Declan McNiff

We got access to some people this week that is absolutely unbelievable that you don't get, if you're just another voice on the end of a keyboard or on the end of a phone, so it's face to face and that's where the juice is and that's where the beauty is and the companies that adopt that to free up their staff from the routine, A, it makes them, empowers them

B, it pushes the business, and lastly, it makes it more meaningful for everybody involved.

There is, and we were laughing about it the other day.

Whoever cracks that code and becomes a consultancy, because look, some of the AI, it varies.

They talk about senior people, and senior developers will become the sort of authenticators of the AI work, and they'll be the ones that verify everything.

but then there's other people that were saying that the best people with ai are straight out of college and won't still study and the ones that are using these tools and adopting it and are able to play about with them in practice and so they're bringing it into the professional workforce but definitely having this the right skill because you're far better training your staff in ai than replacing them

it's harder to replace people and don't get me wrong if you're training staff in AI and some don't adopt it they have to be replaced because it's the people with AI skills that will replace those that don't but there's industries like customer service and that I don't think it'll impact that big you might have the first layer but there's nothing more frustrating than getting on with an AI agent and going nowhere on the back of a call

Well, there was a great Gartner report actually on the impact of AI and they see it as sort of net neutral this year.

Yes, look, if the big companies are laying off people, that gives every CEO around the world asking, do we have the right team?

Are the team of the right skill?

Do we need as many and that on the team?

But that produces, look, there's new roles appearing already.

If you can get AI trainers, AI prompters, and this is the next generation of roles that will come through, and that actual report, the Gardner report, expects that these roles will be clearer defined.

We're definitely in an area, Niall spoke about shifting sands there, Jess, and there's definitely, there's a lot of fear, and we've seen that firsthand over here in America, fear of what AI and the impact of AI, and a lot of people that you just touched on, they don't know where to apply it.

and so you can spend the right money and there's a number of companies that are waiting to see what others are doing but there is this is the first year we've seen a lot of companies that have decided okay we've sat in our hands long enough to try and work out what it is let's there's specific tasks then there's specific problems you only apply ai to solve a problem there's no point as you said otherwise you're wasting money

Well, hopefully you'll need us here, Jess, to talk to and we won't be replaced.

Look, who knows?

And even a lot of companies were saying their forecast and how to forecast 12 months ahead, two years ahead, is very difficult.

We spoke to a number of big clients this week and they're saying even forecasting a quarter and it's very, very difficult.

So, look, 12 months...