Alan Barrett

No, that's absolutely true.

I mean, AI, its impact on the global economy is kind of unusual at the moment because we have to remember there's a phenomenal amount of money being invested in AI at the moment.

So when we hear things like, in spite of a lot of the economic troubles, that the world economy is actually showing a great degree of resilience, one of the reasons it's showing resilience is that you have this phenomenal amount of investment going on there.

And a lot of that's in data centres.

Exactly.

So there's a huge amount going on there.

But at the same time, that's the sort of, you know, the positive impetus.

The concerning side, as Alison has just been talking about then, is the extent to which there's this potential for job destruction.

Now, Ireland, just to add to the vulnerability of the sense of unease around this.

I mean, I've talked to my colleagues in the Institute doing work on it.

And we could end up in Ireland with the following situation.

I mean, if you think about the sort of the world economy generally.

All right.

There's always this sort of sense about new technologies.

Well, even if they destroy some jobs.

They're going to increase productivity.

And so you will create new jobs.

OK, now that's almost invariably true.

But there's always a sense that in moving from A to B, there can be a lot of people who can be sort of left behind.

OK, it's not necessarily the same people getting, you know, just seamlessly transitioning into the industry.