The International Monetary Fund and China’s National Bureau of Statistics have signed a new Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen cooperation on national accounts, macroeconomic statistics and statistical modernisation.
The agreement builds on a previous MoU signed in November 2023 and creates a framework for cooperation on implementing the 2025 System of National Accounts.
The cooperation will include work on measuring the digital economy, AI, cloud computing, digital intermediation platforms and data as an asset. It will also cover broader areas introduced in updated international statistical standards, including globalisation, economic well-being and environmental sustainability.
The IMF and NBS also agreed to deepen technical collaboration on the consistency and integration of macroeconomic statistics, including through the use of innovative data sources and analytical approaches.
The agreement includes cooperation between the IMF Big Data Centre and the NBS Big Data Application Centre, which hosts the UN Global Hub on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics.
Activities under the MoU will include high-level visits, expert consultations, technical workshops, joint analytical work and exchanges on statistical practices and methodologies.
The new MoU will take effect in December 2026, upon the expiration of the current agreement, and will remain in force until December 2029.
Why does it matter?
Measuring the digital economy is becoming harder as AI systems, cloud services, platforms and data-driven business models become more central to economic activity. Cooperation between the IMF and China’s statistics authority could support more consistent approaches to measuring these sectors under the 2025 System of National Accounts. Better statistical methods matter because governments, investors and international organisations rely on comparable data to assess growth, productivity, sustainability and the economic impact of digital transformation.
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UN human rights experts have warned that AI and related digital technologies could deepen gender inequalities if they are developed and deployed without meaningful regulation.
The Working Group on discrimination against women and girls said AI is reshaping the conditions in which women and girls exercise their rights. In a report to the Human Rights Council, the experts said the absence of gender-responsive AI governance could amplify exclusion, reinforce harmful stereotypes and worsen structural inequalities.
The report says AI and digital technologies can support gender equality when designed responsibly, including by expanding access to education, healthcare, financial services and justice. However, the experts warned that poorly governed systems can also create new forms of exclusion across political, civic and economic life.
The Working Group identified three urgent preconditions for substantive gender equality in the digital age: closing the digital divide, ensuring that AI and digital technologies support rather than undermine women’s and girls’ human rights, and promoting their meaningful participation and leadership in public and political life.
The experts also raised concern over gendered harms linked to AI and digital technologies, including technology-facilitated gender-based violence, mass surveillance, armed conflict, lethal autonomous weapons and climate-related impacts.
They called on states to adopt human rights-based and feminist approaches to AI governance, strengthen regulation and accountability, and ensure that women and girls can participate meaningfully in technological development and decision-making.
The Working Group said technology must serve equality, human rights and human dignity, framing gender-responsive AI governance as an obligation rather than an optional policy choice.
Why does it matter?
The report frames AI governance as a gender equality and human rights issue, not only a technical or innovation challenge. Without gender-responsive rules, AI systems can reproduce discrimination through biassed data, unequal access, surveillance, online violence and exclusion from decision-making. The report also matters because it connects AI policy with digital inclusion and political participation, areas where women and girls are often affected by overlapping forms of discrimination.
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The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has said AI presents both significant opportunities and serious risks for democratic systems.
In a resolution based on a report by Deborah Bergamini, the Assembly described AI as one of the most transformative technologies in human history while warning of its potentially disruptive effects on democracy. However, it also expressed concern about the technology’s potentially disruptive impact on democracy in Europe and beyond.
The Assembly said regulatory and democratic governance frameworks are struggling to keep pace with rapid advances in AI. It warned that AI systems can pose risks to democratic processes, rights, and public trust if they are not appropriately governed.
At the same time, the resolution said AI should not be demonised. With appropriate safeguards, the Assembly said AI could strengthen democratic systems by increasing public participation, improving access to information and supporting deliberative democracy.
The Assembly said AI could also promote inclusiveness by reducing socio-economic barriers and improving access to public services, education, and employment.
However, the resolution also highlighted serious risks. The resolution warned that the large datasets used to train AI systems could be exploited by governments, companies or other actors for mass surveillance, predictive policing, social scoring and political censorship.
The Assembly also warned that AI systems can be affected by politically biased disinformation or contain biases that lead to ill-informed decisions or discrimination against groups such as women or minorities.
The resolution also highlighted the risk of AI hallucinations, in which systems generate incomplete or misleading information.
The Assembly said the convention provides a common framework for ensuring that AI development and deployment remain consistent with human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
Why does it matter?
The resolution reinforces the view that AI governance is not only a technology issue but also a question of democratic resilience. By highlighting risks such as surveillance, disinformation, bias and AI-generated misinformation alongside opportunities to improve participation and public services, the Parliamentary Assembly places democratic values at the centre of AI policymaking.
The Assembly’s call for wider ratification of the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence also signals growing support for international governance frameworks. As governments develop national AI strategies and regulations, common principles based on human rights, democracy and the rule of law could help promote greater consistency and trust across jurisdictions.
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The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is rethinking how financial regulation should operate in the age of AI, according to a speech by chief executive Nikhil Rathi.
Speaking at techUK’s Agents of Change: Generative and Agentic AI in Financial Services 2026 event, Rathi said financial services will be central to making the UK a world-leading AI economy. He said the sector can provide the capital, infrastructure, and trust needed for AI to scale across the wider economy.
Rathi said more than 80% of financial services firms are already using or adopting AI, shifting the policy focus from adoption to large-scale deployment. He said AI is challenging the assumptions on which markets and regulation were built, making it necessary to preserve trust, competition, and resilience as technology moves faster than existing frameworks can keep pace.
The FCA chief identified two major scaling opportunities. The first is agentic AI, which Rathi said could evolve beyond summarisation and task automation into systems capable of coordinating workflows and executing transactions.
In retail markets, Rathi said agentic systems could support smarter bill management, personalised investment strategies, and reduced friction. In wholesale markets, they could support liquidity management, trading workflows, and other market functions.
Rathi stressed that accountability for regulated activities and their outcomes must remain clearly assigned, regardless of the degree of automation. He said investors may be reluctant to delegate important decisions to systems they do not understand, making human oversight and consumer confidence essential.
Rathi also identified tokenisation as a second major trend shaping financial markets. Rathi said tokenisation could lower costs, reduce risk, and unlock new services by creating more automated and programmable infrastructure for agentic finance.
He noted that banks are already piloting tokenized deposits and said the FCA had approved Baillie Gifford, alongside Bank of New York Mellon, to launch the UK’s first natively tokenised authorised fund.
Rathi said rapid AI progress raises fundamental questions for regulation. He argued that legislation alone cannot keep pace with technological change, requiring the FCA to evolve from a traditional rule-maker into a regulator focused on continuous supervision, stewardship and resilience.
The FCA is exploring agentic AI as a ‘first responder’ to speed up wholesale market monitoring. Rathi said the regulator could use its technology, large datasets, and supervisory judgement to tackle market abuse faster.
He said traditional rule-making will still be needed in some areas, but will not work everywhere. The FCA’s role will increasingly involve both stewardship and supervision, helping firms and markets navigate technological change and acting before legislation catches up.
Rathi also said AI will change competition in financial services. He said AI can lower barriers to entry and allow challengers to grow quickly, while some incumbents may fall behind.
The FCA chief said the regulator’s role is not to protect incumbents, but to ensure competition works in consumers’ and the economy’s interests. He said the FCA expects to use system-wide powers more frequently as part of its regular toolkit.
Operational resilience was another major theme of the speech. Rathi said financial services increasingly depend on cloud providers, model providers, data providers, and other parts of the AI stack, creating both opportunities and risks for systemic resilience, market integrity, and financial crime.
He said fraud increasingly sits at the intersection of financial services, technology, and telecoms. UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report suggests the UK lost almost £1.3 billion through payment fraud last year, with two-thirds of authorised fraud cases linked to social media sites and messaging platforms.
Rathi said frontier AI could further magnify risks. Faster and more capable models could help firms identify vulnerabilities and strengthen defences, but could also help attackers move more quickly.
Boards and leadership teams must understand these risks, he said. Firms need to map and govern dependencies on model providers and other third parties, as the Critical Third Parties regime becomes more important.
Rathi said resilience will increasingly become a national security and system-wide challenge. He said no single firm, regulator or sector will be able to see all risks, making better information sharing essential.
The FCA is supporting AI adoption through tools including its Supercharged Sandbox, AI Lab, and the AI Consortium with the Bank of England. Rathi said these initiatives are intended to help firms build, test, and scale AI safely in UK financial services.
He said the FCA will publish more work soon, including the Mills Review on how AI could reshape retail financial services and later guidance on good and poor AI practice.
Rathi concluded that the key question is no longer whether AI will reshape financial services, but whether the UK can become the preferred location for developing and deploying AI safely, responsibly and at commercial scale. He said regulation must support innovation while keeping markets competitive, resilient, and fit for technological change.
Why does it matter?
The speech signals a broader shift in financial regulation from static rule-making towards continuous supervision in response to rapidly evolving AI technologies. As agentic AI, tokenisation and frontier models become more deeply embedded in financial services, regulators are increasingly focusing on governance, operational resilience, competition and accountability rather than relying solely on traditional legislative approaches.
It also illustrates how AI is becoming a strategic issue for financial stability and economic competitiveness. By combining regulatory sandboxes, supervisory innovation and collaboration with industry, the FCA aims to encourage responsible AI adoption while managing emerging risks related to fraud, third-party dependencies, cybersecurity and market integrity. The UK’s approach may influence how other financial regulators adapt to AI-driven transformation.
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The system ranked 31st in the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers and 23rd in the Green500 list of energy-efficient systems. According to GRNET, DAEDALUS recorded a measured performance of 85.69 petaflops, making it the most powerful computing system ever ranked in Greece.
DAEDALUS is based on Hewlett Packard Enterprise architecture and uses NVIDIA GH200 accelerators. It also uses direct liquid cooling, combining high computing performance with energy efficiency.
The supercomputer and its data centre are located at the Lavrio Technological and Cultural Park of the National Technical University of Athens, inside the former Power Station building.
Once fully operational, DAEDALUS is expected to support researchers, universities, industry and public authorities working on demanding computational tasks. These include AI, cybersecurity, personalised healthcare, climate research, public administration and large-scale data analytics.
The system will also serve as the computational core of PHAROS, Greece’s national AI Factory under the European AI Factories initiative. Through PHAROS, Greece aims to expand access to AI infrastructure and support the development of AI applications across research, business and the public sector.
The project forms part of Greece’s wider digital transformation agenda and contributes to European efforts to strengthen technological capacity, AI infrastructure and digital sovereignty through high-performance computing.
Why does it matter?
DAEDALUS gives Greece strategic computing capacity for AI research, scientific modelling and public-sector digital transformation. Its role in PHAROS also links national supercomputing infrastructure to the EU’s AI Factories initiative, which aims to give researchers and companies access to advanced computing resources for AI development. The Green500 ranking matters as well, because Europe’s AI infrastructure push increasingly depends not only on raw performance, but also on energy efficiency and sustainable data-centre design.
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The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has welcomed the political agreement on the revised EU Child Sexual Abuse Directive, saying the legislation marks an important step in strengthening Europe’s response to online child sexual abuse and exploitation.
The organisation says the updated rules address legal gaps created by emerging technologies, particularly the misuse of AI to generate child sexual abuse material.
The revised Directive introduces new criminal offences covering the design, adaptation, distribution and supply of AI systems intended to generate child sexual abuse material. It also criminalises the possession of AI-generated abuse content and materials that provide instructions for committing child sexual abuse.
The revised rules also strengthen protections against online grooming, including cases in which offenders falsely present themselves as children or peers, and extend limitation periods to give survivors more time to pursue justice.
The IWF argues that the legislation reflects the rapidly evolving threat posed by generative AI.
IWF warns that technological advances are accelerating the scale and sophistication of online child exploitation.
Following the political agreement, the IWF has urged EU member states to transpose the Directive into national law promptly, arguing that timely implementation will strengthen legal protections and law enforcement capabilities across the EU. The organisation argues that timely transposition will be essential to ensure stronger legal protections, improve law enforcement capabilities and reduce opportunities for offenders to exploit AI technologies across the EU.
Why does it matter?
The revised Directive reflects how advances in generative AI are reshaping criminal law and child protection policy. By introducing offences specifically targeting AI systems designed to generate child sexual abuse material, the EU is adapting its legal framework to address emerging forms of technology-enabled exploitation.
The agreement also highlights the growing need for legal systems to evolve alongside AI capabilities. Alongside new offences, the Directive strengthens protections for victims and expands tools available to law enforcement, illustrating how governments are updating criminal legislation to respond to increasingly sophisticated forms of online abuse while seeking greater consistency across EU member states.
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Canada’s Centre for Cyber Security has warned that frontier AI models are rapidly transforming the cyber threat landscape, reducing the time organisations have to detect, contain and respond to attacks.
According to the Cyber Centre, AI is enabling cybercriminals to identify vulnerabilities, automate complex attack chains and generate increasingly convincing phishing campaigns, deepfakes and voice impersonation attacks at unprecedented speed and scale.
The advisory follows a joint statement by the Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies urging organisations worldwide to strengthen cyber resilience before AI-enabled attacks evolve into major operational, financial and national security incidents.
The Cyber Centre also highlights internal risks associated with unapproved AI use, including the exposure of sensitive information and reliance on inaccurate or manipulated AI-generated outputs.
Rather than viewing AI solely as a source of risk, the Cyber Centre encourages organisations to integrate frontier AI into cybersecurity operations. AI can help identify vulnerabilities earlier in software development, strengthen secure-by-design practices, improve security monitoring and accelerate incident detection and response.
The guidance emphasises that fundamental cyber hygiene, including timely patching, phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, network segmentation, centralised logging and regularly tested incident response plans, remains essential despite rapid advances in AI capabilities.
Why does it matter?
The guidance reflects a shift in cybersecurity from preparing for future AI risks to responding to immediate operational challenges. As frontier AI enables attackers to identify vulnerabilities, automate exploitation and produce more sophisticated phishing and social engineering campaigns, organisations may have less time to detect and contain incidents.
The advisory also reinforces an emerging consensus among the Five Eyes partners that AI should be treated as both a cyber risk and a defensive capability. Alongside robust governance and responsible AI use, organisations are increasingly expected to combine AI-enabled security tools with strong cyber hygiene, secure-by-design practices and resilient incident response capabilities to keep pace with a rapidly evolving threat landscape.
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Africa’s place in an evolving digital governance landscape
As AI, cybersecurity, and digital technologies become increasingly central to international policymaking, African countries are seeking to strengthen their role in shaping global digital governance. Questions of representation, digital sovereignty, capacity development, and regional coordination are becoming more prominent as governments prepare for negotiations on AI governance, cybersecurity, telecommunications, and internet governance.
These issues formed the focus of a recent Diplo webinar on Cyber Diplomacy in Africa: Regional, National and Continental Initiatives, moderated by Mwende Njiraini, African Initiative Coordinator at Diplo and Chair of the ITU-T Study Group 17 Regional Group for Africa on security. The discussion brought together policymakers, diplomats, academics, and regional organisations to examine how African interests can be more effectively represented in international digital governance processes.
Although the discussion focused on Africa, many of the issues raised, including AI governance, digital sovereignty, capacity development, and multistakeholder cooperation, reflect broader challenges facing digital governance worldwide.
From cyber diplomacy to diplomacy in the AI era
Opening the discussion, Kurbalija suggested that the distinction between cyber diplomacy, digital diplomacy, and technology diplomacy is becoming less significant as digital technologies permeate virtually every area of international relations. Rather than focusing on terminology, he argued that the central question is how countries, communities, and citizens represent their interests in an increasingly digital world.
‘Cyber diplomacy, digital diplomacy, or AI diplomacy is ultimately diplomacy. It is about representing interests, negotiating, and finding common solutions.’, he said.
According to Kurbalija, technological developments are no longer confined to specialised policy discussions. AI, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, and data governance increasingly influence trade, security, education, healthcare, humanitarian action, and economic development, making digital issues part of mainstream diplomacy.
This evolution also raises questions about whether Africa is sufficiently represented in international discussions shaping the future of digital technologies.
Image via Magnific
Kurbalija noted that African diplomats are becoming more active in negotiations related to AI, cybersecurity, and internet governance, but argued that stronger participation will be necessary to ensure that the continent’s priorities are reflected in emerging international frameworks.
Rather than approaching these meetings individually, Kurbalija encouraged participants to prepare coordinated positions that reflect African priorities across different policy areas.
Regional coordination remains a work in progress
A recurring theme throughout the discussion was the gap between continental ambitions and national implementation.
However, she questioned whether these processes consistently translate into practical outcomes across the continent.
To illustrate this point, Getao presented the results of a live audience poll measuring familiarity with African digital governance initiatives. While approximately half of the participants recognised the AU Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (the Malabo Convention), significantly fewer were familiar with other continental initiatives, including the AU Digital Transformation Strategy and the African Union’s position on international law in cyberspace.
The findings suggested that awareness of Africa’s existing digital governance architecture remains uneven, even among participants engaged in digital policy discussions.
Ambassador Bitange Ndemo argued that implementation presents an even greater challenge than awareness. He observed that agreements adopted at the African Union level often take considerable time to influence national policymaking, with countries frequently developing their own legal and regulatory approaches rather than building on common continental frameworks.
Using the Malabo Convention as an example, Ndemo suggested that many governments introduced separate data protection legislation without fully integrating broader continental approaches. According to him, one contributing factor is reliance on external funding for many regional digital initiatives.
‘If we continue depending on external partners to finance our priorities, ownership becomes more difficult’, Ndemo added.
Ndemo argued that stronger African investment in digital governance initiatives would improve both implementation and long-term sustainability.
Getao echoed this concern, noting that important achievements at the continental level do not always ‘percolate’ effectively to national implementation.
Building common African positions
Despite these challenges, speakers highlighted several examples of growing regional coordination.
Meriem Slimani described how the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) has worked to strengthen cooperation among member states in preparing common African positions for international telecommunications negotiations.
When she joined the organisation in 2015, Slimani recalled, many countries submitted proposals independently at international meetings, often without consulting neighbouring states.
ATU responded by creating a coordination platform through which member countries discuss priorities, identify common interests, exchange experiences, and gradually develop shared positions before major international conferences.
‘Our objective has been to ensure that Africa speaks with one voice where common interests exist.’
Image via Magnific
According to Slimani, this collaborative approach has become particularly important in preparation for major meetings of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), where coordinated regional positions can strengthen Africa’s influence during negotiations.
While acknowledging that implementation challenges remain, he argued that progress has been more visible in some sectors than others.
In particular, COMESA has advanced several practical digital trade initiatives, including electronic trade documentation, digital logistics systems, electronic certificates of origin, and simplified digital trade procedures designed to facilitate cross-border commerce.
Governance issues such as cybersecurity and cybercrime, however, have generally progressed more slowly because they often involve more politically sensitive discussions and require broader legal coordination among participating states.
Chinemhute suggested that smaller regional organisations can sometimes move more quickly than continental institutions because they involve fewer actors and more focused policy priorities.
Looking ahead
While speakers approached Africa’s digital future from different institutional and regional perspectives, several common priorities emerged throughout the discussion. These included strengthening Africa’s participation in global digital governance processes, improving coordination among national, regional, and continental initiatives, investing in capacity development, and ensuring that digital policies reflect local realities and priorities.
The discussion also highlighted that digital governance extends beyond technology. Questions of AI, cybersecurity, connectivity, language, education, and financing were presented as interconnected challenges that require cooperation among governments, regional organisations, academia, the private sector, and civil society.
Image via Magnific
As international discussions on AI and digital governance continue through forums such as the AI for Good Global Summit, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)+20 process, and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), speakers stressed that African participation will be most effective when supported by coordinated regional positions and sustained investment in local expertise and digital capabilities.
Ultimately, the webinar underscored that Africa’s role in shaping the future of digital governance will depend not only on engagement in international negotiations but also on translating continental ambitions into practical national implementation and ensuring that African perspectives contribute to global debates on AI, cybersecurity, and digital development.
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OpenAI has updated GPT-5.5 Instant to make ChatGPT conversations more natural, useful and responsive to user intent.
According to the company’s release notes, the update is designed to improve conversational quality, especially when users are making decisions, asking for advice, planning, researching options or shopping.
We have a new version of GPT-5.5 Instant for you, and it's much more fun to talk to.
Our most-used model is now better at understanding the intent behind a question and adapting its response accordingly.
It also handles complex constraints more reliably and makes shopping and…
OpenAI said GPT-5.5 Instant is now better at identifying the underlying goal behind a question and carrying context across multiple turns. The company also said the model follows complex instructions more reliably, including requests with several constraints or requirements.
The update is intended to make the model more adaptive during ongoing conversations. When users add constraints or push back on an answer, GPT-5.5 Instant should adjust its approach more effectively, rather than simply repeating its original response.
The change reflects a wider shift in consumer AI systems from one-off answer generation towards more context-aware and interactive assistance.
Why does it matter?
The update shows how competition in AI assistants is moving beyond raw accuracy and benchmark performance towards conversational quality. For everyday users, the ability to understand intent, track context, follow multiple constraints and respond well to feedback can determine whether AI tools feel genuinely useful in education, work, shopping, planning and customer support.
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Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency has published a paper on how higher education institutions can assure quality learning in a future shaped by generative AI.
The paper, ‘Assuring quality learning in a GenAI-integrated future: The role of adaptive capabilities’, argues that universities need to rethink how they define, assess and evidence student learning as generative AI becomes embedded in education.
The authors say generative AI and automated decision-making systems challenge traditional approaches to academic integrity and assessment. Rather than focusing only on securing final submissions, institutions should clarify what students need to learn in AI-integrated environments and how that learning can be demonstrated.
The paper identifies adaptive capabilities as central to graduate learning. These include digital literacy, distributed cognition, hybrid metacognition and life-long learning, grounded in disciplinary knowledge and supported by student agency and regulation.
The authors warn that narrow AI literacy may not be enough, as operational skills linked to current tools can quickly become outdated. Adaptive capabilities can help students evaluate new technologies, use AI ethically and continue learning as systems evolve.
The paper also highlights risks linked to generative AI, including overreliance on AI-generated explanations, reduced effortful learning and excessive cognitive offloading. It says higher education should preserve practices that support deeper learning, such as retrieval practice, spaced revision and generating answers before receiving explanations.
Assessment reform is a major theme. The paper calls for greater attention to evidence of learning processes rather than only to final products. Possible approaches include portfolios, learning journey documentation, reflective tasks, trace data and structured self-assessments.
TEQSA says the paper is not prescriptive and does not form part of its formal guidance notes. Instead, it is intended to support institutional thinking about how quality assurance may need to change as generative AI becomes a normal part of higher education.
Why does it matter?
Generative AI is weakening the reliability of product-based assessment, especially when final essays, reports, or problem solutions are produced or heavily shaped by AI tools. TEQSA’s focus on adaptive capabilities points towards a different quality assurance model: one that values student judgement, process evidence, ethical AI use and deep disciplinary understanding. That matters for universities because they will increasingly need to prove not only that students produced work, but that they learned, reasoned and exercised agency while using AI.
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