Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Ben Zweig: “…offers a revolutionary approach to transforming human capital management through the power of taxonomies. The book follows the experience and ideas of key individuals―from the founders of Wall Street, to the original management consultant, to a young data scientist just out of grad school looking to make sense of the modern workforce―in order to illustrate why our current human capital infrastructure is not serving employees well and what we can do to change that.

By categorizing and organizing workforce data, Zweig provides a practical roadmap for creating a more efficient and data-driven labor market. This book includes key insights on how to:

• Use AI and similar large language model technologies to support businesses with appropriate categorization and regimentation of data
• Know whether or not a taxonomy can be useful and functional for an organization in their ability to be flexible, auditable, and adaptable
• Build a taxonomy that meets the needs of a workforce or organization through clustering, labeling, and production

Combining storytelling with real-world examples, theoretical analysis, and a practical framework, Job Architecture is an essential guide for companies to manage a competitive, modern workforce that improves the working experience for all employees…(More)”.

World Bank Report: “This brief presents the 2025 update of the GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI), offering a global snapshot of public sector digital transformation across 197 economies. The GTMI assesses four focus areas, Core Government Systems (CGSI), Online Public Service Delivery (PSDI), Digital Citizen Engagement (DCEI), and GovTech Enablers (GTEI), using 48 indicators. The methodology combines self-reported survey data from 158 economies with publicly available information for the remaining 39. Findings indicate overall progress since 2022 but widening disparities between higher-income (Group A) and lower-income (Group D) economies. Advances are noted in core systems (e.g., government cloud) and service delivery (e.g., customs services, digital ID), while digital citizen engagement remains the least mature area and adoption of a whole-of-government approach is limited. The brief recommends accelerating implementation of interoperability frameworks, strengthening sustainability of online service portals, and updating GovTech strategies in line with evolving technologies. It underscores the need for targeted support to low-income regions, particularly in Africa, and calls for clear monitoring frameworks to track progress and inform evidence-based policymaking…(More)”.

Whitepaper by Frontiers: “…shows that AI has rapidly become part of everyday peer review, with 53% of reviewers now using AI tools. The findings in Unlocking AI’s untapped potential: responsible innovation in research and publishing point to a pivotal moment for research publishing. Adoption is accelerating and the opportunity now is to translate this momentum into stronger, more transparent, and more equitable research practices as demonstrated in Frontiers’ policy outlines.

Drawing on insights from 1,645 active researchers worldwide, the whitepaper identifies a global community eager to use AI confidently and responsibly. While many reviewers currently rely on AI for drafting reports or summarizing findings, the report highlights significant untapped potential for AI to support rigor, reproducibility, and deeper methodological insight.

The study shows broad enthusiasm for using AI more effectively, especially among early-career researchers (87% adoption) and in rapidly growing research regions such as China (77%) and Africa (66%). Researchers in all regions see clear benefits, from reducing workload to improving communication, and many express a desire for clear, consistent policy recommendations that would enable more advanced use…(More)”.

Article by Mira Mohsini & Andres Lopez: “When the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC) began a multi-year collaboration with the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), they worked together to modernize a critical public health information source: the Oregon Student Health Survey. This survey, disseminated annually across Oregon, was designed to track health trends and inform policy decisions affecting thousands of young people and families.

But there was a problem. Year after year, this survey illuminated inequities, showing, for example, that students of color experienced higher rates of bullying or mental health challenges, without providing any insight into why these inequities existed, how they were experienced, or what communities wanted done about them. The data revealed gaps but offered no pathways to close them.

Working alongside other culturally specific organizations within their coalition and researchers of color in their region, CCC set out to demonstrate what better data could look like for the Oregon Student Health Survey. They worked with high school teachers who had deep relationships with students and met with students to understand what kinds of questions mattered most to them. Simple and straightforward questions like “How are you doing?” and “What supports do you need?” revealed issues that the state’s standardized surveys had completely missed. The process generated rich, contextual data showing not just that systems were failing, but how they were failing and how students desired their needs to be met. The process also demonstrated that working with people with lived experiences of the issues being researched generated better questions and, therefore, better data about these issues.

And the improvements resulting from better data were tangible. OHA created a Youth Data Council, involving young people directly in designing aspects of the next version of the Student Health Survey. CCC documented the survey modernization process in a detailed community brief. For the first time ever, the Oregon Student Health Survey included three open-ended questions, yielding over 4,000 qualitative responses. OHA published a groundbreaking analysis of what students actually wanted to say when given the chance…(More)”

Article by Thijs van de Graaf: “Artificial intelligence is often cast as intangible, a technology that lives in the cloud and thinks in code. The reality is more grounded. Behind every chatbot or image generator lie servers that draw electricity, cooling systems that consume water, chips that rely on fragile supply chains, and minerals dug from the earth.

That physical backbone is rapidly expanding. Data centers are multiplying in number and in size. The largest ones, “hyperscale” centers, have power needs in the tens of megawatts, at the scale of a small city. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta already run hundreds worldwide, but the next wave is far larger, with projects at gigawatt scale. In Abu Dhabi, OpenAI and its partners are planning a 5-gigawatt campus, matching the output of five nuclear reactors and sprawling across 10 square miles.

Economists debate when, if ever, these vast investments will pay off in productivity gains. Even so, governments are treating AI as the new frontier of industrial policy, with initiatives on a scale once reserved for aerospace or nuclear power. The United Arab Emirates appointed the world’s first minister for artificial intelligence in 2017. France has pledged more than €100 billion in AI spending. And in the two countries at the forefront of AI, the race is increasingly geopolitical: The United States has wielded export controls on advanced chips, while China has responded with curbs on sales of key minerals.

The contest in algorithms is just as much a competition for energy, land, water, semiconductors, and minerals. Supplies of electricity and chips will determine how fast the AI revolution moves and which countries and companies will control it…(More)”.

Article by Jacob Taylor and Scott E. Page: “…Generative artificial intelligence (AI) does not transport bodies, but it is already starting to disrupt the physics of collective intelligence: How ideas, drafts, data, and perspectives move between people, how much information groups can process, and how quickly they can move from vague hunch to concrete product.

These shifts are thrilling and terrifying. It now feels easy to build thousands of new tools and workflows. Some will increase our capacity to solve problems. Some could transform our public spaces to be more inclusive and less polarizing. Some could also quietly hollow out the cultures, relationships, and institutions upon which our ability to solve problems together depends.

The challenge—and opportunity—for scientists and practitioners is to start testing how AI can advance collective intelligence in real policy domains, and how these mechanisms can be turned into new muscles and immune systems for shared problem-solving…(More)”.

UNDP Report: “Artificial Intelligence is advancing rapidly, yet many countries remain without the infrastructure, skills, and governance systems needed to capture its benefits. At the same time, they are already feeling its economic and social disruptions. This uneven mix of slow adoption and high vulnerability may trigger a Next Great Divergence, where inequalities between countries widen in the age of AI. 

UNDP’s flagship report, The Next Great Divergence: Why AI May Widen Inequality Between Countries, highlights how these pressures are playing out most visibly in Asia and the Pacific, a region marked by vast differences in income, digital readiness, and institutional capacity. The report outlines practical pathways for countries to harness AI’s opportunities while managing its risks in support of broader human development. 

The result of a multinational effort spanning Asia, Europe and North America, the paper draws on 9 nine background papers prepared with partners including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Germany), Tsinghua University and the Institute for AI International Governance (China), the University of Science and Technology of China, the Aapti Institute (India) and the Digital Future Lab (India)…(More)”.

Article by Shana Lynch: “…After years of fast expansion and billion-dollar bets, 2026 may mark the moment artificial intelligence confronts its actual utility. In their predictions for the next year, Stanford faculty across computer science, medicine, law, and economics converge on a striking theme: The era of AI evangelism is giving way to an era of AI evaluation. Whether it’s standardized benchmarks for legal reasoning, real-time dashboards tracking labor displacement, or clinical frameworks for vetting the flood of medical AI startups, the coming year demands rigor over hype. The question is no longer “Can AI do this?” but “How well, at what cost, and for whom?”

Learn more about what Stanford HAI faculty expect in the new year…As the buzz around the use of GenAI builds, the creators of the technologies will get frustrated with the long decision cycles at health systems and begin going directly to the user in the form of applications that are made available for “free” to end users. Consider, for example, efforts such as literature summaries by OpenEvidence and on-demand answers to clinical questions by AtroposHealth. 

On the technology side, we will see a rise in generative transformers that have the potential to forecast diagnoses, treatment response, or disease progression without needing any task-specific labels.

Given this rise in available solutions, the need for patients to know the basis on which AI “help” is being provided will become crucial (see my prior commentary on this). The ability for researchers to keep up with technology developments via good benchmarking will be stretched thin, even if it is widely recognized to be important. And we will see a rise in solutions that empower patients to have agency in their own care (e.g., this example involving cancer treatment)…(More)”.

Paper by Katharina Fellnhofer, Emilia Vähämaa & Margarita Angelidou: “Trust serves both as a social signal and as an alternative governance mechanism, enhancing confidence in collective action and institutional commitment to the public good. This study investigates how trust—particularly in regional organizations—influences citizen engagement in policymaking processes. Drawing on survey data from 7729 respondents across four European regions, via our Bayesian linear mixed-effect model, we find that higher levels of trust in regional organizations and perceived individual’s trust is significantly associated with higher citizen demand for engagement in policy development. However, a notable gender disparity emerges: while women report higher levels of trust in regional organizations, this does not translate into a greater demand for engagement. This finding underscores the need for more inclusive and equity-oriented engagement strategies that address gendered differences in political efficacy and perceived responsiveness. Our results have practical implications for participatory governance, particularly in the context of addressing complex urban sustainability challenges…(More)”. (See also: Making Civic Trust Less Abstract: A Framework for Measuring Trust Within Cities).

Article by Ellie McDonald and Lea Kaspar: “As the dust settles on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 20-year Review, attention is turning to what the final outcome document (adopted by consensus on 17 December) ultimately delivers. For much of the review, discussions were pragmatic and forward-looking, reflecting a shared interest in maintaining the relevance of the WSIS framework amid a rapidly evolving digital policy landscape. As negotiations moved into their final phase, focus narrowed to a smaller set of long-standing questions, shaping the contours of the text that was agreed.

The outcome document does not seek to resolve all of the issues raised during the review. Rather, it reaffirms core principles, clarifies institutional roles, and sets out expectations for implementation that will now need to be tested in practice.

As negotiations concluded, GPD intervened during the WSIS+20 high-level event this week, emphasising that legitimacy in digital governance is not secured by consensus alone, but depends on sustained participation, human rights anchoring, and accountability as frameworks move into implementation. Read the full intervention here…(More)“.