The AI Pulse

Issue #81 — 22nd June 2026

Editor: Professor Alan Brown

This week’s AI Pulse is supported by our new “AI Pulse Briefing”. Ask a question and AI Pulse Briefing will search Digital Leaders thought-leadership to generate a briefing from trusted sources with useful summaries, author and publication dates and links for further reading. Click here to read our latest briefing on AI Safety.

Highlights in this edition include:

Putting AI to work: The operational excellence imperative (McKinsey)

Global Supply Chains: A Foresight report on risk and resilience (GOV.UK )

Two-thirds of Americans think AI is advancing too quickly (The Verge AI)

UK Government invests in AI cancer diagnosis (UKAuthority)

Help Employees Get Better—Not Just Faster—with AI (Harvard Business)

AI for Good

UK Government announces new advisory AI Growth Lab (UKAuthority) - The UK Government has announced the launch of an advisory AI Growth Lab, bringing together a group of regulators to provide information on how existing regulations apply to novel AI technologies.

UK Government invests in AI cancer diagnosis (UKAuthority) - The NHS is set to expand the use of artificial intelligence across England, following a government funding package of nearly £30 million to accelerate diagnostic times for millions of patients.

Bias and Ethics

The UK AI Compass (Diffusion) - A new UK public opinion study cuts through the noise to reveal what ordinary Brits actually think about AI governance and whether they trust the technology shaping their lives.

Two-thirds of Americans think AI is advancing too quickly (The Verge AI) - People are using AI more, but still don’t like it.

AI’s impact on cognitive ability: MIT study reveals more troubling data (Fastcompany) - AI’s impact on cognitive ability: MIT study reveals more troubling data, as their research found that relying too much on AI negatively affected people’s ability to identify misinformation.

Cyber Security

Police launch national centre of AI (UKAuthority) - A new UK national centre for artificial intelligence (AI) in policing has been formally launched to accelerate the use of technology across forces, reduce administrative burdens, and speed up criminal investigations.

Don’t Let AI Slop Muck Up Your Company’s Processes (Harvard Business) - Generative AI’s gifts come with a hidden danger: decay in the accuracy and quality of organizational knowledge. This decay is the organization-level version of the “workslop” problem.

‘Dangerous’ AI Models Are Coming No Matter What (Wired) - The US government crackdown on Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 hides a glaring truth: AI models with advanced hacking capabilities will soon be the norm.

How AI Is Improving Cyber Safety, Digital Awareness, and Online Security Practices (Thedatascientist) - In today’s interconnected world, cyber safety has become a critical concern for individuals, businesses, and institutions.

Data & Decision Making

Top Data Science Trends Shaping the Future of AI (Thedatascientist) - As we move deeper into the AI-driven economy, several emerging data science trends are reshaping how organizations build, deploy, and scale artificial intelligence.

AI in the Boardroom: 98% of Mid-Market Companies Debating AI-Assisted Decisions (TechRepublic) - A new Board Intelligence survey reveals that 98% of mid-market company boards are actively discussing or implementing AI to assist in high-level decision-making.

Innovation & Collaboration

GDS and National Archives partner on AI in legal data (UKAuthority) - The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) has partnered with The National Archives to explore how legal data can be prepared for AI use, with a focus on data maturity as the foundation for AI readiness.

Your Team Has AI Tools. But Is It AI-Ready? (IE Insights) - AI access is not AI readiness. Ted Yang examines what serious leaders do differently in AI adoption.

Global Supply Chains: A Foresight report on risk and resilience (GOV.UK) - A UK Government foresight report argues that global supply chains should be understood as complex, interconnected networks rather than simple chains. It highlights how climate change, geopolitical tensions, and hidden dependencies create systemic risks.

Productivity & Efficiency

Putting AI to work: The operational excellence imperative (McKinsey) - McKinsey outlines how companies can move AI projects from pilot to production by focusing on operational discipline—essentially turning experimental AI into tools that actually work at scale and deliver measurable business value.

Why AI coding debt is different (Infoworld) - AI-generated code is creating a new form of technical debt, less visible and harder to unwind than the traditional kind. Here’s what to do about it.

How to put a clear AI strategy into focus (CIO) - For IT leaders and their organizations to drive productivity and limit liabilities, it’s essential to first establish a cohesive AI vision.

AI tool to slash planning decision times as government accelerates push to build 1.5 million homes (GOV.UK) - Millions of homeowners could benefit from faster planning decisions, as 2 new AI tools are unveiled to modernise England’s planning permission system.

The AI Economic Indicators (Stanford Digital Economy Lab) - The AI Economic Indicators at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab is an expanding series of economic dashboards that connects policymakers, business executives, and individual workers to timely and reliable information on the economic impact of AI.

Shipping enterprise-quality code with AI agents (Infoworld) - How we can increase software development velocity with AI-assisted coding without the hangover of runaway technical debt.

Regulation and Compliance

J. D. Vance’s AI Doctrine (The Atlantic) - Vice President J.D. Vance is blending Silicon Valley’s tech optimism with MAGA’s nationalist priorities to shape his own vision for how America should approach artificial intelligence policy.

Trump’s Anthropic shutdown just made the case for non-American AI (The Verge AI) - Anthropic may bring Fable and Mythos back online, but the shutdown fired up sovereign AI efforts around the world.

Sustainability

AI Is Replacing Sustainability As The Latest Business Trend (Forbes) - Forbes reports that corporate sustainability initiatives are losing momentum as companies redirect their attention and resources toward artificial intelligence, potentially sidelining environmental and social goals that gained traction in recent years.

Sustainable AI: The Operating Discipline for Scalable, Resilient Growth (KPMG) - KPMG is pushing “Sustainable AI” as a framework to help executives scale AI systems without blowing budgets or climate pledges—focusing on cost control, governance, and energy management as AI deployments grow.

Drilling Into AI’s Financial Sustainability (Towardsdatascience) - Budgets for AI tokens can’t be infinite, no matter how much hyperscalers wish they were.

User Experience

Lessons from Chinese AI Firms on Owning Customers’ Habits (Harvard Business) - As U.S. AI firms compete in an escalating race for superior models, bigger benchmarks, and more advanced features, Chinese companies are pursuing a fundamentally different strategy.

Workforce & Skills

63% of workers see AI making the workplace ‘less human’ (CIO) - Workers are concerned about more than just AI taking their jobs. They worry it will lead to a cold, sterile, dehumanized work culture and environment.

Rewiring Talent to Value in the age of AI (McKinsey) - As humans enter a new era with AI agents as coworkers, companies need to update their framework for defining their most valuable roles. Here’s how to get started.

Help Employees Get Better—Not Just Faster—with AI (Harvard Business) - As AI makes generating polished work easier, the scarce skill is becoming judgment: knowing what to trust, question, and refine. Yet most organizations train employees to use AI tools, not to think critically.

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