Built Against Its People: Iran’s AI Infrastructure of Control Dr. Sara Bazoobandi examines how Iran’s doctrine of “knowledge jihad” shaped the development of its digital and AI infrastructure, transforming technology into an instrument of state control. The piece traces how this system, built for surveillance and centralized authority, has also created strategic fragility, offering a cautionary lesson for democracies designing the foundations of AI governance.

Iran didn’t just adopt AI, it conscripted it.

This #GlobalAIWatch by Dr. Sara Bazoobandi shows how ideology shaped a centralized AI system built for control and why that design creates hidden fragility.

A must-read for democracies building AI infrastructure.

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/iran-ai...

Built Against Its People: Iran’s AI Infrastructure of Control Dr. Sara Bazoobandi examines how Iran’s doctrine of “knowledge jihad” shaped the development of its digital and AI infrastructure, transforming technology into an instrument of state control. The piece traces how this system, built for surveillance and centralized authority, has also created strategic fragility, offering a cautionary lesson for democracies designing the foundations of AI governance.

Iran didn’t just adopt AI, it conscripted it.

This #GlobalAIWatch by Dr. Sara Bazoobandi shows how ideology shaped a centralized AI system built for control and why that design creates hidden fragility.

A must-read for democracies building AI infrastructure.

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/iran-ai...

Built Against Its People: Iran’s AI Infrastructure of Control Dr. Sara Bazoobandi examines how Iran’s doctrine of “knowledge jihad” shaped the development of its digital and AI infrastructure, transforming technology into an instrument of state control. The piec...

Iran didn’t just adopt AI, it conscripted it.

This #GlobalAIWatch by Dr. Sara Bazoobandi shows how ideology shaped a centralized AI system built for control and why that design creates hidden fragility.

A must-read for democracies building AI infrastructure.

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/iran-ai...

Government Strategy Needs Reimagining: An Experiment from Argentina In Argentina, the Red de Innovación Local (RIL) experimented with its AI-powered platform, PortalRIL, to shift from fragmented work plans to an inquiry-driven planning process anchored in a “Question Tree.” By surfacing patterns, trade-offs, and synergies across teams, AI helped compress months of coordination into weeks of shared clarity. The result suggests that AI’s real promise is to expand strategic horizons and accelerate collective insight, freeing public servants to focus on judgment, identity, and long-term public value.

In today’s #GlobalAIWatch, Giulio Quaggiotto explores how #RILArgentina piloted an AI-enhanced strategy process on itself before scaling to 800+ cities. The lesson: better questions expand strategic capacity.

Read more: rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/governm...

Government Strategy Needs Reimagining: An Experiment from Argentina In Argentina, the Red de Innovación Local (RIL) experimented with its AI-powered platform, PortalRIL, to shift from fragmented work plans to an inquiry-driven planning process anchored in a “Question Tree.” By surfacing patterns, trade-offs, and synergies across teams, AI helped compress months of coordination into weeks of shared clarity. The result suggests that AI’s real promise is to expand strategic horizons and accelerate collective insight, freeing public servants to focus on judgment, identity, and long-term public value.

In today’s #GlobalAIWatch, Giulio Quaggiotto explores how #RILArgentina piloted an AI-enhanced strategy process on itself before scaling to 800+ cities. The lesson: better questions expand strategic capacity.

Read more: rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/governm...

Global AI Watch: Korean Public Funds for Global AI Advancements As Korea aims to become a top-three global AI power, the government has staked its strategy on “sovereign AI” as both an economic and national security priority. In this reflection, originally publish...

In our latest #GlobalAIWatch, @hickokmerve.bsky.social lexamines South Korea’s $73.5B public investment in a national foundation model and asks whether smaller language models, energy efficiency, and stronger evaluation may be wiser bets.

Read: rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/korea-p...

Global AI Watch: Korean Public Funds for Global AI Advancements As Korea aims to become a top-three global AI power, the government has staked its strategy on “sovereign AI” as both an economic and national security priority. In this reflection, originally published in the Herald Insight Collection, Merve Hickok examines Korea’s multibillion-dollar investment in a national foundation model amid U.S.–China competition and the rise of Open-Source AI, asking whether alternative investments—such as small language models, compute and energy efficiency, and AI governance and evaluation—might better secure Korea’s long-term autonomy and global leadership.

In our latest #GlobalAIWatch, @hickokmerve.bsky.social examines South Korea’s $73.5B public investment in a national foundation model and asks whether smaller language models, energy efficiency, and stronger evaluation may be wiser bets.

Read: rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/korea-p...

Global AI Watch: Korean Public Funds for Global AI Advancements As Korea aims to become a top-three global AI power, the government has staked its strategy on “sovereign AI” as both an economic and national security priority. In this reflection, originally published in the Herald Insight Collection, Merve Hickok examines Korea’s multibillion-dollar investment in a national foundation model amid U.S.–China competition and the rise of Open-Source AI, asking whether alternative investments—such as small language models, compute and energy efficiency, and AI governance and evaluation—might better secure Korea’s long-term autonomy and global leadership.

In our latest #GlobalAIWatch, @hickokmerve.bsky.social examines South Korea’s $73.5B public investment in a national foundation model and asks whether smaller language models, energy efficiency, and stronger evaluation may be wiser bets.

Read: rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/korea-p...

Mapping the School, Seeing the System: How Spatial Context Reshaped Public Decision-Making in Uzbekistan and Bhutan Mapping schools in Uzbekistan and Bhutan revealed how data that appeared complete on paper often missed what mattered on the ground, like distance, access, and everyday conditions. By treating geography as essential, spatial data, participatory collection, and AI analysis reshaped how evidence-informed public investment and policy decisions are made.

#GlobalAIWatch: Mapping schools in Uzbekistan and Bhutan showed how data that looks complete on paper can miss what matters on the ground.

Spatial data, participation, and AI helped connect evidence to real decisions. Not louder data, just clearer.

🔗 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/mapping...

Mapping the School, Seeing the System: How Spatial Context Reshaped Public Decision-Making in Uzbekistan and Bhutan Mapping schools in Uzbekistan and Bhutan revealed how data that appeared complete on paper often missed what mattered on the ground, like distance, access, and everyday conditions. By treating geography as essential, spatial data, participatory collection, and AI analysis reshaped how evidence-informed public investment and policy decisions are made.

#GlobalAIWatch: Mapping schools in Uzbekistan and Bhutan showed how data that looks complete on paper can miss what matters on the ground.

Spatial data, participation, and AI helped connect evidence to real decisions. Not louder data, just clearer.

🔗 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/mapping...

Mapping the School, Seeing the System: How Spatial Context Reshaped Public Decision-Making in Uzbekistan and Bhutan Mapping schools in Uzbekistan and Bhutan revealed how data that appeared complete on paper often missed what mattered on the ground, like distance, access, and everyday conditions. By treating geograp...

#GlobalAIWatch: Mapping schools in Uzbekistan and Bhutan showed how data that looks complete on paper can miss what matters on the ground.

Spatial data, participation, and AI helped connect evidence to real decisions. Not louder data, just clearer.

🔗 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/mapping...

#GlobalAIWatch: Facing worsening traffic with no room to build new roads, Hillerød, Denmark turned to residents for input.

Digital participation and AI helped synthesize 1,400+ voices into real, and unexpected, policy direction.

🔗 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/hillero...

#GlobalAIWatch: Facing worsening traffic with no room to build new roads, Hillerød, Denmark turned to residents for input.

Digital participation and AI helped synthesize 1,400+ voices into real, and unexpected, policy direction.

🔗 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/hillero...

Toward AI Governance That Works: Examining the Building Blocks of AI and the Impacts As governments and international bodies race to establish guardrails for AI, most of the global agenda still focuses on managing what AI systems produce—their outputs. This article argues that such an...

We talk a lot about evaluating AI outputs, such as safety tests, red teaming, and alignment. But far less about the data practices that shape those outputs in the first place.

Read more by Stefaan Verhulst and Friederike Schüür→ rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/toward-...

#GlobalAIWatch #DataGovernance

Toward AI Governance That Works: Examining the Building Blocks of AI and the Impacts As governments and international bodies race to establish guardrails for AI, most of the global agenda still focuses on managing what AI systems produce—their outputs. This article argues that such an approach is incomplete. The real foundations of safe, rights-respecting, and equitable AI lie upstream in how data is collected, governed, shared, and stewarded. Without integrating mature data governance practices, such as data stewardship and data commons, into AI governance, countries will struggle to protect fundamental rights or ensure that AI’s economic and social benefits are distributed fairly. A future-ready AI governance framework must therefore unite input and output governance into a single, coherent system.

We talk a lot about evaluating AI outputs, such as safety tests, red teaming, and alignment. But far less about the data practices that shape those outputs in the first place.

Read more by Stefaan Verhulst and Friederike Schüür r→ rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/toward-...

#GlobalAIWatch #DataGovernance

Toward AI Governance That Works: Examining the Building Blocks of AI and the Impacts As governments and international bodies race to establish guardrails for AI, most of the global agenda still focuses on managing what AI systems produce—their outputs. This article argues that such an approach is incomplete. The real foundations of safe, rights-respecting, and equitable AI lie upstream in how data is collected, governed, shared, and stewarded. Without integrating mature data governance practices, such as data stewardship and data commons, into AI governance, countries will struggle to protect fundamental rights or ensure that AI’s economic and social benefits are distributed fairly. A future-ready AI governance framework must therefore unite input and output governance into a single, coherent system.

We talk a lot about evaluating AI outputs, such as safety tests, red teaming, and alignment. But far less about the data practices that shape those outputs in the first place.

Read more by Stefaan Verhulst and Friederike Schüür r→ rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/toward-...

#GlobalAIWatch #DataGovernance

Is Your Parliament Transparent or Just Performing? Making Public Data Understandable Opens the Door to Citizen Engagement Political Watch’s “What Our Representatives Do” tool (QHLD) organizes thousands of congressional initiatives into clear, searchable themes, making political priorities visible, comparable, and actiona...

Today's #GlobalAIWatch blog by @celiazafra.bsky.social and @pr3ssh.net h.net explores how transparency fails when public data is unusable. The QHLD tool shows what Spain's Congress really prioritizes and why civic tech struggles to adopt AI.

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/is-your...

Is Your Parliament Transparent or Just Performing? Making Public Data Understandable Opens the Door to Citizen Engagement Political Watch’s “What Our Representatives Do” tool (QHLD) organizes thousands of congressional initiatives into clear, searchable themes, making political priorities visible, comparable, and actionable. By exposing imbalances like the 198 initiatives on squatting versus just 54 on social housing, QHLD shows how structured, understandable data can reconnect citizens with their representatives. Yet the project also highlights a global challenge for civic tech: limited funding, slow adoption, and the high cost of responsible AI integration. Making democracy legible is possible, but only if we invest in tools designed to share power, not just document it.

Today's #GlobalAIWatch blog by @celiazafra.bsky.social and @pr3ssh.net explores how transparency fails when public data is unusable. The QHLD tool shows what Spain's Congress really prioritizes and why civic tech struggles to adopt AI.

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/is-your...

Is Your Parliament Transparent or Just Performing? Making Public Data Understandable Opens the Door to Citizen Engagement Political Watch’s “What Our Representatives Do” tool (QHLD) organizes thousands of congressional initiatives into clear, searchable themes, making political priorities visible, comparable, and actionable. By exposing imbalances like the 198 initiatives on squatting versus just 54 on social housing, QHLD shows how structured, understandable data can reconnect citizens with their representatives. Yet the project also highlights a global challenge for civic tech: limited funding, slow adoption, and the high cost of responsible AI integration. Making democracy legible is possible, but only if we invest in tools designed to share power, not just document it.

Today's #GlobalAIWatch blog by @celiazafra.bsky.social and @pr3ssh.net explores how transparency fails when public data is unusable. The QHLD tool shows what Spain's Congress really prioritizes and why civic tech struggles to adopt AI.

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/is-your...

Designing AI for Trust: Lessons from Tarjimly’s Translation Platform for Humanitarian Action When refugees needed language support, Tarjimly turned everyday volunteers into lifelines. In this reflection, CEO Atif Javed traces how the platform evolved from a Facebook Messenger experiment into ...

“Design for trust. Build for empathy.”

In a new #GlobalAIWatch piece for the #RebootDemocracy blog, Tarjimly CEO Atif Javed shares how the translation platform utilizes AI to amplify, rather than replace, human connection.

📖 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/designi...

Designing AI for Trust: Lessons from Tarjimly’s Translation Platform for Humanitarian Action When refugees needed language support, Tarjimly turned everyday volunteers into lifelines. In this reflection, CEO Atif Javed traces how the platform evolved from a Facebook Messenger experiment into a global translation network, one now partially powered by AI. His key lesson is that designing for trust means using technology to amplify, not replace, human empathy in moments of crisis.

“Design for trust. Build for empathy.” In a new #GlobalAIWatch piece for the #RebootDemocracy blog, Tarjimly CEO Atif Javed shares how the translation platform uses AI to amplify, not replace, human connection.

📖 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/designi...

Designing AI for Trust: Lessons from Tarjimly’s Translation Platform for Humanitarian Action When refugees needed language support, Tarjimly turned everyday volunteers into lifelines. In this reflection, CEO Atif Javed traces how the platform evolved from a Facebook Messenger experiment into a global translation network, one now partially powered by AI. His key lesson is that designing for trust means using technology to amplify, not replace, human empathy in moments of crisis.

“Design for trust. Build for empathy.” In a new #GlobalAIWatch piece for the #RebootDemocracy blog, Tarjimly CEO Atif Javed shares how the translation platform uses AI to amplify, not replace, human connection.

📖 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/designi...

🇧🇷 Brazil is turning 1.5M civic votes into real policy with AI.

Christiana Freitas & Ricardo Poppi demonstrate how a new open-source system is enabling the processing of public input at scale and strengthening participatory democracy.

🔗 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/global-...

#GlobalAIWatch

🇧🇷 Brazil is turning 1.5M civic votes into real policy with AI.

Christiana Freitas & Ricardo Poppi show how a new open-source system is helping process public input at scale and strengthening participatory democracy.

🔗 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/global-...

#GlobalAIWatch

🇧🇷 Brazil is turning 1.5M civic votes into real policy with AI.

Christiana Freitas & Ricardo Poppi show how a new open-source system is helping process public input at scale and strengthening participatory democracy.

🔗 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/global-...

#GlobalAIWatch

Governing the Undefined: Why the Debate Over Superintelligence Misses the Point As headlines warn of “superintelligent AI” threatening human extinction, a new open letter reignites familiar fears. But beneath the apocalyptic rhetoric lies a deeper problem. The narrative around ar...

AI doomerism misleads. In his latest #RebootDemocracy piece, Dane Gambrell argues we must govern real harms—like surveillance and labor exploitation—not vague fears of “superintelligence.” Read via #GlobalAIWatch: rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/governi...

Governing the Undefined: Why the Debate Over Superintelligence Misses the Point As headlines warn of “superintelligent AI” threatening human extinction, a new open letter reignites familiar fears. But beneath the apocalyptic rhetoric lies a deeper problem. The narrative around artificial superintelligence, long embraced by Big Tech, diverts attention from the real and immediate challenges of AI and how our democratic institutions can address them.

The more we fixate on “superintelligence,” the less we govern what matters now. Dane Gambrell argues that speculative AI fears distract from real harms—surveillance, labor exploitation, democratic erosion—and the power behind them.

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/governi...

#GlobalAIWatch #RebootDemocracy

Governing the Undefined: Why the Debate Over Superintelligence Misses the Point As headlines warn of “superintelligent AI” threatening human extinction, a new open letter reignites familiar fears. But beneath the apocalyptic rhetoric lies a deeper problem. The narrative around artificial superintelligence, long embraced by Big Tech, diverts attention from the real and immediate challenges of AI and how our democratic institutions can address them.

The more we fixate on “superintelligence,” the less we govern what matters now. Dane Gambrell argues that speculative AI fears distract from real harms—surveillance, labor exploitation, democratic erosion—and the power behind them.

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/governi...

#GlobalAIWatch #RebootDemocracy

🗞️ What caught our eye this week?

Read the full roundup of democracy, governance, and AI news from around the world:
🌐 rebootdemocracy.ai/newsthatcaug...

#RebootDemocracy #AIforGovernance #GlobalAIWatch #NewsThatCaughtOurEye

News That Caught Our Eye #81 - News That Caught Our Eye Hamburg uses AI to turn citizen feedback into urban policy, Boston showcases tools that improve public trust, and tribal nations are piloting AI for governance while protecting sovereignty. New York b

🗞️ What caught our eye this week?

Read the full roundup of democracy, governance, and AI news from around the world:
🌐 rebootdemocracy.ai/newsthatcaug...

#RebootDemocracy #AIforGovernance #GlobalAIWatch #NewsThatCaughtOurEye