The AI Pulse

Issue #3 — 7th October 2024

Editor: Professor Alan Brown

Welcome to the latest edition of The AI Pulse for Digital Leaders. A curated collection of essential articles, commentaries, and news stories from reputable sources that bring insight to digital leaders on the principles and practices of delivering AI-at-Scale.

Included in this edition: The UK government announces a new digital advisory board; AI adoption in local government; and how nurses view more use of AI in healthcare.

AI for Good

How can AI help to keep us safe? A discussion in Nature describes how AI can be a useful tool in public safety, if developed ethically and responsibly.

A report from the Mozilla foundation describes a vision for AI based on a robust ecosystem of initiatives that promote public goods, public orientation, and public use in AI development and deployment. The report argues that ensuring AI benefits humanity requires expanding who has the power and opportunity to build AI in the first place.

The UK government has announced it has set up a new panel of technology experts, advocates, and academics to shape the government's new “digital centre”. Led by Baroness Martha Lane Fox, she has stated that this group will be working in the open to to help the government make better use of technology across the public sector.

Bias and Ethics

The Deloitte State of Ethics and Trust in Technology report finds that widespread use of GenAI has broadened awareness of its potential benefits, but concerns about the risks of misuse are growing.

Wired reports that license plate readers are creating a US-wide database of more than just cars. Apparently these readers are used around the US to create searchable databases that reveal Americans’ political leanings and more.

Cyber Security

This weekend’s essay in the New Yorker looks at the role of information and asks what privacy is for. The article reviews Lowry Pressly’s new book, “The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life” and argues that in an always-connected world "it is harder to keep one’s mind in place. Our thoughts leak through the sieve of our smartphones, where they join the great river of everyone else’s."

Data & Decision Making

The troubles facing the ancestry company 23andMe are causing concern about how the genetic data it has collected will be used. This in depth article in The Atlantic asks who will soon own the data from up to 14 million people and what will they do with it.

Do improvements with GenAI have to be about bigger models and more data? A review at SingularityHub looks at how much smaller AI Models are being used by match OpenAI with 1,000 times less data.

Innovation & Collaboration

It can be incredibly costly to train new LLMs. It is reported by the Verge that OpenAI has raised another $6.6 Billion to help it train the next generation LLM. This values the company at $157 Billion.

Who own’s AI’s output? With copyright and patent protections around generative AI changing rapidly, this article from CACM, considers the current ways that your innovation can be protected and the variation in regulations in different countries.

Productivity & Efficiency

This short blog article from ieg4 provides a summary of how AI can be used in local government and contains a useful ROI calculator for adopting AI in government.

The Ada Lovelace Institute asks if the public sector is equipped to procure technology in the public interest. They report that their research finds that local government does not have access to a clear, comprehensive or consistent account of how to procure AI in the public interest.

How can Europe ensure it benefits from AI technology? This McKinsey report looks at 3 areas where Europe must focus to remain competitive — accelerating AI adoption, leading in key areas of the AI value chain, and providing low cost energy to power AI use.

Regulation and Compliance

It is reported by the BBC that the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has blocked the AI safety bill after strong opposition from major technology companies. It would have imposed some of the first regulations on AI in the US. Politico claims this is a warning to the UK government about its AI regulation ambitions.

The tension between regulation and innovation in AI continues. TechRepublic reports that Meta has penned an open letter to Europe expressing concerns about AI regulation, while a Google exec has spoken out against laws in the U.K. that prevent training models on copyrighted materials.

Sustainability

AI takes in trash. A discussion in Forbes on the ways that AI is helping to reduce the environmental impacts of landfill sites.

Organizations must balance productivity, innovation, and environmental responsibility as they adopt new technologies such as AI. A new report from IBM asks how business leaders can harness the power of GenAI to drive sustainable IT transformation.

User Experience

What do nurses think of AI in healthcare? McKinsey asked them. The findings suggest optimism and excitement about AI-powered tools that are tempered by a desire to ensure that quality of care is not sacrificed.

Workforce & Skills

AI tools such as ChatGPT are already having impact in many areas. This short personal reflection in Time explains why one teacher has decided to leave their job because of ChatGPT.

As use of GenAI tools in the workplace increases, how should employers act? A report from Sloan Management Review describes research that shows that banning GenAI tools won’t work. Leaders should set guidelines that let employees experiment: This mitigates risks while opening the door to organizational gains, research shows.

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