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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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AI and automation need human oversight in decision-making

Leaders from academia and industry in Hyderabad, India are stressing that humans must remain central in decision-making as AI and automation expand across society. Collaborative intelligence, combining AI experts, domain specialists and human judgement, is seen as essential for responsible adoption.

Universities are encouraged to treat students as primary stakeholders, adapting curricula to integrate AI responsibly and avoid obsolescence. Competency-based, values-driven learning models are being promoted to prepare students to question, shape and lead through digital transformation.

Experts highlighted that modern communication is co-produced by humans, machines and algorithms. Designing AI to augment human agency rather than replace it ensures a balance between technology and human decision-making across education and industry.

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Uzbekistan sets principles for responsible AI

A new ethical framework for the development and use of AI technologies has been adopted by Uzbekistan.

The rules, prepared by the Ministry of Digital Technologies, establish unified standards for developers, implementing organisations and users of AI systems, ensuring AI respects human rights, privacy and societal trust.

A framework that is part of presidential decrees and resolutions aimed at advancing AI innovation across the country. It also emphasises legality, transparency, fairness, accountability, and continuous human oversight.

AI systems must avoid discrimination based on gender, nationality, religion, language or social origin.

Developers are required to ensure algorithmic clarity, assess risks and bias in advance, and prevent AI from causing harm to individuals, society, the state or the environment.

Users of AI systems must comply with legislation, safeguard personal data, and operate technologies responsibly. Any harm caused during AI development or deployment carries legal liability.

The Ministry of Digital Technologies will oversee standards, address ethical concerns, foster industry cooperation, and improve digital literacy across Uzbekistan.

An initiative that aligns with broader efforts to prepare Uzbekistan for AI adoption in healthcare, education, transport, space, and other sectors.

By establishing clear ethical principles, the country aims to strengthen trust in AI applications and ensure responsible and secure use nationwide.

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Governments urged to build learning systems for the AI era

Governments are facing increased pressure to govern AI effectively, prompting calls for continuous institutional learning. Researchers argue that the public sector must develop adaptive capacity to keep pace with rapid technological change.

Past digital reforms often stalled because administrations focused on minor upgrades rather than redesigning core services. Slow adaptation now carries greater risks, as AI transforms decisions, systems and expectations across government.

Experts emphasise the need for a learning infrastructure that facilitates to reliable flow of knowledge across institutions. Singapore and the UAE have already invested heavily in large-scale capability-building programmes.

Public servants require stronger technical and institutional literacy, supported through ongoing training and open collaboration with research communities. Advocates say that states that embed learning deeply will govern AI more effectively and maintain public trust.

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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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Greek businesses urged to accelerate AI adoption

AI is becoming a central factor in business development, according to Google Cloud executives visiting Athens for Google Cloud Day.

Marianne Janik and Boris Georgiev explained that AI is entering daily life more quickly than many expected, creating an urgent need for companies to strengthen their capabilities. Their visit coincided with the international launch of Gemini 3, the latest version of the company’s AI model.

They argued that enterprises in Greece should accelerate their adoption of AI tools to remain competitive. A slow transition could limit their position in both domestic and international markets.

They also underlined the importance of employees developing new skills that support digital transformation, noting that risk-taking has become a necessary element of strategic progress.

The financial sector is advancing at a faster pace, aided by its long-standing familiarity with digital and analytical tools.

Banks are investing heavily in compliance functions and customer onboarding. Retail is also undergoing a similar transformation, driven by consumer expectations and operational pressures.

Google Cloud Day in Athens brought together a large number of participants, highlighting the sector’s growing interest in practical AI applications and the role of advanced models in shaping business processes.

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Italy secures new EU support for growth and reform

The European Commission has endorsed Italy’s latest request for funding under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, marking an important step in the country’s economic modernisation.

An approval that covers 12.8 billion euros, combining grants and loans, and supports efforts to strengthen competitiveness and long-term growth across key sectors of national life.

Italy completed 32 milestones and targets connected to the eighth instalment, enabling progress in public administration, procurement, employment, education, research, tourism, renewable energy and the circular economy.

Thousands of schools have gained new resources to improve multilingual learning and build stronger skills in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

Many primary and secondary schools have also secured modern digital tools to enhance teaching quality instead of relying on outdated systems.

Health research forms another major part of the package. Projects focused on rare diseases, cancer and other high-impact conditions have gained fresh funding to support scientific work and improve treatment pathways.

These measures contribute to a broader transformation programme financed through 194.4 billion euros, representing one of the largest recovery plans in the EU.

A four-week review by the Economic and Financial Committee will follow before the payment can be released. Once completed, Italy’s total receipts will exceed 153 billion euros, covering more than 70 percent of its full Recovery and Resilience Facility allocation.

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Poetic prompts reveal gaps in AI safety, according to study

Researchers in Italy have found that poetic language can weaken the safety barriers used by many leading AI chatbots.

A work by Icaro Lab, part of DexAI, that examined whether poems containing harmful requests could provoke unsafe answers from widely deployed models across the industry. The team wrote twenty poems in English and Italian, each ending with explicit instructions that AI systems are trained to block.

The researchers tested the poems on twenty-five models developed by nine major companies. Poetic prompts produced unsafe responses in more than half of the tests.

Some models appeared more resilient than others. OpenAI’s GPT-5 Nano avoided unsafe replies in every case, while Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro generated harmful content in all tests. Two Meta systems produced unsafe responses to twenty percent of the poems.

Researchers also argue that poetic structure disrupts the predictive patterns large language models rely on to filter harmful material. The unconventional rhythm and metaphor common in poetry make the underlying safety mechanisms less reliable.

Additionally, the team warned that adversarial poetry can be used by anyone, which raises concerns about how easily safety systems may be manipulated in everyday use.

Before releasing the study, the researchers contacted all companies involved and shared the full dataset with them.

Anthropic confirmed receipt and stated that it was reviewing the findings. The work has prompted debate over how AI systems can be strengthened as creative language becomes an increasingly common method for attempting to bypass safety controls.

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Most German researchers now use AI

Around 80 percent of researchers at Germany’s Max Planck and Fraunhofer societies report using AI in their work, according to a survey of more than 6,200 respondents published in Research Policy.

Nearly half said they were very familiar with AI tools, while another 44 percent had used AI a few times.

The study shows a rapid rise in AI use since 2023, when just 17 percent of researchers used generative AI weekly. Many respondents now employ AI for core and creative research tasks, with 37 percent citing its use in innovative work processes.

Demographic trends reveal that older researchers and women are less likely to use AI, although lower familiarity rather than scepticism drives these differences. Researchers view AI as transformative, acting increasingly as a co-creator or manager rather than merely an automation tool.

Measures such as training, supportive learning environments and legal guidance could further boost AI adoption. Despite the study being limited to Germany, the findings point to a profound transformation in research driven by AI technologies.

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DeepSeek launches AI model achieving gold-level maths scores

Chinese AI company DeepSeek has unveiled Math-V2, the first open-source AI model to achieve gold-level performance at the International Mathematical Olympiad.

The system, now available on GitHub and Hugging Face, allows developers to modify and deploy the model under a permissive license freely.

Math-V2 also excelled in the 2024 Chinese Mathematical Olympiad, demonstrating advanced reasoning and problem-solving capabilities. Unlike many AI systems, it features a self-verification process that enables it to check solutions even for problems without known answers.

The launch comes as US AI leaders, such as Google DeepMind and OpenAI, have achieved similar milestones with their proprietary models.

Open access to Math-V2 could democratise advanced mathematical tools, potentially accelerating scientific research and development globally.

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