Digital Leaders AI Pulse Issue #1

Welcome to the first edition of The AI Pulse - a new weekly newsletter for Digital Leaders. The AI Pulse is 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 from this edition: The UN considers governance of AI for the benefit of humanity; The chip manufacturing advances powering the future of AI; and How AI is reshaping the workplace.

AI for Good

An important new report from the UN focuses on governance of AI for humanity. It states that there is “a global governance deficit with respect to AI” and proposes that a global AI fund to help developing nations tap AI’s benefits. This would help provide models, computing power and AI-related training programmes for those countries.

Here is the text of a talk given by Stephen Fry as the inaugural “Living Well With Technology” lecture for King’s College London’s Digital Futures Institute. In an engaging style, Fry emphasizes the importance of careful consideration and regulation to ensure AI is developed and used responsibly for the benefit of humanity.

Bias and Ethics

Meta has confirmed that it’s restarting efforts to train its AI systems using public Facebook and Instagram posts from its U.K. userbase. The company claims it has “incorporated regulatory feedback” into a revised “opt-out” approach to ensure that it’s “even more transparent”.

A report from The Register looks at how Chatterbox Labs tested eight major large language models (LLMs) and found that all of them produce harmful content, though Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet fared better than rivals. The conclusion: No major AI model is safe, but some do better than others.

A key concern with widespread use of AI is that it has scrambled our ability to tell what is real and what is synthetic. A Wired article says that we have entered “an era of deep doubt” and considers what this means for business and society, and how we can distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.

Cyber Security

Governments rely on digital technology companies to survive and thrive. This fascinating essay from "Engelsberg Ideas" examines just how important tech companies are to defence strategy and delivery. It concludes that We are living through a change in the balance of power between states and the private sector — with major implications for modern conflict.

AI’s pervasive adoption is leading to a rapidly expanding threat surface that all enterprises struggle to keep up with. As adversarial attacks on AI models rise, this article from VentureBeat addresses how to be more secure from attack.

Data & Decision Making

In an excellent essay for Englesberg Ideas, Kenneth Payne explores the role of AI in creating strategy in situation such as defence. He argues that the emergence of AI capable of deducing human intentions may transform the world of strategy, diplomacy and warfare.

Using GenAI for writing proposals seems like both a blessing and a curse. News from the US reports that the US Army is now exploring how best to apply it. A user can’t just say “write me a Request For Proposals” and get the AI to blurt out a draft. Instead, the software will guide them through the process step by step – and use multiple AI models to check each other’s’ work.

As AI matures, there is a vast, dynamic, and ever-growing source of public data available. This Forbes article considers the types of public data available and how they can be used effectively to integrate it with AI systems.

Innovation & Collaboration

Driving AI’s advance is the rapid advance in chip technology. The latest “Technology Quarterly” from The Economist provides an excellent overview of the current state and path forward for chip manufacturing to power AI’s future. A great collection of articles that address the technical, economic, and political issues at stake.

With all the releases and updates to Microsoft Copilot, it’s tough to stay on top of it all. This comprehensive summary from Techcrunch does a great job of summarising around a dozen Copilot-branded products powering various capabilities in Microsoft software and services.

TextThe Guardian reports that Google is lobbying the UK government to change the laws to allow more data centres to be built. They say that Britain risks being left behind in the global artificial intelligence race unless the government moves quickly to build more datacentres and let tech companies use copyrighted work in their AI models.

Productivity & Efficiency

A study reported in HBR shows that students now engaged in MBA studies are using GenAI much more than today’s leaders and managers. It concludes that companies must attract new GenAI-savvy talent to build the next generation of AI-capable managers.

Travel and logistics firms face mounting labour challenges—including frequent shortages, rising costs, and declining productivity. This McKinsey report consider how combining AI tools with new ways of working can improve efficiency.

Using GenAI for software development is driving efficiency in software delivery. In this report, MIT researchers propose a four-stage framework using GenAI to improve the process over today’s human-intensive practices.

Regulation and Compliance

A raft of new AI laws are now being drafted. Here is what’s illegal under California’s 38 proposed new AI laws now being considered by California Governor Gavin Newsom. This includes the highly contentious SB 1047, currently waiting for his approval.

The Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard Business School considers whether you should consider governance as a competitive advantage in AI Innovation. Three levels of governance are defined that enable AI innovation.

Sustainability

Rather than viewing data centres and AI as a threat or strain on infrastructure, the World Economic Forum considers how data centres can adopt a “power positive” approach to contribute to community-wide energy efficiency efforts.

Meanwhile, as AI adoption grows, the energy demands of data centres increase. This report from Energy Digital looks at the balance between technology advancement and environmental sustainability.

Workforce & Skills

A helpful overview article from Sloan Management Review assesses how GenAI is reshaping creative work and its teams. Leaders must prepare to address these ongoing shifts. The authors identify four key changes that are reshaping the nature of creative work in the age of AI.

A recent MIT study revealed that GitHub Copilot significantly boosted developer productivity at Microsoft, Accenture, and an unnamed electronics company. trials involving 4,867 developers found that less experienced developers benefited the most from Copilot and that the AI tool did not introduce new errors into the code.

Can you now use AI to interview job candidates? Is it effective? And more importantly, is that he right thing to do? This short article considers the issues.