Digital Data and Advanced AI for Richer Global Intelligence

In this special report, Danielle Goldfarb explores how digital data sets and advances in artificial intelligence (AI) can provide timely, transparent and detailed insights into global challenges, providing examples that illustrate the tremendous step change in possible intelligence when combining digital data with advances in AI.

These tools can fill in gaps in understanding, allow for near real-time verification of claims, or provide information on vulnerable populations or in remote locations where none existed. The combination of cheap, abundant, varied and timely data enables governments, international institutions and civil society researchers to access a far richer, more detailed picture of the world than previously possible. This greater understanding and transparency both allows and requires leaders to improve outcomes.

Despite gaining prominence, the fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics framework in AI governance poses significant limitations. It is inadequately defined to meet the complexities of a pluralistic world, lacks consensus on normative values underpinning it, is prone to misuse and misrepresentation, and inadvertently promotes ethics washing.

Sabhanaz Rashid Diya proposes in this policy brief that “universal human rights principles — despite their limitations — must provide a pragmatic way forward by making human conditions central to the impact of AI technologies, while still addressing pluralism, political fragmentation and cross-culturalism.”

In this policy brief, Daniel R. Mahanty and Kailee Hilt consider the United States’ updated Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy.

Mahanty and Hilt argue that the declaration’s legitimacy as an international framework rests on whether it serves as a catalyst for improving protection of civilians (PoC) outcomes not only in contexts where AI and autonomy feature in the conduct of hostilities but also in contexts where they do not, which will depend on “first, whether the process contributes to a higher standard of practice in PoC, rather than merely serving to legitimize the lowest common denominator; and second, whether states meaningfully adapt their AI and autonomy programs to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.”

“US President Donald Trump views tariffs as his Swiss Army Knife. He can use the threat of tariffs to prod other countries to change a wide range of domestic and international policies….But Trump’s tariffs will also harm American citizens and companies as he reinforces his authority,” writes Susan Ariel Aaronson in this opinion. What is more, besides being disruptive, “tariffs are unaccountable and undemocratic.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, Aaronson says, in this look at the trouble with tariffs, both in trade relationships and at home. “Some 260 years ago, America’s founders decreed that tariffs were inequitable and unaccountable. The same is true today.”

In this op-ed first published by The Line, Wesley Wark cautions that the findings in the final report of Canada’s 16-month public inquiry into foreign interference in the nation’s democratic processes “threaten to be swallowed up by the urgencies surrounding a suddenly fraught Canada-US relationship.”

To avert this threat, it’s important “to be clear about about the ways in which the inquiry weaves two major threads between past foreign interference activities and future threats....The twin lessons of the foreign interference inquiry are probably not what anyone expected at the outset of its investigations — enhance government transparency about national security threats and focus on disinformation. But even if the inquiry doesn’t have many answers for the age of Trump 2.0, it does point the way forward, as foreign interference takes another, potentially nasty, turn.”

In this opinion, Deepak Maheshwari discusses the impact of India’s “Unified Payment Interface (UPI) that enables real-time, frictionless instant payments across 600 plus banks using a QR code, bank account or just the mobile number of the payee” and the “so-called India Stack,” a set of “interoperable building blocks based on open protocols, standards and application programming interfaces” with “three essential layers — digital identity, digital payment and a consent-based data exchange framework.”

Thanks to its innovative and open architecture, Maheshwari writes, this digital infrastructure has received broad support for its core components, design philosophy and deployment strategies, although there are several important safeguards to consider, “to ensure that the public interest remains as the core of [its] raison d’être.”

Feb. 26 – 4:30 p.m. CST (UTC+08:00) – Taipei, Taiwan: Attending RightsCon 2025 next week? If so, don’t miss this in-person interactive workshop, hosted by CIGI as part of its Supporting Safer Digital Spaces project, and featuring speakers Anja Kovacs, Nadia Al-Sakkaf and Natasha Chhabra.

“Figures for Social Change: How to Use Quantitative Survey Data in Intersectional Advocacy on Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV)” is a one-hour workshop for activists, advocates and qualitative researchers who want to use quantitative data in their advocacy on TFGBV and unpack its politics.

Learn more here.

Mar. 6 – 10:00 a.m. EST (UTC–05:00): The Africa Forum at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA), in collaboration with CIGI, is hosting a dynamic conversation on higher education reform in Africa, bringing together experts in higher education policy, post-colonial studies, African development and distance-learning innovation.

The one-hour virtual panel discussion is free and open to the public.

Learn more about the event and the panellists, and register here.

Mar. 4 – 6:30 p.m. EST (UTC–05:00) – Waterloo, Canada: The BSIA and CIGI are pleased to partner to bring Werner Herzog’s documentary Theater of Thought to the CIGI Auditorium.

In this film, Herzog explores the human brain, seeking to understand how it produces complex thoughts and emotions, while also considering the philosophical, ethical and social implications. The film “illuminates the technological advances that are helping people overcome brain-related illnesses, confronting conspiracy theories over implanted chips, and questioning the politics of mind control.”

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with experts who will discuss the implications of emerging neurotechnologies.

This event is in-person only and will not be recorded: reserve your ticket now!