Annelie Lotriet, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of South Africa, examines why artificial intelligence readiness demands institutional leadership, not just ICT solutions. She explores Member literacy gaps, university partnerships, disinformation risks, and how AI could transform legislative oversight, research, and citizen engagement across national and provincial parliaments.

Anthropic's Fable 5 model was pulled from public access days after release when researchers found ways to bypass its safety guardrails, prompting Commerce Department export controls on Fable and Mythos. The episode highlights gaps in Congressional oversight of rapid AI policy decisions affecting national security.

POPVOX Foundation is expanding its legislative modernization work to state legislatures across America, offering a new newsletter, a growing resource bank, hands-on AI training, and original research on legislative capacity — all tailored to the unique needs of full-time and citizen legislatures alike.

State of the Art launches as a new monthly newsletter spotlighting AI adoption and institutional capacity in state legislatures. The debut issue features Idaho's staff AI guidance model, NCSL survey data showing usage nearly doubling, and an Adoption Tracker following pilots across five states.

Caseworkers face a flood of agency updates, hearings, and news each day. Build a system to track what matters: define categories like Prepare, Explain, Proact, Watch, and Meta, source from agencies, IGs, and media, then use AI tools to scan, tag, and draft efficiently.

African parliaments are exploring how AI can unlock the value of digitized parliamentary records — from searching Hansards and tracking legislation to monitoring government assurances. The Digital Parliaments Project, led by POPVOX Foundation and partners, is building the data infrastructure to make that possible.

POPVOX Foundation's Digital Parliaments Project Q2 2026 convening covered ParlLink platform updates including bulk upload, a new data agreement, and AI prompting guides for parliamentary staff. Looking ahead: DPP launches in the Balkans and Africa, plus a Caribbean Parliamentary Modernization Summit in Miami this September.

POPVOX Foundation brought a hands-on AI sandbox to Capitol Hill, giving Congressional staff direct access to coding agents, file-aware assistants, and agentic workflows blocked on official devices. Participants built hearing-prep dashboards, bill trackers, and Federal Register monitors — gaining firsthand intuition about how fast AI is advancing.

POPVOX Foundation and Meridian International Center brought AI Base Camp to Capitol Hill, offering Congressional staff hands-on exploration of AI tools across six skills-based stations — from prompt basics and workflow integration to agentic AI and deepfake detection — in an open-house format welcoming all experience levels.