Colin Rooney

I’m Colin Rooney, head of Technology and innovation at Arthur Cox. AI is no longer theoretical. 97% of the organisations that we surveyed are using it in some form. When clients come and speak to us about AI, it’s no longer to say, can we use AI, it’s more now to say, how should we use AI? How do we do that compliantly? What sort of regulatory or governance framework should we have in place? What sort of risks should we be considering?

The EU AI Act and the enforcement of that legislation is coming over the horizon and so we thought it was a good time to benchmark readiness and risk perception within the market. I think three particular things were surprising in terms of the results. First of all, while there is a degree of governance preparation in terms of roles and people being appointed to particular positions, I think there’s still some work to do in relation to governance, certainly in relation to AI literacy. We expect there will be further rollout of awareness and training over the next number of weeks and months. Risk classification, in particular, understanding the role that you play within the EU AI act ecosystem is particularly important so some degree of confusion between whether you are a provider or a deployer and I think that that’s important to understand because certain risks flow from that and finally, a sense that AI is being used largely to reduce cost and drive efficiency whereas we think there’s some potential in AI in the future, in the near future, around driving competitiveness and distinguishing your company from another company.

I think over the next two to three years we move from a position of experimentation with AI to embedding AI in your business, by which I mean there will be more of a focus on decision making and more of a focus on driving value from AI and more of a focus on assessing and managing risk. We think in particular that those organisations which spend the time to plan governance, to implement risk management, and just to give general consideration to how AI is responsibly used in their business are likely to scale AI in a lucrative and meaningful fashion. I also feel that there’s a potential for greater competitiveness for your organisation arising from AI usage.

So the regulatory road that we’re on will certainly result in some constraints, but it can also be a catalyst for trust and innovation. If you’d like to discuss any of the findings from our survey or any of the other issues that have been thrown up from our presentation, please feel free to reach out to any of the partners at arthurcox.com/technologyandinnovation