Pretrained large language models have revolutionized many applications but still face challenges related to cultural bias and a lack of cultural commonsense knowledge crucial for guiding cross-culture communication and interactions. Recognizing the shortcomings of existing methods in capturing the diverse and rich cultures across the world, this paper introduces a novel approach for massively multicultural knowledge acquisition. Specifically, our method strategically navigates from densely informative Wikipedia documents on cultural topics to an extensive network of linked pages. Leveraging this valuable source of data collection, we construct the CultureAtlas dataset, which covers a wide range of sub-country level geographical regions and ethnolinguistic groups, with data cleaning and preprocessing to ensure textual assertion sentence self-containment, as well as fine-grained cultural profile information extraction. Our dataset not only facilitates the evaluation of language model performance in culturally diverse contexts but also serves as a foundational tool for the development of culturally sensitive and aware language models. Our work marks an important step towards deeper understanding and bridging the gaps of cultural disparities in AI, to promote a more inclusive and balanced representation of global cultures in the digital domain.

Future Shock: 25 trends in education post COVID-19.By Sandeep Goyal This Future Shock series is inspired by the Alvin Toffler book with the same name, first published in the 1970s. The book future gazed a rapidly changing world, propelled into newer and newer orbits by not just science and technology, but by newer political realities, sociological change and the emergence of newer opportunities, newer aspirations and newer lifestyles. But even Toffler had not visualized a world faced with cataclysmic change because of a pandemic, a metamorphosis triggered by a virus. Most governments around the world have temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 1.3-1.5 billion students and youth across the planet are affected by school and university closures. These nationwide closures are impacting over 72% of the world's student population. Several other countries have implemented localized closures impacting millions of additional learners. Governments around the world are making efforts to mitigate the immediate impact of school closures, particularly for more vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, and to facilitate the continuity of education for all through remote learning. School closures carry high social and economic costs for people across communities. Their impact however is particularly severe for the most vulnerable and marginalized boys and girls, and their families.