Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Beth Simone Noveck, Nicholas Biddle and Alex Fischer: “Two trends are converging in countries around the world. Public anxiety about artificial intelligence is growing while communities satisfaction in how they participate and shape government is declining. Emerging examples from Bogotá, Hamburg, Brazil, Mexico and elsewhere show how AI can sharply improve the quality and experience of public engagement while reducing its time and cost. If done poorly or without safeguards, it can also introduce new risks. However, these can be managed with appropriate design, regulation and delivery by skilled practitioners.

This paper examines how artificial intelligence and digital platforms are changing what is possible, and suggests that a key opportunity is to build public-sector capability to deliver meaningful engagement.
The paper makes three claims: 

1. First, meaningful public engagement is a professional skill that requires practitioners to define clear goals, identify and reach appropriate participants, design effective tasks, interpret public input, and connect participation to decisions. Evidence from Australia and New Zealand suggests that public servants want these skills but rarely receive systematic training in them. 
2. Second, the very technologies driving many parts of public concern could also help governments listen and respond more effectively, make better decisions, and rebuild democratic trust. AI and digital platforms can reduce the time and cost of large-scale engagement, making forms of participation feasible that were previously difficult to sustain. The binding constraint is no longer cost or technology but capability to design and use. These technologies, however, need to be designed and used in ways that support democratic values and human judgment.
3. Third, realising this potential requires not only skilled practitioners but also appropriate digital infrastructure and regulation, alongside organisational support and demand.

The paper then explores opportunities for Australian institutions to teach a nine-step framework for AI-enabled engagement and sets out a research agenda to test whether such training changes practice. It introduces an approach to building these skills across public service and public-impact organisations, starting with a new free, self-paced online course developed by The GovLab and InnovateUS at Northeastern University, and Harvard’s Ash Center for Democracy Renovation, with input from more than 50 practitioners and experts across 24 countries. A pilot in Australia will follow the online course, testing how in-person workshops and skill-building can reinforce and apply those skills.

The paper concludes by recommending that governments invest in engagement skills, in platforms designed for democratic engagement, and in making public engagement a routine part of policy design, service delivery, and implementation…(More)”.

Article by JP Flores and Hannah Frank: “…The deeper problem is that a system built around journal prestige shapes what science gets done, how fast it moves, and whose work gets seen. 

We come to this argument from different directions. One of us, Hannah, conducts soil research on vineyards. Fundamental to the project are the relationships she has built with grape growers and winemakers. Yet when her work is finally published there is no guarantee those growers will be able to easily access the material, or that the wine industry beyond the academic paywall will be able to take the findings and apply them more broadly.

The other, JP, has committed years to experiments, failed analyses, and revised manuscripts that often seemed to be judged less by what they contributed to science and more by which journal ultimately agreed to publish them. Like many scientists, he was then asked to pay over $10,000 in article processing charges just to make that research publicly available. That money could have funded follow-up experiments, a student’s salary, or an entirely new project.

There are two central critiques of current publishing venues. First, systems that reward publication volume can encourage researchers to pursue smaller, lower-risk projects that generate a steady stream of papers rather than tackle more ambitious questions whose answers may take years to emerge…(More)”.

(Open access) book edited by Riku Neuvonen and Jukka Viljanen: “We live in a world where many things happen digitally. Ones and zeros determine everyday actions and the course of life. The current digital world is two-dimensional. We see, hear and influence it using tools that are clearly part of the physical world. In the current digital world, we see things on screens. During this millennium, screens have become smaller, and in addition to computer monitors, virtual worlds can now be viewed on the screens of tablets and smartphones. Hardware and devices delivering augmented reality experiences are already on the market, as are virtual reality glasses. Headsets of different types are already commonplace.

A real virtual world is one that we experience like the physical world. In this book, we imagine the potential of such worlds and we examine these from the perspective of law and related disciplines. The current digital world has led us to questions about the applicability of rights. In theory, the regulation of the physical world also applies to the digital world. In practice, this is not always the case, as problems associated with the protection of privacy but also disinformation, online hate and others have emerged. In this context, we can talk about digital human rights, digital rights and digital constitutionalism.

The problems we face in the digital world are related to access, access to information, and privacy. The virtual world has the same problems, but virtuality as an all-encompassing experience also creates new challenges. In the age of platforms, algorithms have played a key role in displaying content and users are now shown what they or advertisers think they want to see. Various forms of artificial intelligence are also involved. These opportunities and problems of the platform era will also transfer to the virtual worlds of the future. This is especially the case when the advocates of virtual worlds, such as the metaverse, want them to be worlds where users spend a significant portion ofp. 2their time. These questions will be approached and explored from several different starting points.

This book is about considering, imagining and reflecting on virtual worlds. In this introduction, we will establish a picture of what virtual worlds can be, largely based on entertainment, films, books, television series, and games. This basis is logical since these forms of entertainment have been creating and experimenting with virtual worlds for decades. After establishing this picture, we will provide an overview of the research that deals with rights in virtual worlds before introducing the authors of the chapters and how each will approach this challenging theme from different perspectives…(More)”.

Book by Jeff Jarvis: “The Linotype mechanized the 400-year-old process of setting type one laborious letter at a time, and thus ignited an explosion of newspaper, book, and magazine empires. The technology helped transform Mark Twain into a premier literary celebrity, but also cost him his fortune — as well as his sense of humor and optimism. The Linotype’s era was a bridge between Twain’s Gilded Age with its tycoons of steam, steel, and wire and today’s Gilded Age with its barons of bits and AI…(More)”.

Report by Pew Research: “Americans have become increasingly worried about artificial intelligence over the years, and young adults’ concern has continued to climb. Worry over job loss, too, is on the rise…

Americans have grown more concerned about AI over time

% of U.S. adults who say the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) in daily life makes them feel …

Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted June 22-28, 2026.

Today, 52% of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life – up from 37% in 2021. Another 9% are more excited than concerned and 37% say they’re equally excited and concerned, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted June 22-28, 2026.

Concern about AI is up among younger and older Americans alike since we first asked this question in 2021. But while the rise was mainly in the first two years for Americans ages 30 and older, concern continues to climb for adults under 30 – whose skepticism of AI has made headlines in recent months…(More)”.

Article by Urs Gasser, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, and Fabienne Marco: “The current approach to artificial intelligence oversight is largely built on measurement. Benchmarks assess capability, red teams probe for failure modes, and evaluation frameworks certify safety and legal compliance before deployment. These instruments can be valuable, but they also share a critical structural vulnerability that AI governance has not yet adequately absorbed: The measurements used to verify AI models are not external to the objects being measured. Rather, this program of measurement operates within the same ecosystem—and is shaped by the same competitive pressures and institutional incentives—that produces the AI technologies it is meant to assess. A result is that the measured behavior of a model may diverge significantly from its behavior when deployed.

Put simply, as AI systems and the organizations building them learn what evaluators look for, the AI model performs for the test, figuring out how to excel in benchmarks without necessarily becoming safer, more useful, or more reliable in real-life scenarios. As evaluation increasingly assesses only the model’s capacity to ace that same evaluation, the boundary between system and oversight grows porous.

This kind of situation is known as a measurement trap: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Measurement traps are not unique to AI. Standardized testing in education leads schools to “teach to the test” rather than help students develop critical thinking skills. In software development, when productivity is tied to the number of lines of code written, programmers write long, repetitive code, which may or may not be good software. And in business, when bonuses are tied to revenue measures, managers prioritize short-term sales over long-term profitability…(More)”.

Article by Mehr Demokratie: “In autumn 2026, a randomly selected Citizens’ Panel will discuss measures to strengthen democracy in the European Union (EU). Until the end of the year, all EU residents can submit their questions and ideas on the subject online and at events organised on the topic… Perspectives on key aspects of democratic life, such as access to reliable information, media literacy, awareness of citizens’ rights, participation in decision-making, and the skills needed to engage in democracy in a digital world can be contributed. 

This debate follows up on the European Democracy Shield. It will feed into ongoing and future EU initiatives aimed at strengthening democracy and will inform future participatory processes, including a European Citizens’ Panel on Democratic Resilience. 

The Citizens’ Forum will meet from September to November 2026. Contributions from the online debate and events will feed into the Forum. The mini-public will discuss the contributions from the online debate and the in-person events and make recommendations to the European Commission….

From 22 May to 7 June 2026, the Sortition Foundation was on the road to recruit participants for the Citizens’ Forum. In collaboration with local partners across the EU, they knocked on doors and approached citizens from 150 randomly selected locations in all EU countries.

From the original pool of interested individuals, the final group of Citizens’ Assembly members will be selected at random to reflect the diversity of the EU population, taking into account gender, education, occupation and the spectrum between rural and urban areas…(More)”.

OECD Dashboard: “Rising uncertainties and geo-political tensions, together with more complex trade relations, have increased the demand for timely data and tools to monitor global trade. At the same time, advances in Big Data analytics and access to large quantities of alternative data – outside the realm of official statistics – have opened new avenues to track trade developments. These data can help identify bottlenecks, disruptions and emerging trends in near real time, but need to be carefully cleaned, validated and interpreted.

One such alternative data source is the Automatic Identification System (AIS), developed by the International Maritime Organisation on to facilitate the tracking of vessels across the globe. The system includes messages transmitted by ships to land or satellite receivers and is available in quasi real time. While AIS was primarily designed to ensure vessel safety, it is particularly well suited for providing insights on trade developments, as over 80% in volume of international merchandise trade is carried by sea. AIS data also provides granular vessel information and detailed location data which, when combined with other data sources, can support analysis at the country, port and berth levels, by vessel type, product group and trade flow.

New work from the OECD Statistics and Data Directorate builds on previous OECD research using AIS data. It refines the identification of ports by exploiting information at the berth level and combines AIS vessel movements with satellite imagery and a rule-based approach to map maritime activity to 23 commodity groups worldwide. This makes it possible to derive timely, experimental estimates of trade by product, with broad global coverage across ports and berths.

The updated OECD AIS Tracking Dashboard visualises key indicators on maritime activity, ports and trade flows. It retains the country-level indicators on vessel activity, capacity, trade estimates and efficiency measures, while adding new product-level breakdowns that allow users to compare developments across selected commodity groups and identify the main ports for imports and exports. The dashboard also includes a new chokepoints section, currently covering Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz, where users can monitor vessel composition and product-level flows through selected strategic maritime passages…(More)”.

Paper by Suoyi Tan et al: “Poverty mapping is increasingly important for monitoring Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1) of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, which aims to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. Yet timely and fine-resolution poverty estimation remains difficult because conventional census- and survey-based approaches are costly, infrequent, and often sparse precisely where deprivation is most severe. As poverty emerges from complex socioeconomic systems shaped by human mobility, social interactions, infrastructure, and economic activities, emerging computational methods and nontraditional data sources have created new opportunities for poverty estimation and mapping. At the intersection of statistical physics, complex systems science, and data science, these approaches enable poverty estimation at finer spatial and temporal resolutions. This review summarizes the main concepts of poverty and the principal frameworks used to measure it, and examines recent advances on poverty estimation and mapping using satellite imagery, mobile phone data, social media data, and multisource data fusion. The review also discusses persistent challenges related to representativeness, transferability across regions, interpretability, and uncertainty quantification. Finally, the review clarifies both the analytical promise and the practical limits of contemporary poverty mapping…(More)”.

Paper by Levin Brinkmann et al: “Intelligent machines have the potential to uncover problem-solving strategies beyond human discovery. Emerging evidence from competitive gameplay, such as Go and chess, demonstrates that AI systems are evolving from mere tools to sources of cultural innovation adopted by humans. However, the conditions under which intelligent machines transition from tools to drivers of persistent cultural change remain unclear. We identify three key dimensions that modulate machine influence on human problem-solving: the discovered strategies must be non-trivial, learnable, and offer a clear advantage. Using a cultural transmission experiment, we demonstrate that when these conditions are met, machine-discovered strategies can be transmitted, understood, and preserved by human populations, leading to enduring cultural shifts. Conversely, using agent-based simulations, we show how machine influence is constrained in the absence of these conditions. These findings provide a framework for understanding how machines can persistently expand human cognitive skills and underscore the need to consider their broader implications for human cognition and cultural evolution…(More)”.