Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk. Today I am going to talk to a very interesting woman here in studio around AI. That was particularly why I wanted to contextualise what life was like in 2010 when none of us were talking about ChatGPT because of course it is its third birthday last weekend and...
According to PwC's 2025 Irish and Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey, this is a really substantial one because it interviewed 50,000 workers globally across 48 major economies, including our own, and 28 sectors. And Leisha Millan is Director and AI Adoption Lead at PwC Ireland. She joins me now. First of all, Leisha, thanks a million for coming into us this morning.
Thanks, Susan. Delighted to be here.
Thank you very much. that was very low.
It's really surprising. And especially when you flip that and think 57% have not used AI in the past 12 months. It's not what we expected to see.
Absolutely. That's right, actually. 57% haven't used it at all in the past 12 months. Now, is it that they haven't or they think they haven't? Because I would imagine if you asked somebody about Gen AI versus ChatGPT, they may not necessarily associate the two of them together.
Yeah, it's a good point. And I suppose we see AI being rolled out all the time. I think the reality is people are using the tools. And if we think about that 43%, they're seeing the benefits. So we're seeing that they're able to do more in the same amount of time.
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Chapter 2: What insights does PwC's survey provide about AI usage in Ireland?
They're able to get to things that they didn't get to before. And we're seeing creativity is increased. So people are doing things differently. And then we're also seeing that the quality of output. But I would say all of those benefits are Gen AI benefits.
So personal productivity improving, whereas we really unlock the opportunity when it comes to artificial intelligence from a broader perspective. And if we think about AI agents and the fact that they can do goal oriented tasks autonomously, that really provides us with an opportunity to go beyond incremental improvements and and really start thinking about redefining the way we do work entirely.
Now, when you talk about redefining the way we do work entirely, like I get excited about that because just like in the characterisation I gave of the 15 year time frame there that I just mentioned at the beginning of the show, I'm excited to see how work could change in the next while. But that could frighten people too, Leisha. So how do we square that circle?
Understandably, the uncertainty is there and with uncertainty comes a huge amount of vulnerability, I think, on the side of the worker. So I'm very passionate about ensuring that we have diverse perspectives when it comes to how AI is used within organisations and having those diverse perspectives involved in the transformation process so that we understand why. What are we trying to achieve?
You know, it's goal oriented actions autonomously. That's what AI agents can do. What is the goal? What are we going to do? What is the value that we're going to create? And making sure that we have those different perspectives coming in so that we achieve those intended consequences, but also don't have unintended consequences that we didn't foresee.
And that's the key point is actually look at this from a rounded perspective. I was looking at the reporting on the survey in the papers this morning and like one of the headlines that came out is that Ireland is lagging the world. And, you know, sitting here as somebody who runs a company in Ireland, like, I don't like the thought that we're doing that, but the numbers back it up.
Like you say here, workers who used AI over the past year report being more productive at work. 67% of people say that in Ireland. Globally, it's 74%. See greater quality of work appointments you made, 64% in Ireland. Globally, 75%. See their creativity increase, 55% in Ireland. Globally, 69%. What do we need to do to catch up? Or are we asking the right question in doing that?
So interestingly, both globally and in Ireland, curiosity outweighs anxiety when it comes to AI, which is a positive thing. Where Ireland is lagging from a mindset perspective is when it comes to excitement. So we're much less excited in Ireland for some reason about AIs and our global counterparts. And I think this is something where we need to focus in terms of, again, what is in it for people?
What are they going to get out of this technology? And then I think it's about providing people with the knowledge, skills and experience so that they can tackle this in a positive way.
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Chapter 3: How does AI influence productivity and creativity at work?
The technology is changing all the time. So it's about being able to constantly adapt and improve.
And speaking of adapting, we've already talked about Gen AI and to be fair, that is far more widespread than a Gentic. And another element from the survey here is that AI agents are used 3% in Ireland and 6% globally. Now, I know we might have the excitement divide and you and I can work on that, but that is a very, very low percentage.
Is that because there's a lot less language models or a lot less training have been done on agents? Is it because it's newer? What is it that leads to that?
So with agents, I think there's a lot of groundwork that needs to go into making sure that things are, you know, the architecture is correct, that the guardrails are in place for it to be safe and responsible AI. And I think organizations are doing that investment at the moment. We know that there's a high number of organizations planning to invest in agents in the future.
And so they're getting the ground, the setup correct. And then beyond that, I think it's about bringing it to life for people. So if I think about the AI agent example that always comes into my mind, if we think about, you know, we're used to seeing HR chatbots, for example, that's something that's been around for a long time.
AI agents take that from being just an information gathering process where it can answer your question to being able to answer your very specific question tailored to you and the context of your organisation. But it can then also go and take on action. So I could ask it, you know, what's my annual leave? And it could tell me, so this is what you're entitled to.
These are the days of annual leave that you've taken so far. Here are the days that you have remaining. And, you know, here's what's coming up in your calendar that you're going to want to avoid. And then I can say, OK, so I want to take these annual leave days knowing what it's now told me. And it can then follow through the approval process.
So it takes something that would have taken me a lot more time previously, a simple conversation to be able to book that into the system.
So what I'm hearing you saying, though, is that it's less about talking to an AI chatbot that can annoyingly give me the wrong answer and more into personalisation and almost predictive as well, particularly like saying these are the things you need to avoid in taking your annual leave. It's been fascinating to talk to you.
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