Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 15 May 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Businesses: Discussion

Mr. David Lee:

I am happy to take that question. Each of the speakers spoke about the importance of the opportunity being taken advantage of in a responsible way. I can only speak to the experience we have had of the 70 organisations that come through our own business centre. As owners and management within the organisations, they are all acutely aware of the trust equation, and that is trust in terms of the engagement with their customers, but as important is the engagement with their own staff. Deputy O’Reilly is correct in terms of the perception and the coverage. There is a level of apprehension among employees, regardless of what level they operate at within the organisation and whether they come from a professional background or otherwise. What we are seeing increasingly from those organisations is that when they are looking to the governance arrangements they are putting in place to oversee the introduction of the technologies, they are not just looking at that as a technology question and they are seeing it as a trust journey with their employees. They are ensuring that HR is appropriately represented in those governance forums, so the proposed introduction of the technologies is looked at not just through the eyes of the economic equation but also through the impact on employees.