philanthropies with diverse goals and risk tolerances. Similar challenges exist globally, with initiatives like the EU’s Horizon Europe and agencies in the UK and Germany adopting mission-oriented, high-risk funding frameworks inspired by DARPA. Addressing grand challenges such as climate change, pandemics, and AI governance requires new coordination mechanisms across these decentralized actors rather than reverting to older centralized models, aiming for more effective collaboration in a complex R&D landscape.
Financial services, Education, Health
Repurposing Grand Challenges in Tumultuous Times
The UK government's Local AI team within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government supports councils in responsibly using AI to address local government challenges. Over the past year, efforts focused on identifying AI applications that reduce administrative burdens and enhance service delivery, particularly in temporary accommodation and homelessness services. Collaborative initiatives include developing AI transcription tools, participating in innovation hackathons, and improving data quality through the Mayoral Data Council. Current priorities involve scaling successful projects, exploring new service areas, promoting ethical AI practices, and ensuring local councils shape ongoing developments for impactful AI adoption.
Local AI
Artificial intelligence fundamentally operates on statistical pattern recognition rather than human-like thinking. Large language models predict responses based on patterns in extensive training data, making them impressive but prone to errors linked to data gaps or biases. Their outputs rely on probabilities, not certainty, emphasizing the importance of understanding data origin, representativeness, and reliability. This statistical perspective is crucial for using AI safely, ethically, and effectively, especially in sensitive areas like employment, healthcare, and public services. The Royal Statistical Society advocates for rigorous statistical development, evaluation, and governance of AI systems.
AI is Statistics: Why statistical thinking is vital for the effective, ethical and safe use of AI
AI tools are already transforming policy evaluation by automating labor-intensive tasks across the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) lifecycle. Advanced AI systems like InsightAgent can rapidly conduct complex systematic reviews, synthesizing vast literature and producing rigorous outputs in hours instead of months. AI-led qualitative interviews generate richer responses at lower costs, exemplified by Salomo, which enabled a small team to process 100 interviews in under a week. Additionally, AI Scientist-V2 autonomously handles the full research cycle—hypothesis generation, coding, visualization, and manuscript drafting—significantly accelerating analysis and reporting. These innovations enable evaluators to focus more on interpretation and policy implications while AI manages technical execution.
Education
AI and the future of policy evaluation
Agentic AI systems, capable of planning, taking limited actions, and managing multi-step workflows under human oversight, are emerging in state governments. These systems extend beyond generative AI's role in drafting and analysis by actively routing approvals, detecting anomalies, and managing citizen services end-to-end. State technology leaders are advised to understand the transition phases, anticipate associated governance, security, and workforce risks, and implement practical safeguards. Preparing policies and building trust around agentic AI is essential as its adoption accelerates in state government operations.
Beyond Generation: The Rise of Agentic AI in State Government
Data science faces a moral crisis as algorithms often perpetuate injustice despite good intentions. Ben Green argues that to promote social justice, data science must shift from a purely mathematical approach to a practical methodology addressing real-world issues. In Algorithmic Realism, he offers an expanded framework for the data science workflow, providing a step-by-step guide for applying data science skills in the public interest. This approach aims to realize data science’s potential to foster a more equitable society.
Algorithmic Realism: Data Science Practices to Promote Social Justice
Noncommunicable diseases and mental health conditions cause most premature deaths in Southeast Asia, disproportionately affecting migrants who face barriers like inaccessible services, high costs, and stigma. Thailand hosts many migrants with limited continuous care due to legal, administrative, and mobility challenges. Digital health solutions—including portable electronic health records ("digital health passports"), mobile health apps, telemedicine, and integrated referral systems—can improve care continuity, coordination, and access across borders and workplaces. Successful implementation requires strong data privacy safeguards, multilingual and gender-sensitive design, provider training, interagency cooperation, and addressing digital exclusion. Despite challenges, digital health ecosystems offer policy avenues to enhance migrant healthcare in the Greater Mekong Subregion.
Bangladesh | Financial services, Education, Health, ICT
Digital Pathways to Care: Strengthening Migrant Health Systems
Developing Asia and the Pacific can enhance resilience by improving domestic resource mobilization, debt management, public financial and expenditure controls, and governance accountability. Addressing fiscal risks, private sector growth, and subnational governance, the study underscores the need for inclusive collaboration, tailored reforms, and strong political commitment. These efforts aim to strengthen macrofiscal stability and institutional capacity throughout the region.
Japan, Philippines | Financial services, Health
Emerging Macrofiscal and Governance Challenges and Opportunities in Developing Asia and the Pacific
Mongolia’s mining sector faces environmental, social, and governance (ESG) challenges that could impact investment and sustainable development. This assessment identifies gaps in existing laws and practices, recommends alignment with international standards, and proposes strategies to responsibly mine critical minerals essential for clean energy technologies. Through stakeholder consultations, it emphasizes creating shared value for the Mongolian people while supporting the global energy transition with climate-smart mining approaches.
Eswatini, Ghana, Mongolia
Environmental, Social, and Governance Assessment of Mongolia’s Mining Sector
Rapid urbanization in Pakistan has led to a significant infrastructure gap, estimated at $125 billion by 2040, impacting economic growth. The Asian Development Bank’s Cities Development Initiative for Asia (CDIA) has supported 12 cities in preparing bankable, sustainable urban projects, emphasizing project preparation as key for integrating gender, climate resilience, stakeholder engagement, institutional strengthening, and risk management. Successful efforts include aligning projects with city development plans, fostering inclusive consultation, embedding gender equity, and promoting climate-responsive solutions. Establishing clear institutional frameworks and identifying sustainable funding early are crucial for project sustainability and reducing subsidy dependence. These approaches promote transformative urban development and empower cities as economic growth engines.
Bangladesh, Pakistan | Financial services
Project Preparation as Catalyst for More Transformative Investment
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Bloom, and Gemini present significant opportunities for enhancing deliberative democracy by running simulations of hypothetical deliberations. These AI-driven simulations can complement human judgment rather than replace it, aiding in tasks such as training facilitators and providing timely policy advice. The approach leverages models like GPT-4o to illustrate practical benefits while acknowledging challenges, including transparency and bias concerns. This method also offers new insights for developing and refining theories about deliberation dynamics.
The Case for Using Generative AI to Run Deliberation Simulations
Global municipal solid waste reached 2.6 billion tonnes in 2022 and is projected to rise to 3.9 billion tonnes by 2050. Although the percentage of mismanaged waste is expected to decline from 30% to 20%, the absolute amount of mismanaged waste, around 760 million tonnes, will remain nearly constant. Poor waste management, especially open dumping and burning common in developing countries, causes significant health, environmental, and economic harm. High costs and underfunding hamper universal waste collection, leaving about 2 billion people reliant on informal methods. Current global spending on waste management is insufficient, with costs projected to rise to $426 billion annually by 2050, shifting economic burdens to public health and ecosystems.
Latin America | Health
The world’s waste mountain is rising at an alarming rate
Human-AI collaboration, while ideal for combining AI's scale with human judgment, faces a paradox: as AI reliability improves and errors become rare, motivating humans to maintain vigilant oversight becomes more costly and challenging. This "human-AI contracting paradox" may lead organizations to delay adopting advanced AI, rely solely on AI despite occasional failures, or prefer less reliable AI to keep humans engaged. Effective oversight requires explicit incentives, targeted human involvement focused on judgment rather than constant monitoring, and alignment of governance with compensation structures. Predictable AI strengths and weaknesses enable more efficient human oversight, emphasizing that higher AI reliability does not automatically yield better outcomes.
When Better AI Makes Oversight Harder
The GENIUS Act, passed in 2025, provides comprehensive legal and regulatory clarity for stablecoins, requiring issuers to maintain 100% reserves in liquid assets like U.S. dollars or Treasuries and monthly disclosure of reserves. This has fueled rapid growth, with stablecoin daily transaction volumes soaring from $1 trillion to $4 trillion. Major stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether dominate over 80% of the market. The Act aims to ensure stablecoin redemption at par and protect consumers with strict marketing rules. However, experts note gaps, including insufficient anti-money laundering measures, potential regulatory arbitrage, and lack of fraud prevention, which call for evolving regulations as the market develops.
Financial services
How Stablecoins Could Get More Stability With the GENIUS Act
China maintains a dual approach in its global interactions, especially with Europe. Despite rising concerns about unfair trade practices and geopolitical tensions, particularly related to China's support for Russia in the Ukraine conflict, Chinese exports to Europe continue to grow rapidly, highlighting a dependency on Chinese goods. European public opinion is divided—while there is strong support for diversifying trade away from China, consumers still favor affordable Chinese products, creating conflicting interests with domestic producers. China’s soft power efforts in Europe benefit from U.S. political clashes, yet it remains rigid on key issues like trade rebalancing and its stance on Russia. Europe's planned investment initiatives signal openness to engagement, though China's response remains uncertain.
Australia, France | Financial services
[China Trends #25] - Dealing With a Two-Faced China: From Global Trade to Russia
Artificial intelligence is significantly shifting the offense-defense balance in cyberspace by accelerating offensive operations, enabling polymorphic attacks, and reducing the need for specialized expertise. Defense strategies now rely heavily on rapid machine-driven decision support but face limitations due to institutional readiness. While AI currently favors offensive capabilities, implementing policy-aware autonomy and resilient governance frameworks can help restore a degree of operational parity. Overall, AI acts as a structural force shaping the evolution of state competition within cyberspace.
Education
AI-Enabled Cyberspace Operations
Data governance must evolve beyond mere compliance to address the full data lifecycle—planning, collection, processing, sharing, analysis, and use—especially amid complex, real-time, and AI-driven environments. Innovations span new practices like privacy-enhancing technologies, data commons, agentic AI, and policy as code, alongside structural forces such as regulatory complexities, AI deployment, and cross-border data constraints. Cross-cutting issues include integrating AI governance, fostering social license for data reuse, and aligning with digital public infrastructure. This evolving framework supports more effective and adaptive data governance across organizations.
Health
How Data Governance Is Evolving: Mapping Innovations Across the Data Lifecycle
Energy prices have surged due to the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, significantly impacting global oil and gas supplies and increasing costs in Europe. Unlike the 2022-23 crisis, current gas supply disruptions are smaller and Europe’s gas imports are more diversified, mitigating extreme price spikes in electricity. However, low gas storage and constrained fiscal space, alongside rising defense spending, challenge the EU's ability to respond. Governments should act swiftly with targeted fiscal measures to protect vulnerable consumers and businesses, while preserving incentives to reduce fossil fuel consumption, supporting economic stability and the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Latin America | Financial services
How should governments respond to the Iran energy crisis?
Cyberspace is reshaping international relations by undermining the traditional rules-based system established over the past 70 years. The convergence of cyber power, intelligence, surveillance, and emerging technologies, coupled with critical infrastructure vulnerabilities and private sector reliance, introduces new operational, strategic, military, and diplomatic challenges. States employ hybrid operations for geopolitical advantage, while non-state actors also play significant roles. Emerging technologies act as destabilizing factors in national and global security, blurring domestic and international boundaries. This transformation fundamentally alters approaches to national security, governance, diplomacy, and international relations.
Cyprus | Financial services, ICT
Decoding the New Geopolitics of Cyberspace, Hybrid Operations and Emerging Technologies and Their Impact on States and Society

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