ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HAS quietly woven itself into the fabric of our daily lives, so much so that most of us don’t even notice it’s there.

It curates the news you read, autocorrects your messages, flags fraud on your bank account in real time, and adjusts your home’s heating without you touching the thermostat.

Official figures tell us that one in eight people on the planet are actively using AI, with Ireland ranked 4th globally for AI adoption. In 2025, 45% of Irish people were using AI tools, and nearly six in 10 large Irish enterprises have already integrated AI into their operations. Given the pace at which this technology moves, those figures are already out of date and likely to be much higher.

AI holds real promise. It can help us detect and treat disease, open up new ways of learning and drive economic prosperity. But it also brings serious risks. It can introduce and amplify bias into decision-making, lead to job disruption and be misused to fuel deepfakes, cybercrime and mass surveillance.

The recently published report from the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) “Artificial Intelligence in Service of Society: Navigating our Way Forward”, addresses how we can manage that tension to ensure that AI develops in a way which can deliver benefits for all in a safe, fair and sustainable........

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