The AI Pulse

Issue #39 — 21st July 2025

Editor: Professor 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:

How to run useful LLMs from the safety and comfort of your own computer .

A new Global Initiative on AI for Food Systems has been launched .

Waymo robotaxis have now covered more than 100 million self-driving miles .

Is AI eroding our critical thinking ?

Companies pursuing artificial general intelligence lack credible plans to ensure safety .

Why business leaders are misjudging AI’s impact on the workforce .

AI for Good

The UN Agency for Digital Technology reports that a new Global Initiative on AI for Food Systems has been launched to enhance productivity, resilience, and global food security through AI.

A RAND Corporation study explores 6 ways AI could cause the next big war, and why it probably won't (!).

McKinsey has published its recommendations for 9 books on AI and tech to build your understanding and knowledge of AI.

Bias and Ethics

The Seismic Foundation has released its latest report based on a major survey that shows emerging tensions as people are beginning to see AI as something that could make their lives worse.

The Register reports that Meta has decided not to abide by the recently-released voluntary EU AI safety guidelines.

An edition of BBC Sounds’ “The Inquiry” asks if AI is eroding our critical thinking.

Cyber Security

An opinion piece in CIO Magazine explains why autonomous AI agents create an autonomous security threat.

UKAuthority reports that the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) has published a set of principles for securing personal data in government services.

The Data Scientist considers AI and network security, and why AI is changing cyber defense.

Data & Decision Making

MIT Technology Review reveals that personally identifiable information has been found in DataComp CommonPool, one of the largest open-source data sets used to train AI image generation models.

An article from IE Business School looks at how AI is reshaping credit decisions and why balancing predictive power with transparency is key to ensuring trust in financial systems.

Toward Data Science considers what the history of data tells us about the future of AI.

ZDNET reports that researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google have released a new paper warning that as training models become more advanced, they could cut off insights into how AI operates and makes decisions.

Innovation & Collaboration

UKAuthority reports that the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has been working on self-hosted LLMs to be used on its internal data platform.

MIT Technology Review describes how to run useful LLMs from the safety and comfort of your own computer.

A CapGemini report explores the rise of agentic AI and why trust is the key to human-AI collaboration.

The UK Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have launched their compute roadmap for how the UK will power the use of AI.

Productivity & Efficiency

The Data Scientist looks at key practical applications of AI in HR to see what’s already in use.

McKinsey has provided a summary from its 21st annual CIO Conference in which it explores the emerging AI technologies CIOs and CTOs believe are mostly hype and which ones could bring impact at scale.

Business Day reports that Waymo robotaxis have now covered more than 100 million self-driving miles .

The Deloitte AI Institute has issued the “FinanceAI Dossier” — a selection of high-impact GenAI use cases in Finance .

VentureBeat offers some details on Walmart’s new scalable AI platform and how it is used to support 1.5 million partners handling 3 million daily queries from 900,000 weekly users.

A leader in The Economist believes that to survive the AI age, the web needs a new business model .

Regulation and Compliance

A World Economic Forum (WEF) report describes 3 ways regulation can prevent deepfake greenwashing.

As AI drives digital acceleration, the World Economic Forum (WEF) believes it’s time for tech standards to catch up.

Sustainability

The UN Agency for Digital Technologies asks, “Do we know how to measure AI’s environmental impact?”.

The Guardian reports that Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said they will build a data center the size of Manhattan in a new push to deliver more AI products.

User Experience

An HBR article looks at how AI can be a promising new tool for early-stage market research by simulating customer responses to product concepts.

The Guardian reports on a study by the Future of Life Institute that concludes companies pursuing artificial general intelligence lack credible plans to ensure safety.

The Verge has an interesting interview with Cassie Kozyrkov on how AI can make us better decision-makers.

Workforce & Skills

MIT News asks if AI can really code based on an MIT study that maps the roadblocks to delivering autonomous software engineering.

An article in MIT Technology Review looks at how AI tech giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic can help students learn—not just cheat—even if real-world use suggests otherwise.

Tim O’Reilly discusses whether AI creates or destroys jobs and what happens when we move from “Day 1” to “Day 2” thinking.

A new Wharton Business School report looks at why business leaders are misjudging AI’s impact on the workforce.

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