The study aimed to analyse the European experience of investigating criminal offences in the field of official activity and the peculiarities of its adaptation to the Ukrainian context. The study employed a combination of case study methods, formal legal analysis, content analysis, comparative legal analysis, contextual analysis and PESTEL (political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal) analysis. The analysis of international experience was conducted in the context of European Union member states that have successfully established effective systems for investigating crimes in the public sector, including Germany, France and Poland. The study found that the approaches and strategies implemented in Ukraine have several shortcomings that significantly reduce the effectiveness of criminal investigations, including a widening gap between the number of registered offences and the number of notices of suspicion served. The reason for the identified discrepancy is the lack of coordination between the subjects of criminal investigations, as well as the lack of transparency of the investigation process and accountability of the parties involved. To overcome these shortcomings, the study recommended adapting the German experience in the field of round-the-clock interaction between the subjects of a criminal investigation, which guarantees quick access to information and prompt permission to conduct investigative actions. Adaptation of the French experience in conducting investigations was recommended to ensure cross-control of the investigation subjects and improve the efficiency of their work. The Polish experience of utilizing electronic resources in criminal proceedings was recommended to enhance interdisciplinary cooperation among the parties involved in the investigation. Adopting the best international practices can be used to enhance the detection statistics of criminal offences and increase public confidence in the country’s system for investigating and prosecuting criminal misconduct in office.

This article examines the governance challenges of human genomic data sharing. The analysis builds upon the unique characteristics that distinguish genomic data from other forms of personal data, particularly its dual nature as both uniquely identifiable to individuals and inherently collective, reflecting familial and ethnic group characteristics. This duality informs a tripartite risk taxonomy: individual privacy violations, group-level harms, and bioterrorism threats. Examining regulatory frameworks in the European Union (EU) and China, the article demonstrates how current data protection mechanisms—primarily anonymisation and informed consent—prove inadequate for genomic data governance due to the impossibility of true anonymisation and the limitations of consent-based models in addressing the risks of such sharing. Drawing on the concept of “genomic contextualism,” the article proposes a nuanced framework that incorporates interest balancing, comprehensive data lifecycle management, and tailored technical safeguards. The objective is to protect individuals and underrepresented groups while maximising the scientific and clinical value of genomic data.

This article is a proof-of-concept that archaeologists can now disseminate archaeological topics to the public easily and cheaply through video games in teaching situations or in museum or heritage communication. We argue that small but realistic, interactive, and immersive closed- or open-world 3D video games about cultural heritage with unscripted (but guardrailed) oral conversation can now be created by beginners with free software such as Unreal Engine, Reality Capture, and Convai. Thus, developing tailor-made “archaeogames” is now becoming extremely accessible, empowering heritage specialists and researchers to control audiovisual dissemination in museums and education. This unlocks new uses for 3D photogrammetry, currently mostly used for documentation, and could make learning about the past more engaging for a wider audience. Our case study is a small game with two levels, one built around 3D-scanned Neolithic long dolmens in a forest clearing and an archaeologist and a prehistoric person, who are both conversational AI characters. We later added a more open level with autonomous animals, a meadow, and a cave with a shaman guiding the player around specific cave paintings. We tested the first level on players from different backgrounds whose feedback showed great promise. Finally, we discuss ethical issues and future perspectives for this format.

Modern Elections can be conceived as a socio-technical system, as the electoral process in many ways relies on technological solutions: voter information, identification and registration, collecting, verifying and counting the votes – in some countries these steps are conducted by using innovative technologies. But how do those devices and processes actually become part of the official legislation and can finally deployed during this sensitive and important democratic procedure? Over time, the State of California has developed a robust regulatory ecosystem for integrating innovative technology into the electoral process and is also able to change and modernize its rules and regulations. Although technologies currently used are more static, hardware-based and usually do not include algorithmic systems, the overall structure of the process may also function as a blueprint for regulating more dynamic algorithm-based or even AI-based technologies.

How can existing experiences of regulatory experimentation inform AI sandbox design in Europe? This paper explores the ‘responsible AI’ sandbox of the Norwegian Data Protection Agency (DPA), a GDPR-oriented regulatory experiment created in 2020 with four projects per annum. Through an interpretive policy analysis of documents (exit reports and workshop transcripts) and semi-structured interviews with officials, we explore how the Norwegian DPA approached its mandate of ‘helping with responsible innovation’, where it identified role conflicts, and what scope conditions and challenges it perceived around sandbox work. Sandboxing represented a ‘new way of working’ for the regulatory authority: in an idea-based intervention mode, the DPA moves from rule-based interventions as a watchdog to becoming a dialogue-oriented partner in solution-finding, a concretiser of ambiguous GDPR rules, and a keen learner from sectoral and technical experts. Critical engagement with our data suggests that sandbox design should not be reduced to technical and procedural questions. It requires regulators’ critical reflexivity on their ambivalent role and power relations in the regulatory experiment: how to strategically select relevant projects and issues, how to navigate budgetary constraints and the lack of follow-ups, and how sandboxing affects more interventionist regulatory duties.

This comment interrogates the methods and conclusions of Working with AI, a recent report conducted under the auspices of Microsoft, which identified historians as the profession with the second-highest ‘AI applicability’. It finds that the authors’ conclusions are based on an erroneous simplification and misrepresentation of a historian’s typical professional tasks, which have been publicly amplified by extensive media coverage. This comment then offers a wider provocation about the report’s conception of a professional historian, and whether it is related to the public application of ‘historian’ to a number of different practitioners with varied training and qualifications. In particular, it seeks to highlight a paradox which the report exposes: that we cannot defend the specialist training and expertise of professional historians against the encroachment of AI without also separating the academic skills and qualifications of historians from those engaged in more popular forms of historical writing and communication. The comment questions how we might grapple with this paradox without reverting to academic elitism.

Regulatory sandboxes for Artificial Intelligence (AI) are designed to address challenges of rapid technological change. AI innovations create an acute need for learning about what regulation is suitable for enabling innovation while dealing with technological risks. This article argues that regulatory sandboxes should be analyzed primarily as mechanisms for enhancing policymakers’ understanding of technologies such as AI, rather than solely as spaces for experimentation that promote innovation. It discusses the role of regulatory sandboxes in facilitating policy learning that can complement the long-term learning processes of the traditional policy cycle. Six case studies serve to illustrate sandbox elements for enabling collaborative experiential learning in contexts in which the absence of AI regulation makes accelerated policy learning particularly valuable. Looking at the design and governance of regulatory sandboxes from Brazil, Colombia, Mauritius, Mexico, Rwanda, and Thailand, learning elements related to the technology and consequences for closing legal lags emerge as critical components.

The establishment of artificial intelligence regulatory sandboxes (AIRSs) poses both policy and technical challenges, especially in how to reconcile support for innovation with regulatory oversight. AIRSs are based on dynamic regulatory feedback mechanisms that allow for a deeper examination of legal norms with a view to their future evolution. These structures facilitate engagement between regulators and innovators, enabling business learning and regulatory adaptation. However, their proliferation across the European Union under the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) may raise issues of coordination between competent authorities, cross-border regulatory alignment and consistency with overlapping (sectoral) rules. In view of these potential complexities, this paper makes two distinct recommendations. First, AIRSs would benefit from cross-border cooperation – efforts should therefore be made to pursue the establishment of joint AIRSs among different Member States in order to reduce regulatory fragmentation, lower the risk of forum shopping, and optimise administrative resources. Second, integrating AI and cybersecurity compliance within the same sandbox environment would be beneficial in terms of providing clearer and more structured compliance pathways. A well-designed regulatory sandbox regime would make regulation more effective, encourage responsible AI development and secure Europe’s leadership in digital regulation.

This article explores how AI-generated music challenges traditional theological understandings of creativity, spirituality, and the soul. By engaging the theological traditions of analogy and participation developed by Thomas Aquinas, Thomas de Vio Cajetan, and Francisco Suárez, this article reconsiders whether AI-generated music generates emotions and spiritual significances in listeners and whether it might disclose something meaningful about the nature of divine creativity. Rather than arguing AI music is either a technological innovation or artistic threat, this article suggests various frameworks of analogy, participation, and pneumatology to create a better theological discernment on how divine creativity works through secondary causes within creation. The exploration concludes in proposing a ‘theology of digital transcendence’ – a framework for understanding how computational creativity participates in the broader economy of divine creation.

In recent years, evidence for extraterrestrial life has focused mainly on the following sections, meteorites, space probes, radio telescopes, and extraterrestrial intelligence and civilization. Biochemical studies on meteorites have tried to trace fossilized microorganisms or organic molecules in living structures. Images and atmospheric information obtained from various planets by space probes have been used to uncover the habitability of other celestial bodies in the solar system. Observations of radio telescopes that receive the waves emitted by cosmic objects and display them on their screens have pave the way to estimate the habitability of heavenly bodies. As the last one, claims related to extraterrestrial intelligence and civilization have been repeatedly reported in different periods of history. All of this evidence points to the possibility of extraterrestrial life, but how close we are to confirming or disproving this hypothesis is still debatable. However, recent advancements in artificial intelligence, particularly in machine learning, have significantly enhanced the ability to analyze complex astrobiological data. This technology optimizes the processing of meteoritic data, differentiates astronomical signals, and reinterprets historical evidence, opening new frontiers in the search for extraterrestrial life. In this review, we have attempted to present the above-mentioned evidence in detail to provide a suitable understanding of the level of our extraterrestrial knowledge.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women globally and the most prevalent cancer in women. Artificial intelligence (AI)-based frameworks have shown great promise in correctly classifying breast carcinomas, particularly those that may have been difficult to discern through routine microscopy. Additionally, mitotic number quantification utilizing AI technology is more accurate than manual counting. With its many advantages, such as improved accuracy, efficiency and consistency as shown in this literature review, AI has promise for significantly enhancing breast cancer diagnosis in the clinical world despite the paramount obstacles that must be addressed. Ongoing research and innovation are essential for overcoming these challenges and effectively harnessing AI’s transformative potential in breast cancer detection and assessment.