The AI Pulse

Issue #29 — 284th April 2025

Editor: Alan Brown

Welcome to the latest edition of The AI Pulse for Digital Leaders. An expertly curated collection of essential articles, commentaries, and news stories from reputable sources. Do you know anyone who might be interested in AI Pulse. Have some news or looking to partner? Just get in touch at: [email protected]

Highlights in this edition include:

The first EU-wide perspective on the governance and use of GenAI across public administrations in Europe .

How high-performing companies are integrating HR into their GenAI strategies .

Could future AIs be “conscious” and experience the world as humans do ?

601 real-world GenAI use cases from the world's leading organizations .

AI for Good

The EU’s Public Sector Tech Watch (PSTW) has published the first EU-wide perspective on the governance and use of GenAI across public administrations in Europe.

Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor have published a preview of their forthcoming book that cuts through the AI hype an urges we treat “AI as normal technology”.

Infoq reports that the EU has presented the “AI Continent Action Plan”, a new strategy designed to strengthen the European Union’s capacity for AI development and deployment.

Bias and Ethics

The Rest of World reports that government use of AI in Brazil in an algorithmic tool meant to reduce bureaucracy is misfiring on complex cases, and vulnerable Brazilians are paying the price.

A leader article in The Economist warns that as AI models improve, they can become devious and the challenges switches to how to keep AI models on the straight and narrow.

Watch out! ZDNET reports that OpenAI's most capable models hallucinate more than earlier ones.

Cyber Security

As AI systems evolve, Towards Data Science simply explains the layers of the AI stack when designing robust AI systems.

ZDNET looks at how Apple plans to train its AI on your data without sacrificing your privacy.

TechRepublic offers guidance on how to safeguard enterprises from exploitation of AI applications.

Data & Decision Making

Data quality is essential for AI, but working with it doesn’t always feel meaningful. MIT Sloan Management Review offers four strategies to make data work more engaging.

Wikipedia got fed up with AI companies scraping it for training data, so has put a clean, structured training data set online instead .

MIT Technology Review examines how organizations must adapt to AI’s new reasoning era .

ZDNET asks why data literacy is essential - and elusive - for business leaders in the AI age .

Innovation & Collaboration

Could future AIs be “conscious,” and experience the world similarly to the way humans do? TechCrunch reports that Anthropic is studying “AI model welfare" to find out.

McKinsey considers the role and future of open source in the age of AI.

A report from MIT Technology review explores how AI computation is shifting to become distributed—and much of it will take place on device and at the edge.

Productivity & Efficiency

Bain reports that high-performing companies are integrating HR into their GenAI strategies as they balance big bets with near-term wins.

Google outlines 601 real-world GenAI use cases from the world's leading organizations .

A report from OpenAI highlights 7 lessons for enterprise AI adoption based on several real world case studies of its use.

A report from McKinsey looks beyond automation to assess how gen AI is reshaping supply chains.

VentureBeat reminds us of the hidden cost of model migration and why swapping LLMs isn’t plug-and-play.

Regulation and Compliance

After nearly a year’s pause due to regulatory concerns, DailyAI reports that Meta has resumed AI training using EU user data, allowing people to opt-out.

UKAuthority report that the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) and the Local Government Association (LGA) have launched a new resource to support local authorities in the procurement, implementation, and use of AI.

The Institute for AI Policy and Strategy (IAIPS) has provided an excellent field guide to AI agent Governance.

Sustainability

TechRepublic highlights how inference, training, and everyday operations all contribute to water and power consumption and concludes that “AI Is Fundamentally Incompatible With Environmental Sustainability”.

A study by TechRepublic reviews how AI is revolutionizing approaches to data centre power and cooling .

TechRepublic provide a guide to how enterprise IT can achieve water sustainability despite the demands of AI.

User Experience

UX Magazine presents a series of emerging design patterns for human interaction with AI agents.

O’Reilly looks at how successful AI teams operate by reviewing 30+ AI production Implementations.

FastCompany reports that to keep up with the rapid evolution of consumer expectations, most customer experience teams have now embraced AI solutions .

Workforce & Skills

A blog from academics at LSE notes that AI and green jobs are outpacing traditional degrees as skill-based hiring is favoured over traditional degrees.

Microsoft’s latest Work Trends Index highlights a new organizational blueprint blending machine intelligence with human judgment, building systems that are AI-operated but human-led.

As AI use in software development takes hold, InfoWorld warns that “Vibe Coding” is how we will write code in the future. O’Reilly explore this Vibe Coding phenomena.

IEEE Spectrum considers what engineers should know about AI jobs in 2025.

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