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	Nature is everybody’s business by Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity Dr. David Obura, Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services   Feb. 2026   * In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature, were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion.   * Less than 1% of publicly reporting companies mention their impacts on biodiversity in their reports.   Every business depends on biodiversity, and every business impacts biodiversity. The growth of the global economy has been at the cost of immense biodiversity loss, which now poses a critical and pervasive systemic risk to the economy, financial stability and human wellbeing. This is a central finding of a landmark new report published today by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).   Even companies that might seem far-removed from nature or that do not see themselves as nature-based rely, directly or indirectly, on material inputs, regulation of environmental conditions. Yet, businesses often bear little or no financial cost for their negative impacts on the environmental conditions we all depend on for life. Businesses are central to halting and reversing biodiversity loss.   The IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment report finds that the current conditions in which businesses operate are not compatible with achieving a just and sustainable future, and that these conditions also perpetuate systemic risks.   Businesses often face inadequate or perverse incentives, barriers that hinder efforts to reverse nature’s decline, an institutional environment with insufficient support, enforcement and compliance, as well as significant gaps in data and knowledge. These combine with business models that result in ever-increasing material consumption and an emphasis on reporting quarterly earnings, whilst contributing to the degradation of nature around the world.   The Report makes the point that fundamental change is possible and necessary to create an enabling environment to align what is profitable for business with what is beneficial for biodiversity and people.   “This Report draws on thousands of sources, bringing together years of research and practice into a single integrated framework that shows both the risks of nature loss to business, and the opportunities for business to help reverse this,” said Matt Jones (UK), one of three Co-chairs of the Assessment.   “This is a pivotal moment for businesses and financial institutions, as well as Governments and civil society, to cut through the confusion of countless methods and metrics, and to use the clarity and coherence offered by the Report to take meaningful steps towards transformative change. Businesses and other key actors can either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction…both of species in nature, but potentially also their own.”   Business-as-usual incentives are driving nature’s decline and do not support the transformative change necessary to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.   For example, large subsidies that drive losses of biodiversity are directed to business activities with the support of lobbying by businesses and trade associations.   In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature, were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion.   In contrast, $220 billion in public and private finance flows were directed in 2023 to activities contributing to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity, representing just 3% of the public funds and incentives that encourage harmful business behaviour or prevent behaviour beneficial to biodiversity.   “The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business”, said Prof. Stephen Polasky (USA), Co-chair of the Assessment. “Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it. Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points.   The Report shows that business as usual is not inevitable – with the right policies, as well as financial and cultural shifts, what is good for nature is also what is best for profitability. To get there, the Report offers tools for choosing more effective measurements and analysis.”   The Report finds that a wide range of methods, knowledge and data exist for measuring business impacts and dependencies, which can already inform decisions and action. Yet less than 1% of publicly reporting companies mention their impacts on biodiversity in their reports.   The Report makes it clear that all businesses, including financial institutions, have a responsibility to address their impacts and dependencies. The authors point out in their report the many actions that businesses can take now that benefit business and biodiversity.   “Better engagement with nature is not optional for business – it is a necessity”, said Prof. Rueda. “This is vital for their bottom line, long-term prosperity and the transformative change needed for a more just and sustainable future. To avoid greenwashing though, it is essential that businesses have transparent and credible strategies, which clearly demonstrate their actions and how they contribute to biodiversity outcomes and that they publicly disclose their impacts and dependencies as well as their lobbying activities”.   The Report explores both actions that can be taken by businesses themselves and ‘signalling’ actions that can publicly influence and inspire action by others.   Another central message of the Report is that businesses cannot, by themselves, deliver the scale of change needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. Collaboration, collective and individual actions are essential to create an enabling environment where businesses contribute to a just and sustainable future.   Five specific components are identified as central to such an enabling environment: policy, legal and regulatory frameworks; economic and financial systems; social values, norms and culture; technology and data; and capacity and knowledge. The Report provides more than 100 specific examples of concrete actions that can be taken, across each of these five components, by businesses, governments, financial actors and civil society.   “Better stewardship of biodiversity is central to managing risk across the whole of the economy and throughout societies – it’s not some distant environmental issue, but a core challenge now in every boardroom and cabinet-room,” said Prof. Polasky.   “We need to move beyond the fallacy of a binary choice between governments and decision-makers being either pro-environment or pro-business. All business depends on nature, so actions that conserve and sustainably use nature can also be those that help businesses thrive in the long-term.   One of the innovations of this Report is that it provides a template for accelerating collaboration and collective actions at all levels among and by governments, financial actors, other actors including civil society, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, consumers, NGOs, international organisations, and academia in addition to the action needed by businesses and financial institutions themselves.”   Speaking about the significance of the Business and Biodiversity Report, Dr. David Obura, Chair of IPBES said: “This IPBES Assessment Report was delivered with urgency, as a vital contribution to efforts by businesses, governments, financial actors and the whole of society to meet the goals and targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change".   "It relates very directly to Target 15 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which focuses on businesses, but ultimately to all our shared global goals because businesses are at the centre of how our economies, and large parts of our society, depend on and impact nature”.   "Nature is everybody’s business and the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity is central to business sustainability and success".   http://www.ipbes.net/business-impact http://www.ipbes.net/node/97532 http://ipbes.canto.de/v/IPBES12Media/ http://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1y/k1yl72cx8w http://www.ipbes.net/nexus-assessment http://www.ipbes.net/media_release/Values_Assessment_Published http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/time-to-align-economic-practice-with-ecological-reality-the-critical-need-to-include-nature-in-macroeconomic-models/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2026/02/a-business-necessity-align-with-nature-or-risk-collapse-ipbes-report-warns/ http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/biodiversity http://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/biodiversity/ http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/governments-must-protect-nature-or-pay-a-higher-price-for-borrowing-study-finds/   # Biodiversity is the natural world around us, and the variety of all of the different kinds of organisms - the plants, animals, insects and microorganisms that live on our planet. Every one of these live and work together in ecosystems to maintain and support life on earth, and exist in delicate balance. Biodiversity is one of the most precious and important things we have.   Without biological diversity, our entire support system for human, as well as animal life, would collapse. We rely on nature to provide us with food and clean water, for medicines, to prevent flooding and other extreme weather effects. So much is provided by the natural ecosystems around us – they’re truly vital to life on earth. Because biodiversity is so crucial to our future survival, its loss is a crisis on a global scale. Visit the related web page
	Less than 5% of major companies pay living wages by World Benchmarking Alliance, agencies   Jan. 2026   Less than 5% of major companies pay living wages - World Benchmarking Alliance   Corporate inaction on wages and affordability is worsening the global cost-of-living crisis   Less than 5% of major companies pay a living wage, leaving households worldwide under growing financial strain.   The world is no longer weathering a temporary cost-of-living shock. A crisis that should have passed has instead calcified into a structural failure, as wages flatline and prices of everyday essentials keep climbing.   Real wages remain below pre-pandemic levels in many countries, while food, housing, energy, water, and transport costs continue to outpace household incomes.   Half of all wage workers in low-income countries earn less than USD 201 (PPP) a month — far below what is needed for a decent standard of living — and even median-income households in advanced economies are struggling to meet basic needs.   The world’s largest companies influence both sides of the cost-of-living equation: they determine what people earn and what people pay.   Moreover, the scale of these companies means their decisions directly affect billions of people globally, as essential services become increasingly privatised and corporate supply chains expand.   Momentum across the multilateral system is calling for action on living wages. In 2024, the ILO reached a landmark tripartite agreement formally defining and establishing principles for living wages, a commitment that governments reaffirmed in the 2025 Doha Political Declaration, now moving into implementation.   Leading standard-setters such as GRI and ISSB are signalling stronger emphasis on wage- and benefits-related expectations in future corporate disclosure. In tandem, WBA has launched a Collective Call to Action, now supported by over 65 signatories, inviting companies, governments and investors to embed living wage principles into practice.   Less than 5% of major companies report paying living wages   The overwhelming majority of the 2,000 companies across WBA’s assessments are shirking their responsibility for paying living wages or ensuring affordable essential services, exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis at both ends.   Among these 2,000 globally influential companies, which employ over 107 million workers, less than 5% disclose that they guarantee a living wage for their workforce, of which four out of five are headquartered in North America or Europe.   The remaining 95% of companies do not disclose whether their workers earn enough to meet basic needs, leaving millions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, without any clear assurance of sufficient earnings.   Performance is even weaker in supply chains: less than 3% of companies support suppliers in paying living wages, despite influencing the incomes of more than half a billion workers through their supply chains globally.   Corporate action on affordability of basic services remains deficient   Corporate performance on affordability is also strikingly poor. Among the 300 companies affecting utilities, housing and transport, 76% score zero on every affordability indicator, from basic reporting to target-setting and implementation.   This means that the companies people rely on for essential services neither disclose whether their services are affordable nor report any action to ease rising costs for households. The digital sector fares no better: only less than 8% of 200 digital companies have programmes that expand access to technology for vulnerable groups.   Affordability is not treated as material by most companies. There a few promising practices - in the utilities sector, American Water Works, Iberdrola and United Utilities have embedded affordability measures into business planning and reporting, and are taking steps to support vulnerable households and reduce bill volatility.   Yet only four utility companies disclose forward-looking affordability targets, leaving the majority of 3.6 billion energy customers and 800 million water customers with providers that show no definitive plans to improve affordability.   Many top performers in the digital sector are headquartered in lower-income countries such as Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and South Africa, offering opportunities to scale low-cost models and break traditional wealth patterns. Nonetheless, affordability continues to be one of the main barriers to digital inclusion globally.   The results are clear: companies still have a considerable distance to go to mitigate their worldwide impact on wages and affordability, while inequality and cost-of-living pressures continue to mount.   Companies can play a pivotal role in tackling the cost-of-living crisis by considering living wages and affordability as core responsibilities. Next to ensuring living wages for workers across their operations and supply chains, it is increasingly important that companies conduct affordability risk assessments, integrate affordability as a material sustainability topic and disclose relevant metrics.   At the same time, governments can help bridge the gap between minimum wages and living wages through policies. By integrating wage standards into reporting requirements, policymakers can accelerate corporate transparency and action.   Simultaneously, investors and other financial actors can engage with companies to promote living wages and affordability as fundamental human rights and overcome long-term systemic issues.   Clear accountability frameworks are essential. Defining responsibilities for companies, governments, and investors is fundamental to ensure that affordability doesn’t slip through the cracks and land up ‘no one’s problem’.   Creating clarity on everyone's responsibility sets the conditions for collective action that closes gaps in affordability and ensures that no one’s basic needs are overlooked.   http://www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org/corporate-inaction-wages-and-affordability-worsening-global-cost-living-crisis http://www.srpoverty.org/2025/04/04/joint-statement-all-states-must-prioritise-adoption-of-a-living-wage-ahead-of-the-second-world-summit-for-social-development/ http://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/lessons-from-mexicos-wage-policy-that-lifted-millions-out-of-poverty/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2025/01/what-is-a-living-wage-and-why-is-it-a-human-rights-issue/ http://www.ituc-csi.org/wages http://www.socialprotectionfloorscoalition.org/2025/02/achieving-global-social-justice/   June 2026   Rising Emissions, Depleting Water and Vanishing Land: AI is threatening Natural Resources for Billions - UN Scientists   By 2030, AI's water use will match the needs of 1.3 billion people while its power use triples that of 650 million, UN University investigation warns.   By 2030, the global data centres powering artificial intelligence are projected to consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity. This is nearly triple the combined annual electricity use of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria—countries collectively home to more than 650 million people. Their associated water footprint will equal the basic annual domestic water needs of all 1.3 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa, and their land footprint will exceed 14,500 square kilometers, roughly twice the Jakarta metropolitan area, home to more than 32 million people.   These stark findings are detailed in the new report, Environmental Cost of AI's Energy Use: Carbon, Water and Land Footprints, by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).   Researchers have previously warned about the greenhouse gas emissions of data centers before. But the UN scientists now argue that the environmental costs of AI and data centers cannot be understood through carbon emissions alone. In their report, they quantify the carbon, water and land footprints of AI's electricity use across the globe and highlight the big differences between these footprints in the world’s 20 largest data center hubs.   "This report is a call for using AI responsibly and addressing its unintended impacts proactively to make it sustainable and equitable. We have a narrow window to ensure that the backbone of this technological development is sited within planetary limits, and that the communities who provide the critical minerals for AI and the ones that host its infrastructure and e-waste are also among those who benefit from it." said Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of UNU-INWEH who led the investigation team."   The report finds that AI's environmental cost is being systematically mismeasured. Most existing assessments focus on the carbon emissions associated with training large models. Yet every kilowatt-hour of electricity used to train or run an AI system also carries a huge water footprint, from cooling and power generation, and a land footprint, from energy infrastructure and supply chains. These three footprints do not move in the same direction. The report finds that AI's environmental cost is being systematically mismeasured.   The benefits and burdens of the massive global expansion of AI are highly unequal. "If you map where data centres are getting built against where water stress is worst, you tend to see the same regions in some instances," said Dr. Mir Matin, Manager of UNU-INWEH's Geospatial, Climate and Infrastructure Analytics Programme and a co-author of the report.   "And the communities living near these sites are not necessarily the ones using the AI being run there. That asymmetry is the issue. Without fixing it, we'll just be repeating older patterns, where some places carry the costs and other places capture the benefits."   Data centres are becoming country-scale consumers of electricity, water and land. Global data-centre electricity use, estimated at 448 TWh in 2025, could reach 945 TWh by 2030. The associated water footprint is projected at 9.3 trillion litres and the associated land footprint at over 14,500 square kilometres..   http://unu.edu/inweh/news/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-use-carbon-water-and-land-footprints http://unu.edu/inweh/collection/global-water-bankruptcy http://unu.edu/inweh/news/water-quality-mirror-and-magnifier-of-structural-inequalities-and-social-injustice   Massive job losses from the adoption of AI and Automation predicted   * AI will affect nearly 40 percent of jobs worldwide   The International Monetary Fund (IMF 2024) estimates that about 60 percent of jobs in advanced economies are exposed to AI, and that 33 percent fall into a category of “high exposure,” with a high risk that AI substitutes for human tasks rather than complementing them.   AI Job Exposure and Displacement Risk by Country Income Groups (% of employment)   Advanced economies: Affected jobs 60% High Displacement Risk 33%   Emerging markets: Affected jobs 40% High Displacement Risk 24%   Low-income countries: Affected jobs 26% High Displacement Risk 18%   A few new jobs will be created, but many more jobs will be eliminated or displaced (IMF 2026). Job losses affecting roughly one-third of employment in high-income countries, and a quarter in emerging markets, is not a normal business-cycle adjustment, it represents a structural rupture.   The Inter-American Development Bank’s index of occupational exposure finds that 980 million jobs worldwide face high disruption risk in the next year.   Goldman Sachs has predicted that as many as half of all jobs could be fully automated by 2045, driven by generative AI and robotics. PwC estimates that by the mid-2030s, up to 30% of jobs could be automatable.   800 million workers to lose their jobs because of automation. That's the alarming conclusion of a 2017 report by global management consultants McKinsey.   * In an interview in September 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted that AI may take over 30-40% of work tasks in the economy by 2030.   The World Economic Forum 2025 Future Report highlights Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei as warning that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within one to four years. Estimates have projected that between 400 million and 800 million jobs worldwide could be displaced by automation by 2030. And artificial intelligence (AI) could cause 30%, of all workers to be unemployed by 2030.   "It’s the quiet reality being whispered across the American executive suite. We’re standing at the edge of a massive disruption driven by AI, automation and new models of work that few leaders are talking about publicly".   The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Jobs of the Future Report reveals that due to AI, 41% of employers intend to reduce their workforce by 2030. Amazon believes it can use robots to avoid adding more than half a million jobs in the next few years, the New York Times reports.   23 Feb. 2026: Ethan Mollick - Ralph J. Roberts Distinguished Faculty Scholar, Co-Director, Generative AI Labs at Wharton University: "The CEOs of the AI labs have spent the last two years ominously discussing massive future job losses even as they continued AI development. As AI becomes more salient outside of the “AI bubble,” workers and policymakers are going to need to start taking that kind of talk very seriously".   * Pope Leo warns of the threat to millions of jobs posed by AI.   “The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good,” Leo wrote.   “A society that guarantees employment to only a small fraction of the population, despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to forced inactivity.. resulting in human impoverishment,” the pope wrote. “This creates a paradox of material progress and anthropological regression that undermines the foundations of a just and stable social peace.”   * Massive job losses from the adoption of AI and Automation are predicted to be in the hundreds of millions globally and remain absent from international discussions. With AI industry PR agencies promoting "universal basic incomes" as a supposed antidote to such concerns. Such promotions are farcical, with the World Inequality Report 2026 reporting that the richest 10% of the world’s population owning 75% of wealth and the bottom half just 2%, with the top 1% wealthier than the bottom 90% combined.   Government and financial institutions will continue to pursue austerity for the working classes and largesse for multinational corporations and economic elites and the hundreds of millions impacted by AI job losses will be left impoverished for Wall Street investors profits. Many workers will confront lower wages, insecure casualised work, with increasing roles in the gig economy and service sector roles to satisfy tech billionaire bottom lines.   http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jun/24/indian-factory-workers-told-film-themselves-for-ai-robots http://www.theindiaforum.in/economy/ai-needs-human-hands-indian-workers-resist http://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/automation-and-repression-the-two-go-hand-in-hand-daron-acemoglu/107063582 http://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35336/w35336.pdf http://www.ipsnews.net/2026/06/ai-will-destabilize-jobs-the-middle-class-and-the-welfare-state-unless-we-act-in-time/ http://www.unrisd.org/en/library/blog-posts/artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-the-social-contract http://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/news/wemustactnow/   EU will need to tax AI ‘corporate profits’ to keep funding the social welfare system, by Mark Stabile. (EU Observer. Extract)   Every major technological shift reshapes not just the economy but the tax system that pays for it. When big corporations emerged, corporate and payroll taxes followed. When mass car ownership took hold, fuel duties emerged to pay for the roads it required.   As AI shifts work from people to machines, it will force a rethink of who gets taxed, on what, and where. Nowhere is that question more urgent than in Europe, which funds the world’s most comprehensive welfare states primarily through taxes on work.   Taxes on work make up 51.5 percent of all tax revenue in the EU-27, according to the European Commission’s latest Taxation Trends data — a share that rose in 2024. These charges are taken straight from the payslip. They’re hard to avoid, and scale with employment. AI, by replacing human work with software and machines, eats away at exactly this tax base.   The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that around 40 percent of jobs worldwide are exposed to AI. Fewer workers will also mean fewer payslips, pension contributions and social charges, weakening the revenue streams that fund Europe’s pension and healthcare systems. This is not a distant problem; the costs are already mounting.   The obvious response is to shift more of the tax burden onto corporate profits, which will increasingly reflect the gains firms make by deploying AI instead of hiring workers. The case for shifting weight from payroll taxes to corporate profits is strong and strengthens as AI replaces more workers with machines.   But profits, unlike payrolls, move. A company can locate its intellectual property in a low-rate jurisdiction — a pattern Europe knows well from decades of profits routed through Ireland and Luxembourg — and ensure that profits are booked far from where the jobs are lost. It is how the world's largest technology and AI firms already operate.   Profits shifted across jurisdictions to avoid tax, and e-commerce allows sales where firms have no physical presence. AI makes these reforms more urgent.   AI companies are concentrated in a select number of countries, very few of them European, but the displacement they cause, and the public services that displaced workers will require, will weigh heavily on European budgets.   Under the G7's June 2025 ‘side-by-side’ agreement, US-parented groups would be exempt from the EU's minimum-tax rules: a carveout the European Commission confirmed in January 2026. The Commission also dropped its proposed EU digital levy under US trade pressure. Such exceptions and carveouts show that big-power politics can hollow out minimum tax frameworks.   European governments that fail to act will be managing the social costs of technological disruption with a tax system built for the industrial age, while the profits that fund their rivals accumulate beyond their reach.   Yet, Europeans needs for health care, pensions, and consumption remain. As wage-based contributions shrink, Europe must shift more of the tax burden onto corporate profits and close off the routes that let those profits move beyond the reach of the states bearing the costs of automation.   * Mark Stabile is chaired professor of wealth inequality and professor of economics at European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD). He is also the academic director of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality.   http://www.icrict.com/international-tax-reform/un-ecosoc-a-blueprint-for-financial-integrity/ http://www.icrict.com/international-tax-reform/the-us-threat-to-global-tax-reform-a-proposal-for-protecting-multilateralism/ http://www.icrict.com/corporate-taxation/countries-must-stand-up-against-trump-bullying/ http://www.icrict.com/reports/icrict-evaluation-of-the-oecd-g2o-two-pillar-solution/ http://taxjustice.net/press/rich-countries-push-to-preserve-the-status-quo-in-un-tax-convention-despite-standing-to-gain-billions/   July 2026   UN Opens First All-Nations AI Forum. 191 Nations cannot verify what they are being asked to Govern. US rejects any binding multilateral rules. (Passblue, Tech Times)   The United States accounts for approximately 75 percent of the computing power among the world's 500 most capable AI supercomputers. China holds roughly 15 percent. Together, two nations control nearly all of the physical infrastructure on which frontier AI systems are trained and run. (Epoch AI supercomputer data)   That means 191 of the 193 nations lack the independent compute capacity to audit, evaluate, or stress-test the systems they are being asked to govern. Any future safety standard will depend, for its technical enforcement, on the voluntary cooperation of the two nations that built and operate the systems being regulated.   Whether that cooperation is forthcoming is not a minor implementation detail — it is the structural condition on which the entire exercise rests.   The United States has been explicit about its position. When the UN Global Dialogue was formally launched at the UN General Assembly in September 2025, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, stated that the US "totally rejects all efforts by international bodies to assert global governance of AI." That position has not changed: the Trump administration's June 2, 2026 executive order on AI established a voluntary framework for frontier model safety reviews and specifically stated that nothing in the order creates a mandatory government licensing or preclearance requirement.   The structural consequence is that the international community is attempting to establish governance norms for a technology whose enforcement infrastructure is held almost entirely by one of its most powerful members — a member that attends but has formally refused the premise.   Places where frontier AI is produced, evaluated and released, has no meaningful UN presence at all. There is no multilateral body with technical staff who can examine a laboratory’s work, no arrangement for evaluating training runs, no shared infrastructure for incident reporting across borders. The governing architecture for the next several decades is consolidating right now in bilateral arrangements between frontier labs and the governments that host them, in private entities like Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and in export-control decisions by the parties hosting the technology. Once those institutional facts are established, the path of least resistance for every subsequent decision will be to extend them rather than to build a multilateral alternative.   The pattern is visible in the news cycle. The US Department of Commerce recently authorized the release of Anthropic’s most-able AI model to roughly a hundred American institutions, two weeks after an export-control suspension had taken it offline for everyone. Both the suspension and the selective release were decided by the White House. The approved partners are American, but the populations affected by the technology are global. European officials expressed frustration at this new dependence on decisions made in Washington. The authority to determine which populations receive access to a frontier-safety technology now resides, by default, in a single national administration.   Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. (Extract)   Economic and labour gains and their equitable distribution are not automatic.. AI risks widening inequality, displacing workers and shifting wealth from labour to capital rather than creating sustainable good jobs – those with fair compensation, worker autonomy and a reliable path to social dignity..   Foundation-model markets trend oligopolistic: chips, compute, cloud and frontier training are concentrated, generating rents that must be paid. Who owns the stack, determines access, captures the surplus and what happens to labour-income tax systems as the gains shift to capital?
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