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UN scientific panel publishes first global AI assessment ahead of Geneva governance dialogue

The United Nations’ Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence has published its first preliminary report, providing an evidence-based assessment of AI’s opportunities, risks, and societal impacts ahead of next week’s inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva. Rather than prescribing specific policies, the report aims to inform international discussions by providing an independent scientific foundation for AI governance decision-making.

Established by the UN General Assembly in August 2025 following commitments made in the Global Digital Compact, the panel brings together 40 independent experts from academia, civil society, the private sector, and the technical community. It is the first permanent UN scientific body dedicated exclusively to assessing the development and societal implications of AI. The report will serve as a key input to the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, which takes place on 6–7 July alongside the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum and the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva.

The preliminary report examines AI through four broad dimensions:

Scientific and technological developments;
Opportunities for sustainable development;
Emerging risks;
Approaches to international governance.

Instead of advocating a particular regulatory model, the panel seeks to establish a shared evidence base that can support future policymaking and international cooperation on AI.

Rather than focusing solely on risks, the report examines AI’s growing role across sectors, including healthcare, education, agriculture, scientific research, and public administration. It describes AI as a general-purpose technology with the potential to accelerate innovation, improve productivity, and expand access to knowledge and public services. At the same time, the panel notes that these benefits remain unevenly distributed across countries and regions, with significant disparities in access to computing infrastructure, technical expertise, and digital resources.

The report estimates that more than one billion people now use AI-powered services each week, while frontier AI capabilities remain concentrated among a relatively small number of companies and countries. According to the panel, this concentration extends beyond AI models themselves to include computing infrastructure, specialised hardware, large-scale datasets, and technical talent, raising broader questions about equitable access to AI and the distribution of its benefits.

The panel also highlights the challenges facing developing countries, warning that many risk becoming primarily consumers rather than producers of AI technologies if investment in local infrastructure, research ecosystems, digital skills, and governance capacity does not keep pace with global developments. It identifies multilingual AI, locally relevant datasets, and stronger scientific capabilities as important factors in ensuring that AI systems better reflect diverse societies and languages rather than reinforcing existing global disparities.

Alongside these opportunities, the report identifies a range of emerging risks associated with increasingly capable AI systems. These include the use of AI for cyberattacks, fraud, disinformation, election interference, and other malicious activities, as well as broader concerns related to market concentration, transparency, and the growing dependence of many countries on a limited number of AI providers. The panel also notes that many governments currently lack the technical capacity to evaluate the most advanced frontier AI models independently.

Beyond security-related concerns, the report identifies environmental sustainability as an increasingly important governance issue. It notes that the rapid expansion of AI requires increasing amounts of computing power, electricity, water, and specialised hardware, and argues that future AI development should balance technological progress with efficient resource use and broader sustainable development objectives.

Speaking at the report’s launch, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the pace of AI development requires stronger international cooperation grounded in scientific evidence and inclusive dialogue.

Panel co-chair Maria Ressa described the publication as an independent scientific assessment designed to inform, rather than replace, intergovernmental decision-making. The report itself states that ‘effective AI governance requires international cooperation,’ while recognising that governance approaches will continue to reflect different national circumstances and policy priorities.

The publication marks the first major output of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI since its establishment under the Global Digital Compact. Future reports are expected to provide regular scientific assessments of AI capabilities, impacts, and governance challenges as the technology continues to evolve.

Why does it matter?

As governments, international organisations, researchers, and industry representatives gather in Geneva next week for the inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance, the preliminary report is expected to provide an important reference point for discussions on the future of AI. By combining scientific evidence with a broad assessment of opportunities, risks, and governance considerations, it seeks to support a more informed international conversation on how AI can contribute to sustainable development, human rights, and shared global prosperity.

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Claude Science launches AI workbench for researchers

Claude Science has been launched as an AI workbench designed to streamline scientific research by bringing data analysis, coding and research tools into a single integrated environment. The platform is designed to help researchers analyse data, run multi-step workflows, and generate publication-ready outputs with full transparency.

The platform consolidates research tools such as databases, coding environments and analysis software, enabling scientists to work across disciplines without switching between applications. Outputs are fully auditable, with embedded code, workflow histories and documentation to support validation and reproducibility.

Claude Science also uses a multi-agent architecture comprising specialist agents and a reviewer agent that verifies calculations and citations. It can be deployed on local infrastructure or high-performance computing systems, allowing institutions to scale AI-assisted research while keeping sensitive data within their own environments.

Why does it matter?

Claude Science reflects a broader evolution of AI from a standalone assistant to an integrated research platform. By combining specialised AI agents, computational tools and transparent workflows in a single environment, it aims to simplify scientific research while improving reproducibility and collaboration.

The platform also raises broader questions about the future of AI in science. As researchers increasingly rely on AI to support data analysis and experimentation, ensuring transparency, validation and institutional control over sensitive research data will be essential to maintaining scientific integrity and trust.

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Canada and Germany strengthen semiconductor supply chains

Canada and Germany have signed a joint declaration of intent to strengthen semiconductor supply chains and deepen industrial cooperation, reinforcing collaboration in a technology that underpins AI, advanced computing and the digital economy.

The declaration was signed on the sidelines of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Annual Global Conference on Energy Efficiency by Carlos Leitão, Parliamentary Secretary to Canada’s Minister of Industry, and Stefan Rouenhoff, Parliamentary State Secretary at Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Canada said resilient and diversified semiconductor supply chains are becoming increasingly important as global demand grows for AI, advanced computing and connected technologies.

The declaration establishes a framework for policy dialogue and cooperation on investment, industrial development, technology and research. It also aims to support start-ups, scale-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises while building on both countries’ semiconductor expertise to strengthen competitiveness.

Canada described semiconductors as foundational technologies for the digital economy, highlighting their role in enabling AI and other emerging technologies.

The declaration also supports Canada’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy: AI for All, particularly its focus on infrastructure, international partnerships and long-term competitiveness. It builds on a series of bilateral initiatives launched since late 2025, including the Canada-Germany Digital Alliance, a joint AI declaration, the Sovereign Technology Alliance, and cooperation on automotive manufacturing, batteries and critical minerals.

A separate February 2026 declaration also expanded bilateral industrial cooperation in auto and battery manufacturing and critical minerals. Officials from both countries said stronger semiconductor supply chains can support innovation, economic resilience and long-term prosperity.

The partnership adds semiconductor supply chains to a wider Canada-Germany agenda focused on trusted advanced technologies, economic security and the next generation of AI-enabled digital infrastructure.

Why does it matter?

Semiconductors have become strategic assets that underpin AI, advanced computing, telecommunications and many other digital technologies. By strengthening cooperation on chip supply chains, Canada and Germany aim to reduce supply chain vulnerabilities, encourage investment and support long-term technological competitiveness.

The agreement also reflects a broader trend of trusted technology partnerships among like-minded countries. Rather than focusing solely on trade, governments are increasingly coordinating industrial policy, research and supply chains to strengthen economic security and reduce dependence on concentrated sources of critical technologies.

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OpenAI launches GeneBench-Pro for AI biology research

OpenAI has introduced GeneBench-Pro, a research benchmark designed to assess whether AI agents can perform the complex, judgment-intensive analysis required in real-world computational biology.

Unlike conventional benchmarks that focus on factual recall or routine workflows, GeneBench-Pro is designed to measure what OpenAI calls ‘research taste‘, the sequence of judgement calls involved in scientific analysis, from interpreting ambiguous data and revising assumptions to deciding whether findings are robust enough to inform downstream research.

The benchmark comprises 129 problems spanning ten domains within computational biology, including statistical genetics, cancer genomics, clinical diagnostics, and pharmacogenomics. Each problem presents an AI agent with a realistic and deliberately messy dataset, brief experimental context, and a target to estimate.

To answer correctly, the model must explore the data iteratively, select an appropriate analytical approach, and supply a final answer without exploiting shortcuts or matching arbitrary author preferences. To prevent common benchmark shortcuts, every problem uses synthetically generated data whose underlying causal structure is fully known, allowing performance to be measured against a controlled ground truth.

OpenAI said its flagship model, GPT-5.6 Sol, achieved a pass rate of 28.7% at the highest reasoning setting, increasing to 31.5% in Pro mode. By comparison, the strongest model available when the original GeneBench was introduced scored below 5%.

External reviewers estimated that completing a typical GeneBench-Pro task would require 20 to 40 hours of expert work and cost thousands of dollars, whereas AI inference currently costs only a few dollars per run. OpenAI argues this suggests substantial economic potential even before models achieve expert-level performance.

OpenAI acknowledged that frontier models still solve fewer than one-third of the benchmark problems, often making partial progress but failing to complete the full chain of scientific reasoning expected from experienced researchers. To encourage independent evaluation, the company is open-sourcing ten representative tasks on Hugging Face and providing a 50-question subset to Artificial Analysis for third-party benchmarking.

Why does it matter?

GeneBench-Pro reflects a broader shift in AI evaluation from testing factual knowledge and coding ability to assessing whether models can support complex scientific reasoning. As computational biology increasingly becomes limited by data interpretation rather than data generation, reliable AI assistance in analytical workflows could accelerate research in areas such as genomics, drug discovery and precision medicine.

The benchmark also highlights the importance of rigorous evaluation methods for frontier AI. By using controlled synthetic datasets with known ground truth, GeneBench-Pro seeks to measure not only whether models reach the correct answer but also how well they make the sequence of judgements required in real-world scientific research.

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Anthropic redeploys Claude Fable 5

Anthropic will restore global access to Claude Fable 5 after the US government lifts export controls on the model.

The company said the controls were applied on 12 June to Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, requiring access restrictions for foreign nationals inside and outside the United States. Anthropic suspended access to both models for all users because it said it had no reliable way to verify nationality in real time.

Anthropic said the controls were lifted on 30 June. Fable 5 will become available globally from 1 July on the Claude Platform, Claude.ai, Claude Code and Claude Cowork, with access on AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Foundry to be restored as quickly as possible.

Access to Mythos 5 has been restored only for a set of US organisations following government approval. Anthropic said Fable 5 and Mythos 5 share the same underlying model, but Fable 5 has stronger safeguards for general use, while Mythos 5 has fewer safeguards and is limited to trusted partners working on defensive cybersecurity.

The export control directive followed a report by Amazon researchers describing a method for bypassing Fable 5 safeguards. Anthropic said the reported behaviour involved identifying software vulnerabilities and, in one case, producing code showing how a vulnerability could be exploited.

The company said its review found that the technique did not expose unique Mythos-level cyber capabilities. It has trained an improved safety classifier to block the behaviour described in the report, and said blocked requests will be redirected to Claude Opus 4.8.

Anthropic also called for a shared industry framework to assess the severity of AI jailbreaks. It said it is working with Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other Glasswing partners on criteria including capability gain, breadth of capability gain, ease of weaponisation and discoverability.

The company said it is expanding cooperation with the US government on frontier AI security, including pre-release evaluation, faster information sharing and joint research on safeguards.

Why does it matter?

The case shows how frontier AI releases are becoming part of national security and export-control policy, especially when models have advanced cybersecurity capabilities. Anthropic’s response also highlights a broader governance gap: governments and companies still lack a shared standard for judging when a jailbreak is minor, serious or urgent enough to justify intervention. The outcome could influence how advanced AI models are tested, released and restricted across borders.

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EU launches three new digital skills academies

The European Commission has launched three new Digital Skills Academies focused on AI, quantum technologies and virtual worlds.

The academies were announced during Digital Skills EU Days, an annual event bringing together digital skills projects, national coalitions, policymakers, industry representatives and education organisations from across the EU.

Funded under the Digital Europe Programme, the academies are intended to establish specialised training in critical technology areas and help the EU meet its Digital Decade targets.

The Commission said Europe’s competitiveness and leadership depend on digital talent, linking the initiative to the Union of Skills, the AI Continent Action Plan, the Apply AI Strategy and the Digital Decade Policy Programme.

The new academies add to wider Digital Europe Programme investments in skilling, upskilling and reskilling. The programme has invested more than €294 million in the EU digital skills initiatives covering areas such as data, cloud, cybersecurity and AI.

During the event, the Commission also presented the 2026 European Digital Skills Awards, recognising projects focused on AI literacy, cybersecurity education, digital inclusion, research data management and women’s participation in ICT.

Why does it matter?

The new academies show that the EU is treating digital skills as part of its strategic technology agenda, alongside regulation, infrastructure and industrial policy. AI, quantum technologies and virtual worlds all require specialised expertise, and shortages in these areas could slow deployment across businesses, research institutions and public services. The initiative also supports the EU’s broader goal of strengthening technological competitiveness and reducing dependence on external talent and capabilities.

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South Korea and Japan expand AI and defence cooperation

South Korea and Japan have agreed to expand defence cooperation, including collaboration on AI and other advanced technologies, following talks between South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-Back and Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi in Seoul. The agreement was reached during a bilateral summit held in Seoul that day.

The ministers agreed to establish regular high-level visits and meetings, resume bilateral naval search and rescue exercises for the first time in nine years, and continue trilateral security cooperation with the United States to support regional peace and stability.

They also agreed to expand exchanges between South Korea’s Black Eagles and Japan’s Blue Impulse aerobatic teams to support search and rescue training. The agreement also included a commitment to strengthen ties in state-of-the-art science and technology, including AI, with the summit taking place at the Ministry of National Defence’s parade ground in Seoul.

Why does it matter?

The agreement marks a further improvement in defence relations between South Korea and Japan, whose security cooperation has often been constrained by historical and political tensions. The resumption of joint search and rescue exercises after nine years reflects growing alignment on shared regional security priorities.

The inclusion of AI and advanced technology cooperation also illustrates how emerging technologies are becoming integral to defence partnerships. As countries increasingly integrate AI into military planning, logistics and operational capabilities, technological collaboration is becoming a strategic component of broader security relationships, particularly within the Indo-Pacific.

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Google says AI power users drive UK productivity gains

Workplace AI adoption in the UK has more than doubled over the past year, reaching 73%, according to a new Google report. However, the benefits remain uneven, with a small group of advanced users seeing significantly stronger career outcomes than the wider workforce.

The report categorises workers into four groups: AI Spectators, who have not yet engaged with the technology; Experimenters, who use basic AI functions; Practitioners, who use AI regularly; and AI Trailblazers, who apply it in advanced and innovative ways.

Although AI Trailblazers account for just 15% of users, they report significantly better outcomes, including faster promotions, larger pay increases and substantial weekly time savings.

The report found that advanced users outperform other workers across several indicators, including promotions, performance reviews and salary growth. However, differences in adoption across age, gender and geography suggest that unequal access to AI skills could widen existing labour market disparities.

Google argues that closing this gap will require greater investment in AI literacy, organisational support and workplace culture. Initiatives such as national upskilling programmes and diagnostic tools are intended to help workers progress from basic experimentation to more advanced AI use, supporting broader productivity growth.

Why does it matter?

The findings suggest that simply adopting AI is not enough to generate widespread economic benefits. The greatest productivity and career gains are concentrated among workers who integrate AI deeply into their daily work, highlighting the importance of skills development and organisational support.

The report also points to a growing policy challenge. If access to advanced AI skills continues to vary across demographic groups and regions, AI could widen existing inequalities in the labour market. Expanding AI literacy and helping more workers move beyond basic use may therefore be as important as increasing adoption itself.

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UNESCO expands digital literacy training for educators

Around 10,000 literacy educators worldwide have completed a UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning digital skills course designed to strengthen the use of technology in literacy education.

The multilingual course was launched in December 2025 by the Secretariat of the Global Alliance for Literacy, in collaboration with Huawei. It is available in Arabic, English, French and Spanish.

The programme focuses on practical digital skills that educators can apply in literacy classrooms. It also encourages participants to use digital tools responsibly, evaluate online information critically and understand how technologies, including AI, shape learning and information use.

UNESCO said literacy today goes beyond reading and writing, requiring learners and educators to navigate digital environments and participate confidently in societies increasingly mediated by technology.

The course is delivered through 11 self-paced sessions and encourages educators to reflect on their teaching practice while developing new skills.

Participants from countries including Mexico, Pakistan and Togo reported stronger confidence in using digital tools, more learner-centred teaching approaches and greater use of collaboration and assessment technologies.

UNESCO said national and municipal adult education agencies, adult learning providers and UNESCO Learning Cities are helping expand the course across countries.

Why does it matter?

Digital literacy is becoming essential for both educators and learners, especially as AI and online platforms reshape access to information. Training literacy educators first can create a multiplier effect, helping adult learners and underserved communities build practical digital skills, critical thinking and confidence in online environments. The programme also shows how international education initiatives are moving beyond access to focus on effective and responsible use of technology.

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South Korea boosts AI funding to strengthen global competitiveness

South Korea’s National Assembly has approved a supplementary budget of 1.9067 trillion won for the AI sector, increasing the government’s original proposal by 61.8 billion won to strengthen the country’s global AI competitiveness. The Ministry of Science and ICT said the funding would be used to swiftly advance initiatives aimed at strengthening national AI competitiveness and positioning the country among the world’s top three AI leaders.

The funding is focused on three priorities: expanding AI computing infrastructure, advancing next-generation AI models and developing world-class talent. The largest allocation, 1.6341 trillion won, will be used to secure 10,000 advanced GPUs by the end of the year, alongside the leasing of a further 3,000 GPUs from the private sector to expand access.

A further 213.6 billion has been allocated to the proposed World Best LLM Project, under which five leading domestic AI teams will receive up to three years of support, including access to GPUs, high-quality datasets and specialist personnel. The Ministry will also launch the AI Pathfinder Project, offering grants of up to 2 billion won annually to attract leading international AI researchers.

Science and ICT Minister Yoo Sang-im said the funding comes at a pivotal moment as countries intensify competition for AI leadership. He said the government would pursue an all-out effort spanning advanced technology, talent development and AI adoption to establish South Korea among the world’s top three AI powers.

Why does it matter?

The supplementary budget demonstrates how governments are increasingly treating AI as strategic national infrastructure rather than simply an innovation policy issue. By investing simultaneously in computing capacity, foundation models and talent, South Korea is seeking to strengthen its long-term competitiveness in a global race increasingly defined by access to GPUs and skilled researchers.

The initiative also highlights that leadership in AI depends on more than financial investment alone. Competition for advanced chips and world-class talent has become increasingly intense, meaning the success of South Korea’s strategy will depend on how quickly it can translate funding into deployable infrastructure, cutting-edge research and commercial innovation.

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