My first class in the Diploma in Artificial Intelligence and Working into the Future at CCT College Dublin started with a simple question:
“What is AI?”
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot came to mind quickly. But then the list expanded: facial recognition, credit decisions, medical imaging, recommendation systems, autonomous vehicles and factory quality control.
It was a useful reminder that AI isn’t always a chatbot or an app we interact with directly. It can be embedded in products, business processes and decision-making systems.
That discussion came back to me when I saw new research from Ireland.
According to Unlocking Ireland’s AI Potential, commissioned by AWS and conducted by Strand Partners, 65% of Irish businesses now use AI, up from 45% last year. The research places Ireland ahead of the European average of 54% and estimates that more than 160 Irish businesses started using AI for the first time every day over the past year.
But another figure is just as important.
Only 20% of Irish businesses using AI have reached “advanced adoption”, where AI is integrated into core business processes and decision-making. The European average is 22%.
This research covers the broader business population, rather than specifically Ireland’s AI-native startups and companies already building advanced AI solutions.
So perhaps it is no longer enough to ask:
“How many businesses are using AI?”
We also need to ask:
“How deeply are they using it?”
Adopting AI and transforming how a business operates with it are not the same stage.
Ireland is adopting AI rapidly. The next chapter may be about moving beyond individual tools and integrating AI more deeply into business processes, products and decision-making.
