NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

AI Just Got Its First Rulebook

South Korea just did something no other country has done yet: it rolled out the world’s first comprehensive AI law.

Their new AI Basic Act is a wide-ranging framework (43 articles across 6 chapters) that took effect last week.

At its core, the law is about trust: South Korea isn’t trying to regulate users or ban AI tools. Instead, it puts responsibility on companies that deploy AI in sensitive or high-impact areas.

The core changes:

• You must be told when AI is involved. If an AI system is screening you for an important decision like a job offer or a loan, companies must notify you.

• High-risk AI must be explainable. In areas tied to public safety, companies must be able to explain how their AI actually makes decisions.

• AI content must be labeled. Content that could be mistaken for real must carry clear labels or watermarks.

Companies that violate the law could face fines of up to $20,000.

Why this matters: most countries are still figuring this out. The European Union’s AI Act hasn’t kicked in yet. The US still has no federal AI law. China regulates AI through narrower provisions tied to cybersecurity and ethics.

South Korea is the first country to attempt a single, unified framework covering safety, transparency, labeling, and accountability all at once. That makes it a test case: the law could become a model for protecting citizens without banning AI outright.

(Source: Jiyoung Sohn for The Wall Street Journal)

Babysitting AI at Work?

If you ask your boss, AI is saving hours every week. If you ask most workers… not so much. 😅

A new survey of 5,000 white-collar employees found a sharp divide. Upper-level executives overwhelmingly see AI as a productivity miracle - nearly 1 in 5 bosses say it saves them more than 12 hours a week.

Workers tell a very different story: 40% of them said AI saves them no time at all. Many report that it actually slows them down, produces confident-but-wrong answers, or creates extra cleanup - especially in roles where matters.

Despite that gap, leadership continues to push AI harder, convinced it’s the future of work, while employees feel increasingly anxious, overwhelmed, or quietly skeptical.

(Source: Frank Landymore for Futurism)

Meet Mfikeyi Makayi, CEO of KoBold Metals Africa

Celebrating this week’s Woman in Tech 🥳: Meet Mfikeyi Makayi, CEO of KoBold Metals Africa - where she is using AI to find the minerals powering the clean-energy future.

If the world wants electric cars, renewable energy, and fewer fossil fuels, it needs huge amounts of copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel - the materials used inside batteries, power grids, and solar panels.

Mfikeyi Makayi is helping make sure the world can find them.

Born in Zambia, Mfikeyi left home to study Civil and Environmental Engineering in the US, then earning a Master’s in Mining Engineering in the UK.

She returned home to work inside active mines, starting her career at First Quantum Minerals, where she learned how mining works - from operations on the ground to audits across Africa, Australia and Europe.

Today, she is CEO of KoBold Metals Africa, leading a company that uses AI to search underground. Instead of drilling blindly, KoBold’s AI analyzes decades of geological data to predict where large mineral deposits are likely to be - making exploration faster, cheaper, and less damaging to the environment.

Under her leadership, KoBold is developing what’s expected to be a $2B underground copper mine in Zambia, one of the biggest discoveries in recent years. It puts Africa at the center of the global energy transition.

In 2025, Mfikeyi was named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, and became one of the first Zambian women to lead a major mining exploration company in the country.