{"id":421592,"date":"2026-04-28T12:20:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/421592\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T12:20:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:20:28","slug":"ai-is-probably-an-easy-scapegoat-almost-a-victimless-crime-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/421592\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018AI is probably an easy scapegoat, almost a victimless crime\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Meta <\/a>announced the loss of another 8,000 jobs at the end of last week, citing its investment in AI<\/a>, the suggestion by the chair of the UK\u2019s Institute for the Future of Work (IFOW) that the technology sometimes seems like an easy scapegoat felt prescient.<\/p>\n

Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon was in Dublin for the recent Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)<\/a> conference in the RDS when she told The Irish Times many employers need to engage with their workers a little more intelligently when seeking to maximise their return from AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to get the most out of it, it does need to be worker-led, worker-informed, worker-centred in the way that you\u2019re deploying AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey know the role and will know what the machines can help with or do better,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

How many would suggest AI could simply replace them is open to question, of course, and it\u2019s hard to imagine the 8,000 staff at Meta had much of a role in the company\u2019s decision to do away with their jobs. <\/p>\n

Imafidon, whose own background is in computer science and social entrepreneurship but also includes a stint in television, readily acknowledges the technology is having a growing impact on workplaces but, she insists, \u201cthere is this phenomenon, it seems, with companies investing heavily in AI and then needing to justify it by seeing an immediate return. And those immediate returns are a really big issue. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are usually the most expensive resource a company has and it\u2019s a bit of a cop-out but, for some, money-saving equals getting rid of people.\u201d <\/p>\n

In others, she contends, \u201cAI is probably an easy scapegoat, almost a victimless crime. The employer says \u2018AI can do it,\u2019 and everyone\u2019s going to go: \u2018Yeah, boo, AI.\u2019 Right?\u201d<\/p>\n

One issue, she believes, is that AI is not quite where some of those selling its services are claiming it is and \u201cin the really bad examples we have seen, managements have sent thousands of people home because they believed AI could do the work and then months later they\u2019ve said: \u2018Actually, can you come back? Because it can\u2019t do what we thought.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0AI boom threatens to cause \u2018significant upheaval\u2019 for Irish tech jobsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Research published by the IFOW, an independent think tank that works with various stakeholders including the CIPD, unions and government agencies, has recognised the productivity benefits the technology can offer but it also suggested the benefits can be greatest where managements work with their staff to develop new ways of working and invest in their ability to implement it.<\/p>\n

Case studies published in collaboration with the CIPD at the start of this month appeared to support that premise across a wide range of employer types.<\/p>\n

In this more collaborative scenario, workers are most likely to share in the benefits too, an outcome somewhat at odds with the recent ESRI report that predicted negative future impacts on employee income, with higher earners more heavily impacted. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it\u2019s about optimising what you are doing as a company,\u201d says Imafidon. \u201cAnd the companies that do better are the ones that say \u2018we are going to open up this AI platform but we\u2019re going to work with you [the staff] on how work transforms\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to greater productivity and increased profits, she suggests, there can also be benefits for staff, whether that is in the form of pay, changed work practices or time. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, it\u2019s about better decisions being made,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

That level of collaboration might be regarded as something of an ideal, however, and she accepts that for many enterprises with concerns around competition, the more immediate concern will be the bottom line.<\/p>\n

Either way, she believes, there will be a need for greater regulation around the impact AI has on the employment landscape in order to ensure the level of change experienced and the way it is implemented is \u201cresponsible\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe role regulations and regulatory bodies play in supporting this transition is a really big one, and it\u2019s one of the pillars of the work that we\u2019re doing at the institute. If that\u2019s not upheld, then these things are not going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

More fundamentally, she laments some of the ways in which the new technology is being deployed. At the CIPD Ireland event in the RDS at which she spoke, a contributor from the floor spoke about the automation of some food dispensing at Dublin Airport and Imafidon cited it as an example of where taking the human factor out of a process might be regarded as a clear negative. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe folks at Dublin Airport might want to think about other things. I think there\u2019s the opportunity for non-technologists to say: \u2018Do you know what? This is a real problem, not how I get my food. The problem is my health. How do we get robots to support wellbeing?<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019The problem is a lack of joy,\u201d she continues, warming to the theme. \u201cLet\u2019s look into that. How do we get the robots to help promote joy and support joy for folks? That\u2019s a huge market so it\u2019s not that you wouldn\u2019t make any money.\u201d<\/p>\n

The folks in Silicon Valley, to be fair, have likely thought about just about every aspect of the technology\u2019s use there might be a return in but Imafidon is adamant they, and society in general, can do better and, she says, she remains optimistic that we will, \u201cbecause it isn\u2019t just about technology, it\u2019s about people\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think my optimism comes from a little bit of that gap between a lot of what\u2019s being said by folks versus the quality of the data sets that we have when we look at the shape of the workforce, what work looks like.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings can only be automated if they\u2019re majority digitised and some of the technologists believe everything can be automated because everything in their world is digitised. But the invention of the AI tutor doesn\u2019t mean everybody wants to stop going to school. Healthcare might benefit hugely from AI but it can\u2019t all be automated.\u201d <\/p>\n

The challenge, she suggests, is find the correct balance while remembering that the technology is supposed to be for the benefit of humans. <\/p>\n

If only there was someone, or something, we could ask to show us the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Meta announced the loss of another 8,000 jobs at the end of last week, citing its investment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,184532,25744,61,60,1226,80],"class_list":["post-421592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chartered-institute-of-personnel-and-development","tag-esri","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-meta","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}