THE REAL AI JOB PROBLEM ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK

We were asked again to comment on the AI-jobs debate, this time after yesterday's IMF warning that 40% of Irish jobs could be affected.

Here's what we said:

Impacting jobs is very different from destroying them. We're seeing a lot of work change - people doing different things than before, as they are augmented by AI. But working with large multinational clients in Ireland across biopharma, medtech, advanced manufacturing and insurance, we've yet to see the evidence of displacement.

What we do see, all day long, is AI raising the floor on what people can achieve. To the point that it sometimes becomes a problem - making a constant stream of decisions for eight hours, evaluating what AI has produced and being the human-in-the-loop is intense and exhausting. It's a new kind of cognitive load, not a smaller one.

So we agree with the IMF. Reskilling is a genuine and urgent need. AI is already changing roles in the workplace. And the skillset needed to use that particular toolset is a very different one.