Every so often, an airport scanner deliberately shows the screener a gun that isn’t in the bag. And if you’re integrating digital intelligence into processes with a ‘human in the loop’, you might want something similar. Back in the Second World War, RAF radar operators hunting U-boats kept missing signals. These were highly trained, motivated people. And so the RAF asked a researcher called Norman Mackworth to find out why. He built a clock. His clock had a black pointer tha

If you have AI working in production, how might your enterprise move closer to becoming AI-native? For businesses that have moved beyond prototypes, digital intelligence is already helping with individual tasks and, increasingly, complete workflows. Is the next logical focus on the team, building on what is already working? A team could coordinate through agents, provided people and agents share an understanding of objectives, decisions and work in progress. The models would

Welcome to all the AI news you won't regret reading – across tech, biopharma, medtech, advanced manufacturing and insurance. At the end of a week in which the end of the world was foretold, priced and promptly tossed aside. tl;dr: It's the end of the world as we know it. And we feel fine. Reading Anthropic's IPO filing might finally convince you that AI will be humanity's ultimate cataclysm. And yet – most of us feel fine. It appears the world still thinks Claude's maker is w

You soon find out what isn’t in the manual when your most experienced colleague goes on holiday. And that’s worth remembering when we ask an AI agent to work from the same manual. An experienced engineer can hear a pump starting to fail before an alarm sounds. But ask her how she knew and the explanation may be frustratingly brief. What took years to learn now feels obvious. So getting at that knowledge takes a different sort of conversation. Pick a difficult incident and wor

Bring Your Own Agent. It’s a thing. Someone in your house watching Netflix using your profile explains why it’s recommending Barbie and 1950s horror. But what happens when this happens at work? When your AI agents use your login? Because we brought our phones, then our AI chatbots. And now, it seems, we’re bringing our agents. But it’s no longer just a data privacy concern. Using someone’s login, an agent inherits their access – and its actions are likely recorded under their

Photo credit: NASA What can a chimpanzee teach us about AI oversight? Rather a lot. At least about being the ‘human in the loop’. On 29 November 1961, Enos went into orbit in a capsule built to fly itself. He did exactly what he’d been trained to do: pull levers to turn off lights. But when a thruster failed, he had no way to fix it. And he came home one orbit early. NASA’s verdict was blunt. Both faults ‘could have been corrected had an astronaut been aboard’. And less than

Production planning doesn’t usually call for black tie. But last Thursday, our work with Meissner was one of three finalists in the Digital Innovation & Transformation (Large) category at the Lean Business Ireland Awards. And Melissa Proxenos was there with Joseph Convey and Tom Kelly to celebrate. The platform replaces hours of manual preparation each week, giving Meissner’s planners more time to act on what they see. Congratulations to Astellas Pharma on winning the categor

# 11 in an irregular series You can find your way across a familiar room in the dark. Until someone moves a chair. The hypegeist - that roar of things which get picked up and talked about incessantly - quite understandably missed some mice who know the feeling. But their behaviours are rather instructive. Researchers let the creatures explore a landscape of tiles and towers in the dark. Within two hours, they were leaping between towers from memory, without first checking the

Welcome to all the AI news you won't regret knowing – across tech, biopharma, medtech, advanced manufacturing and insurance. In a week of hiding, seeking and finding expectations of an online apocalypse. tl;dr: Transparency. Maybe. The Machines, it turns out, may be less able to conceal their truths than we'd feared. AI researcher Nick Cammarata suggests that around 90% of the 'neurons' in a large language model might be decipherable. Which means, rather than having to treat

When an expert explains their job to an agent, where does that knowledge end up? We were at last week's International AI Summit in Dublin. And its big theme was applied AI as the place Ireland and Europe can win, and we agree. But applied AI runs on expertise: the judgement of people who know how a production line or a claims desk works day to day. And unless organisations are deliberate about building their own capability around that judgement, they can’t guarantee the sove

Is a smaller company a good place to build a career? We were in Dublin last week for Digital Talent EU Days, where our Chief Strategy Officer, Philip Black, joined a panel on just that question. The panel’s answer was broadly yes. And not only for graduates. Plenty of people moving into SMEs are well into their careers. We think AI is part of the reason. As it takes on more of the routine work, more of a person’s value sits in their judgement. And judgement comes from making

Your gran thickens her gravy with flour. Your aunt swears by cornflour. They’ve both made perfect gravy for forty years. Eventually, at Sunday lunch, you ask which way is right. And then you’re reminded that your uncle can’t eat wheat. Ah. Work has its own gravy moments. Two experienced reviewers rate the same report differently. Two planners put the same changeover on different shifts. When you’re training an agent to do that work, the reflex is to settle it: pick one answer

Welcome to all the AI news that matters this week – across tech, biopharma, medtech, advanced manufacturing and insurance. The week AI's secrets became the story. tl;dr: Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy. On 30 September, OpenAI found a recording device plugged into the back of a television in an executive conference room. It was concealed in toilet paper. The case became public on Tuesday, when the US Justice Department announced the charges against the engineer accused of planti

Ireland, we are told, wants to be Europe's leading applied AI economy. Here at Brightbeam, we rather like the emphasis on applied. Around 1,500 people - all expected at the RDS in Dublin for today's International AI Summit - discussing future prospects from the AI economy. A year ago, we hypothesised that the optimal division of labour would be: - The US creates AI; - China reduces its cost; - The EU regulates it; and - Ireland implements it. So it's good to see implementatio

Ever so proud of Melissa Proxenos and Corey Duffy for being finalists in this year’s AI Awards! Melissa is shortlisted for AI Person of the Year, recognising technical excellence and leadership. Corey is up for Young AI Role Model of the Year, recognising the work and promise of the next generation of AI leaders. We know they’re top notch. But it’s lovely to see their brilliant work recognised more widely. Fair play to you both. Congratulations to everyone else shortlisted, a

Did you know there's an emerging protocol for conducting human-agent symphonies? We have MCP for connecting agents to tools and A2A for connecting them with each other. But through our work with regulated enterprises, it became clear that the agent stack needed a third protocol for how people and agents work together. Delegating work, reviewing results, overriding decisions. And so Brightbeam Applied Research developed CHAP, the Collaborative Human-Agent Protocol: a common la

An attack is spreading through your network, and you want it stopped. But your agent sits waiting for your approval. The hypegeist missed what a small fish can teach us about the cost of waiting. On a reef in Curaçao, researchers filmed predators trying to catch small fish. The predators were bigger and faster, closing the gap until their prey was almost within reach. Then a last-moment turn would send the little fish out of their path. The predators’ nervous systems simply c

Welcome to all the AI news that matters this week – across tech, biopharma, medtech, advanced manufacturing and insurance. The week doom gave way to cheer. tl;dr: Haters gonna hate. Even when hard facts beg to differ. So how did this come to pass? Trump's War in Iran has created the Oil Crisis. The Middle East's crude exports have fallen 24%. And yet, the WTO predicts, international trade will rise by 3.9% this year. What miracle of a phenomenon could be strong enough to beat

Did you hear? The 2027 Generative AI for Medtech playbook is out. Order yours today and we’ll send you a free printed copy, anywhere in the EU. 97 professionals across six Medtech companies talked us through their working days and the problems they wanted to solve. Those conversations helped identify and assess 92 use cases, of which 28 were then selected by participants for deeper exploration. Opportunities range from planning production and assessing regulatory changes to a

There’s a lot to be said for finding next month’s production problem this month. You have time to chase a missing component, adjust staffing or rethink the plan. All considerably easier before the work is due to start. That’s what we worked on with Meissner’s planners in Castlebar. And Meissner has now been shortlisted in two categories at the Pharma Industry Awards for this project. This follows their Digital Innovation & Transformation shortlist at the Lean Business Ireland

You know the information is there somewhere. But you’d just quite like to get on with the job. That’s a recurring frustration across Medtech teams in Ireland. Quality evidence spread across systems and practical knowledge that’s hard to reach when the right colleague is off shift. Tomorrow, we’re launching ‘Generative AI for Medtech: The 2027 Playbook’ with Irish Medtech Skillnet, Irish Medtech and Ibec. It draws on the experience of professionals from six Medtech companies,

Think of the ideas you've had to say ‘not yet’ to. The project that needs people you can't spare. The opportunity you can see, but don't have the capacity to explore. Now imagine those same people with a thousand agents each. An engineer can finally fix the problem everyone has learned to live with, because agents have found a pattern in years of maintenance records. An unusual customer request can bring sales, engineering and production together, with agents checking capacit

Welcome to all the AI news that matters – across tech, biopharma, medtech, advanced manufacturing and insurance. In the week AI got a promotion – and still struggled to take an order. tl;dr: Super Intelligence is official. But where is all the automation? It's official: artificial intelligence is now 'Super Intelligence'. Trump signed the order on Tuesday, 'because the other word is a fake word'. The signing followed a 'Last Supper' vibe lunch with the tech super-elite, six o

A couple of years ago, the main question about AI agents was whether they'd be capable enough. That's largely been answered. The harder question now is: who stands behind the decisions they propose? And that thought sits at the centre of our work with regulated enterprise. It's also a core part of the conversation at this week's European Big Data Value Forum in Galway, where we're joining four sessions. Our CEO Brian Hanly joins the Innovation Value Institute’s panel on how o