At the United Nations’ Summit of the Future in New York city, Rwanda and Singapore launched the ‘AI Playbook for Small States’, a strategic guide to help smaller countries tackle the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption. This Global Trends Flash explains how this strategic guide addresses the unique obstacles small states face in AI adoption and development. These include limited resources, talent shortages, and a lack of expertise, which hinder the ability of smaller countries to fully leverage the benefits of AI.

The Indian government proposed two new regulations, one for telecoms cybersecurity and another for critical telecoms infrastructure, as part of a revised cybersecurity framework under India’s Telecommunications Act 2023. The new draft rules focus on risk management and aim to protect telecoms networks, equipment and users against fraudulent activities and security incidents. This Global Trends Flash summarises the context and the key points of the proposed rules. If approved, these rules will give new supervisory powers to the government over the protection, management, and use of telecoms networks, services and equipment in India.

This Global Trends flash discusses an Australian government consultation to resolve whether some artificial intelligence (AI) “guardrails” should be made mandatory in high-risk settings. The consultation, which will continue until 4 October 2024, follows the government’s adoption of voluntary AI guardrails in early September 2024. It is the latest step of several by the Australian government to ensure the safe and responsible deployment and use of AI. How to regulate high-risk AI is also being debated in other parts of the world.

This Global Trends flash discusses an amendment to Australia’s criminal code that strengthens criminal penalties for the transmission of unconsented sexually explicit material, including material made via artificial intelligence (AI) or other technology. This conduct is often meant to humiliate and harass others, especially women and girls; and it has become increasingly common worldwide. This is due to easily accessible deep synthesis or “deepfake” software, namely AI-powered tools that can reproduce the likenesses of real persons. Several jurisdictions around the world are addressing the deepfake phenomenon generally.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) announced that the final date for subscriber identification module (SIM) card registration is 14 September 2024. After that date, all SIM cards which are not linked to a national identity number (NIN) will be deactivated. To date, more than 153m SIM cards have been successfully registered with NIN identification, achieving a 96% compliance rate, this Global Trends Flash highlights. Like Nigeria, several other African countries have recently updated their regulatory frameworks to ensure SIM card users’ identities are duly registered.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is consulting until 19 September 2024 on a draft policy brief aimed at informing legislators worldwide about regulatory approaches to artificial intelligence (AI) currently being considered globally by legislative bodies. UNESCO identified and categorized nine regulatory approaches. These are not mutually exclusive and were ordered by UNESCO from the least interventionist to the most coercive. This Global Trends Flash summarises the findings and scope of the UNESCO policy brief, with concrete examples from around the world for each of the nine categories identified.