Stefaan Verhulst
OECD Report: “Governments are under growing pressure to respond more effectively to rapid technological, economic and societal changes while maintaining stability and fiscal sustainability. A significant transformation of the functioning of governments needs to take place that can take advantage of digital and AI tools, and the opportunity of large cohorts of retiring civil servants to change the culture. Based on the analysis of cutting-edge practices in governments of OECD countries, Government Unstuck provides a coherent set of actions that will help governments be up to the challenges of today…(More)”.
Paper by Dimitrios Kalogeropoulos, Paul Barach, Andrea Downing, Stefaan Verhulst, and Maryam Lustberg: “Healthcare services and data ecosystems remain fragmented, inequitable and misaligned with patient, clinician and public health needs. Three pathways to patient-centred Artificial Intelligence (AI) have emerged to address this: data collaboration, Whole System Approaches and digital inclusion. Each has advanced the field. However, none delivers the continuous, participatory and outcome-grounded learning that equitable AI demands. The populations whose data drives AI learning must also be the populations who benefit from it. This principle has not been structurally embedded in any existing pathway. This narrative review defines a framework for operationalising Adaptive Machine Learning (AML) as a fourth, integrative pathway to patient-centred AI. AML is defined as continuous learning from real-world individual-level data to generate personalised, population-level insights returning direct benefit to the communities who produce them. A narrative review of PubMed and Google Scholar (2018–2025) was conducted across five thematic domains: AI and machine learning in healthcare; real-world data and evidence; patient-centred care and digital health; data governance and AI regulation; and adaptive clinical trial design. Search terms covered healthcare AI applications and adaptive, continuously learning systems, emphasising prediction-oriented rather than static diagnostic approaches. Eligibility was determined through iterative thematic analysis. Eight systemic barriers to patient-centred AI are identified and the three existing pathways critically examined for limitations in addressing bias, validation and equitable implementation. AML is proposed as the mechanism that closes this gap, connecting systems medicine, personalised medicine and precision medicine through continuous, outcome-based learning, identifying three original conceptual contributions as enablers: Integrative Data Governance (IDG), Adaptive Clinical Trial (ACT) designs and Evidence Sandbox Facilities (ESFs). Progress requires globally standardised Healthcare Data Recycling frameworks, adaptive evaluation methodologies and ESFs enabling multi-stakeholder validation. Future research should address federated AML validation, collective consent mechanisms and alignment of regulatory frameworks with international AI governance standards…(More)”.
Paper by Curtis Ventriss and Tina Nabatchi: “Public administration is at the center of the global democratic crisis. Meeting this challenge requires more than managerial and analytic competence—it requires a public philosophy grounded in the first principles of democratic ethos. We offer such a philosophy, drawing on four seminal thinkers whose concepts reflect the conditions public administrators face in times of democratic crisis. Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear establishes a negative obligation to refuse cruelty and resist its institutionalization. Alasdair MacIntyre’s internal goods of practice create a positive obligation to cultivate virtue and protect the integrity of administrative practice. Isaiah Berlin’s agony of choice obligates administrators to acknowledge irreducible value conflicts and their consequential impact on democratic life. Hannah Arendt’s enlarged mentality provides a framework for thinking across perspectives so that judgment under conflict becomes democratically defensible. Together, these concepts form a public philosophy for public administration with practical significance for administrative judgment, organizational culture, and institutional courage…(More)”.
Article by sheets.works: “Billions of phones run on code looked after by a handful of people. We counted them from the code itself…
People post this comic whenever something breaks. The tower is labelled “all modern digital infrastructure” and it stands on one small block, “a project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003”.
We wanted to know how close to true it is. We downloaded the full history of 23 pieces of software that phones, browsers and servers depend on, and counted everyone who made ten or more changes to each one between October 2025 and October 2026. Then we listed what is actually installed on an Android phone, an iPhone and a Windows PC…(More)”.
Book by David Weinberger: “Amid the clamor about AI, Beautiful Particulars poses a unique question: Not how does our use of AI change what we do, but how is the idea of AI already subtly yet fundamentally reshaping how we think about ourselves and our world?
In clear, engaging, and even humorous prose, David Weinberger offers a new perspective on how machine learning works and how it may already be changing our basic and deepest ideas. Through lively examples, he shows that AI’s success—with all its risks and dangers—is taking us past our millennia of reliance on laws and principles by revealing what morality, free will, creativity, causality knowledge, and even reality itself look like now that we’re able to let the particulars speak their tiny truths.
The author poses questions not usually asked: What does a coin look like to AI? When AI gives you evidence that the earth is round, why are its own reasons for saying that so different? Why does an AI image generator create a “selfie” of ancient Aztec warriors with broad smiles that it “believes” are historically unlikely? If AI becomes conscious but bodiless, could it still make good moral decisions? Why is the world so much better at being causal than AI could ever “understand”? How does AI show us that genuine creativity is not about a “spark” but about moments that feel right? And how can you take the temperature of a joke?
Beautiful Particulars offers a new—and hopeful—perspective on how machine learning works, and how that’s already changing how we understand what it means to be human in the age of AI…(More)”
Book by Catarina Zuzarte Tully: “This book is different.It is written for people who are actively trying to transform the systems around them in a time of uncertainty and change. It is written for people who are experiencing the present as a period of frustration, anxiety and retrenchment—but who also know that it is a time of extraordinary possibility to shape a positive future. It is written for people who understand that transformation is ultimately about power: speaking truth to it, challenging it and redistributing it. It is written for people who feel a sense of stewardship: a responsibility to connect people working across past, present and future in service of a more prosperous, secure and sustainable world.
Future generations are not strangers who happen to live later. They are extensions of ourselves, just as we are extensions of those who came before us. Playing with Time is rooted in this simple idea. It invites us to loosen our grip on the present, reconnect with longer-term horizons, and allow possible futures to reshape how we act today.
This moment calls for our creative, collective response. It asks us to articulate and defend the values we care about, work across difference wherever possible, and act for the wellbeing of current and future generations. These are things that all of us can do. This book shows how...(More)”.
Report by the Wellcome Trust: “The Wellcome Global Monitor is the world’s largest study of how people think and feel about science and health. The 2026 edition draws on surveys of more than 140,000 people in 140 countries, making it a uniquely rich and globally comparable data set on public trust in science.
This is the third wave of the Wellcome Global Monitor, following surveys in 2018 and 2020. Over the course of these surveys, we saw trust rise during the pandemic, when science was more visible in people’s lives, but that rise has not been sustained. Today, trust in science is below 2018 levels globally.
Global averages only tell part of the story. Trust levels vary widely between and within countries, and it is closely linked to people’s everyday experiences of healthcare, of public institutions and of whether they feel they are getting by.
The full report, the dataset, country and regional factsheets and an interactive dashboard are all freely available…(More)”.
Book by Gary Wolf: “Science has given us tools and methods that allow us to observe things that were once imperceptible—and this book shows what we can learn when we use them to look at ourselves.
Written by science journalist Gary Wolf, co-founder of the Quantified Self movement, this book teaches readers how to use proven scientific methods to answer their own health questions. At a time when trust in expertise is fractured and people are divided not just politically but over how to know what’s true, The Quantified Self makes the case that science belongs to everyone—and proves it by putting the method in the reader’s hands.
Wolf teaches ten reasoning patterns adapted from the history of scientific practice and illustrates them with dozens of personal narratives. Across chapters on pain, mood, cognition, sleep, digestion, heart health, and hormones, readers learn a practical method for answering the health questions that matter most to them…(More)”.
Article by Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Zahuranec: “What would it take for Indigenous communities not simply to be represented in the emerging AI ecosystem but to shape, govern, and benefit from it?
That question is what animated our event during UNGA High-Level Week on Advancing Public Interest AI Through Data Commons for Indigenous Languages and Cultures.
The discussion brought together Indigenous leaders and technologists, funders, researchers, international organizations, civil society, and industry around a growing challenge: As AI becomes embedded in education, public services, cultural production, and everyday life, many Indigenous communities are being drawn into AI systems that they did not design, using data they may not control, and reflecting assumptions and values that may not be their own.
The stakes are particularly high for Indigenous languages and cultural knowledge. AI could become a powerful instrument for language revitalization, education, cultural transmission, and economic opportunity. But without different approaches to data, infrastructure, governance, and investment, it could just as easily reproduce longstanding patterns of extraction while amplifying misinformation. This leads to weaker foundations of reliable information for AI and other systems that subsequently harm communities…Five themes emerged from the discussion…(More)”.
Paper by Geoff Mulgan and Alex Fischer: “Work in Progress argues that democracy has not failed as an idea, but that many of the ways we practise it remain rooted in the 19th century and have not kept pace with a rapidly changing world. Falling trust, political disengagement and declining participation point to a system that is too often failing to listen, learn and adapt.
Drawing on more than 50 examples of democratic innovation from over 25 countries, Mulgan and Fischer set out a framework for understanding democracy as an interconnected system of functions – from elections and decision-making to public services, scrutiny, knowledge and citizen participation. They explore how these functions can be strengthened, alongside the relational foundations that allow democracy to work effectively.
The paper considers the opportunities and risks presented by digital technology and AI, arguing for deliberate investment in new forms of cognitive infrastructure that can help democracies harness collective intelligence, improve decision-making and rebuild trust.
The authors’ central message is clear: democracy should be treated as a work in progress – something to be upgraded, tested and renewed, rather than a finished achievement to simply defend…(More)”.