The AI Pulse
Issue #70 — 16th March 2026
Editor: Professor Alan Brown
This Week's AI Pulse is supported by Mozaic. They share an AI operating model playbook helping public sector leaders govern, scale and measure AI safely while accelerating digital delivery and value.
Highlights in this edition include:
AI for Good
Can AI help predict which heart-failure patients will worsen within a year? (MIT) - MIT researchers developed a deep learning model that can predict which heart failure patients will deteriorate up to a year ahead, potentially helping doctors intervene earlier and improve patient outcomes.
AI Skills for Business Competency Framework (Alan Turing Institute) - The AI Skills for Business Competency Framework has been developed to provide a structured understanding of the skills needed across the workforce.
Nonprofits shaping the future of responsible AI (CIO) - Nonprofits are becoming unlikely pioneers in responsible AI development, using their limited budgets and privacy requirements to build more thoughtful governance frameworks that could teach the private sector a thing or two.
Bias and Ethics
Irish firms lose €720m to failed AI projects (Think Business) - Irish companies have burned through €720 million on AI projects that didn’t work, largely because they can’t explain how their AI systems make decisions—a critical problem when facing customers or regulators.
AI toys for young children must be more tightly regulated, say researchers (The Guardian) - Cambridge researchers found that AI toys often misinterpret children’s emotions and give inappropriate responses, highlighting the need for stricter safety regulations in a market where young minds are increasingly interacting with artificial intelligence.
Why AI Chatbots Agree With You Even When You’re Wrong (IEEE) - Scientists discovered that AI chatbots frequently abandon correct information just to agree with users, prompting researchers to develop ways to make AI more willing to respectfully disagree when humans are wrong.
Britons fear AI could erode ‘human touch’ in public services, poll suggests (computing.co.uk) - Most Britons worry that AI in public services will strip away human connection and oversight, even as they recognize the technology’s potential benefits.
How AI is turning the Iran conflict into theater (MIT Technology Review) - AI-powered dashboards and prediction markets are turning the Iran conflict into a real-time spectacle, complete with fake imagery that’s making it harder to separate actual war reporting from digital theater.
Cyber Security
How AI is Quietly Becoming a Supply Chain Problem (RUSI) - AI’s complex supply chains are creating hidden vulnerabilities that could turn our most powerful technologies into national security risks, demanding urgent attention from both companies and governments.
The first AI war: US and Israel use Iran to test autonomous tech (The Times) - Intelligence experts are questioning whether AI-powered targeting systems mistakenly identified an Iranian school as a military target, resulting in over 140 civilian deaths and highlighting the dangerous risks of autonomous warfare technology.
AI is accelerating cloud cyberattacks, and one weak link stands out (ZDNET) - Google’s new threat report reveals that cybercriminals are weaponizing AI to target third-party cloud tools, giving businesses just days to shore up their defenses before attacks hit.
AI: The Default Enterprise Accelerator – Key Insights from the ThreatLabz 2026 AI Security Report (CIO) - New research reveals that as AI becomes standard across enterprise operations, it’s dramatically expanding cybersecurity vulnerabilities that organizations must now urgently address.
Data & Decision Making
Why senior management loses confidence in AI before it reaches scale (CIO) - Senior executives often pull the plug on AI initiatives because companies fail to establish clear metrics for measuring progress, leaving leadership in the dark about whether their investments are actually working.
Reflective AI: How Artificial Intelligence Is Expanding Beyond Productivity Tools (Thedatascientist) - Reflective AI is moving past simple task automation to help businesses make smarter decisions by learning from past experiences and adapting to new situations in real-time.
The world needs an AI lab — for Data (a16z) - While AI can beat chess masters and write code, it still struggles with basic tasks like common sense reasoning — all because the quality and type of training data makes or breaks AI performance.
Innovation & Collaboration
China’s OpenClaw Boom Is a Gold Rush for AI Companies (WIRED) - China’s OpenClaw agent has sparked a frenzy of experimentation, with users scrambling to rent cloud servers and buy AI subscriptions just to test it out—creating unexpected revenue windfalls for tech companies.
UK’s biggest AI data centre plan approved (Construction Enquirer) - The UK just approved plans for a massive £7.5bn AI data center in North Lincolnshire, positioning the country to compete more seriously in the global race for AI infrastructure and computing power.
Using AI Can Stifle Innovation. But It Doesn’t Have To. (Harvard Business Review) - Harvard Business Review research reveals that while AI boosts productivity by making knowledge instantly reusable, it can kill innovation when teams stop exploring original solutions and just copy “good-enough” answers.
Productivity & Efficiency
Who in the C-Suite Should Own AI? (Harvard Business Review) - Harvard Business Review explores why C-suite leaders are fighting over who controls AI strategy, using sociological theory to explain how major tech disruptions reshape corporate power structures and offering practical guidance for moving beyond turf wars.
Institutional AI vs Individual AI (a16z) - While individual workers are embracing AI tools for personal productivity gains, most companies are still struggling to translate these improvements into measurable organizational-level results.
The Shape of the Thing (oneusefulthing.org) - AI development is hitting a crossroads where the next breakthroughs will likely reshape how we work and think, making this a pivotal moment for leaders to understand what’s coming.
Student Generative Artificial Intelligence Survey 2026 (HEPI) - British undergraduates now use AI almost universally, but a new survey reveals they’re split on whether it’s helping or hurting their education.
The AI antidote (McKinsey) - McKinsey explores how organizations can build resilience against AI-driven disruption by developing human-centric capabilities that complement rather than compete with artificial intelligence.
Smart capability in the age of AI (UKAuthority) - How Artificial Intelligence has fundamentally changed the role of technology in organisations.
Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation (Business Insider) - Silicon Valley companies are experimenting with offering AI compute credits as part of employee compensation packages, recognizing that access to powerful AI tools has become as valuable as traditional perks for attracting top engineering talent.
Amazon convenes ‘deep dive’ internal meeting to address outages (CNBC) - Amazon’s retail tech leaders held an emergency meeting this week to figure out why their website keeps crashing, as repeated outages threaten the company’s reputation for reliability.
AI agents are coming for government. How one big city is letting them in (Fastcompany) - San Francisco is piloting AI agents to handle routine government tasks, potentially showing other cities how automation could streamline bureaucracy and free up human workers for more complex citizen services.
Regulation and Compliance
Challenges to the Monitoring of Deployed AI Systems (NIST) - NIST’s new report reveals that companies are struggling to properly monitor their AI systems once they’re actually running in the real world, highlighting critical gaps that could affect performance and safety.
A 5-step approach to taming shadow AI (CSO Online) - Organizations are scrambling to get control of “shadow AI” — employees using AI tools without IT approval — by building proper governance frameworks before these unmanaged systems create serious security and compliance risks.
Thousands of authors publish ‘empty’ book in protest over AI using their work (The Guardian) - About 10,000 authors, including Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, are publishing blank books to protest AI companies training their models on copyrighted work without permission or payment.
Europe leads on AI regulation, UK and USA lag behind (computing.co.uk) - Europe is setting the pace on AI regulation while the UK and US struggle to keep up, potentially leaving businesses in these markets facing more uncertainty about future compliance requirements.
How AI firm Anthropic wound up in the Pentagon’s crosshairs (The Guardian AI) - The Pentagon is pressuring AI company Anthropic to allow military use of its Claude chatbot, sparking fresh concerns about accountability when artificial intelligence systems make life-or-death decisions in warfare.
Sustainability
Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data Centers (The Atlantic) - The explosive growth of AI is transforming landscapes with massive data centers that consume enormous amounts of energy and water, raising serious questions about the environmental cost of our digital future.
User Experience
As we enter the age of agentic AI, everyone becomes a manager (FE Week) - As AI agents take over routine tasks, human workers are shifting from doing the work to directing it—making good judgment and clear communication the most valuable skills in tomorrow’s workplace.
AI Isn’t Lightening Workloads. It’s Making Them More Intense (WSJ) - The technology is increasing the speed, density and complexity of work rather than reducing it, new analysis shows.
Has AI Ended Thought Leadership? (Harvard Business Review) - Harvard Business Review argues that AI-powered content is flooding organizations with polished but hollow expertise, while real progress comes from operators who actually test ideas and share honest results about what works.
Workforce & Skills
Britons’ attitudes towards technology (moreincommon.org.uk) - A new UK study reveals Britons aren’t tech-phobic luddites or Silicon Valley accelerationists—they’re pragmatic adopters who want innovation that actually improves their daily lives.
AI Isn’t Coming for Everyone’s Job (The Atlantic) - The Atlantic uses the history of player pianos to argue that AI won’t eliminate all jobs, pointing to enduring demand for uniquely human skills that machines simply can’t replicate.
IBM looks beyond short-term AI gains, tripling entry-level hiring (CIO) - IBM is tripling its entry-level hiring because the company believes investing in new talent today is essential to avoid a skills shortage crisis in five years, even as other tech firms focus on immediate AI profits.
Why AI makes human judgment more valuable (Fastcompany) - As AI handles more routine decisions, the ability to make nuanced judgment calls in complex, ambiguous situations becomes a premium skill that separates valuable employees from replaceable ones.
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