The AI Pulse

Issue #30 — 12th May 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:

A new guide to help civil servants use LLMs and GenAI tools responsibly and effectively .

How to avoid ethical red flags in your AI projects .

What’s the best way to harness AI for economic growth ?

The UK’s AI Security Institute sets out its research roadmap .

What public servants think about their work in government.

AI for Good

The Tony Blair Institute has published a report reimagining local government in the age of AI that calls for the creation of a new Devolved AI Service (DAIS) to support councils adopting the technology.

Imogen Parker from the Ada Lovelace Institute argues that if the public are not convinced the government is using their data and AI in their best interests, the consequences could be significant – including for democracy itself.

The 2025 Human Development Report from the United Nations Development Programme considers how AI helps or hinders people’s choices around the world .

UKAuthority reports on the latest increases in GP appointments due, it is claimed, to GP practices adopting digital services to help meet growing demand .

Bias and Ethics

A report from the American Enterprise Institute examines China’s AI strategy which prioritises adoption of current AI tools over long term visions for AGI.

The Bennett Institute for Public Policy at Cambridge University has issued a new guide to help civil servants use LLMs and GenAI tools responsibly and effectively.

The promise of AI in surgery is vast and exciting — but who is to blame when things go wrong? A report from the Royal College of Surgeons looks at the issues.

IEEE Spectrum reports on how to avoid ethical red flags in your AI projects.

Cyber Security

The UK’s AI Security Institute sets out its research roadmap, including focus on technical solutions to face down AI threats by improving safeguards and advancing the fields of AI alignment and control.

ComputerWeekly reports on a study highlighting concerns the public has with automated data processing for national security.

CSO Magazine considers why firewalls may soon need an upgrade as legacy tools fail at AI security

Data & Decision Making

A report from the Alan Turing Institute assesses UK public attitudes to national security data processing and concludes that the public do not perceive automated data processing as inherently less intrusive than human processing.

CIO Magazine looks at why training data is the key to successful AI models .

Innovation & Collaboration

The latest Deloitte 2025 Chief Transformation Officer study offers 6 things to know about the state of enterprise digital transformation today.

A report from the Hoover Institute at Stanford University delves into the impact of DeepSeek and why it is wake-up call for US innovation strategy.

Anthropic has released a substantial set of best practices for agentic coding.

Productivity & Efficiency

According to New Scientist, AI hallucinations are getting worse – and they're here to stay.

UKAuthority describes a new report from PA Consulting on the NHS that places £21 billion price tag on digitisation of health and social care .

TechRepublic have highlighted a new IBM CEO Study which surveyed 2,000 CEOs and found that most leaders are pressing ahead with AI investments even as only a minority of projects achieve expected returns.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published a book with evidence for policymakers, business leaders, and researchers on the adoption of AI in enterprises and the policies needed to enable this.

FastCompany considers how the US “Department for Government Efficiency”, DOGE, used AI to reshape the government in the first 100 days.

ZDNET offers 4 ways to scale GenAI experiments into production services.

Regulation and Compliance

ComputerWeekly looks at how EU is acting to adjust regulations to mend ailing AI competitiveness.

A new McKinsey survey shows that companies globally say they see lots of room for improvement in AI governance, risk, and compliance.

Sustainability

IEEE Spectrum looks at AI’s impact on public health and reports that data centre pollution is linked to asthma, heart attacks, and more.

Towards Data Science looks at how AI agents can help companies measure, optimise, and accelerate their sustainability initiatives .

User Experience

An essay in The Atlantic explores how the latest GenAI tools engage in “uncomfortable, unsettling” interactions and that their “opinionated” positions on some topics are destroying AI’s potential.

Workforce & Skills

Tim O’Reilly has kicked off AICodeCon conference with a speech declaring that AI has brought the end of programming as we know it.

Apolitical has issued a report reviewing what public servants think about their work in government — what’s getting in the way, where they need support and what they want to see done differently.

According to The Atlantic, something alarming is happening to the job market because of AI.

A MIT Sloan Management Review article says leaders need to deconstruct jobs and processes, redeploy work, and reconstruct new ways of operating to capitalize on the promises of AI.

TechRadar highlights a report that claims over half of UK businesses who replaced workers with AI regret their decision.

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