World Solve

AI agents may perform tasks once done by contractors, analysts, translators, and assistants. The challenge is creating rules for liability, taxation, attribution, and market fairness when human labor and machine labor overlap. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Predictive policing can reinforce historical bias even when built from apparently neutral data. The open problem is designing standards that make public safety tools testable, reviewable, and defeasible when they cause harm. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Digital consultation can produce large volumes of participation while still failing to influence decisions. The challenge is creating governance processes where consultation changes outcomes and does not become symbolic theater. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Border systems may increasingly use risk scoring, biometric checks, and predictive screening. The unresolved problem is ensuring security tools do not become opaque instruments of arbitrary exclusion or rights violations. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Future societies may need shared datasets for health, mobility, climate, education, and infrastructure. The challenge is creating commons rules that enable useful access while preventing extraction, surveillance, and inequitable control. The challenge is especially acute for low-resource administrations, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Future societies may need shared datasets for health, mobility, climate, education, and infrastructure. The challenge is creating commons rules that enable useful access while preventing extraction, surveillance, and inequitable control. The challenge is especially acute without mass surveillance, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Future societies may need shared datasets for health, mobility, climate, education, and infrastructure. The challenge is creating commons rules that enable useful access while preventing extraction, surveillance, and inequitable control. The challenge is especially acute in post-conflict institutions, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Future societies may need shared datasets for health, mobility, climate, education, and infrastructure. The challenge is creating commons rules that enable useful access while preventing extraction, surveillance, and inequitable control. The challenge is especially acute across fragmented municipalities, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

AI can generate convincing but fake expert testimony, reports, and analysis. The open problem is building public systems that preserve trust in real expertise while making fabricated authority easier to detect. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Disasters can overwhelm budgets, insurance markets, and borrowing capacity long before adaptation completes. The challenge is designing fiscal rules, reserves, and mutual support systems that keep essential public services functioning. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Transport systems may be increasingly optimized by private algorithms that control routing, pricing, access, and safety. The unresolved problem is ensuring these systems improve mobility for everyone rather than only for users who can pay most. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Rivers and aquifers shared across borders will become more contested as climate stress increases. The challenge is creating durable institutions for measurement, allocation, dispute resolution, and emergency coordination. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Many agricultural and infrastructure systems are designed around historical seasons that may no longer exist. A useful solution must help governments revise calendars, reservoirs, insurance, crops, and public budgets under deep uncertainty. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

Governments may use health and behavioral data to predict outbreaks, allocate care, or target interventions. The open problem is enabling public-health benefits while preventing discrimination, mission creep, and privacy erosion. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Future cities may experience extreme heat precisely when electricity and water systems are least able to support cooling. The challenge is coordinating urban design, demand management, public health, and energy policy under compound stress. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

Public systems using legacy cryptography will eventually face long-term exposure as quantum computers improve. The challenge is coordinating migration across ministries, vendors, archives, and critical infrastructure without breaking public services. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Synthetic biology and AI-assisted design may create biological capabilities that are both socially valuable and potentially dangerous. The unresolved problem is building oversight that reduces misuse risk while keeping legitimate research open and productive. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Digitizing land records can improve access while also enabling new forms of fraud, corruption, and system failure. The challenge is designing registry governance that protects ownership claims, customary rights, and dispute resolution over decades. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Public agencies will buy models, datasets, inference services, and automated workflows from vendors whose systems may not be easy to inspect. The unresolved problem is creating contract standards that make public AI procurement auditable, portable, and lawfully contestable. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Future political manipulation may be conducted by large networks of bots, synthetic personas, and microtargeted propaganda. The challenge is detecting and deterring these campaigns without undermining legitimate civic participation. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.