Artificial Intelligence has progressed steadily over decades and has been slowly seeping into our lives, from recommender systems that help us shop to diagnostic tools in healthcare. Recent advancements in generative AI have accelerated the interest and development of AI and have created new opportunities.
Generative AI is transforming workforce practices for individuals and organizations in three ways. First, for individuals, generative AI tools from major tech companies such as Gemini (Google), and Copilot (Microsoft) are enhancing productivity in everyday tasks like email, document creation, and presentations. We’re also using new AI products like Claude.ai, perplexity.ai, and ChatGPT.
Second, generative AI enables organizations to create in-house systems specific to their operations. For example, Revenue developed a tool for agents to search through thousands of pages of tax manuals conversationally, while Teagasc created a system for farmers to query agricultural information. These examples and many others, were not achievable prior to the emergence of generative AI.
The third and final impact of generative AI is in the creation of new roles, new jobs and new types of services. Because generative AI synthesises new content from training data, this impact will be felt right across the spectrum, from creative organisations to finance, education, healthcare, transport, etc.
Apart from the requirements of having training data and computational resources to turn training data into an AI model that can generate content, the main driver behind the development of generative AI is talent.
Dublin’s talent in AI is not only in the large tech companies that operate here but also in AI centres of excellence that have been set up by dozens of multinationals, from Citibank and Mastercard, to Accenture and SAP. It is also present in the emerging Irish AI enterprises, large ones like Intercom and small ones like Reva.
That talent pipeline is fed by our University graduates with expertise in AI. Each University produces hundreds of masters graduates in AI or Data Science each year, many funded by Skillnet Ireland. On top of that we have SFI-funded research centres like Insight and ADAPT and SFI-funded CRTs which produce close to 100 industry-focussed PhD graduates with AI expertise each year.
This academic-led approach to developing AI talent really pays off as according to IDA Ireland, access to AI talent is the number one reason why companies bring AI R&D investment to Ireland. Don’t take my word for it though, Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer with OpenAI visited Dublin in early 2024 and said he was “intoxicated” by the tech talent on offer in Ireland.
Of course AI and generative AI in particular is not a silver bullet and there are challenges associated with data privacy, biases in training data and ethical uses of such training data as well as security concerns. We must also be wary of blind adoption of generative AI tools and always have a human-in-the-loop when using it. Fortunately many of the provisions of the EU AI Act which is now in force should rein in some of these and allow a balanced promotion of innovation in AI in a safe and transparent way.
Founding Director of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics
