Key Internet developments

Canada sets national guidelines for equitable AI

Yesterday, Canada released the CAN-ASC-6.2 – Accessible and Equitable Artificial Intelligence Systems standard, marking the first national standard focused specifically on accessible AI.

A framework that ensures AI systems are inclusive, fair, and accessible from design through deployment. Its release coincides with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, emphasising Canada’s commitment to accessibility and inclusion.

The standard guides organisations and developers in creating AI that accommodates people with disabilities, promotes fairness, prevents exclusion, and maintains accessibility throughout the AI lifecycle.

It provides practical processes for equity in AI development and encourages education on accessible AI practices.

The standard was developed by a technical committee composed largely of people with disabilities and members of equity-deserving groups, incorporating public feedback from Canadians of diverse backgrounds.

Approved by the Standards Council of Canada, CAN-ASC-6.2 meets national requirements for standards development and aligns with international best practices.

Moreover, the standard is available for free in both official languages and accessible formats, including plain language, American Sign Language and Langue des signes québécoise.

By setting clear guidelines, Canada aims to ensure AI serves all citizens equitably and strengthens workforce inclusion, societal participation, and technological fairness.

An initiative that highlights Canada’s leadership in accessible technology and provides a practical tool for organisations to implement inclusive AI systems.

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CJEU tightens duties for online marketplaces

EU judges have ruled that online marketplaces must verify advertisers’ identities before publishing personal data. The judgment arose from a Romanian case involving an abusive anonymous advertisement containing sensitive information.

In this Romanian case, the Court found that marketplace operators influence the purposes and means of processing and therefore act as joint controllers. They must identify sensitive data before publication and ensure consent or another lawful basis exists.

Judges also held that anonymous users cannot lawfully publish sensitive personal data without proving the data subject’s explicit agreement. Platforms must refuse publication when identity checks fail or when no valid GDPR ground applies.

Operators must introduce safeguards to prevent unlawful copying of sensitive content across other websites. The Court confirmed that exemptions under E-commerce rules cannot override GDPR accountability duties.

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UNESCO launches AI guidelines for courts and tribunals

UNESCO has launched new Guidelines for the Use of AI Systems in Courts and Tribunals to ensure AI strengthens rather than undermines human-led justice. The initiative arrives as courts worldwide face millions of pending cases and limited resources.

In Argentina, AI-assisted legal tools have increased case processing by nearly 300%, while automated transcription in Egypt is improving court efficiency.

Judicial systems are increasingly encountering AI-generated evidence, AI-assisted sentencing, and automated administrative processes. AI misuse can have serious consequences, as seen in the UK High Court where false AI-generated arguments caused delays, extra costs, and fines.

UNESCO’s Guidelines aim to prevent such risks by emphasising human oversight, auditability, and ethical AI use.

The Guidelines outline 15 principles and provide recommendations for judicial organisations and individual judges throughout the AI lifecycle. They also serve as a benchmark for developing national and regional standards.

UNESCO’s Judges’ Initiative, which has trained over 36,000 judicial operators in 160 countries, played a key role in shaping and peer-reviewing the Guidelines.

The official launch will take place at the Athens Roundtable on AI and the Rule of Law in London on 4 December 2025. UNESCO aims for the standards to ensure responsible AI use, improve court efficiency, and uphold public trust in the judiciary.

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Mistral AI unveils new open models with broader capabilities

Yesterday, Mistral AI introduced Mistral 3 as a new generation of open multimodal and multilingual models that aim to support developers and enterprises through broader access and improved efficiency.

The company presented both small dense models and a new mixture-of-experts system called Mistral Large 3, offering open-weight releases to encourage wider adoption across different sectors.

Developers are encouraged to build on models in compressed formats that reduce deployment costs, rather than relying on heavier, closed solutions.

The organisation highlighted that Large 3 was trained with extensive resources on NVIDIA hardware to improve performance in multilingual communication, image understanding and general instruction tasks.

Mistral AI underlined its cooperation with NVIDIA, Red Hat and vLLM to deliver faster inference and easier deployment, providing optimised support for data centres along with options suited for edge computing.

A partnership that introduced lower-precision execution and improved kernels to increase throughput for frontier-scale workloads.

Attention was also given to the Ministral 3 series, which includes models designed for local or edge settings in three sizes. Each version supports image understanding and multilingual tasks, with instruction and reasoning variants that aim to strike a balance between accuracy and cost efficiency.

Moreover, the company stated that these models produce fewer tokens in real-world use cases, rather than generating unnecessarily long outputs, a choice that aims to reduce operational burdens for enterprises.

Mistral AI continued by noting that all releases will be available through major platforms and cloud partners, offering both standard and custom training services. Organisations that require specialised performance are invited to adapt the models to domain-specific needs under the Apache 2.0 licence.

The company emphasised a long-term commitment to open development and encouraged developers to explore and customise the models to support new applications across different industries.

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NVIDIA platform lifts leading MoE models

Frontier developers are adopting a mixture-of-experts architecture as the foundation for their most advanced open-source models. Designers now rely on specialised experts that activate only when needed instead of forcing every parameter to work on each token.

Major models, such as DeepSeek-R1, Kimi K2 Thinking, and Mistral Large 3, rise to the top of the Artificial Analysis leaderboard by utilising this pattern to combine greater capability with lower computational strain.

Scaling the architecture has always been the main obstacle. Expert parallelism requires high-speed memory access and near-instant communication between multiple GPUs, yet traditional systems often create bottlenecks that slow down training and inference.

NVIDIA has shifted toward extreme hardware and software codesign to remove those constraints.

The GB200 NVL72 rack-scale system links seventy-two Blackwell GPUs via fast shared memory and a dense NVLink fabric, enabling experts to exchange information rapidly, rather than relying on slower network layers.

Model developers report significant improvements once they deploy MoE designs on NVL72. Performance leaps of up to ten times have been recorded for frontier systems, improving latency, energy efficiency and the overall cost of running large-scale inference.

Cloud providers integrate the platform to support customers in building agentic workflows and multimodal systems that route tasks between specialised components, rather than duplicating full models for each purpose.

Industry adoption signals a shift toward a future where efficiency and intelligence evolve together. MoE has become the preferred architecture for state-of-the-art reasoning, and NVL72 offers a practical route for enterprises seeking predictable performance gains.

NVIDIA positions its roadmap, including the forthcoming Vera Rubin architecture, as the next step in expanding the scale and capability of frontier AI.

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UK ministers advance energy plans for AI expansion

The final AI Energy Council meeting of 2025 took place in London, led by AI Minister Kanishka Narayan alongside energy ministers Lord Vallance and Michael Shanks.

Regulators and industry representatives reviewed how the UK can expedite grid connections and support the necessary infrastructure for expanding AI activity nationwide.

Council members examined progress on government measures intended to accelerate connections for AI data centres. Plans include support for AI Growth Zones, with discounted electricity available for sites able to draw on excess capacity, which is expected to reduce pressure in the broader network.

Ministers underlined AI’s role in national economic ambitions, noting recent announcements of new AI Growth Zones in North East England and in North and South Wales.

They also discussed how forthcoming reforms are expected to help deliver AI-related infrastructure by easing access to grid capacity.

The meeting concluded with a focus on long-term energy needs for AI development. Participants explored ways to unlock additional capacity and considered innovative options for power generation, including self-build solutions.

The council will reconvene in early 2026 to continue work on sustainable approaches for future AI infrastructure.

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AI growth threatens millions of jobs across Asia

UN economists warned millions of jobs in Asia could be at risk as AI widens the gap between digitally advanced nations and those lacking basic access and skills. The report compared the AI revolution to 19th-century industrialisation, which created a wealthy few and left many behind.

Women and young adults face the most significant threat from AI in the workplace, while the benefits in health, education, and income are unevenly distributed.

Countries such as China, Singapore, and South Korea have invested heavily in AI and reaped significant benefits. Still, entry-level workers in many South Asian nations remain highly vulnerable to automation and technological advancements.

The UN Development Programme urged governments to consider ethical deployment and inclusivity when implementing AI. Countries such as Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, and Vietnam are focusing on developing simple digital tools to help health workers and farmers who lack reliable internet access.

AI could generate nearly $1 trillion in economic gains across Asia over the next decade, boosting regional GDP growth by about two percentage points. Income disparities mean AI benefits remain concentrated in wealthy countries, leaving poorer nations at a disadvantage.

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Australia stands firm on under 16 social media ban

Australia’s government defended its under-16 social media ban ahead of its introduction on 10 December. Minister Anika Wells said she would not be pressured by major platforms opposing the plan.

Tech companies argued that bans may prove ineffective, yet Wells maintained firms had years to address known harms. She insisted parents required stronger safeguards after repeated failures by global platforms.

Critics raised concerns about enforcement and the exclusion of online gaming despite widespread worries about Roblox. Two teenagers also launched a High Court challenge, claiming the policy violated children’s rights.

Wells accepted rollout difficulties but said wider social gains in Australia justified firm action. She added that policymakers must intervene when unsafe operating models place young people at risk.

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Data centre power demand set to triple by 2035

Data centre electricity use is forecast to surge almost threefold by 2035. BloombergNEF reported that global facilities are expected to consume around 106 gigawatts by then.

Analysts linked the growth to larger sites and rising AI workloads, pushing utilisation rates higher. New projects are expanding rapidly, with many planned facilities exceeding 500 megawatts.

Major capacity is heading to states within the PJM grid, alongside significant additions in Texas. Regulators warned that grid operators must restrict connections when capacity risks emerge.

Industry monitors argued that soaring demand contributes to higher regional electricity prices. They urged clearer rules to ensure reliability as early stage project numbers continue accelerating.

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Singapore and the EU advance their digital partnership

The European Union met Singapore in Brussels for the second Digital Partnership Council, reinforcing a joint ambition to strengthen cooperation across a broad set of digital priorities.

Both sides expressed a shared interest in improving competitiveness, expanding innovation and shaping common approaches to digital rules instead of relying on fragmented national frameworks.

Discussions covered AI, cybersecurity, online safety, data flows, digital identities, semiconductors and quantum technologies.

Officials highlighted the importance of administrative arrangements in AI safety. They explored potential future cooperation on language models, including the EU’s work on the Alliance for Language Technologies and Singapore’s Sea-Lion initiative.

Efforts to protect consumers and support minors online were highlighted, alongside the potential role of age verification tools.

Further exchanges focused on trust services and the interoperability of digital identity systems, as well as collaborative research on semiconductors and quantum technologies.

Both sides emphasised the importance of robust cyber resilience and ongoing evaluation of cybersecurity risks, rather than relying on reactive measures. The recently signed Digital Trade Agreement was welcomed for improving legal certainty, building consumer trust and reducing barriers to digital commerce.

The meeting between the EU and Singapore confirmed the importance of the partnership in supporting economic security, strengthening research capacity and increasing resilience in critical technologies.

It also reflected the wider priorities outlined in the European Commission’s International Digital Strategy, which placed particular emphasis on cooperation with Asian partners across emerging technologies and digital governance.

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