This week’s featured stories 10 August – 16 August 2026…
Supercharging AI into explosive growth
If frontier AI models can be used to develop their next models, this may lead to an ‘intelligence explosion’ and give a large boost to technological advancement. Davidson et al develop a framework for understanding how AI may transform the economy through new feedback loops
Europe’s regulatory double bind
The EU’s AI Act was supposed to enter into full effect on 2 August 2026. But while the transparency layer has come into effect, its high-risk regime has been delayed. Marco Perugini argues that the result is a double bind in which Europe loses regulatory sovereignty whether it enforces its own rules or retreats from them
Many public institutions are now experimenting with AI tools to support surveillance, supervision, and policy analysis. Paola Ganum and Tohid Atashbar show that today’s LLMs perform well on structured, factual tasks but remain less reliable on nuanced rating questions, where human judgement still matters
Why financial technology is moving toward more modular infrastructure
The financial technology sector is changing quickly. Hannah Fischer-Lauder discusses the increasing reliance on modular infrastructure by financial companies
Quantum is the EU’s next big competitiveness test – to pass, here’s what it needs to do
Andrea Renda argues that quantum is set to massively change the way we organise our economy, and proposes a series of dos and don’ts to ensure the EU gets quantum right, based on two decades of analysing EU technology policy
Trusted interdependence in an age of geopolitical shocks
Singapore and India bring complementary strengths to the semiconductor industry, which is facing geopolitical shocks and intense demand from AI. Asha Hemrajani writes that this partnership can serve as an operating architecture for resilient logistics, shared research, manufacturing and talent development
Building a European competitive edge in space
The global space economy is entering a decisive phase of structural transformation. Carlo Des Dorides, Andrea G Rodríguez, Jaime Martínez and Christopher Schade propose an agenda for Europe to move from coordination to orchestration
How Trump’s next tariffs could drive companies back to China
The Trump administration’s next policy decisions on tariffs could increase imports from China. Chad P Bown explains how the administration’s policy may leave companies no choice to move their sourcing back to China
