AI Research

ADOPTING AI: Irish entrepreneurs reveal the benefits of using artificial intelligence

Published

7 days ago

July 1, 2025

TECHNOLOGICAL tools are transforming the way the world works.

Artificial intelligence is now in use across all sectors, from IT to health and retail to transportation, legal and financial services.

Whether automating mundane tasks and streamlining operations such as customer service, or for improving health and safety or data processing, the technology, which enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving and decision making, is revolutionising industries across the board.

AI is widely regarded at the future and there are plenty of Irish firms who are already committing to the changes or helping to lead the revolution.

In Bristol, the Irish founded cybersecurity firm OnSecurity has just launched a new service which uses AI to improve their offering while reducing the cost to clients.

Originally the firm, which was founded by Kildare native Conor O’Neill, developed software which allows its users to test and find security issues in their systems that would leave them vulnerable to hackers.

Last month they updated their offering to launch the first AI-augmented pentesting service to hit the market – which they say offers the perfect solution for their clients.

“The new service combines the creativity and expertise of human security professionals with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities, optimising the entire security testing process from initial reconnaissance to final reporting,” O’Neill, explains.

Over in Limerick, tech start-up Zerve has created a platform which allows AI and data developers to work seamlessly together.

CEO Phily Hayes, who co-founded the firm in 2021 with Jason Hilary and Greg Michaelson, says the product offers a “secure, productive environment in which to explore, build, test and deliver data and AI products in record time”.

This week, the business leaders took time out to tell The Irish Post more about their business, their industries and the importance of AI…

Conor O’Neill, CEO at OnSecurity

Conor O’Neill, CEO at OnSecurity

Born in Leixlip, Co. Kildare, Mr O’Neill moved to the UK in his 30s. Now aged 43, he commutes from his home in Liverpool to the office in Bristol.

When and where was your company founded?

We launched in 2018 in Bristol.

What inspired you to create the business?

OnSecurity was born out of frustration with the inefficiency of the processes surrounding penetration testing – getting quotes, booking a test, receiving the reports, and integrating the results into workflows in a meaningful way was all very manual and had a lot of friction.

Pentesting – or penetration testing, sometimes called ethical hacking – is a service where our consultants attempt to hack into the applications or systems of our customers, finding weaknesses so that our customers can fix the issues before they are hacked for real.

Tell us about your product/solution?

We have created an AI augmented pentesting platform that makes the entire pentesting process, from booking to delivery to remediation, as simple as possible for our customers.

OnSecurity’s platform makes procurement and management of pentesting and pentesting outcomes easy and pain-free compared to traditional models.

Our customers are typically fast-moving tech businesses of various sizes/stages who often require quick, efficient testing and reporting to meet compliance or client requirements.

Pentesting is required or strongly recommended in various sectors, including fintech, healthcare, software and technology, telecoms etc.

What benefits does it bring to your clients?

Quick example – it typically takes up to a month to schedule a pentest with another vendor due to multiple phone calls and slow exchange of information.

With our platform, booking a pentest takes about two minutes.

Once clients are on the platform, they can schedule, book and manage their test all in one place.

We aim to simplify every step of the pentest value chain.

We recently launched AI-augmented pentest delivery, which makes actual pentesting significantly more efficient.

Human testers can now focus on high impact, high quality work while AI handles low-value, tedious, repetitive tasks and most of the reporting.

How do you use AI within your service?

We use AI pretty much everywhere now to amplify our offering to clients.

By combining human expertise and AI, we are transforming the way security testing is performed and delivered with lower costs without compromising quality.

We use AI to generate quotes in real-time, for automating repetitive tasks such as reporting, to improve test coverage by enabling broader and deeper assessments and to improve efficiency, allowing human testers to focus on high-impact analysis.

We have also just released an MCP server which talks to our API so that our customers can ask anything they want about their security programme.

Operationally, we are rolling out AI more and more across the business, in particular in the sales and software engineering areas, to improve efficiency and throughput with the staff we have.

What are the greatest benefits/challenges of AI as a tool for your industry?

AI increases efficiency, lowers costs and expands coverage however, it is not a replacement for human expertise.

We need to rapidly become operationally AI-native and do more with fewer resources. Everyone on the team must become excellent at using AI to amplify their work, but not rely on it.

The way we have integrated AI in our platform creates a number of benefits for clients.

It saves security teams time and money, improves resource allocation across teams, handles tedious, low-value tasks such as reporting and frees up human testers to evaluate high impact tasks and findings

It also provides detailed contextualised reports with remediation guidance and aids faster, clearer communication.

Some challenges the industry might face include the fact that AI lacks creativity and human logic, so cannot replace human expertise (just yet!).

There are regulative compliance or ethical frameworks to consider.

For a critical service like pentesting – human assurance and accountability will always be required.

How challenging has it been to get clients to accept the use of AI services over traditional ones?

What I find interesting is that, despite the noise and clamour around AI, our customers generally haven’t been asking about it/for it that much just yet.

A lot of the pentesting market is regulatory driven and the customers need a given result and aren’t too fussed about what the technology that gets them that result is.

I expect this to change quite rapidly over the next 18 months or so.

What is your business goal for 2025?

Continue to innovate in the pentesting space as we have always done. To continue to grow our revenues and customer base and to become excellent at using AI operationally.

What’s the biggest challenge facing your industry today?

Commoditisation, saturation and competition from pure AI pentest vendors are the biggest challenges in the industry right now.

How can it be overcome?

We must continue to differentiate and innovate as we have always done.

Continue to focus on the customer pain points.

We are designing our company strategy around Jevon’s paradox – whenever something gets cheaper, people buy more of it.

As the price of pentesting inevitably reduces, people will buy more pentesting, meaning the management and orchestration of pentesting will become ever more important.

We already excel in this area and will continue to focus our product development here.

How would you describe your job?

Bloody hectic but rewarding. I am extremely proud to be part of the change and look forward to seeing how we progress OnSecurity to continue to simplify pentesting for our clients.

What’s the best life lesson you have learnt in your career to date?

“It’s never as good as you think and it’s never as bad as you think!”

What’s your favourite thing to do when not working?

I enjoy playing with my son, running and playing guitar.

Phily Hayes, CEO at Zerve

Phily Hayes, CEO at Zerve

Hailing from New Inn in Tipperary, Mr Hayes now lives in Cahir. The 34-year-old co-founded Zerve in 2021. It is headquartered at the University of Limerick but now has representatives in nine countries across the globe.

When and where was your company founded?

May 2021, in Tipperary.

What inspired you to create the business?

The understanding we had that amazingly talented code first data teams weren’t having the impact they should have, we set about trying to solve that for them and their organisations.

What is your product/solution?

Zerve is the operating system for developing and delivering data and AI products.

Most tools on the market today solve isolated problems, but Zerve unifies the entire lifecycle—from planning and coding, to provisioning infrastructure, and deploying into production… in a single platform.

The multi-agent platform helps humans and AI agents to work side by side and is designed for organisations that are creating AI products built to scale with the ability to deliver value.

What problem does it solve and for who?

Zerve tackles one of the most persistent challenges in enterprise AI and data science: translating prototypes and isolated experiments into real-world, production-grade products.

In many organisations, data and AI projects stall after the proof-of-concept phase—not because of lack of talent or innovation, but because of bottlenecks in infrastructure, cross-team collaboration, and deployment workflows.

We empower data scientists, machine learning engineers, and analytics teams to collaboratively build, iterate, and deploy AI and data products without getting sidelined by DevOps or system integration issues.

What benefits does it bring to your clients?

Zerve accelerates the journey from idea to impact, giving clients a faster time-to-value and enabling them to deliver a higher volume of high-quality data and AI projects.

Zerve frees up experienced team members to focus on innovation and problem-solving. This means data teams are faster, more productive, more aligned, and more impactful. Zerve improves customer insights, optimizes operations, and supports new revenue streams.

How do you use AI within your product/solution?

Zerve is a platform for building AI, however we also use AI deeply within the platform, with breakthrough features like our Agent which works like a full stack Data & AI professional on your time.

Unlike traditional AI code assistants that offer narrow, task-specific suggestions, the Zerve Agent operates with a broader, end-to-end understanding of the project lifecycle. It can scope a project, architect a solution, write production-ready code, manage infrastructure provisioning, and troubleshoot issues as they arise – all through natural language interactions and intelligent automation.

Whether the goal is to spin up a new data pipeline, deploy a machine learning model, or run diagnostics on a production system, the Agent acts as an expert teammate to enable teams to move faster and reduce errors.

Zerve not only supports AI development, it reshapes how organisations build and scale intelligent systems.

What are the greatest challenges/benefits of AI as a tool for your industry?

The speed of change can be a challenge, but we mainly view it as an opportunity and an exciting time to be working with this sort of technology.

How challenging has it been to get clients to accept the use of AI services over traditional ones?

We work with expert teams who have been working with AI for years, long before ChatGPT made AI a universal topic of conversation, so our teams do not have this concern.

What is your business goal for 2025?

Continuing to support some of the most talented teams in world using our solution, like NASA, HPE & Canal+, while also building an even bigger RnD footprint here in Ireland.

What is the biggest challenge facing your industry today?

The speed of change.

How can it be overcome?

Remain agile, nimble and open minded to the boundaries of what’s possible constantly moving.

How would you describe your job?

Startup CEO.

What’s the best life lesson you have learnt in your career to date?

Celebrate the wins.

What’s your favourite thing to do when not working?

Hang out at home with my two kids and my wife.

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AI Research

Political attitudes shape public perceptions of artificial intelligence

Published

36 minutes ago

July 8, 2025

The Editors

Political attitudes shape public perceptions of artificial intelligence | National Centre for Social Research

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AI Research

Space technology: Lithuania’s promising space start-ups

Published

2 hours ago

July 7, 2025

MaryLou Costa

Technology Reporter

Reporting fromVilnius, Lithuania

Astrolight A technician works with lasers at Astrolight's lab — Astrolight is developing a laser-based communications system

I’m led through a series of concrete corridors at Vilnius University, Lithuania; the murals give a Soviet-era vibe, and it seems an unlikely location for a high-tech lab working on a laser communication system.

But that’s where you’ll find the headquarters of Astrolight, a six-year-old Lithuanian space-tech start-up that has just raised €2.8m ($2.3m; £2.4m) to build what it calls an “optical data highway”.

You could think of the tech as invisible internet cables, designed to link up satellites with Earth.

With 70,000 satellites expected to launch in the next five years, it’s a market with a lot of potential.

The company hopes to be part of a shift from traditional radio frequency-based communication, to faster, more secure and higher-bandwidth laser technology.

Astrolight’s space laser technology could have defence applications as well, which is timely given Russia’s current aggressive attitude towards its neighbours.

Astrolight is already part of Nato’s Diana project (Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic), an incubator, set up in 2023 to apply civilian technology to defence challenges.

In Astrolight’s case, Nato is keen to leverage its fast, hack-proof laser communications to transmit crucial intelligence in defence operations – something the Lithuanian Navy is already doing.

It approached Astrolight three years ago looking for a laser that would allow ships to communicate during radio silence.

“So we said, ‘all right – we know how to do it for space. It looks like we can do it also for terrestrial applications’,” recalls Astrolight co-founder and CEO Laurynas Maciulis, who’s based in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius.

For the military his company’s tech is attractive, as the laser system is difficult to intercept or jam.

It’s also about “low detectability”, Mr Maciulis adds:

“If you turn on your radio transmitter in Ukraine, you’re immediately becoming a target, because it’s easy to track. So with this technology, because the information travels in a very narrow laser beam, it’s very difficult to detect.”

Astrolight’s system is difficult to detect or jam

Astrolight An Astrolight laser points towards the sky with telescopes in the background — Astrolight’s system is difficult to detect or jam

Worth about £2.5bn, Lithuania’s defence budget is small when you compare it to larger countries like the UK, which spends around £54bn a year.

But if you look at defence spending as a percentage of GDP, then Lithuania is spending more than many bigger countries.

Around 3% of its GDP is spent on defence, and that’s set to rise to 5.5%. By comparison, UK defence spending is worth 2.5% of GDP.

Recognised for its strength in niche technologies like Astrolight’s lasers, 30% of Lithuania’s space projects have received EU funding, compared with the EU national average of 17%.

“Space technology is rapidly becoming an increasingly integrated element of Lithuania’s broader defence and resilience strategy,” says Invest Lithuania’s Šarūnas Genys, who is the body’s head of manufacturing sector, and defence sector expert.

Space tech can often have civilian and military uses.

Mr Genys gives the example of Lithuanian life sciences firm Delta Biosciences, which is preparing a mission to the International Space Station to test radiation-resistant medical compounds.

“While developed for spaceflight, these innovations could also support special operations forces operating in high-radiation environments,” he says.

He adds that Vilnius-based Kongsberg NanoAvionics has secured a major contract to manufacture hundreds of satellites.

“While primarily commercial, such infrastructure has inherent dual-use potential supporting encrypted communications and real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance across NATO’s eastern flank,” says Mr Genys.

Lithuania should invest in its domestic space tech says Tomas Malinauskas

BlackSwan Space Tomas Malinauskas with a moustache and in front of bookshelves. — Lithuania should invest in its domestic space tech says Tomas Malinauskas

Going hand in hand with Astrolight’s laser technology is the autonomous satellite navigation system fellow Lithuanian space-tech start-up Blackswan Space has developed.

Blackswan Space’s “vision based navigation system” allows satellites to be programmed and repositioned independently of a human based at a ground control centre who, its founders say, won’t be able to keep up with the sheer volume of satellites launching in the coming years.

In a defence environment, the same technology can be used to remotely destroy an enemy satellite, as well as to train soldiers by creating battle simulations.

But the sales pitch to the Lithuanian military hasn’t necessarily been straightforward, acknowledges Tomas Malinauskas, Blackswan Space’s chief commercial officer.

He’s also concerned that government funding for the sector isn’t matching the level of innovation coming out of it.

He points out that instead of spending $300m on a US-made drone, the government could invest in a constellation of small satellites.

“Build your own capability for communication and intelligence gathering of enemy countries, rather than a drone that is going to be shot down in the first two hours of a conflict,” argues Mr Malinauskas, also based in Vilnius.

“It would be a big boost for our small space community, but as well, it would be a long-term, sustainable value-add for the future of the Lithuanian military.”

Eglė Elena Šataitė leads a government agency supporting space tech

Space Hub LT Blonde haired Eglė Elena Šataitė in a pin-striped jacket — Eglė Elena Šataitė leads a government agency supporting space tech

Eglė Elena Šataitė is the head of Space Hub LT, a Vilnius-based agency supporting space companies as part of Lithuania’s government-funded Innovation Agency.

“Our government is, of course, aware of the reality of where we live, and that we have to invest more in security and defence – and we have to admit that space technologies are the ones that are enabling defence technologies,” says Ms Šataitė.

The country’s Minister for Economy and Innovation, Lukas Savickas, says he understands Mr Malinauskas’ concern and is looking at government spending on developing space tech.

“Space technology is one of the highest added-value creating sectors, as it is known for its horizontality; many space-based solutions go in line with biotech, AI, new materials, optics, ICT and other fields of innovation,” says Mr Savickas.

Whatever happens with government funding, the Lithuanian appetite for innovation remains strong.

“We always have to prove to others that we belong on the global stage,” says Dominykas Milasius, co-founder of Delta Biosciences.

“And everything we do is also geopolitical… we have to build up critical value offerings, sciences and other critical technologies, to make our allies understand that it’s probably good to protect Lithuania.”

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AI Research

How Is AI Changing The Way Students Learn At Business School?

Published

2 hours ago

July 7, 2025

The Editors

Artificial intelligence is the skill set that employers increasingly want from future hires. Find out how b-schools are equipping students to use AI

In 2025, AI is rapidly reshaping future careers. According to GMAC’s latest Corporate Recruiters Survey, global employers predict that knowledge of AI tools will be the fastest growing essential skill for new business hires over the next five years.

Business students are already seeing AI’s value. More than three-quarters of business schools have already integrated AI into their curricula—from essay writing to personal tutoring, career guidance to soft-skill development.

BusinessBecause hears from current business students about how AI is reshaping the business school learning experience.

The benefits and drawbacks of using AI for essay writing

Many business school students are gaining firsthand experience of using AI to assist their academic work. At Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University in the Netherlands, students are required to use AI tools when submitting essays, alongside a log of their interactions.

“I was quite surprised when we were explicitly instructed to use AI for an assignment,” said Lara Harfner, who is studying International Business Administration (IBA) at RSM. “I liked the idea. But at the same time, I wondered what we would be graded on, since it was technically the AI generating the essay.”

Lara decided to approach this task as if she were writing the essay herself. She began by prompting the AI to brainstorm around the topic, research areas using academic studies and build an outline, before asking it to write a full draft.

However, during this process Lara encountered several problems. The AI-generated sources were either non-existent or inappropriate, and the tool had to be explicitly instructed on which concepts to focus on. It tended to be too broad, touching on many ideas without thoroughly analyzing any of them.

“In the end, I felt noticeably less connected to the content,” Lara says. “It didn’t feel like I was the actual author, which made me feel less responsible for the essay, even though it was still my name on the assignment.”

Despite the result sounding more polished, Lara thought she could have produced a better essay on her own with minimal AI support. What’s more, the grades she received on the AI-related assignments were below her usual average. “To me, that shows that AI is a great support tool, but it can’t produce high-quality academic work on its own.”

AI-concerned employers who took part in the Corporate Recruiters Survey echo this finding, stating that they would rather GME graduates use AI as a strategic partner in learning and strategy, than as a source for more and faster content.

How business students use AI as a personal tutor

Daniel Carvalho, a Global Online MBA student, also frequently uses AI in his academic assignments, something encouraged by his professors at Porto Business School (PBS).

However, Daniel treats AI as a personal tutor, asking it to explain complex topics in simple terms and deepen the explanation. On top of this, he uses it for brainstorming ideas, summarizing case studies, drafting presentations and exploring different points of view.

“My MBA experience has shown me how AI, when used thoughtfully, can significantly boost productivity and effectiveness,” he says.

Perhaps one of the most interesting ways Daniel uses AI is by turning course material into a personal podcast. “I convert text-based materials into audio using text-to-speech tools, and create podcast-style recaps to review content in a more conversational and engaging way. This allows me to listen to the materials on the go—in the car or at the gym.”

While studying his financial management course, Daniel even built a custom GPT using course materials. Much like a personal tutor, it would ask him questions about the material, validate his understanding, and explain any questions he got wrong. “This helped reinforce my knowledge so effectively that I was able to correctly answer all multiple-choice questions in the final exam,” he explains.

Similarly, at Villanova School of Business in the US, Master of Science in Business Analytics and AI (MSBAi) students are building personalized AI bots with distinct personalities. Students embed reference materials into the bot which then shape how the bot responds to questions.

“The focus of the program is to apply these analytics and AI skills to improve business results and career outcomes,” says Nathan Coates, MSBAi faculty director at the school. “Employers are increasingly looking for knowledge and skills for leveraging GenAI within business processes. Students in our program learn how AI systems work, what their limitations are, and what they can do better than existing solutions.”

The common limitations of using AI for academic work

Kristiina Esop, who is studying a doctorate in Business Administration and Management at Estonian Business School, agrees that AI in education must always be used critically and with intention. She warns students should always be aware of AI’s limitations.

Kristiina currently uses AI tools to explore different scenarios, synthesize large volumes of information, and detect emerging debates—all of which are essential for her work both academically and professionally.

However, she cautions that AI tools are not 100% accurate. Kristiina once asked ChatGPT to map actors in circular economy governance, and it returned a neat, simplified diagram that ignored important aspects. “That felt like a red flag,” she says. “It reminded me that complexity can’t always be flattened into clean logic. If something feels too easy, too certain—that’s when it is probably time to ask better questions.”

To avoid this problem, Kristiina combines the tools with critical thinking and contextual reading, and connects the findings back to the core questions in her research. “I assess the relevance and depth of the sources carefully,” she says. “AI can widen the lens, but I still need to focus it myself.”

She believes such critical thinking when using AI is essential. “Knowing when to question AI-generated outputs, when to dig deeper, and when to disregard a suggestion entirely is what builds intellectual maturity and decision-making capacity,” she says.

This is also what Wharton management professor Ethan Mollick, author of Co Intelligence: Living and Working with AI and co-director of the Generative AI Lab believes. He says the best way to work with [generative AI] is to treat it like a person. “So you’re in this interesting trap,” he says. “Treat it like a person and you’re 90% of the way there. At the same time, you have to remember you are dealing with a software process.”

Hult International Business School, too, expects its students to use AI in a balanced way, encouraging them to think critically about when and how to use it. For example, Rafael Martínez Quiles, a Master’s in Business Analytics student at Hult, uses AI as a second set of eyes to review his thinking.

“I develop my logic from scratch, then use AI to catch potential issues or suggest improvements,” he explains. “This controlled, feedback-oriented approach strengthens both the final product and my own learning.”

At Hult, students engage with AI to solve complex, real-world challenges as part of the curriculum. “Practical business projects at Hult showed me that AI is only powerful when used with real understanding,” says Rafael. “It doesn’t replace creativity or business acumen, it supports it.”

As vice president of Hult’s AI Society, N-AIble, Rafael has seen this mindset in action. The society’s members explore AI ethically, using it to augment their work, not automate it. “These experiences have made me even more confident and excited about applying AI in the real world,” he says.

The AI learning tools students are using to improve understanding

In other business schools, AI is being used to offer faculty a second pair of hands. Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Business has recently introduced an ‘AI Jockey’. Appearing live on a second screen next to the lecturer’s slides, this AI tool acts as a second teacher, providing real-time clarifications, offering alternate examples, challenging assumptions, and deepening explanations.

“Students gain access to instant, tailored explanations that complement the lecture, enhancing understanding and engagement,” says Dr Tom Vinaimont, assistant professor of finance, Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Business, who uses the AI jockey in his teaching.

Rather than replacing the instructor, the AI enhances the learning experience by adding an interactive, AI-driven layer to traditional teaching, transforming learning into a more dynamic, responsive experience.

“The AI Jockey model encourages students to think critically about information, question the validity of AI outputs, and build essential AI literacy. It helps students not only keep pace with technological change but also prepares them to lead in an AI-integrated world by co-creating knowledge in real time,” says Dr Vinaimont.

How AI can be used to encourage critical thinking among students

So, if you’re looking to impress potential employers, learning to work with AI while a student is a good place to start. But simply using AI tools isn’t enough. You must think critically, solve problems creatively and be aware of AI’s limitations.

Most of all, you must be adaptable. GMAC’s new AI-powered tool, Advancery, helps you find graduate business programs tailored to your career goals, with AI-readiness in mind.

After all, working with AI is a skill in itself. And in 2025, it is a valuable one.

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