Chatting GPT

In January 2026, Google was granted a patent that lets it read your website, break it into components, and serve searchers an AI-generated page assembled from your content. Visitors may never see your actual site. Joe Toscano — former Google designer, one of the voices in The Social Dilemma, and founder of Service Stories — saw this coming.

Joe left Silicon Valley in 2017, before Cambridge Analytica broke, because of what he was being asked to build. He now runs Service Stories, which helps small and mid-size service businesses get found by AI search engines by converting their existing work orders and job data into content — automatically. Early results from their pilots show direct web traffic growth of 228% within 90 days, and over 400% across longer periods.

The shift that makes this possible: search is moving from "plumber near me" to "why is my HVAC system creating complications in my house?" Topical authority — specific, question-answering content — is now the edge, and AI makes it viable to produce at scale for the first time.

He also just returned from two months in China — and his account of robots delivering room service in three minutes, seamless phone-based identity and payments, and a level of operational fluency the West hasn't reached yet is genuinely uncomfortable for anyone who assumes Europe's regulatory caution is the only sensible posture.

A sharp, grounded episode on where search is going, what China is building, and what AGI actually looks like when it arrives.

Find Joe and a step-by-step guide to doing this yourself at servicestories.com.

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Simon Hodgkins has spent a career running global marketing — Sage, CMO Club president, and now Chief Marketing Officer at Vistatec, the Dublin firm helping iconic brands scale content and AI worldwide. He joins Maryrose to argue that the real AI bottleneck isn't the models. It's whether a company is ready to use them.

Simon makes the case for gap analysis before tooling: before you buy, pilot or deploy, you need to know how you actually work today — what content exists, which workflows are documented, how the Frankfurt office differs from New York, and what ISO 42001 would expect you to prove. He explains why bolting AI onto broken processes wastes money, why regulated industries still need human experts in the loop, and what an "intelligent workflow" actually looks like.

On the hype cycle, Simon is blunt: stop headline-reading. Figure out what you're doing first. Or as Rory Sutherland puts it — no robots are buying new cars.

A conversation for any leader whose pilots keep going nowhere.
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The CSO stopped tracking the price of a pint of Guinness in Ireland in 2011. The last official figure was €3.93. Nobody picked it up again until Matt Cortland and John Fleming decided to call every pub in the country and ask.

Using Google Maps for contact data, 11 Labs to clone a Northern Irish voice, Claude Code to orchestrate the whole system, and Twilio to actually make the calls, they built the Guinndex: a real-time index of pint prices across Ireland and Northern Ireland. Over 700 pubs called. Total cost: approximately €200.

They didn't stop there. With fuel prices dominating headlines on both sides of the Atlantic, they applied the same methodology to US gas stations, creating the Gas Index, complete with AI agents named after King of the Hill characters and a feature that tells you whether the cheaper station is actually worth the drive.

This episode is a masterclass in what's possible when you connect off-the-shelf AI tools with a problem worth solving. And a cautionary tale about the Irish goodbye.

Find Matt and John at guindex.ai.

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Sean Blanchfield, Co-Founder Jentic, joins Maryrose Lyons of the AI Institute for the second part of their conversation, this time diving deep into agentic AI, what it actually means for businesses, and how Jentic's infrastructure can help enterprise get there. From the risks of locking into a single AI model to a practical three-layer roadmap for AI transformation, Sean offers a grounded, builder's perspective on where enterprise AI is really headed. An essential listen for anyone in construction, professional services, or other sectors navigating fragmented systems and wondering where to start.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Welcome Back
00:30 Model Neutrality — Why You Shouldn't Lock Into One AI
01:30 Microsoft Copilot: The Hype and the Reality
02:20 Self-Hosting and On-Prem AI for Sensitive Data
03:00 Where Jentic Fits In — Mapping Your Software Ecosystem
04:00 Building a Digital Twin of Your Business Infrastructure 05:00 Agents in the Sandbox — Testing Before Going Live
05:45 Validating and Publishing Automations Incrementally
06:30 Voice Agents and Real-Time Field Queries 07:30 Layer Three: Governance and Running an AI-Powered Company
08:30 Humans in the Loop — Cross-Workflow Thinking
09:15 Resistance to AI Adoption (Spoiler: Less Than You'd Think)
10:00 The Future Company — Humans as Governors of Machines
11:00 Wrap-Up and Where to Find Jentic

Connect with Sean Blanchfield : https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanblanchfield/
Check out Jentic https://jentic.com/
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Serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Jentic, Sean Blanchfield joins our host Maryrose Lyons for a conversation about Ireland's AI opportunity, and the risks of getting it wrong. From energy infrastructure and nuclear power to the future of the professional class, Sean lays out a bold, pragmatic roadmap for positioning Ireland to win in the AI generation. A must-listen for founders, policymakers, and anyone thinking seriously about the future of the Irish economy.

Key Topics

Ireland's AI strategy and infrastructure
Energy and regulation for AI development
Future economy and AI's impact on jobs and wealth
Data centers and inference centers in Ireland
Regulatory environment and green energy initiatives

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Sean Blanchfield and AI in Ireland
01:07 Ireland's Position in the AI Landscape
01:43 The Future of Work and AI's Impact
04:47 Regulatory Challenges and Data Centers
07:40 Energy Needs for AI Infrastructure
09:24 The Importance of Creativity in the AI Era

Connect with Sean Blanchfield : https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanblanchfield/
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