Here are a few things that caught my eye this week (week of October 28, 2024). Let's jump in!
1/ Cohere introduces Aya, a global initiative to expand access to LLMs in more languages. The Aya Collection and their first Aya model, Aya 101, cover 101 languages. To put this in context, it is estimated that there are 7,164 languages in use in the world today.
2/ UNESCO launches the Albert Hirschman lectures. I've been a Hirschman fan (stan?) ever since I read his biography by Jeremy Adelman years ago. It's wonderful to see a lecture series created to "promote interdisciplinary dialogue on pressing global challenges and catalyze intellectual exploration in the social sciences." And it is wonderfully fitting that Daron Acemoglu is kicking it off.
3/ USG announces its first financial inclusion strategy. The strategy document clearly articulates that financial inclusion is a continuum that goes from access to resilience to well-being (and wealth-building).
It seems like we're finally at the moment where people are agreeing that financial health / financial well-being is a better goalpost than financial inclusion. The measurement section, in particular, is very clear about what should be measured.
I'm lucky to know many of the people behind this effort, and it is really incredible to see this live.
4/ David Eaves, Mariana Mazzucato, and Beatriz Vasconcellos discuss Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and explore what "public" actually means. In it, they argue that DPI are not neutral, but can be created and governed for the common good.
5/ Speaking of DPI, Buenos Aires announced a digital identity solution based on zero-knowledge proofs. I'm excited to see more uses of ZK technology. Let's see how this goes!