The Connected News Podcast · Business Post

The Connected AI Podcast: AI and digital pathology

·47 min·2 clips

Donal says DeSyfex is investing in a pathology foundation model trained on vast visual data.

1. The Connected News Podcast focuses on AI and digital pathology in The Connected AI Podcast: AI and digital pathology. 2. Hosts Elaine Burke and Charlie Taylor lead the discussion, and guest Donal O'Shea appears as CEO and founder of DeSyfex, an Irish tech company building software for digital pathology. 3. The episode asks what AI is actually being used for now, and whether its strongest role is shifting from search and editing toward emotional and professional support. 4. Elaine Burke cites Mark South Sanders at Harvard Business Review, who compared reported AI use cases from 2024 and 2025. 5. The list of 100 use cases included 38 brands this year, and the ranking showed a move away from technical assistance, troubleshooting, content creation, and learning. 6. Search fell from position 3 to 13, and editing text fell from position 4 to 45. 7. Generating ideas dropped from number 1 in 2024 to number 6 in 2025, while therapy and companionship moved from number 2 to number 1. 8. Two new use cases entered the 2025 top three: organizing my life and finding purpose. 9. The hosts note that personal and professional support now represents almost one third of use cases, nearly double the 2024 share. 10. Burke worries that AI products may move further into emotional support and companionship because those use patterns can lock users in. 11. The conversation turns to Cursor, an AI coding tool from Anisphere, after a support bot told users a policy existed when it did not. 12. The specific issue involved people using Cursor on multiple machines, and the bot told them that behavior was against policy. 13. The co-founder later apologized on Reddit and said the policy did not exist, which the hosts treat as a warning about AI customer support. 14. Burke compares that failure with the way big tech companies already route customers through automated loops or repeated handoffs. 15. The hosts argue that customer service still needs scripted, deterministic steps, and that a unique AI response is not useful if it invents rules. 16. They also discuss OpenAI's rumored interest in buying Windsurf for $3 billion and its connection to the "vibe coding" label. 17. Burke reads Andrej Karpathy's X post describing vibe coding as giving in to the vibes, using LLMs like Cursor Composer with Sonnet, and copying error messages back until something works. 18. The tone is conversational and skeptical, with Charlie Taylor and Elaine Burke trading jokes while pushing on the risks of sloppiness and overreliance on AI. 19. Listeners interested in AI product design, healthcare diagnostics, and tech policy will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for light entertainment or a simple news roundup may skip it.

As heard by us

AI is framed as a practical tool, from killer-app skepticism to pathologists and Oscars rules.

The episode treats AI as a working tool, not a slogan. It begins with the hosts asking where the real "killer app" is, then moves to Donal O'Shea and DeSyfex, an Irish tech company building a global network of AI-supported pathologists.

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Why you'd press play

You want a sane AI conversation that lands on real medical workflow.

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