Employees and businesses in Ireland will enjoy significant benefits from Artificial Intelligence during 2024, says Catherine Doyle, managing director, Dell Technologies Ireland.
She anticipates that Generative AI will enhance people’s creativity within the next six months, while also empowering organisations in their bid to reduce their carbon emissions. Many companies, of course, have already embraced the emerging technologies during 2023.
“2023 brought about the most significant advancements in technology in a generation. We’ve all seen Generative AI has truly come to life with the emergence of ChatGPT and other AI-enabled chatbots,” Catherine said.
“As we look to the year ahead with a certain degree of uncertainty, one thing is clear. Emerging technologies will prove vital in helping Ireland’s business community to navigate a slowing domestic economy and fuel innovation in the months ahead.”
Catherine said that the business value of AI is becoming crystal clear, with data now being harnessed by organisations in every sector of the economy. Cyber risk continues to weigh heavily on business leaders with the vast majority having taken steps to enhance data protection in 2023.
“Generative AI will take centre stage in 2024, moving from theory to practice,” she said. “While Generative AI has fostered many creative ideas in recent times of how it will transform our future, there are very few real-world examples of this powerful technology in action. That will change in the coming year.
“AI will become business-ready with visible productivity gains becoming evident in many sectors of our economy. According to our latest GenAI Pulse survey at Dell Technologies, nearly half of organisations expect to see meaningful results from Generative AI projects within six months to a year.” One of the first steps that leaders can take to ensure successful AI adoption is to organise and structure data within their business.
“The economic and societal gains from these emerging technologies should not be underestimated,” said Catherine. “A new AI platform that our Dell Technologies Ireland team developed is helping researchers at the University of Limerick’s Digital Cancer Research Centre to find new ways to diagnose and treat cancer patients.
“Employees in Ireland will also witness how AI can support their daily work. As new digital assistants come to the fore, the PC experience will change before our eyes. We’ll increasingly see a shift from searching to prompting, from reading to understanding, and from editing to directing.”
She anticipates that this will result in the emergence in a two-way human-machine partnership in many workplaces across Ireland.
“With the global explosion of data, there will be an increasing need for Irish businesses to have the computing power to manage it effectively. Quantum computing will begin to address this obstacle and bring about a massive leap in the computing power that is required to fuel our data-driven future,” she adds. “If we were surprised by the advancements in AI over the last year, leaders should expect to see a bigger jump forward when quantum computing becomes intertwined in the near future.
“2024 will be a make-or-break year for sustainable IT. With larger companies being required by the EU to disclose their environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and activity, business and IT leaders in Ireland will increasingly rely on technology to track their climate data and reduce emissions. In essence, technology will be a key enabler for the measurement and delivery of the ESG agenda.”
Dell’s latest Digital Pulse Survey revealed that almost half of Irish companies are looking at upgrading technology in the coming year to cut rising energy costs and drive sustainable innovation.
That trend is only set to continue in the wake of the recent COP28 agreement which placed a spotlight on AI and emerging technologies to tackle climate change.
“Although there has been much discussion about Zero Trust, 2024 will see Zero Trust evolve from a concept to reality,” Ms Doyle said. “By requiring all processes, whether in or outside the organisation’s network, to be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated, businesses will be able to put in place an added layer of cyber security.
“As the benefits of a Zero Trust approach becomes evident, it is expected that Zero Trust will become the norm in a wider range of industries in Ireland.”
But above all, Ms Doyle says that 2024 will be the year in which businesses transform how they consume technology. Embracing technology ‘as-a-service’ will allow innovative start-ups as well as more established businesses to scale as they look to access new markets and meet the needs of consumers long into the future.
“While the coming months promises significant change, I’m optimistic about the future which will be fuelled by the transformative power of emerging technologies,” she said.
“But now is the time not only to envision a future shaped by technology but to make it a reality. That’s why it is vital that business leaders in Ireland put in place the IT infrastructure and skilled workforce that will power AI and unlock the business benefits of data wherever it may reside.
“By taking a proactive approach today, we can ensure that emerging technologies enable Irish businesses to pivot and innovate in a changing world as well as help advance our collective journey to a net-zero future,” she concluded.
