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UN explores how AI can scale human rights implementation

Digital tools and AI can help governments turn thousands of human rights recommendations into concrete action, but only if technology remains firmly guided by human expertise and institutional cooperation, speakers concluded during a WSIS Forum 2026 session on scaling digital tools for human rights monitoring.

The discussion brought together representatives from Costa Rica, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), academia, and civil society to examine how digital platforms, AI-assisted analysis, and improved data management can enhance the implementation of recommendations issued by UN human rights mechanisms.

Costa Rica shares experience with recommendation tracking

Opening the discussion, Domenico Zipoli, Head of Programmes at the Geneva Human Rights Hub, noted that governments receive thousands of recommendations every year from treaty bodies, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), special procedures, and regional mechanisms, making implementation increasingly difficult without digital support.

Costa Rica’s Roberto Cespedes, Chargé d’Affaires at the country’s mission to the UN in Geneva, explained how the National Recommendations Tracking Database (NRTD) has transformed the country’s follow-up process.

Costa Rica established its National Mechanism for Implementation, Reporting and Follow-up (NMIRF) in 2011, bringing together ministries, parliament, the judiciary, and the national human rights institution. However, for years, the mechanism lacked an effective technological platform capable of managing recommendations from multiple international processes.

‘The database has significantly improved visibility of recommendations across institutions,’ Cespedes said.

He highlighted the tool’s ability to cluster recommendations by topic, enabling ministries to identify shared responsibilities and collaborate more effectively. Rather than working in isolation, institutions increasingly recognise the need for coordinated implementation.

Costa Rica is also working to expand access beyond government. Cespedes said civil society organisations are expected to gain direct access to the platform, allowing them to monitor implementation, provide feedback, and strengthen transparency.

OHCHR: AI can assist, but humans remain indispensable

Presenting the UN perspective, Marie Eve Boyer, Human Rights Officer at OHCHR, explained that the NRTD was developed to address the fragmentation of international human rights recommendations.

Built on the Universal Human Rights Index, the platform enables governments to consolidate recommendations, assign responsibilities across ministries, monitor progress, and prepare reports more efficiently.

Boyer noted that 20 countries are already using the NRTD, while another 40 are waiting for deployment.

She argued that AI has significant potential to support implementation by identifying relevant information, clustering recommendations, highlighting data gaps, and scaling reporting processes. However, she stressed that technology cannot replace human judgement.

‘AI can help process information, but it cannot understand the reality experienced by communities,’ she said, adding that contextual expertise remains essential when assessing whether recommendations have genuinely been implemented.

She also warned against viewing digital tools as substitutes for strong institutions, arguing that successful implementation depends on sustained human engagement alongside technological innovation.

Generative AI opens new possibilities for legal experts

Offering an academic perspective, Lukasz Szoszkiewicz, Assistant Professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, demonstrated several prototype tools built using natural language processing and generative AI.

His projects include searchable databases of UN treaty body jurisprudence, analytical dashboards for the Universal Human Rights Index, and paragraph-level search tools for European Court of Human Rights decisions.

Szoszkiewicz argued that generative AI is fundamentally changing software development by enabling lawyers, researchers, and other domain experts to build specialised digital tools themselves rather than relying solely on IT teams.

‘Domain experts now have the possibility to develop tools that match exactly what they need,’ he explained.

He also addressed concerns about AI hallucinations, recommending that large language models be used primarily to generate deterministic software code rather than directly analysing sensitive datasets. This approach, he said, produces more reliable and verifiable results while reducing the likelihood of inaccurate outputs.

Better data still needed to measure real-world outcomes

Audience interventions highlighted persistent challenges surrounding data availability and measuring whether human rights recommendations actually improve people’s lives.

Representatives from civil society organisations working on torture prevention and disability rights pointed to the difficulty of obtaining reliable outcome data, particularly in countries where governments do not systematically publish relevant information.

Responding to these concerns, Boyer said OHCHR is exploring minimum datasets that could help governments monitor implementation more consistently while aligning human rights indicators with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Cespedes added that AI could eventually help governments identify positive actions that officials may not even realise correspond to international recommendations, making implementation more visible and easier to document.

Throughout the session, speakers agreed that AI and digital platforms should be viewed as tools to strengthen human rights implementation rather than replace human oversight. They concluded that meaningful progress will depend on better data, stronger institutional cooperation, and continued collaboration between governments, international organisations, academia, and civil society.

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Universal acceptance key to multilingual internet, UNESCO and ICANN say

The internet cannot be truly inclusive until every valid domain name and email address works regardless of language or script, speakers said during a WSIS Forum 2026 session marking the launch of UNESCO and ICANN’s joint policy brief on universal acceptance (UA). The discussion brought together representatives from UNESCO, ICANN, and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), who argued that multilingual internet infrastructure has become increasingly important not only for digital inclusion but also for the future development of AI.

While internationalised domain names (IDNs) and multilingual email addresses have long been supported by global technical standards, implementation remains far from complete. Speakers stressed that closing this gap now requires stronger political commitment, procurement policies, and coordinated action from governments, industry, academia, and civil society.

Technical standards exist, but implementation lags

Opening the session, UNESCO’s Guilherme Canela argued that multilingualism is about much more than preserving languages, it is about enabling full participation in digital society.

‘A multilingual internet expands access to information, education, services, innovation, and opportunity,’ he said, noting that many websites and online services still fail to recognise or process domain names and email addresses written in local languages and scripts.

ICANN’s Theresa Swinehart echoed that message, describing universal acceptance as a practical challenge that can be solved rather than a technological limitation. She highlighted ICANN’s work on multilingual internet infrastructure, including the delegation of more than 150 internationalised top-level domains covering 37 languages and 23 scripts, alongside efforts to improve compatibility across software platforms and open-source projects.

Dr Sarmad Hussain, Senior Director for IDN and UA Programmes at ICANN, illustrated the scale of the remaining challenge with new data. A survey of around 1,000 websites across 20 countries found that, on average, only 12% accepted email addresses written in local languages. Meanwhile, fewer than 30% of the world’s email servers currently support internationalised email addresses.

‘The technology and standards already exist,’ Hussain explained. ‘The problem is that many applications and websites have simply not been updated to support them.’

UNESCO–ICANN policy brief offers roadmap

A central focus of the session was the launch of the joint UNESCO–ICANN policy brief Advancing Universal Acceptance of All Domain Names and Email Addresses for Multilingual Internet.

Presenting the document, UNESCO’s Xianhong Hu argued that achieving universal acceptance requires much more than technical upgrades. The policy brief identifies gaps in awareness, policy, capacity development, and implementation, while providing tailored recommendations for governments, international organisations, civil society, academia, technical communities, and language communities.

Hu also stressed that multilingual internet infrastructure has become increasingly important in the AI era.

‘Without universal acceptance, AI systems learn from a narrower and less representative digital environment,’ she said, warning that languages excluded from today’s internet infrastructure risk remaining underrepresented in tomorrow’s AI models.

The brief also introduces measurement frameworks that governments and organisations can use to monitor progress. UNESCO plans to integrate UA into the sixth monitoring cycle of its Recommendation on the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism, with national reports due in 2027.

Multilingual internet increasingly linked to AI governance

Several speakers argued that universal acceptance should no longer be viewed as a niche technical issue but as part of broader AI governance discussions.

Henri Monceau of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie said multilingual internet infrastructure directly influences which languages become visible in AI training datasets.

‘The richer and more linguistically diverse the internet becomes, the richer and more representative AI systems can become,’ he said, warning that languages marginalised online today may also be marginalised in future AI applications.

Speakers therefore called for governments to include universal acceptance in national digital transformation and AI strategies, alongside procurement requirements that encourage software developers to build multilingual support from the outset.

ICANN also highlighted its growing capacity-building efforts, including more than 200 UA Day events organised across 86 countries in 42 languages, reaching over 29,000 participants. The organisation is also working with universities in Bahrain, Mexico, India, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, and other countries to integrate universal acceptance into computer science curricula so future software developers build multilingual support by default.

End users and local communities remain central

Audience questions focused on ensuring that end users, not only technical communities, remain at the centre of universal acceptance efforts, as well as whether growing interest in AI sovereignty could conflict with broader multilingual accessibility.

Responding to these concerns, Canela argued that locally developed AI models and universal acceptance should reinforce rather than compete with one another. Smaller language models designed for specific communities, he said, can strengthen both linguistic diversity and digital inclusion while requiring fewer computing resources.

Panellists agreed that the success of universal acceptance ultimately depends on collaboration across governments, industry, academia, civil society, and local language communities. They concluded that making every valid domain name and email address work equally across the internet is no longer simply a technical objective, but a prerequisite for a multilingual, inclusive, and AI-ready digital future.

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SpaceXAI launches Grok 4.5 for coding and agentic tasks

SpaceXAI has introduced Grok 4.5, its latest model for coding, agentic tasks and knowledge work.

The company describes Grok 4.5 as its most capable model to date, trained for real-world engineering, software development, science and mathematics tasks.

According to SpaceXAI, the model was trained across tens of thousands of NVIDIA GB300 GPUs, using data filtering, curation and reinforcement learning focused on multi-step technical work.

The company says Grok 4.5 can complete complex coding tasks and build functional applications from a single prompt.

Beyond software development, Grok 4.5 is designed to support knowledge-work tasks in Grok Build, including Excel modelling, PowerPoint slide design and Word document drafting.

SpaceXAI said the model serves up to 80 tokens per second and offers greater token efficiency than comparable leading models on selected tasks.

Grok 4.5 is available through Grok Build, Cursor and the SpaceXAI console. It is priced at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens.

The company said Grok 4.5 is not yet available in the EU through its products or API console, with the EU availability expected in mid-July.

Why does it matter?

Grok 4.5 shows how frontier AI competition is moving towards practical agentic work, not only general chatbot performance. Coding, spreadsheet modelling, document creation and application-building are becoming key battlegrounds for AI providers targeting enterprise and professional users. The model’s pricing and claimed token efficiency also show growing pressure on AI companies to compete on cost and speed as much as benchmark performance.

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ECB urges banks to prepare for AI cyber threats

The European Central Bank has called on major euro area banks to prepare action plans to address AI-enabled cybersecurity threats.

In a letter to bank CEOs, ECB Banking Supervision said emerging AI models can identify software vulnerabilities and generate functioning exploits at unprecedented speed.

The ECB warned that AI is compressing the time between vulnerability discovery and exploitation, with potentially serious implications for the confidentiality, integrity and resilience of banks’ ICT systems.

The central bank said the change is a long-term shift in the threat landscape, not a temporary risk linked to a single tool.

Banks have been asked to submit action plans to their Joint Supervisory Teams by 31 October 2026.

The plans should set out concrete measures, resources, roles, responsibilities and implementation timelines for strengthening cyber resilience.

Short-term priorities include faster vulnerability and patch management, stronger monitoring and detection, AI-enabled defensive capabilities and updated third-party risk management.

The ECB also called for structural measures such as defence-in-depth, improved cyber hygiene, infrastructure modernisation, crisis management, recovery arrangements and information-sharing.

The letter follows a European Systemic Risk Board warning about systemic cyber risks posed by frontier AI models.

ECB Banking Supervision also said it will address cybersecurity risks linked to quantum computing in a separate letter.

Why does it matter?

The ECB letter turns AI-enabled cyber risk into a concrete supervisory issue for major euro area banks. If AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and exploit generation, banks will face shorter windows for patching, detection and response. The focus on third-party providers and supply chains is also important because financial institutions depend heavily on external ICT services. The ECB’s approach links AI cyber threats with DORA-style operational resilience, showing that advanced AI is now part of mainstream financial supervision.

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African leaders push for homegrown AI and value creation at WSIS Forum

African experts and industry leaders used the WSIS Forum 2026 to argue that the continent must move beyond digital inclusion towards digital sovereignty, calling for greater investment in industrial capacity, locally developed AI, and value creation from Africa’s own resources and data rather than continued dependence on foreign technologies.

The session, ‘From Digital Inclusion to Digital Sovereignty: Building Capacity, Infrastructure, and Governance for Sustainable Digital Transformation,’ explored how Africa can become not only a user of AI and Industry 4.0 technologies, but also a producer of digital value. Moderated by Adelina Zeqiri of the University of Côte d’Azur, the discussion featured Professor Sama Mbang, Jean Bosco Byiringoro, and Professor Adel Ben Youssef, all founding members of the Alliance for Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing in Africa (ASMA).

Industrialisation remains the foundation of development

Opening the discussion, Professor Sama Mbang argued that Africa risks falling further behind unless it accelerates industrialisation alongside digital transformation.

Drawing on his experience implementing Industry 4.0 solutions in manufacturing, Mbang stressed that industrial development remains the common denominator among prosperous economies.

‘There is no developed country that is not industrialised,’ he argued, adding that industrialisation creates the skills, technology, and productive capacity needed for long-term prosperity.

Mbang introduced ASMA as a platform designed to connect governments, industry, academia, and technical experts around practical projects in smart manufacturing, health, mining, automotive production, agriculture, and digital technologies.

He also highlighted the continent’s long-standing imbalance in global value chains. Although Africa possesses around 68% of the world’s critical minerals, it captures less than 1% of the value added from their processing. Similar disparities exist in pharmaceuticals, where Africa exports raw materials while importing most finished medicines.

According to Mbang, AI should support industrialisation, not replace it.

‘Sometimes talking about AI shifts attention away from the real challenge,’ he observed. ‘Africa first needs the capability to manufacture and transform locally.’

Building African AI for African realities

The discussion repeatedly returned to the distinction between adopting AI and developing AI that reflects African contexts.

Jean Bosco Byiringoro, professor of mechatronics and founder of ASMA, argued that importing models developed elsewhere will not solve Africa’s development challenges because they are built for different industrial environments.

‘What we need is not to import the model,’ he said. ‘We need to build our own model in the African context.’

Byiringoro argued that human capital is the continent’s greatest priority. Rather than focusing solely on software, African countries need engineers, technicians, manufacturers, and researchers capable of building AI systems rooted in local industries and value chains.

He illustrated this through agricultural projects that use digital representations of industrial equipment to help farmers understand production processes and develop new business opportunities. His organisation has already helped more than 2,000 people move into industrial employment through such initiatives.

Africa’s resources create new opportunities

Professor Adel Ben Youssef challenged participants to avoid viewing Africa as a single market, reminding the audience that the continent comprises 54 countries with diverse economic realities.

He nevertheless identified several shared competitive advantages.

Africa’s rapidly growing population, abundant renewable energy resources, and what he described as a ‘last mover advantage’ could allow countries to leapfrog older industrial models and build more sustainable digital infrastructure.

Rather than remaining dependent on foreign data centres, Ben Youssef argued that Africa could become a global location for digital infrastructure powered by renewable energy.

‘The real obstacle is not energy,’ he said. ‘It is political stability.’

He also warned that Africa’s creative industries face a growing threat as cultural content, artistic works, and local knowledge are increasingly used to train AI models without consent or compensation.

‘Most African creative content is being scraped to train AI models,’ he noted, arguing that this represents both an economic and cultural sovereignty challenge.

Human capital before regulation

Audience questions turned to data governance, with participants asking whether Africa should pursue GDPR-style regulation to protect its growing digital economy.

The panellists urged caution.

Ben Youssef argued that simply copying Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation would ignore Africa’s very different economic realities, particularly the importance of informal economies.

Instead, he called for flexible, sector-specific governance frameworks adapted to local contexts and accompanied by fair mechanisms for sharing the economic value generated from African data.

Mbang went further, arguing that the continent’s immediate priority should be creating value rather than replicating regulatory frameworks developed elsewhere.

‘Our fight today is not GDPR,’ he said. ‘Our fight is creating value locally instead of exporting raw materials and importing finished products.’

Byiringoro agreed, insisting that strong regulation can only emerge once countries have developed the human capital and industrial capabilities worth protecting.

Digital sovereignty through collaboration

The discussion concluded with an invitation to governments, universities, businesses, and international organisations to participate in ASMA’s growing network, including its inaugural conference in Dakar later this year.

While the session focused on Africa, speakers stressed that digital sovereignty should not be viewed as economic isolation or geopolitical competition.

Instead, they argued that enabling Africa to capture more value from its own resources, industries, and knowledge would strengthen global prosperity rather than diminish it.

Across the discussion, a consistent message emerged: AI alone will not transform Africa unless it is accompanied by investment in manufacturing, skills, infrastructure, and local innovation. For the panellists, digital sovereignty begins not with owning algorithms, but with building the industrial and human foundations that allow countries to shape their own digital future.

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Swiss AI users report stronger workplace gains, Microsoft says

Swiss AI users are reporting stronger workplace productivity gains than their global peers, according to Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index.

The company said 65% of AI users in Switzerland say they can now produce higher-value analytical and creative work that would not have been possible a year ago, compared with 58% globally.

The results point to a growing divide between organisations that introduce AI tools and those that redesign work around AI.

Among Swiss Frontier Professionals, defined by Microsoft as workers in organisations that embed AI into workflows and redesign how work gets done, 83% say AI has expanded the type of work they can produce.

Leadership alignment remains a challenge. Only 24% of Swiss AI users say their leaders are clearly and consistently aligned on AI strategy.

Microsoft said almost half of Swiss AI users feel it is safer to focus on current goals than to redesign workflows with AI in mind.

Swiss workers also emphasised human oversight. Some 84% treat AI output as a starting point rather than a final answer, while 46% identify quality control of AI output as a critical skill.

Microsoft said the next phase for Swiss organisations will involve moving from individual AI use to organisation-wide deployment, shared team capabilities and AI agents embedded in core workflows.

Why does it matter?

The Microsoft data suggests that workplace AI benefits depend less on tool availability and more on how organisations redesign workflows, train staff and set clear leadership priorities. The Swiss figures also show why human oversight remains central: productivity gains are linked to workers using AI as support, not as a replacement for judgement. For policymakers and employers, the broader issue is how to build AI skills and organisational capacity so productivity gains do not remain concentrated among the most advanced firms and workers.

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ESRB urges EU action on frontier AI cyber risks in finance

The European Systemic Risk Board has warned that frontier AI models could strain cyber resilience in the EU financial system by increasing the speed, scale and sophistication of cyberattacks.

The warning follows the ESRB General Board’s assessment that systemic cyber risk has risen to ‘severe’, up from ‘elevated’ earlier this year.

The ESRB defines frontier AI models as advanced AI models capable of materially affecting offensive or defensive cyber operations.

According to the Board, these models may eventually strengthen cyber resilience, but in the short to medium term, they are likely to give threat actors an advantage.

The ESRB said frontier AI can help attackers discover vulnerabilities and execute cyberattacks more quickly and at greater scale.

It also warned that the concentration of leading AI providers outside the EU creates strategic dependency and geopolitical risks.

The Board called on the EU to scale up capacity, expertise and strategic autonomy in frontier AI and cybersecurity.

It said the response should involve AI providers, software providers, security firms, open-source maintainers, financial institutions and authorities at the national and the EU level.

The ESRB said it will continue monitoring the development and use of frontier AI models with cyber capabilities and their impact on the financial sector from a systemic risk perspective.

Why does it matter?

The ESRB warning puts frontier AI into the financial stability debate. If advanced AI models help attackers identify vulnerabilities and launch cyberattacks more quickly, financial institutions could face shorter response windows and greater systemic risk. The warning also links cybersecurity to the EU strategic autonomy, because dependence on non-EU AI providers could affect the resilience of Europe’s financial infrastructure during crises.

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WSIS Forum 2026 opens with calls to turn digital commitments into action

The WSIS Forum 2026 opened in Geneva with a high-level appeal for stronger international cooperation to ensure that AI and digital transformation benefit everyone, not just the countries leading the technology race. Leaders from governments, the UN, academia, and civil society argued that the next phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) must focus on implementing long-standing commitments on connectivity, digital inclusion, and AI governance rather than creating new principles.

Moderated by ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, the opening plenary brought together UN General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock, Estonian President Alar Karis, Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Zhaslan Madiyev, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi, and AI Academy Asia CEO Bolor-Erdene Battsengel to discuss how leadership can shape a more inclusive digital future.

Multilateral cooperation remains essential

Opening the discussion, Annalena Baerbock warned that multilateralism is under increasing pressure, making the recently adopted WSIS+20 consensus resolution an important demonstration that countries can still work together on digital issues.

She argued that AI governance cannot be separated from broader development challenges, stressing that discussions about responsible AI have little meaning where people still lack reliable internet access or electricity.

‘We can have the best AI governance systems in the world, but they will not matter if millions remain disconnected,’ she suggested, pointing to Tanzania’s digital health initiatives, which have connected almost two million people with healthcare services through WSIS-supported projects.

Baerbock also called for stronger cross-regional partnerships and warned that digital inequality increasingly intersects with broader challenges relating to development, peace, and human rights.

Estonia outlines principles for trusted digital governance

President Alar Karis shared Estonia’s experience as one of the world’s most digitally advanced governments, presenting five principles for building trusted digital societies.

According to Karis, digital infrastructure should remain open, secure, and interoperable, while governments should embrace inclusive multistakeholder governance involving the private sector, civil society, academia, and technical communities. He also stressed that human rights must be protected online just as they are offline, digital development should include skills and literacy alongside connectivity, and global initiatives such as WSIS and the Global Digital Compact should reinforce rather than duplicate one another.

Karis also highlighted Estonia’s investments in AI education, noting that all upper secondary school teachers and students are now being introduced to AI tools and literacy as part of a nationwide programme.

Kazakhstan showcases rapid digital transformation

Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Zhaslan Madiyev outlined his country’s digital transformation strategy, describing digital infrastructure as the foundation for economic growth.

More than 90% of Kazakhstan’s public services are now available online, he said, supported by a digital ecosystem that includes over 2,000 technology companies and dedicated digital leadership across government ministries.

Madiyev also highlighted recent legislative reforms, including a constitutional amendment protecting digital rights and personal data, alongside plans to build one gigawatt of AI computing capacity within the next three to five years.

He argued that AI should increasingly be viewed as basic infrastructure, comparable to electricity, water, and internet connectivity, rather than simply another emerging technology.

Compassion must become part of AI

The session’s strongest moral appeal came from Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi, who challenged participants to think beyond technical capabilities and focus instead on whom AI ultimately serves.

Satyarthi argued that technology is never neutral because it reflects the values of those who create it. He urged developers to embed compassion, justice, and human dignity directly into AI systems, particularly for the benefit of vulnerable children.

One of his most striking proposals was that AI engineers should spend time working with children living in poverty, conflict zones, or remote communities before designing new systems.

‘When they return to their laboratories,’ he suggested, ‘they will write different code.’

His proposal received immediate support from Bolor-Erdene Battsengel, who said she would gladly encourage her own engineers to participate.

AI skills become the new economic infrastructure

Battsengel argued that digital inclusion today depends as much on skills as on connectivity.

Drawing on AI Academy Asia’s work across Mongolia and Central Asia, she described how training around 1,000 teachers enabled those educators to introduce AI tools to approximately 50,000 children living in remote communities.

Rather than treating AI education as a standalone technical programme, she described it as an investment in future economic competitiveness.

‘We no longer simply train people to use AI,’ she explained. ‘We build economic opportunity.’

Kazakhstan similarly reported training around one million people in AI-related skills during the past year and announced plans to launch a dedicated AI University later in 2026.

From dialogue to delivery

Closing speakers from UNESCO, UNCTAD, and UNDP argued that the international community should now shift from discussing digital inclusion to implementing it.

UNESCO stressed that people, not technology, remain at the centre of the WSIS vision, while UNDP highlighted ongoing work supporting national AI strategies and public-sector capacity development across dozens of countries.

Meanwhile, UNCTAD warned that although the world is expected to invest around $800 billion in AI infrastructure this year, most of that investment remains concentrated in a small number of countries. Developing economies, speakers argued, risk arriving ‘after the rules have already been written’ unless international cooperation accelerates.

The session concluded with broad agreement that the next phase of WSIS should focus less on developing new declarations and more on delivering measurable progress in connectivity, AI skills, trusted digital infrastructure, and inclusive governance.

Twenty years after the original WSIS process began, participants agreed that the challenge is no longer defining a vision for an inclusive information society, but ensuring that vision becomes reality.

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OECD report warns AI skills gaps could widen labour inequalities

The OECD has warned that stronger skills policies will be needed to prevent AI from widening labour-market inequalities.

In its policy paper Skills in the AI age, the organisation says AI can boost productivity, support economic growth and create new opportunities. Still, it may also deepen existing gaps if workers and firms are not prepared for the transition.

AI adoption by firms has accelerated rapidly in OECD countries, rising from around 7% to 20% of businesses between 2021 and 2025.

The OECD says the increase has been driven partly by the spread of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot.

Adoption remains uneven. Larger firms and start-ups are more likely to use AI, while small and medium-sized enterprises face barriers including costs, infrastructure gaps and shortages of skilled workers.

The paper also cautions that exposure to AI does not automatically mean a job is likely to disappear.

High-skill occupations such as managers, professionals and engineers are among the most exposed to AI, but are less likely to be automated because they rely heavily on non-routine cognitive and social skills.

Low- and middle-skill roles involving routine manual or cognitive tasks face higher automation risks.

The OECD says workers will need a mix of foundational skills, ICT skills and complementary skills such as critical thinking, creativity and collaboration.

Advanced AI skills, including machine learning and data science, remain scarce, with workers possessing such skills accounting for around 1% of the workforce.

The organisation calls for stronger education and training systems, wider lifelong learning, AI literacy for all workers, employer-led training and better coordination between governments, industry and education providers.

Why does it matter?

The OECD report frames AI skills as a core labour-market issue, not only a technology-sector concern. If training systems do not adapt, AI adoption could widen gaps between large firms and SMEs, between high- and low-skilled workers, and between regions with different levels of digital capacity. The report also makes an important distinction for policy: jobs highly exposed to AI are not necessarily the jobs most likely to disappear, meaning governments need more targeted approaches to reskilling, worker support and AI literacy.

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NVIDIA says nations should build AI around local priorities

NVIDIA says countries are increasingly building AI around domestic infrastructure, local data, skilled workforces and national business ecosystems.

According to the company, this approach allows governments and industries to develop AI systems that reflect local languages, cultures, regulations and public priorities.

NVIDIA said national AI capabilities now go beyond computing infrastructure. Countries are also developing foundation models trained or fine-tuned on local datasets, helping systems better reflect regional dialects, cultural context and specific domains.

The company identifies five elements of a national AI strategy: trusted AI aligned with national goals, an AI-ready workforce, locally trained models and data, a strong domestic AI ecosystem and AI factories for training and inference.

NVIDIA describes AI factories as locally owned, operated and governed AI clouds that provide computing capacity through public-private partnerships.

The blog highlights examples, including AI agents supporting public-service workflows in France, multilingual AI models in India and AI tools for legal services in Brazil.

NVIDIA argues that domestic infrastructure, local data and homegrown talent can help countries apply AI to economic growth, public services, climate resilience, cybersecurity and social development.

Why does it matter?

NVIDIA’s framing reflects a broader shift in how governments and companies talk about AI: not only as a commercial technology, but as strategic infrastructure. Local compute, datasets, models and skills can help countries adapt AI to their own languages, laws and public needs. At the same time, the source is a vendor blog, so its emphasis on AI factories and accelerated computing should be read as part of NVIDIA’s commercial and policy positioning in the sovereign AI debate.

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