AGI vs. AAI: Grassroots Ingenuity and Frugal Innovation Will Shape the Future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Akash Kapur: “Step back from the day-to-day flurry surrounding AI, and a global divergence in narratives is becoming increasingly clear. In Silicon Valley, New York, and London, the conversation centers on the long-range pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI)—systems that might one day equal or surpass humans at almost everything. This is the moon-shot paradigm, fueled by multi-billion-dollar capital expenditure and almost metaphysical ambition.

In contrast, much of the Global South is converging on something more grounded: the search for near-term, proven use cases that can be deployed with today’s hardware, and limited budgets and bandwidth. Call it Applied AI, or AAI. This quest for applicability—and relevance—is more humble than AGI. Its yardstick for success is more measured, and certainly less existential. Rather than pose profound questions about the nature of consciousness and humanity, Applied AI asks questions like: Does the model fix a real-world problem? Can it run on patchy 4G, a mid-range GPU, or a refurbished phone? What new yield can it bring to farmers or fishermen, or which bureaucratic bottleneck can it cut?

One way to think of AAI is as intelligence that ships. Vernacular chatbots, offline crop-disease detectors, speech-to-text tools for courtrooms: examples of similar applications and products, tailored and designed for specific sectors, are growing fast. In Africa, PlantVillage Nuru helps Kenyan farmers diagnose crop diseases entirely offline; South-Africa-based Lelapa AI is training “small language models” for at least 13 African languages; and Nigeria’s EqualyzAI runs chatbots that are trained to provide Hausa and Yoruba translations for customers…(More)”.

Sustainable Development Report 2025

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN): “Ten years after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), progress remains alarmingly off-track, with less than 20% of targets projected to be achieved by 2030…The SDR includes the SDG Index and Dashboards, which rank all UN Member States on their performance across the 17 Goals, and this year’s report features a new Index (SDGi), which focuses on 17 headline indicators to track overall SDG progress over time…This year’s SDR highlights five key findings:

The Global Financial Architecture (GFA) must be urgently reformed to finance global public goods and achieve sustainable development. Roughly half the world’s population resides in countries that cannot adequately invest in sustainable development due to unsustainable debt burdens and limited access to affordable, long-term capital. Sustainable development is a high-return investment, yet the GFA continues to direct capital toward high-income countries instead of EMDEs, which offer stronger growth prospects and higher returns. Global public goods also remain significantly underfinanced. The upcoming Ff4D offers a critical opportunity for UN Member States to reform this system and ensure that international financing flows at scale to EMDEs to achieve sustainable development…

At the global level, SDG progress has stalled; none of the 17 Global Goals are on track, and only 17% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030. Conflicts, structural vulnerabilities, and limited fiscal space continue to hinder progress, especially in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs). The five targets showing significant reversal in progress since 2015 include: obesity rate (SDG 2), press freedom (SDG 16), sustainable nitrogen management (SDG 2), the red list index (SDG 15), and the corruption perception index (SDG 16). Conversely, many countries have made notable progress in expanding access to basic services and infrastructure, including: mobile broadband use (SDG 9), access to electricity (SDG 7), internet use (SDG 9), under-5 mortality rate (SDG 3), and neonatal mortality (SDG 3). However, future progress on many of these indicators, including health-related outcomes, is threatened by global tensions and the decline in international development finance.

Barbados leads again in UN-based multilateralism commitment, while the U.S. ranks last. The SDR 2025’s Index of countries’ support to UN-based multilateralism (UN-Mi) ranks countries based on their support for and engagement with the UN system. The top three countries most committed to UN multilateralism are: Barbados (#1), Jamaica (#2), and Trinidad and Tobago (#3). Among G20 nations, Brazil (#25) ranks highest, while Chile (#7) leads among OECD countries. In contrast, the U.S., which recently withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO) and formally declared its opposition to the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda, ranks last (#193) for the second year in a row…(More)”

The Global A.I. Divide

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur: “Last month, Sam Altman, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, donned a helmet, work boots and a luminescent high-visibility vest to visit the construction site of the company’s new data center project in Texas.

Bigger than New York’s Central Park, the estimated $60 billion project, which has its own natural gas plant, will be one of the most powerful computing hubs ever created when completed as soon as next year.

Around the same time as Mr. Altman’s visit to Texas, Nicolás Wolovick, a computer science professor at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina, was running what counts as one of his country’s most advanced A.I. computing hubs. It was in a converted room at the university, where wires snaked between aging A.I. chips and server computers.

“Everything is becoming more split,” Dr. Wolovick said. “We are losing.”

Artificial intelligence has created a new digital divide, fracturing the world between nations with the computing power for building cutting-edge A.I. systems and those without. The split is influencing geopolitics and global economics, creating new dependencies and prompting a desperate rush to not be excluded from a technology race that could reorder economies, drive scientific discovery and change the way that people live and work.

The biggest beneficiaries by far are the United States, China and the European Union. Those regions host more than half of the world’s most powerful data centers, which are used for developing the most complex A.I. systems, according to data compiled by Oxford University researchers. Only 32 countries, or about 16 percent of nations, have these large facilities filled with microchips and computers, giving them what is known in industry parlance as “compute power.”..(More)”.

Opening code, opening access: The World Bank’s first open source software release

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Keongmin Yoon, Olivier Dupriez, Bryan Cahill, and Katie Bannon: “The World Bank has long championed data transparency. Open data platforms, global indicators, and reproducible research have become pillars of the Bank’s knowledge work. But in many operational contexts, access to raw data alone is not enough. Turning data into insight requires tools—software to structure metadata, run models, update systems, and integrate outputs into national platforms.

With this in mind, the World Bank has released its first Open Source Software (OSS) tool under a new institutional licensing framework. The Metadata Editor—a lightweight application for structuring and publishing statistical metadata—is now publicly available on the Bank’s GitHub repository, under the widely used MIT License, supplemented by Bank-specific legal provisions.

This release marks more than a technical milestone. It reflects a structural shift in how the Bank shares its data and knowledge. For the first time, there is a clear institutional framework for making Bank-developed software open, reusable, and legally shareable—advancing the Bank’s commitment to public goods, transparency, Open Science, and long-term development impact, as emphasized in The Knowledge Compact for Action…(More)”.

The AI Policy Playbook

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Playbook by AI Policymaker Network & Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH: “It moves away from talking about AI ethics in abstract terms but tells of building policies that work right-away in emerging economies and respond to immediate development priorities. The Playbook emphasises that a one-size-fits-all solution doesn’t work. Rather, it illustrates shared challenges—like limited research capacity, fragmented data ecosystems, and compounding AI risks—while spotlighting national innovations and success stories. From drafting AI strategies to engaging communities and safeguarding rights, it lays out a roadmap grounded in local realities….What can you expect to find in the AI Policy Playbook:

  1. Policymaker Interviews
    Real-world insights from policymakers to understand their challenges and best practices.
  2. Policy Process Analysis
    Key elements from existing policies to extract effective strategies for AI governance, as well as policy mapping.
  3. Case Studies
    Examples of successes and lessons learnt from various countries to provide practical guidance.
  4. Recommendations
    Concrete solutions and recommendations from actors in the field to improve the policy development process, including quick tips for implementation and handling challenges.

What distinguishes this initiative is its commitment to peer learning and co-creation. The Africa-Asia AI Policymaker Network comprises over 30 high-level government partners who anchor the Playbook in real-world policy contexts. This ensures that the frameworks are not only theoretically sound but politically and socially implementable…(More)”

Representants and International Orders

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Alena Drieschova: “Different units of international politics, such as states or the church, cannot be present in their entirety during international interactions. Political rule needs to be represented for international actors to coordinate their activities. Representants (i.e. maps, GDP, buildings, and diplomatic and warfare practices) establish collective understandings about the nature of authority and its configuration. Whilst representants are not exact replica, they highlight and omit certain features from the units they stand in for. In these inclusions and exclusions lies representants’ irreducible effect. This book studies how representants define the units of the international system and position them in relation to each other, thereby generating an international order. When existing representants change, the international order changes because the units are defined differently and stand in different relations to each other. Power is therefore defined differently. Spanning centuries of European history, Alena Drieschova traces the struggles between actors over these representations…(More)”.

Leveraging Citizen Data to Improve Public Services and Measure Progress Toward Sustainable Development Goal 16

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Dilek Fraisl: “This paper presents the results of a pilot study conducted in Ghana that utilized citizen data approaches for monitoring a governance indicator within the SDG framework, focusing on indicator 16.6.2 citizen satisfaction with public services. This indicator is a crucial measure of governance quality, as emphasized by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through target 16.6 Develop effective, accountable, and transparent institutions at all levels. Indicator 16.6.2 specifically measures satisfaction with key public services, including health, education, and other government services, such as government-issued identification documents through a survey. However, with only 5 years remaining to achieve the SDGs, the lack of data continues to pose a significant challenge in monitoring progress toward this target, particularly regarding the experiences of marginalized populations. Our findings suggest that well-designed citizen data initiatives can effectively capture the experiences of marginalized individuals and communities. Additionally, they can serve as valuable supplements to official statistics, providing crucial data on population groups typically underrepresented in traditional surveys…(More)”.

The Global Data Barometer 2nd edition: A Shared Compass for Navigating the Data Landscape

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Global Data Barometer: “Across the globe, we’re at a turning point. From artificial intelligence and digital governance to public transparency and service delivery, data is now a fundamental force shaping how our societies function and who they serve. It holds tremendous promise to drive inclusive growth, foster accountability, and support urgent action on global challenges. And yet, access to high-quality, usable data is becoming increasingly constrained.

Some, like Verhulst (2024), have begun calling this moment a “data winter,” a period marked by shrinking openness, rising inequality in access, and growing fragmentation in how data is governed and used. This trend poses a risk not just to innovation but to the democratic values that underpin trust, participation, and accountability.

In this complex landscape, evidence matters more than ever. That is why we are proud to launch the Second Edition of the Global Data Barometer (GDB), a collaborative and comparative study that tracks the state of data for the public good across 43 countries, with a focused lens on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and Africa…

The Barometer tracks countries across four dimensions: governance, capabilities, and availability, while also exploring key cross-cutting areas like AI readiness, inclusion, and data use. Here are some of the key takeaways:

  • The Implementation Gap

Many countries have adopted laws and frameworks for data governance, but there is a stark gap between policy and practice. Without strong institutions and dedicated capacity, even well-designed frameworks fall short.

  • The Role of Skills and Infrastructure

Data does not flow or translate into value without people and systems in place. Across both Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa, we see underinvestment in public sector skills, training, and the infrastructure needed to manage and reuse data effectively.

  • AI Is Moving Faster Than Governance

AI is increasingly present in national strategies, but very few countries have clear policies to guide its ethical use. Governance frameworks rarely address issues like algorithmic bias, data quality, or the accountability of AI-driven decision-making.

  • Open Data Needs Reinvestment

Many countries once seen as open data champions are struggling to sustain their efforts. Legal mandates are not always matched by technical implementation or resources. As a result, open data initiatives risk losing momentum.

  • Transparency Tools Are Missing

Key datasets that support transparency and anti-corruption, such as lobbying registers, beneficial ownership data, and political finance records, are often missing or fragmented. This makes it hard to follow the money or hold institutions to account.

  • Inclusion Is Still Largely Symbolic

Despite commitments to equity, inclusive data governance remains the exception. Data is rarely published in Indigenous or widely spoken non-official languages. Accessibility for persons with disabilities is often treated as a recommendation rather than a requirement.

  • Interoperability Remains a Barrier

Efforts to connect datasets across government, such as on procurement, company data, or political integrity, are rare. Without common standards or identifiers, it is difficult to track influence or evaluate policy impact holistically…(More)”.

New data tools enhance the development effectiveness of tourism investment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Louise Twining-Ward, Alex Pio and Alba Suris Coll-Vinent: “The tourism sector is a major driver of economic growth and inclusive job creation. Tourism generates a high number of jobs, especially for women (UN Tourism). In 2024, tourism was responsible for one in ten jobs worldwide, delivering 337.7 million total jobs, and accounted for 10.5 percent of global GDP . For many developing countries, it is a primary generator of foreign exchange.

The growth of this vital sector depends heavily on public investment in infrastructure and services. But rapid change, due to uncertain geopolitics, climate shocks, and shifting consumer behavior, can make it hard to know how best to spend scarce resources. Traditional data sources are unable to keep up, leaving policymakers without the timely insights needed to effectively manage mounting complexities. Only a few developing coutries collect and maintain tourism satellite accounts (TSAs), which help capture tourism’s contribution to their economies. However, even in these countries, tourist arrival data and spending behavior, through immigration data and visitor surveys, are often processed with a lag. There is an urgent need for more accessible, more granular, and more timely data tools.

Emerging Data Tools

For this reason, the World Bank partnered with Visa to access anonymized and aggregated credit card spend data in the Caribbean and attempt to fill data gaps. This and other emerging tools for policymaking—such as satellite and geospatial mapping, analysis of online reviews, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics—now allow tourism destinations to take a closer look at local demand patterns, gauge visitor satisfaction in near-real time, and measure progress on everything from carbon footprints to women’s employment in tourism…(More)”.

How Behaviorally-Informed Technologies Are Shaping Global Aid

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Heather Graci: “Contraceptives are available in Sub-Saharan Africa, but maternal deaths caused by unwanted pregnancies are still rampant. Refugee agencies support those forced to flee their homes, but don’t always know where they’ll go—or what they’ll need when they get there. AI-powered tutors provide crucial support to kids struggling in under-resourced schools, but may not treat their students equally. 

These are the sorts of humanitarian challenges that featured at the seventh annual United Nations Behavioural Science Week earlier this month. Each year, the UN Behavioural Science Group brings together researchers and practitioners from inside and outside of the UN to discuss how to use behavioral science for social good. Practitioners are exposed to the latest research that could inform their work; academics glimpse how their ideas play out amid the chaos of the real world. And everyone learns about projects happening beyond their focus area. Experts in healthcare, finance, education, peace and security, and beyond share a common language—and common solutions—in behavioral science. 

This year technology was a central theme. Panelists from organizations like UNICEF and the World Bank joined academic experts from behavioral science, data science, and AI to discuss how thoughtful, behaviorally-informed technologies can bolster global development and aid efforts. 

I’ve curated three sessions from the week that capture the different ways this is happening. Digital assistants that boost the capacity of health care workers or teachers. Predictive models that help aid agencies send the right resources to the right regions. And just as AI can exacerbate bias, it can mitigate it too—as long as we understand how it intersects with different cultures as it’s deployed around the world…(More)”.