Despite all the hype, many businesses are still in the very early stages of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption. Business leaders may not know exactly how they will use the technology, but they are sure that it will have a profound impact on the way they do business in the coming years.
The newly launched UCD Smurfit Executive Development Diploma in Artificial Intelligence and Business Analytics is aimed at providing executives and managers with the knowledge, tools, and insights to demystify these critically important technologies and explore how they can be applied in their organisations.
“It gives participants a broad perspective of the potential of the technology to fundamentally change industries and the nature of competition,” says Prof Joe Peppard, academic director at UCD Smurfit Executive Development. “Managers and executives need to consider how their organisations might leverage technologies like AI and blockchain and the Internet of Things to improve productivity and gain competitive advantage.”
He explains that AI has been around for a very long time. “The label was first coined in 1956. There have been lots of starts and stops since then, but it has been used for a long time in areas like medical diagnostics to read scans and in manufacturing where computer vision is used to detect problems with quality in production processes.”
The difference now is the advent of generative AI. It has opened up a much wider range of business applications and generated a lot of hype. “But you can expect that,” says Peppard. “Tech companies and consultancies are trying to sell something and of course, they will produce surveys saying that 70 per cent of companies are doing this and that Irish companies are falling behind or whatever. They are trying to create fear of missing out.”
Having said that, AI does have the potential to reshape the way some industries work. Pointing to the 2023 strike by US screenwriters, Peppard notes that one of the reasons for the dispute was the probable use of AI in screenwriting.
“ChatGPT can hallucinate or make things up,” he explains. “If you are in a creative space, that’s what you want it to do. The way the screenwriting process works is that the fee for a first version of a screenplay is $200,000 (€193,000) and $50,000 for every rewrite after that. Now, it is possible to use GenAI to produce the first version and only go to the screenwriters for rewrites.”
Other applications are emerging all the time. “It seems that DeepSeek works well in narrowly focused areas,” he notes. “ChatGPT is an example of what’s often referred to as artificial general intelligence. It’s not designed for any purpose. Narrow AI is designed only for one purpose. Now you have agentic AI which will perform certain tasks for you.”
One of those might be arranging a business trip. “If you are going to a conference in Vienna next month, the bot will book a flight at an appropriate time to fit in with your work schedule, book taxis to the airports, make reservations for a hotel close to the conference centre, book entertainment like the opera or a musical performance based on your personal preferences, make restaurant reservations and so on. That’s where the technology is moving. You can see how the productivity gains there could be quite significant.”
Agentic AI can also be used by financial institutions, he adds. “It can sometimes take up to four weeks to prepare a credit risk report. Agents can cut that by between 20 and 40 per cent; that’s quite significant. But in all these things you still need humans in the loop to make sure the AI is not hallucinating.”
Participants in the Diploma in Artificial Intelligence and Business Analytics will gain an understanding of the technologies and their capabilities and limitations, he adds. “The programme includes deep dives into machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, neurolinguistic programming and other areas. It will give them a sound grounding in what they need to know as managers in terms of the technology and its applications as well as in areas like ethics, regulation, and risk management. Overall, it will help executives and managers ensure that their organisations are set up for success in terms of these technologies.
“What do I need to do? Where do I start? Do I need to set up a centre of excellence? How do I do that? How do I identify potential opportunities and evaluate them? What do I need to know about regulation and the AI Act and GDPR? It will help them answer all those questions and more. It will also give them the frameworks and models to think through the decisions they need to make. The models can’t tell you what to do, but they will help you come to the right decision.”
