Interdisciplinary approaches Archives | Page 20 of 179

Lithuania selects Swiss firm Procivis for national eIDAS 2.0 wallet sandbox

Swiss firm Procivis has secured a contract to deliver Lithuania’s end-to-end Digital Identity Wallet sandbox, supporting the country’s preparations under eIDAS 2.0. The project will establish a national testbed for digital ID use cases and interoperability across the European Union.

Selected by Lithuania’s digitalisation agency, Procivis will build a platform for public authorities and relying parties to test secure digital wallet use cases. The sandbox will validate readiness ahead of the EU’s 2027 digital identity wallet deadline.

The updated eIDAS 2.0 technical framework sets out how wallets will store and share trusted digital credentials and electronic identification. Governments and private organisations will be able to integrate services into the wallets, streamlining authentication, onboarding, and cross-border access.

Across Lithuania and the EU, testbeds and large-scale pilots have been central to turning regulatory requirements into interoperable infrastructure. Lithuania’s sandbox will also support activities under the EU’s LSP Aptitude consortium, which is testing cross-sector digital identity solutions.

Procivis said the collaboration aims to accelerate practical validation while ensuring compliance with European standards on security, interoperability, and data protection. The company stated that supporting a timely, budget-aligned implementation of eIDAS 2.0 remains central to its mission.

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South Korea accelerates AI education reform in universities

South Korea’s Ministry of Education has launched a nationwide initiative to introduce mandatory AI courses at universities. The measure aims to ensure that all students acquire basic AI skills, regardless of their major, and to extend AI education reforms to higher education.

Under the plan, 6 billion won will be allocated to 20 universities, each receiving 300 million won to develop compulsory introductory AI courses. An additional 30 billion won will support national universities outside Seoul, alongside 5 billion won for short-term interdisciplinary AI programmes.

AI education will be integrated across disciplines rather than confined to computer science departments. Universities are expected to introduce AI courses for nonengineering majors, promote cross-faculty collaboration, and establish campus-wide support systems.

Participating institutions will share curricula, enable credit recognition across universities, and expand course delivery through online platforms. A consultative group will coordinate implementation and disseminate best practices nationwide.

Significant structural challenges remain. Shortages of AI-specialised faculty, limited recruitment flexibility, and the absence of generative AI guidelines in many institutions raise concerns about implementation capacity.

Education officials state that support will also be provided to professors outside AI-related fields to strengthen teaching capacity and address instructor shortages.

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Chinese AI video tool unsettles Hollywood

A new AI video model developed by ByteDance has unsettled Hollywood after generating cinema-quality clips from brief text prompts. Seedance 2.0, launched in 2025, went viral for producing realistic action scenes featuring western cinematic characters such as Spider Man and Deadpool.

In response, major studios, including Disney and Paramount, issued cease and desist letters over alleged copyright infringement. Japan has also begun investigating ByteDance after AI-generated anime videos spread widely online.

Industry experts say Seedance 2.0 stands out for combining text, visuals and audio within a single system. Analysts in Singapore and Melbourne argue that Chinese AI models are now matching US competitors at the technological frontier.

As Seedance 2.0 gains traction, Beijing continues to prioritise AI and robotics in its economic strategy. The rise of tools from China has intensified debate in the US and beyond over copyright, regulation and the future of creative work.

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Bremen trials AI-based safety system ‘AI Watch’ on city trams

The city of Bremen, Germany, has begun piloting an AI-based safety system called AI Watch on its tram fleet. The technology uses onboard cameras and computer vision models to automatically detect potential safety issues, such as passengers too close to doors, objects on the tracks, or unexpected pedestrian behaviour, and alerts tram operators in real time.

The goal is to reduce accidents and enhance situational awareness without replacing human oversight.

Developed with transport and AI specialists, AI Watch integrates with vehicles’ existing sensor suites and is designed to function in real-time operational environments. During the pilot, the system has been tested under various traffic and lighting conditions to refine hazard recognition accuracy and minimise false alarms.

BSAG representatives say the AI support tool complements human judgement, helping drivers focus on decision-making rather than continuously scanning for hazards.

The initiative comes as cities explore AI applications in urban mobility, from predictive maintenance to intelligent traffic management and automated incident detection, to improve safety, efficiency and passenger experience.

Bremen’s pilot will be evaluated for scalability across additional routes and potentially other types of public transport vehicles.

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Adoption of agentic AI slowed by data readiness and governance gaps

Agentic AI is emerging as a new stage of enterprise automation, enabling systems to reason, plan, and act across workflows. Adoption, however, remains uneven, with far fewer organisations scaling deployments beyond pilots.

Unlike traditional analytics or generative tools, agentic systems make decisions rather than simply producing insights. Without sufficient context, they struggle to align actions with real business conditions, revealing a persistent context gap.

Recent survey data highlights this disconnect. Although executives express confidence in AI ambitions, significant shares cite data readiness, infrastructure, and skills as barriers. Many identify AI as central to strategy, yet only a limited proportion tie deployments to measurable business outcomes.

Effective agentic AI depends on layered data foundations. Public data provides baseline capability, organisational data enables operational competence, and third-party context supports differentiation. Weak governance or integration can undermine autonomy at scale.

Enterprises that align data governance, enrichment, and AI oversight are more likely to scale beyond pilots. Progress depends less on model sophistication than on trusted data foundations that support transparency and measurable outcomes.

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UK sets 48-hour deadline for removing intimate images

The UK government plans to require technology platforms to remove intimate images shared without consent within forty-eight hours instead of allowing such content to remain online for days.

Through an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, firms that fail to comply could face fines amounting to ten percent of their global revenue or risk having their services blocked in the UK.

A move that reflects ministers’ commitment to treat intimate image abuse with the same seriousness as child sexual abuse material and extremist content.

The action follows mounting concern after non-consensual sexual deepfakes produced by Grok circulated widely, prompting investigations by Ofcom and political pressure on platforms owned by Elon Musk.

The government now intends victims to report an image once instead of repeating the process across multiple services. Once flagged, the content should disappear across all platforms and be blocked automatically on future uploads through hash-matching or similar detection tools.

Ministers also aim to address content hosted outside the reach of the Online Safety Act by issuing guidance requiring internet providers to block access to sites that refuse to comply.

Keir Starmer, Liz Kendall and Alex Davies-Jones emphasised that no woman should be forced to pursue platform after platform to secure removal and that the online environment must offer safety and respect.

The package of reforms forms part of a broader pledge to halve violence against women and girls during the next decade.

Alongside tackling intimate image abuse, the government is legislating against nudification tools and ensuring AI chatbots fall within regulatory scope, using this agenda to reshape online safety instead of relying on voluntary compliance from large technology firms.

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Reload launches Epic to bring shared memory and structure to AI agents

Founders of the Reload platform say AI is moving from simple automation toward something closer to teamwork.

Newton Asare and Kiran Das noticed that AI agents were completing tasks normally handled by employees, which pushed them to design a system that treats digital workers as part of a company’s structure instead of disposable tools.

Their platform, Reload, offers a way for organisations to manage these agents across departments, assign responsibilities and monitor performance. The firm has secured 2.275 million dollars in new funding led by Anthemis with several other investors joining the round.

The shift toward agent-driven development exposed a recurring limitation. Most agents retain only short-term memory, which means they often lose context about a product or forget why a task matters.

Reload’s answer is Epic, a new product built on its platform that acts as an architect alongside coding agents. Epic defines requirements and constraints at the start of a project, then continuously preserves the shared understanding that agents need as software evolves.

Epic integrates with popular AI-assisted code editors such as Cursor and Windsurf, allowing developers to keep a consistent system memory without changing their workflow.

The tool generates key project artefacts from the outset, including data models and technical decisions, then carries them forward even when teams switch agents. It creates a single source of truth so that engineers and digital workers develop against the same structure.

Competing systems such as LongChain and CrewAI also offer support for managing agents, but Reload argues that Epic’s ability to maintain project-level context sets it apart.

Asare and Das, who already built and sold a previous company together, plan to use the fresh capital to grow their team and expand the infrastructure needed for a future in which human workers manage AI employees instead of the other way around.

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Greece positions itself as a global AI bridge

The PM of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, took part in the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi as part of a two-day visit that highlighted the country’s ambition to deepen its presence in global technology governance.

A gathering that focuses on creating a coherent international approach to AI under the theme ‘People-Planet-Progress’, with an emphasis on practical outcomes instead of abstract commitments.

Greece presents itself as a link between Europe and the Global South, seeking a larger role in debates over AI policy and geoeconomic strategy.

Mitsotakis is joined by Minister of Digital Governance Dimitris Papastergiou, underscoring Athens’ intention to strengthen partnerships that support technological development.

During the visit, Mitsotakis attended an official dinner hosted by Narendra Modi.

On Thursday, he will address the summit at Bharat Mandapam before holding a scheduled meeting with his Indian counterpart, reinforcing efforts to expand cooperation between Greece and India in emerging technologies.

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UNESCO expands multilingual learning through LearnBig

The LearnBig digital application is expanding access to learning, with UNESCO supporting educational materials in national and local languages instead of relying solely on dominant teaching languages.

A project that aligns with International Mother Language Day and reflects long-standing research showing that children learn more effectively when taught in languages they understand from an early age.

The programme supports communities along the Thailand–Myanmar border, where children gain literacy and numeracy skills in both Thai and their mother tongues.

Young learners can make more substantial academic progress with this approach, which allows them to remain connected to their cultural identity rather than being pushed into unfamiliar linguistic environments. More than 2,000 digital books are available in languages such as Karen, Myanmar, and Pattani Malay.

LearnBig was developed within the ‘Mobile Literacy for Out-of-School Children’ programme, backed by partners including Microsoft, True Corporation, POSCO 1% Foundation and the Ministry of Education of Thailand.

An initiative by UNESCO that has reached more than 526,000 learners, with young people in Yala using tablets to access digital books, while learners in Mae Hong Son study through content presented in their local languages.

The project illustrates the potential of digital innovation to bridge linguistic, social, and geographic divides.

By supporting children who often fall outside formal education systems, LearnBig demonstrates how technology can help build a more inclusive and equitable learning environment rather than reinforcing existing barriers.

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Universities in India partner with OpenAI to scale AI education

OpenAI is expanding its footprint in India by partnering with leading higher-education institutions to integrate AI into teaching and research. The initiative aims to reach more than 100,000 students, faculty, and staff over the next year as India seeks to scale domestic AI skills.

Six public and private institutions, spanning engineering, management, medicine, anfd design, will participate in the first phase. Partners include the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

The programme focuses on embedding AI into core academic workflows rather than consumer experimentation. Campus-wide access to ChatGPT Edu, faculty training, and responsible-use frameworks will support applications in coding, research, analytics, and case analysis.

Two institutions will introduce OpenAI-backed certifications, while ed-tech platforms including Physics Wallah, upGrad, and HCL GUVI will extend structured AI training beyond campuses. The move coincides with broader investment by global AI firms as India hosts the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.

With India now OpenAI’s second-largest user base after the US, the company is positioning universities as a long-term channel for adoption. The expansion reflects a wider contest over who shapes how AI is taught, governed, and embedded across one of the world’s largest education systems.

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