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A United Nations report on AI warns the technology is moving faster than governments can keep up, and the window of opportunity to establish effective global governance of it will not be open forever. The Preliminary Report from the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence presents AI as something of a mixed blessing. It says that the potential benefits of AI are enormous. If deployed and applied thoughtfully, the technology could support progress towards sustainable development goals, among other gains. On the other hand, a rapid, unchecked deployment of the technology at scale presents risks such as harm to the mental health of users, potential use as a destructive tool, and adverse impact on social, economic, and environmental systems. Obtaining the benefits from AI while minimizing those risks requires effective governance, the report says. With complementary investments in skills and labor market regulation, AI will likely create new jobs. Without them, AI risks wider inequality, displacing workers, and shifting wealth from labor to capital – those who own and control the AI. AI is, of course, an all-encompassing term that covers everything from algorithms that try to predict the word you are typing to large language models (LLMs). The UN report seems most concerned about agentic AI, which refers to systems that are allowed to make their own decisions and act on them. There is no guarantee that such AI agents will not violate their instructions, and the UN report claims there is clear evidence of cases where they have already disregarded them. Such behavior may pose challenges to evaluation and oversight methods, as some leading AI systems have been shown to recognize testing environments and produce misleading evaluation results. Agentic systems make AI harder to measure and govern, it says, as emerging multi-agent risks cannot be detected through single-agent evaluation, and reliable methods for maintaining control over highly autonomous systems remain underdeveloped. The report also notes that policymakers aiming to draw up effective governance face a dilemma: they need evidence to make informed decisions, but by the time sufficient evidence exists, harmful systems may already be widely deployed. AI capabilities are also unevenly distributed. Most nations, including many advanced economies, lack the technical expertise to assess the most capable "frontier" models or to participate meaningfully in their governance, the UN claims. The US and China account for 90 percent of the compute power behind the leading AI models, leaving developing countries dependent on technology they cannot build or adapt to their own societies. This could reinforce existing global inequality rather than reducing it. But the report acknowledges the Scientific Panel's own lack of visibility into certain areas. Evidence is limited as to whether task-level AI productivity gains will aggregate to economy-wide gains, it says. As The Register has previously reported, many companies are failing to increase revenue or reduce operating costs through their AI projects, and that was before AI vendors drove up costs by shifting to consumption-based pricing, meaning there is a lack of evidence that AI will ever be cost-effective. Forecasts diverge significantly due to different assumptions about adoption and new task creation, according to the UN. The panel concludes that AI is neither inherently good nor bad, but its impact will depend on the choices that governments, companies, and societies make today. Given that the US government is already hostile to anything resembling regulation of AI companies, and that the industry is already copying techniques used by tobacco firms, big pharma, and oil companies to subvert regulation, the outlook isn't encouraging. ®

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“What a lot of people don’t appreciate these days is that as recently as the first half of the last century, what they called literature was a very, very different thing to the thing we have now. Almost no resemblance at all. Quite apart from questions of legality, health and safety and so on, there wouldn’t be any point in revisiting the vast majority of those First Era texts—believe me, we’ve been through them with a fine-tooth comb and the functionality just isn’t there.”

Their guide, who’d introduced himself as Murphy, spoke as he walked and without looking back.

“We don’t have that much source material left, obviously, but it’s evident from what we do have that neither the risks nor the potential benefits were understood. We know that literature was readily available in a multiplicity of media. Mass produced, widely consumed. That consumption, however, seems to have been left entirely to the vagaries of entertainment markets.”

He shook his head.

“Very much an Arts thing, for them. Of the numerous commentaries that survived the Disaster, none make any reference to specific applications. Remember that Spirituality® at that time lingered on in the public sector . And there does seem to have been a connection; we know that consumers habitually sought some sort of emotional uplift from literature. Solace®, if you will. It isn’t easy for us to imagine now that Solace® would have been difficult to access elsewhere. But there you go. Markets evolve. Back then it was, as I said, very much one of the old Arts.”

He stopped and turned and the little group of journalists formed a semi-circle around him.

“Which is why, in the run-up to the Second Enlightenment, we see signs of disillusion. I’m not saying that anyone had had the eureka moment—almost certainly not—but there were embryonic attempts to embed literature, and the Arts in general, into the wider human project. To put them to use. It can seem surprising to us now that once established, those early strategies, from product placement to search optimization, influencer content and so on, didn’t light the way sooner. Any questions?”

No questions. He went on.

“In fact, the mood at the time was anything but optimistic. It was as if they believed they were winding up, actually—bringing a defunct and ultimately fruitless human endeavor to an end. There was this increased focus on game play, social networking and other reality driven behaviors.

“Pfft. They hadn’t even started. Pinpoint® Role Assignment changed everything. It is now universally recognized as the single most significant factor in the development of modern literature. Without it the Second Enlightenment couldn’t have happened. We’d still be pawing through books like our forebears did, looking for some inherent value in there as opposed to identifying the countless opportunities we’ve since been able to exploit—a completely untapped resource, right under our noses. Very little of what we’ve accomplished economically, socially and politically would have been conceivable. Or scientifically—remember that Pinpoint® can only be fully understood in the context of the discovery of Cog® power.”

There was a large touch screen on the wall behind Murphy. He swiped it till the day diary showed up and he blocked out the entry for their tour. 4am: Billy didn’t suppose many of the journalists had been up this early on a Tuesday morning before. It felt a lot like a Monday night.

“Of course, it’s a work in progress,” said Murphy. “You try this, you try that. Necessarily, there’s an ad lib element in the early stages of any new field. We’ve been quite transparent about that. But believe me: every single false start has provided critical information. Know-how. That’s what’s so exciting about tomorrow.”

Someone stifled a yawn.

“We’re no strangers to controversy,” Murphy scowled. “There will always be resistance to change, of course. Pockets of extremism. The recent emergence of Gilgamesh is very worrying, and you all know about the problems we’ve had at the book burnings—people don’t like them.

“The digital purge continues.” He shrugged. “We’ll get there. We deeply regret every fatality, we really do, but it was incumbent upon us to ramp things up in preparation for the launch. We have a responsibility to our users. Those are some pretty fancy shoes mister.” Murphy’s gaze had dropped to Billy’s feet. “We are probably going to mess those up for you today.”

He walked on. They fell into line behind him.

“It would be premature to guarantee that we’ve found the definitive application. But early signs are very, very encouraging. You’ll have to forgive us for being a little pleased with ourselves here at Gripping Tails®. No previous incarnation of Applied Lit® has been rolled out on this scale. Maybe we have some slips. Tony, do we have any of those plastic slips for this guy’s shoes?”

They were at the end of a long, brightly lit corridor. Murphy stood outside a metal double door, low but wide. He looked like someone who had more to say. A tall man in a white coat pressed a pair of plastic shoe covers into Billy’s hand.

“It’s amazing,” said Murphy, “if you stop to think about it. It is to me, anyway. Before Pinpoint® there’s no way anyone could have seen it pan out like this. That something we’d all learned to think of as a historical fallacy—a heresy, even—could be resurrected in this way. That it would take up so useful a role in our lives. With hindsight though, from the moment the Cog® drive was introduced, it was just a matter of time. Who knows what other old Arts we might resurrect—under carefully controlled conditions, of course—and put to work?”

He planted his feet wide and clasped his hands.

“We’ve struggled with this thing for centuries but at long last, folks, literature finds itself fully optimized as Gripping Tails®, now the fourth largest auto-sector brand in the country and set to revolutionize road safety legislation both domestically and around the world. We even have our eyes on the colonies. I know, I know—early days, but we don’t do small thinking here. Mind your heads.”

Murphy opened the door and one by one, they bowed their heads to pass beneath a cluster of cable runs, stepping out into a vast, low-ceilinged hangar. To either side of them, the outer walls were punctuated by what might have been loading docks—floor to ceiling openings that framed the blank night. The place stretched away into a distance that couldn’t quite be made out through the machinery and personnel that occupied the floor space. Instrumentation arrays were aligned with each of the docks and operatives in orange-and-green overalls stood in huddles, nodding and tapping data onto tabs.

Billy was the first to say anything, as he bent to pull the plastic slips over his shoes. They were indeed fancy—a pair of two-tone Hennessy brogues that had cost him a hundred and forty bux—but they were the only ones, aside from house slippers, that he’d left in his old room when he’d moved into Jane’s. And they weren’t the only problem. Passing for his usual sports jacket was the top half of the navy blue velvet suit Ma had bought him for his prom. Underneath was a frilled oyster-white shirt, originally from the same outfit. It had been six weeks now since Jane had thrown him out, staying at Vince’s hadn’t gone well and being back at Ma’s was getting old. Not least because it was out in Lakeside, which meant a ninety minute commute. He’d gone back to Jane’s a couple of times for his clothes but she would never answer the door.

“It’s so quiet in here,” he said. His fully buttoned overcoat and scarf were only to be removed if absolutely necessary. His hat was tilted right back and the visible hair—fine and blond—was damp against his scalp.

Murphy smirked.

“You think so,” his eyes dropped to Billy’s visitor badge, “Mr Stringer? You normally make a lot of noise when you read?”

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From The Coast of Everything by Guillermo Stitch . Used with permission of the publisher, Sagging Meniscus Press. Copyright © 2026.

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T-Mobile is extending its Member Month celebrations by offering limited-edition soccer jerseys for $60.

The jerseys will be available from July 7 through the T-Life app.

They will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis until stocks last.

June was “ Member Month ” for T-Mobile customers, and if you thought the company was done offering perks, it’s got another thing in store. The carrier announced in a blog post that it has partnered with sports brand Umbro and will sell limited edition jerseys celebrating the soccer World Cup.

The jerseys will be available in two styles and will come branded with T-Mobile and Umbro logos. They will be sold through the T-Life app starting July 7 for $60 and will only be available to T-Mobile customers. Being a limited edition drop, once the stocks run out, they’ll be gone for good.