The AI Pulse
Issue #5 — 21st 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.
Highlights in this edition include:
AI for Good
The OECD and UNESCO have collaborated on a toolkit for AI in the public sector. The toolkit is a compendium of strategies and policies related to public sector AI across countries. It is a comprehensive guide to help policymakers and public sector leaders translate principles for safe, secure, and trustworthy AI into actionable policies.
Smart Data Research UK (SDR UK) has announced a £22 million investment in new data services, enabling researchers across the UK to access new forms of smart data. This includes the first national smart data donation service that provide new insights into our economy, environment, health and wellbeing.
Bias and Ethics
The new frontier in LLMs is the ability to “reason” their way through problems. Wired reports that new research from Apple says it's not quite what it's cracked up to be. Data from six Apple engineers shows that the mathematical "reasoning" displayed by advanced LLMs can be extremely brittle and unreliable in the face of seemingly trivial changes to common benchmark problems.
Cyber Security
CNN reports that AI has helped the US Treasury prevent over $1 billion of fraud in 2024. And it believes that it is just getting started. Gizmodo says that the increase in fraud detection is credited to its new data-driven approach to fraud detection. That includes using machine learning to identify instances of fraud and to prioritize high-risk transactions for further investigation.
The World Economic Forum outlines 5 cybersecurity risks posed by emerging AI technology – and how we can defend against them.
In the past, legal actions were costly and time-consuming. This HBR article argues that GenAI has made it much easier for individuals and organizations to initiate legal proceedings. As a result, companies need to adopt a cybersecurity approach to prepare for this new reality, focusing on understanding vulnerabilities, threats, mitigation strategies, and communication plans.
Data & Decision Making
Following the UK government designating data centers as critical national infrastructure, The Register reports that four US tech firms will invest in UK data facilities. This move has brought the total investment in UK data centers to over £25 billion since the government took office.
Innovation & Collaboration
Here is a very good paper that Ed Horvitz (Chief Scientific officer at Microsoft) and Tom Mitchell (CMU) have put together on "Scientific Progress in AI: History, Status, and Futures." The review serves to provide a "snapshot on AI" at a point in time and will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming book.
The latest “State of AI Report 2024” from Air Street Capital is a very detailed examination of the current trends in AI. It sees 2024 as a year of consolidation of AI technology.
Productivity & Efficiency
With the importance of AI to the world economy, this report from the UK Day One Project considers the role of AI in driving productivity and argues that the UK must capitalise on its strengths to make AI central to its industrial strategy.
Is artificial intelligence delivering on all its promises? A Forbes article suggests that business leaders’ enthusiasm for AI is waning based on a recent survey from McKinsey.
CIO asks, When is the right time to dump a failing AI project? The answer seems to depend on what you measure!
A special report by Digital Leaders on "AI in Business" in The Times was published this week. It addresses questions such as: How can firms move from small-scale projects to full-scale integration? What must business leaders do to ensure their employees are prepared for work in the age of AI? And, will AI really change workers' lives for the better?
Regulation and Compliance
The New York Time has had it with GenAI tools using its content, according to TechCrunch. The New York Times sent a cease and desist letter demanding that Perplexity stop accessing and using its content in AI summaries and other output.
Sustainability
The growing reliance on data centers to fuel AI development presents a significant challenge to sustainability efforts. An article in InfoWorld suggests that the energy consumption, resource demands, and environmental impact associated with these facilities often contradict the principles of sustainable technology touted by the Cloud technology companies.
With AI consuming so much energy, the BBC reports that Google is turning to nuclear to power AI data centres. TechCrunch says that Google has contracted with nuclear startup Kairos Power to build seven small reactors by 2030 to supply electricity to its data centers
User Experience
In an world of rapid change, an article in HBR suggests that trying to adapt to every shift can lead to chaos. Instead, keep your eye on what remains constant.
Many of us have been playing with Google’s NotebookLM tool recently. Amongst other features, the tool generates AI-hosted audio podcasts on any topic. Wired reports that its latest update allows users to personalize the output by entering prompts.
Workforce & Skills
According to ComputerWorld, IT job unemployment decreased sharply in September as smaller companies hired talent laid off by larger enterprises. This big shift in IT indicates a change in the desired skills among employers.
The New Scientist reports that human scientists are still better than AI ones — for now. A simulator for the process of scientific discovery shows that AI models still fall short of human scientists and engineers in coming up with hypotheses and carrying out experiments on their own.
The use of GenAI in software engineering is having a major impact. This Special Issue of IEEE Software about GenAI for software engineering provides an excellent summary of using generative models and algorithms in software development, testing, maintenance, and evolution.
Want to learn all about LLMs in less than two weeks? Here is a guide on how Hesham Sheikh suggests you might want to go about it.
Have a comment or a story you’d like to share with us?
Just get in touch at: [email protected]
Do you know anyone who might be interested in AI Pulse
© 2025 Digital Leaders
Digital Topics Ltd, 239 Old Street, London, ec1v 9 ey, United Kingdom