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| Welsh Government's offices at Llandudno Junction Author: Jonathan Wilkins Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Business Wales describes itself as "a free, government-funded service by the Welsh Government that provides advice, guidance, and support for starting, running, and growing businesses in Wales." It reminds me of Business Link before the abolition of the regional development agencies in England. Among its other services, Business Wales holds conferences, workshops and seminars on business issues throughout the nation. It held an AI Summit at the Menai Science Park ("M-SParc") immediately after the science park's finance and innovation conference which I discussed yesterday in "Tanio 2026" - M-Sparc's Finance and Innovation Conference. I was at the summit, and it was one of the best events of its kind that I have ever attended.
The event was moderated by Jordan Eardley, the AI adoption lead at Business Wales. He introduced the afternoon's programme and explained how it would help Welsh small and medium enterprises to adopt AI practically, ethically and confidently. Throughout the afternoon, Jordan addressed us almost entirely in Welsh.
Jordan's first speaker was Bill McAllister-Lovatt, who refers to himself as The Disruptive Innovator. He considered whether artificial intelligence was making humanity lazy and the possible consequences. Bill has made the video "I am a river to your dream" which introduces his skills and services.
The next speaker was Andrew McStay, Professor of Technology and Society at Bangor University. He discussed ethics and AI for business, which was particularly apposite at a time of warnings of existential threats to humanity and the recent hacking of an Australian government website. He considered the risks to privacy and other dangers and ways of mitigating them.
Kirsty Robson-Davies chaired a panel discussion on the skills, talent and training that Welsh businesses would require to thrive with AI and the support already available with Catherine Morris-Roberts of Ambition North Wales, Emily Roberts of M-Sparc and Nigel Holloway of Coleg Cambria. One of the topics that came up was hallucination by AI systems. I referred to the recent decision of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in Solicitors Regulation Authority v Kumar 29 July 2026 in which a registered foreign lawyer was prosecuted inter alia for relying on misleading materials generated by artificial intelligence. I suggested that the only way to avoid this peril was to check everything that the system produced which would tend to defeat the purpose of artificial intelligence.
The keynote speaker was Victoria Southam of Microsoft. She started by reminding everyone with a 365 licence that they already enjoyed the right to use Copilot. She ran a video which illustrated the capabilities of the system and mentioned several examples of its successful use.
Victoria was followed by short presentations from Tony Beever of Node9 Consulting, Ruth Astbury of the University of South Wales, Alan Munby of the University of Wales, Trinity St David, Euros Evans of Cian and Klaire Tanner of Artio Productions. Euros had created the first Welsh-language AI tool for email and administration. Klaire introduced the audience to the AI tools that have been particularly useful to her work. I first heard her lecture on this subject in AI for Business in 2024 and have been one of her fans ever since.
The afternoon was rounded off with a barbecue at 17:00. There was to be a coding hackathon using Lovable from 18:30 onwards which I would gladly have attended had I more time. Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on 020 7404 5252 during UK office hours or send me a message through my contact form at any other time.
