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Demonstration of AI innovation at the AI for Good Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, on July 7, 2025.
Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, it’s been nearly impossible to attend a global conference — from Davos to Delhi — without encountering a slew of panels and keynote speeches on artificial intelligence. Will AI make our lives easier, or will it destroy humanity? Can it be a force for good? Can AI be regulated without stifling innovation?
At the ripe old age of eight, the AI for Good Summit is now a veteran voice in this rapidly-evolving dialogue. It kicks off today in Geneva, Switzerland, for what promises to be its most ambitious edition yet.
Launched in 2017 by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the gathering typically features conversations on AI safety, access, and governance, but also serves as a “show and tell” moment for innovators spotlighting the latest in robotics, autonomous vehicles, and AI-based tools to combat climate change.
This year, AI for Good is being held at the massive Palexpo, Geneva’s largest convention center, with thousands expected to attend over four days. GZERO is there all week for our Global Stage series, produced in partnership with Microsoft, to help you understand what this summit is and why it’s such a hot ticket (as far as international conferences go).
What is ITU, and why does it host AI for Good? The ITU, founded in 1865, is the UN’s agency for communication technologies. In fact, it was formed 160 years ago as the International Telegraph Union, just as that electronic correspondence method was changing how messages spread across the world. ITU is perhaps best known for establishing global telecom standards, but it’s been playing a growing role in helping more people access the Internet and all the benefits that can bring.
ITU launched “AI for Good” as a platform to connect technology developers and innovators with organizations working on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which seek to bring more people into health and socioeconomic stability by eradicating key challenges like extreme poverty, hunger, and gender inequality.
“We’ve been very consistent and true to our original mission,” the ITU’s Frederic Werner, a summit co-founder, told GZERO. “It was identifying practical applications of AI to solve global challenges and to foster partnerships to make that happen for global impact.”
What happens this week? Expect lots of discussion about the future of jobs and how agentic AI – meaning AI that is autonomously self-improving – could impact companies and the workforce. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff will address participants on that theme, and Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, now an ITU ambassador, will speak about the importance of training and educating people to work effectively with AI.
Throughout the Palexpo, startup founders and established companies alike will be sharing their creations — like interactive robots and flying cars (more like drones that can carry people, but cool nonetheless). The summit also highlights AI youth initiatives and inventions from around the world.
There will also be a day devoted to policy and regulatory frameworks surrounding AI, a speech from Estonia’s President Alar Karis, and a presentation of suggested standards for AI encompassing everything from healthcare applications to the risks of AI-generated misinformation.
Why does the summit matter right now? For starters, the global “digital divide” remains vast. An estimated 2.6 billion people, a third of the world’s population, still lack Internet connectivity altogether. And nearly 150 years after Thomas Edison introduced the incandescent light bulb, 700 million people still don’t have the electricity to power one. Most are in the Global South.
As more and more industries adopt and deploy AI, the technology could contribute as much as $20 trillion to the global economy through 2030, driving as much as 3.5% of the world’s GDP by then. But the largest and most developed economies, primarily the US and China, stand to gain the most right now, while poorer countries fall further behind.
Conversations in Geneva this week are confronting that concern, calling for “cooperation” and greater global inclusion in the AI economy. In today’s deeply fragmented geopolitical reality, that may be much further in the distance than a self-flying passenger drone.
See GZERO’s complete interview with AI for Good co-founder Frederic Werner here.
American President Donald Trump's X Page is seen displayed on a smartphone with a Tiktok logo in the background
In August 1991, a handful of high-ranking Soviet officials launched a military coup to halt what they believed (correctly) was the steady disintegration of the Soviet Union. Their first step was to seize control of the flow of information across the USSR by ordering state television to begin broadcasting a Bolshoi Theatre production of Swan Lake on a continuous loop until further notice. (Click that link for some prehistoric GZERO coverage of that event.)
Even in the decade that followed the Cold War’s end, citizens of both authoritarian states and democracies had far fewer sources of reliable information than today about what was happening in their communities, across their countries and around the world.
Earlier this month, the Reuters Institute published its 14th annual Digital News Report, which Reuters claims is the “most comprehensive study of news consumption worldwide.” Its findings detail just how fundamentally different today’s media landscape has become. Here are some key takeaways that help us understand how and where people get their information and ideas about what’s happening today:
- “News use across online platforms continues to fragment.”
- “Engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows. This is particularly the case in the United States.”
- “The proportion accessing news via social media and video networks in the United States (54%) is sharply up – overtaking both TV news (50%) and news websites/apps (48%) for the first time.”
- “Around a third of our global sample use Facebook (36%) and YouTube (30%) for news each week. Instagram (19%) and WhatsApp (19%) are used by around a fifth, while TikTok (16%) remains ahead of X at 12%.”
- Personalities and influencers are, in some countries, playing a significant role in shaping public debates.
- There’s no reason to expect these trends won’t continue indefinitely.
There’s much more in the Reuters report, but today let’s focus on a few political implications of the points above.
In the years since social media and online influencers began shaping our perception of reality, we’ve seen strong anti-establishment political trends. Think Brexit, the election of charismatic political outsiders (like Donald Trump), and a move away from long-entrenched political establishments in dozens of countries.
Social media algorithms create “filter bubbles” as algorithms feed us steady supplies of what they’ve learned we like at the expense of new information and ideas that make us question what we believe. That trend helps explain the worsening polarization we see in the United States and many European countries.
That problem is compounded by the increasing prevalence in social media feeds of AI bots, which can generate heavy volumes of false information, distorting our sense of reality every day and in real time.
All these trends will make politics, particularly in democracies, much less predictable over time as elections swing outcomes between competing ideologies.
As a source of news and insight, social media has brought billions of people directly into the political lives of their countries in ways unimaginable a generation ago. They’ll continue to play a positive role in helping news consumers and voters learn more and share their views. But the unreliability of so many social media information sources — and the political volatility it increasingly generates — create problems that will only become more complex as technologies change.
And this problem is intensifying at a time when more of the big threats facing governments extend across borders — the eruption of more regional wars, climate change fallout, management of refugee flows, and governance of artificial intelligence. Big ideological swings following elections will make long-term multinational cooperation much more complicated.
Tell us what you think. How should our elected leaders, media sources, and all of us news consumers respond to these challenges? Let us know here.
Democratic mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo, left, shakes hands with Zohran Mamdani, center, as Whitney Tilson reacts after participating in a Democratic mayoral primary debate, on June 4, 2025, in New York City.
New York City residents head to the polls today to vote in the Democratic primary election for mayor, and while housing affordability, street safety, and public transit are the key issues motivating voters, another issue has come into the limelight in recent weeks, from nearly 6,000 miles away.
The candidates views’ of Israel have become, if not a decisive factor, a huge flash point in a city that is home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel, becoming a major topic of discussion at the two televised debates.
The race has now come down to two candidates: Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Democratic Socialist politician of South Asian descent who once tried to become a rapper, and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, an establishment centrist who resigned from his previous role after facing accusations of sexual harassment. Other candidates like hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander are still in the running but face long odds – they have endorsed Cuomo and Mamdani, respectively.
The race is on a knife edge. Polls show a surprisingly close race: Most had shown Cuomo ahead, but an Emerson College survey from last week found Mamdani edging out his rival in the final round. In a city that is as heavily Democratic as the Big Apple, the Democratic primary winner will be the firm favorite to win the general election on November 4.
Where do the candidates stand on Israel? Mamdani is an avowed critic. At the first televised debate, he affirmed Israel’s right to exist, but not as a “Jewish state.” He has also defended the use of the controversial call to “Globalize the Intifada,” drawing backlash from several Jewish groups who view it as antisemitic hate speech. But he has also said that he wishes to “meet Jewish New Yorkers where they are” and focus on the issues that they care about in the Big Apple.
“The New York City mayor does not make foreign policy, of course,” Tilson told GZERO Media last week. But Mamdani’s views on Israel, he said, are “absolutely motivating Jewish voters in the city.”
Cuomo, on the other hand, has been wholly supportive of Israel – he’s always seen wearing a yellow ribbon on his lapel in solidarity with Israelis held hostage in Gaza. Yet he has faced criticism, too. Lander, who is Jewish, accused him of “weaponizing antisemitism to score political points.”
How did this become such an issue? New York City is home to 1.4 million Jewish people, accounting for roughly 12% of the city’s population. While Israel is often a higher priority for Jewish voters than others, it’s especially high now among Jewish New Yorkers due to Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, the backlash against it at institutions like Columbia University, and the rise of antisemitic violence across the United States.
New York Jewish voters, reflecting the broader community in the US, are hardly a monolith. While support for Israel is generally strong, there is a diversity of opinion about the war in Gaza and the Palestinian cause. That may in part be why a recent poll shows Jewish voters in New York are actually split among the top candidates, Cuomo at 31%, Mamdani at 20%, and Lander, who is Jewish himself, at 18%.
Reality check. Housing affordability and the economy remain the top issue for voters: Three in 10 New Yorkers put housing costs as their top issue, and another two in 10 said it was the economy, per an Emerson College poll from May. Fewer than 1% of voters said their top issue was foreign policy.
Yet Israel specifically remains an issue, one that can’t be captured in the nebulous “foreign policy” bracket, says Tilson, whose wife and daughters are Jewish. What this is really about, he said, is Jewish people’s perception of safety – over three-quarters of all American Jews said they feel less safe in the United States following Hamas’ attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, per an American Jewish Committee report. In New York City, antisemitic attacks increased more than 100% between 2022 and 2023, according to the local offices of the Anti-Defamation League.
“You’re defining it too narrowly by saying foreign policy. It is [about] keeping the Jewish community safe,” said Tilson. “And there has been a dramatic decline in the feeling of [safety among New York Jews].”
A rising number of US college graduates are having trouble securing jobs. The Class of 2025 is up against the toughest labor market in four years, with the unemployment rate for recent graduates sitting nearly two percentage points above than the national average of 4%. Trade tensions are also raising fears of a global recession.
On top of these short-term economic factors is a major long-term one: experts say that many entry-level positions – particularly in the tech sector – are being displaced by artificial intelligence. Here’s a look at the majors least likely to lead to a job after college.
Maybe majoring in history was not such a bad idea after all.
Trump tells Elon to say it to his face. #PUPPETREGIME
Watch more PUPPET REGIME here!
Members of the California National Guard stand in a line, blocking an entrance to the Federal Building, as demonstrators gather nearby, during protests against immigration sweeps, in Los Angeles, California, USA, on June 9, 2025.
Overnight, hundreds of US Marines began arriving in the city of Los Angeles, where protests, some of them violent, against the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement have been ongoing since Saturday.
The move marked an escalation by the White House beyond its initial deployment of National Guard troops on Saturday, and it came just hours after California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom sued the Trump administration over that decision, calling it an “unprecedented usurpation of state authority,” and accusing the White House of provoking the protests.
Why are the Marines there? The troops are officially acting on orders to protect federal property rather than to restore order more widely, though US President Donald Trump has suggested they are there to suppress protesters he has labeled “insurrectionists.”
Legal scholars say this rhetoric suggests Trump may be leaving the door open to invoke the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the direct use of the military against US citizens to suppress rebellion.
“The Insurrection Act is still sitting there on the shelf and gives the president enormous power,” Yale Legal Expert Emily Bazelon told Ian Bremmer on the upcoming episode of GZERO World.
It allows the military to go beyond protecting federal property, to potentially breaking up and policing the protests themselves. In an eerie historical echo, the last time a president did this was in 1992, when President George H. W. Bush deployed Marines to quell racially charged riots in Los Angeles that were touched off by the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist.
Trump has already tested the legal bounds in LA. When he deployed the National Guard over the objections of Governor Newsom – the first time a president has defied a governor in this way since the 1960s, he invoked Title 10 of the US Code. That’s a law which permits the White House to “federalize” state-based National Guard units if necessary to “execute the laws of the United States,” – in this case immigration enforcement.
California’s lawsuit says that the White House overstepped its authority and that local law enforcement is capable of managing the protests alone.
In the White House vs California standoff there are risks for both sides. On the one hand, Trump has public approval for stricter immigration policy, with a slight majority of Americans, and a robust majority of Republicans, in favor of his policies, according to polls taken before the weekend upheaval.
And with polls showing that only a third of Americans support the LA protests, Trump, who has long styled himself as a “law and order” leader, may also relish the notion of Democrats associating themselves with images of unpopular chaos and disorder on American streets.
But the deployment of federal troops also poses risks – if they are seen harming US citizens there could be a public backlash against an administration that is seen to be overstepping its bounds.
For now, Trump seems keen to push the envelope. “It is 100% true that they’re enforcing immigration laws and that there are lots of people in the country illegally. However, if you were just playing the numbers game, you would go to a poultry factory in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest and pick up a lot of factory workers,” says Bazelon.
“When you choose to go into the heart of a city, onto the streets and publicly snatch people up, you’re kind of asking for a reaction.”
A migrant carries his child after crossing the Darien Gap and arriving at the migrant reception center, in the village of Lajas Blancas, Darien Province, Panama, on September 26, 2024.
On Tuesday, a coalition government in the Netherlands collapsed. The trigger? Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Party of Freedom (PVV) and a coalition partner, demanded new restrictions on the government’s grant of asylum to migrants. When these weren’t met, he pulled his party from the governing coalition.
Elsewhere in Europe, anti-immigration frustrations have fueled the rising political fortunes of nativist parties and politicians in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and several other countries. In the United States, Donald Trump was again elected president in 2024 after centering his campaign not just on curbing illegal immigration across the southern border from Mexico, but also on deporting millions of undocumented immigrants.
This political trend isn’t limited to wealthy Western countries. The entry of a million Rohingya Muslims fleeing a bloody state crackdown in Myanmar has roiled the politics of Bangladesh. Refugees are moving across African borders in large numbers, fueling violence in many countries.
Globally, the number of people on the move is on the rise. In 2024, the UN reported 304 million international migrants, nearly double the number in 1990.
There are three main drivers of all these border crossings. The first is violence. Wars force civilians to flee, but less organized violence – like criminal gang activity in Central America – also pushes people to seek new lives abroad.
The second driver is climate change. Changing weather patterns disrupt farming, fishing, and herding, and can generate famine. Rising sea levels force people from over-crowded, low-lying areas.
But the principal cause is that a clear majority of the world’s migrants are simply looking for better economic opportunities for themselves and their families. This is especially true for those in developing countries. Counterintuitively, it isn’t poverty but their rising incomes that give them new opportunities to move toward richer countries.
Given these sources of migration, we should expect bigger waves ahead. The current lack of leadership in the international system, a problem that Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer calls the “G-zero world order,” will make armed conflict and an expansion of the world’s ungoverned spaces within countries, both more likely and more violent.
The Institute for the Study of Economics and Peace, a think tank, warns that more than one billion people live in 31 countries where “the country’s resilience is unlikely to sufficiently withstand the impact of ecological events” by 2050, contributing to “mass population displacement,” and that as many as 3.5 billion people could suffer from food insecurity by that date.
What’s more, as living standards and populations continue to grow in developing countries, more people will have the opportunity to move abroad.
As people increasingly go on the road, the politics in wealthy countries will also become uglier. Politicians on one side will insist that all new border restrictions are hateful and cruel, while those on the other will warn that surges of new arrivals will spread crime and disease.
Even when the debate is more nuanced, political leaders seem more interested in scoring points – and raising cash – at the other side’s expense than in finding common ground and enacting sensible immigration policies.
This deadlock over how to accommodate hundreds of millions of migrants in coming years will ensure this problem will become a much larger-scale international emergency than it is today. The situation in the Netherlands is the tip of the iceberg.
And, speaking as the husband of someone who migrated to America as a six-year-old girl, the scale of human tragedy becomes almost unthinkable.