!['Organisations need to build the confidence and trust in [AI] technologies before they are willing to use them,' says David Lee, chief technology officer with PwC Ireland](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/UQ47DXPHLFDVPO4M2MBKNGQGH4.jpg?auth=0cae7ec5c59060998c61383828b659a0ac69f277bc30f47500df420e22d87d28&smart=true&width=1024&height=683)
There is broad agreement on the significant positive impact that artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) can likely have, a survey of Irish businesses has found.
Research among Irish business leaders carried out by PwC revealed that a surge in innovation and activity to enable AI adoption is happening. In June 2024 less than half (47 per cent) of respondents were engaged in experimentation. By December that had risen to two in three businesses (67 per cent). That’s a very significant increase. However, the translation of experimentation to adoption at scale remains relatively low, at less than 10 per cent.
Nearly nine out of 10 (86 per cent) Irish business leaders believe that the overall impact of AI on Ireland’s economy in five years’ time will be positive while more than half (55 per cent) are of the view that GenAI will have a significant or transformative impact on their businesses over the same time period.
The employment outlook is also positive with three-quarters (75 per cent) of survey respondents expecting an increase or no net impact on jobs in Ireland as a result of GenAI, up from 55 per cent when the survey was previously carried out in June 2024.
Those findings are broadly in line with the results of PwC’s 2025 Irish chief executive survey, which revealed an anticipated surge in AI and GenAI adoption in key business areas. On average, 89 per cent of Irish chief executives predicted that AI and GenAI will be systematically integrated into a range of key business areas in their organisation over the next three years.
While there is a clear appreciation for the opportunities that AI can bring, the GenAI Survey also revealed that business leaders realise that safe and successful deployment and sustained AI adoption is a complex process that requires careful planning and co-ordination. That is reflected in the fact that just 6 per cent of respondents reported widespread adoption of AI in their organisations and this has remained below 10 per cent in all the runnings of the survey.
The focus continues to be on operational efficiencies and productivity with 82 per cent of respondents believing that GenAI will deliver increased efficiency in their employees’ time at work.
Positive impact
“There is broad agreement on the significant positive impact that AI is likely to have,” says David Lee, chief technology officer with PwC Ireland. “The overwhelming majority of respondents to our GenAI Irish Business Leaders Survey said it would have a positive impact on their business over the next five years. We do this survey every six months and that number has continued to grow.”
Lee doesn’t believe that the low rate of widespread adoption should be a cause for concern. “It is not a surprise that the survey highlights that the current focus of AI-related innovation is on efficiency-related gains rather than more radical business model reinvention,” he explains. “In our experience, organisations need to build the confidence and trust in the technologies before they are willing to use them as the bedrock for more fundamental transformation.” Lee believes that the dial will move materially in the next 12 months.
The findings are consistent with his experience of working with clients in the PwC GenAI Business Centre, enabled by Microsoft, he adds. “While organisations are interested in understanding the potential for AI to transform their businesses, their immediate focus is on ensuring that the right guard rails – both organisational and technical – are in place before they move beyond innovation to an adoption-at-scale mindset.”
That position, however, is showing signs of improvement. “In the June 2024 GenAI Business Leaders survey, less than 30 per cent of business leaders thought that they had adequate controls and processes in place to ensure safe adoption and deployment. That went up to 56 per cent in the January 2025 survey, but more than four in 10 still believe the controls aren’t adequate so there is still some way to go.”
The other key inhibitor to adoption at scale is the lack of a clear business case for its deployment.
“Organisations want to understand how they can monetise it, how the freeing up of capacity may be turned into commercial return from investments,” says Lee. “They need to have confidence in their ability to stand over the return on investment. Less than half (46 per cent) of business leaders are confident in their organisation’s ability to assess a return on investment from their current AI initiatives.”
This slow rate of adoption and inability to translate the technology into increased earnings are only to be expected at such an early stage in the technology’s life cycle, Lee believes. “Before organisations are willing to trust technology to reinvent their existing business, they really need to be satisfied that they understand the technology and be confident that it won’t disrupt their core activities or their relationships of trust with employees and customers.”
That considered approach is natural with the adoption of any new technology, he explains. Organisations tend to start with quite basic uses and as they become more confident, they start to take on and manage more complex applications.
He points to Amara’s Law, named after the American scientist Roy Amara, which holds that the effect of a technology is overestimated in the short run and underestimated in the long run. In other words: once cold, hard reality bites, the true effect is understood but, from small beginnings, adoption rates accelerate quite rapidly.
“It can be quite abstract when first adopting a technology,” Lee explains.
He adds that when people see it in action it sparks new ideas. People start to ask if it can be used in one area, what else might it be able to do. The capability of the products is also advancing at pace. What started out as intelligent data retrieval tools have now gone much further than that. They are designed for specific use cases in areas like finance, marketing, HR and so on.
They are becoming more refined and focused in terms of the personas they are trying to serve. That will have an impact on the ability to monetise the technology. Agentic AI holds out great promise in that regard. It translates knowledge into action and allows organisations to monetise the efficiency gains and time savings.
And PwC and Microsoft have recently announced a strategic collaboration to transform industries with AI agents. This collaboration seeks to harness AI’s potential to drive business value, enhance customer engagement and streamline operations across various sectors. The collaboration focuses on deploying AI agents – sophisticated systems capable of performing tasks autonomously, analysing data and aiding decision-making. Together, PwC and Microsoft will provide businesses with the tools needed to embrace AI agents as strategic assets that enhance efficiency and drive innovation.
Another encouraging finding of the PwC research Lee points to relates to attitudes towards the EU AI Act, with an overwhelming majority (86 per cent) of business leaders welcoming the legislation, saying it is necessary to prevent the potential negative impact of AI and build trust in the technology.
“The Act provides a useful risk – classification framework,” Lee notes. “Organisations are more interested in what the Act allows them to do rather than what it doesn’t. The pitch you can play on is a lot bigger than the one you have to stay off.”
Over the coming year, Lee says organisations must move faster in addressing the gaps in governance and controls, invest in understanding the business case for their own organisation that will provide the platform for wider AI adoption and reflect on the opportunities presented by developments in agentic AI.
