The AI Pulse
Issue #77 — 18th May 2026
Editor: Professor Alan Brown
This week's AI Pulse is in partnership with the Digital Policy Alliance. They have been informing legislators on digital policy for 33 years. This week they are promoting a new research paper "Robust AI - A framework for Leaders". Its a free download here.
Highlights in this edition include:
AI for Good
How AI is Helping Hospitals Get Ahead (TechRepublic) - Northwestern Medicine is using AI to predict diseases earlier and speed up radiology scans, showing how hospitals can shift from reactive treatment to preventing problems before they happen.
The state of artificial intelligence in public audit (OECD) - How public audit institutions are exploring the use of AI to strengthen oversight and improve audit processes. It draws on consultations with 15 institutions across 14 countries and the European Union.
Bias and Ethics
AI is a leadership problem, not a technology problem (Fastcompany) - Smart leaders are discovering that AI success depends less on choosing the right algorithms and more on making tough decisions about workforce changes, ethical boundaries, and strategic priorities.
What Are Your Company’s AI Nightmares? (Harvard Business Review) - HBR argues companies should ditch slow, vague AI ethics policies and instead focus on identifying their worst-case AI scenarios—then build specific resources and training to prevent those nightmares from happening.
Cyber Security
AI, open code, and vulnerability risk in the public sector (GOV.UK) - The UK government is helping public sector organizations safely share their code publicly while protecting against AI tools that could quickly spot and exploit security flaws.
Empowering Defenders: AI for Cybersecurity (WEF) - AI is transforming cybersecurity, but realizing its full value requires strategic deployment, robust governance, and balanced human oversight. This white paper offers practical guidance for organizations seeking to harness AI in their cybersecurity efforts.
Intelligent Infrastructure: A Primer (WEF) - Infrastructure is in transition. No longer is it about how well a country builds and connects physical assets, but how intelligently those assets can sense, communicate, learn and act.
Data & Decision Making
From “System of Record” to “System of Intelligence” (A16z) - A16z argues that smart companies are now building “reasoning layers” on top of traditional databases, essentially turning boring data storage into intelligent systems that can actually think and make decisions.
Establishing AI and data sovereignty in the age of autonomous systems (MIT Technology Review) - MIT Technology Review explores why companies need direct control over their AI data and models to succeed in business and build trustworthy autonomous systems.
Nearly every enterprise is investing in AI, but only 5% say their data is ready (CIO) - Nearly every company is experimenting with AI and seeing early wins, but a Dun & Bradstreet study reveals only 5% believe their data infrastructure can handle reliable enterprise-scale deployment.
Data readiness for agentic AI in financial services (MIT Technology Review) - Financial services firms are discovering that deploying AI agents requires more than advanced algorithms—they need rock-solid data foundations that can be trusted and accessed reliably across their entire organization.
Innovation & Collaboration
What happens when AI starts building itself? (TechCrunch AI) - Richard Socher raised $650 million to build AI systems that can research and upgrade themselves continuously, promising actual products rather than just research experiments.
Redefining What Efficiency Means in the Age of AI (Harvard Business) - Harvard Business explores how neuroscientist Mithu Storoni believes we need to retrain our brains to complement AI’s capabilities, shifting from traditional productivity metrics to new forms of human-machine collaboration.
The Quadrillion-Dollar Disagreement on AI and the Economy (AI Frontiers) - Economists are split on whether AI will trigger explosive growth or economic stagnation, with the debate hinging on three key assumptions that we can start testing now.
Productivity & Efficiency
Measuring up (Ada Lovelace Institute) - The Ada Lovelace Institute examines whether AI is actually delivering the productivity gains promised to UK government agencies, cutting through the hype to measure real-world results.
AI only works well if the foundations are strong – and many organisations are still dealing with outdated systems (Civil Service World) - Organizations are discovering that their aging IT systems aren’t ready for AI implementation, creating a fundamental challenge that audit committees need to address before departments can effectively harness artificial intelligence capabilities.
The AI assembly line: Strategic imperatives for CEOs (McKinsey) - McKinsey outlines how CEOs should build “AI assembly lines” that systematically transform business operations, warning that companies treating AI as just another tech tool will fall behind competitors who embed it throughout their workflows.
Implementing advanced AI technologies in finance (MIT Technology Review) - MIT Technology Review finds that financial firms can’t just plug in AI and expect results—they need to reshape how teams work together and focus on solutions that can grow company-wide.
AI is not transforming software development where you think (CIO) - AI coding tools are speeding up developers, but companies won’t see real gains until AI tackles the bottlenecks in testing and deployment that actually slow down software releases.
Regulation and Compliance
AI, private platforms, and the risk to NHS data sovereignty (The British Medical Association) - The NHS faces a critical choice: embrace AI tools that could transform healthcare while potentially surrendering control of sensitive patient data to private tech companies.
Good practice guide for organisations using AI (National Audit Office) - The UK’s National Audit Office released a practical guide helping public sector organisations audit and manage AI risks, giving government bodies a roadmap for responsible AI oversight.
Palantir to be granted ‘unlimited access’ to NHS patient data (Digital Health) - The NHS is giving Palantir staff unlimited access to identifiable patient data for its Federal Data Platform project, raising significant privacy concerns about how Britain’s health service shares sensitive medical information with private tech companies.
Sustainability
Building and procuring sustainable Defence AI will boost force resilience (Alan Turing Institute) - New research reveals that considering sustainability measures will increase the resilience of Defence AI systems. Building sustainability into AI systems will reduce operational risks, improve reliability, bolster resilience, and contribute to force sustainment.
What It Will Take to Make AI Sustainable (Wired) - AI researcher Sasha Luccioni says we’re flying blind on AI’s environmental impact—we need solid emissions data and a clearer picture of how people actually use these tools before we can make them sustainable.
Datacentres using 6% of electricity supply in UK and US, research says (The Guardian) - Data centers now consume 6% of electricity in the UK and US, with AI driving a 15% global spike in energy use over two years—raising concerns about public pushback as the technology’s environmental costs become impossible to ignore.
Building Resilient and Scalable AI Value Chains: A Nexus Strategy (WEF) - AI is triggering one of the largest infrastructure buildouts in modern history. This report examines the growing AI-energy-water-minerals-land nexus,and the systemic risks emerging from poorly coordinated expansionn..
User Experience
Gov.uk chatbot makes government services faster to access (Computer Weekly) - The UK government launched a chatbot on Gov.uk that lets citizens ask questions in plain English to access services faster, potentially making bureaucratic processes less painful for millions of users.
Workforce & Skills
Is AI putting graduates out of work already? (The Economist) - If you are studying coding, there might be some bad news coming your way.
Stanford HAI Launches AI and Organizations Lab to Study Science of AI in the Workplace (Stanford HAI) - Stanford’s new AI and Organizations Lab will study how artificial intelligence actually affects workplace dynamics, job roles, and team productivity—giving businesses hard data on what AI adoption really means for their operations.
How AI is transforming software development (CIO) - AI coding tools are evolving from simple shortcuts to autonomous agents that can build entire software applications independently, forcing companies to reconsider how they hire and train junior developers.
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
© 2026 Digital Leaders
Digital Topics Ltd, 239 Old Street, London, ec1v 9 ey, United Kingdom