Here, using two rounds of natural field experiments based on an audit-study approach, we investigated whether sanctioned Russian government officials retain access to the international financial system. Researchers sent 7,081 email solicitations to intermediary firms in 202 countries and jurisdictions to establish shell companies and set up corporate bank accounts. Responses to sanctioned names (middle initial modified) are compared with equivalent solicitations from non-sanctioned placebo names. Round 1 results in December 2020 reveal no statistically significant difference in financial access for the sanctioned names compared with placebo. Round 2 findings in May 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, indicate that sanctioned individuals’ access to international corporate services and banking was significantly reduced (drop in non-compliant response rates: 4.0 percentage points, 95% confidence interval 1.2–6.8, P = 0.006, Cohen’s d = 0.207). The results suggest that factors related to the war and not sanctions law proved decisive in constricting sanctioned individuals’ access to the global financial system. A field experiment by Findley et al. finds that financial sanctions on Russian officials had little effect on access to banking and corporate services before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but significantly reduced access afterwards.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content increasingly saturates our information environment. Efforts to detect and remove it are failing. We propose that calling AI-generated content ‘slop’ is best understood as a social judgement: what a community recognizes as unwanted AI content. Studying AI slop this way makes it tractable, measurable and governable.
Preprimary education is central to the global education agenda, including Sustainable Development Goal 4.2. Despite global momentum in low- and middle-income countries, cross-national evidence on long-term outcomes associated with preprimary education legislation remains limited. Here we applied a matrix-completion approach with subgroup and sensitivity analyses using 495 nationally representative surveys from 1990 to 2024, covering nearly 6.7 million women across 117 countries. Eligibility under the legislation was associated with higher educational enrolment and completion, and with more gender-egalitarian attitudes, more favourable empowerment-related behaviours and greater reproductive autonomy. For example, eligibility was associated with higher female primary-school enrolment (1.21 percentage points (pp); 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.52 to 1.91; P < 0.001) and completion (0.75 pp; 95% CI 0.24 to 1.25; P = 0.004), greater disapproval of wife-beating (1.04 pp; 95% CI 0.53 to 1.56; P < 0.001), greater participation in decisions about husbands’ earnings (3.25 pp; 95% CI 2.50 to 4.00; P < 0.001) and greater ever use of contraception (2.96 pp; 95% CI 2.33 to 3.59; P < 0.001). Eligibility under the legislation was also associated with lower rates of adolescent childbearing (−2.41 pp; 95% CI −2.67 to −2.14; P < 0.001) and child marriage (−0.43 pp; 95% CI −0.71 to −0.15; P = 0.003). These findings provide cross-national evidence directly relevant to ongoing policy discussions surrounding Sustainable Development Goal 4.2 and broader global development agendas, while emphasizing the importance of implementation capacity and equitable system expansion. Lou et al. find that eligibility for preprimary education is linked to more gender-equitable attitudes, greater empowerment and reproductive autonomy, and lower levels of adolescent marriage and childbearing across low- and middle-income countries.
Prominent employers are increasingly dropping college degree requirements when hiring. Does this provide upward mobility for non-college workers? Matching job postings to 446,500 job starts in US administrative data from 2011 to 2021, we show that employers reduced the share of postings requiring a degree by more than 10%. Non-college workers who move to decredentialed jobs earn 12 log points more than matched workers moving to never-credentialed jobs (beta = 0.124; 95% confidence interval, (0.042, 0.206)), around US$4,600 per year-a premium that endures for at least five years. These hires are more likely to be Black, Hispanic and female than the workers they replace. Employers also benefit, as removing degree requirements reduces labour costs. Yet most employers that drop requirements do not hire non-college workers (non-college hiring rises 1.2 percentage points; 95% confidence interval, (0.5, 2.0)). Decredentialing is a promising tool for social mobility, but only when employers follow through.
People will often trust or distrust an artificial intelligence (AI) output because of how it makes them feel, rather than how reliable it is. AI governance frameworks should require that platforms disclose design choices that target user emotions, allow users control over these, and include features aimed to calibrate trust.
