Walking the floor of his potato and crisp factory near Oldtown, Co Dublin, Tom Keogh greets almost two dozen staff, on a first-name basis, going about their work as he passes by.Most of the staff respond in kind, but two workers keep their eyes fixed on a stream of potatoes and crisps flowing in front of them on conveyor belts.“Even after all the machinery has done its work, we still have human eyes on everything before it goes into a pack,” Keogh says.Keogh’s facility is a mix of high tech and the human touch.In a large warehouse where potatoes are sorted, a bank of cameras takes 50 photos of each potato as they spin by and an automatic trapdoor activates if it doesn’t pass a quality test.At the end of that process, there is a person on the lookout for unsuitable potatoes that managed to evade detection.“The machines are just there to make the job for these people easier. I don’t think we’ll ever replace human eyes as a quality control.”In a separate building nearby, where Keogh’s Crisps are cooked and sorted, it’s a similar scenario. As thousands of crisps approach the end of a conveyor belt, a photo is taken of every single one. When a crisp falls off the conveyor belt, an automatic air jet individually pushes bad crisps from the production line as they are in suspension. “And then there’s a set of human eyes again,” Keogh says. “We need humans at every stage of the process. In some cases, automation is not the right way. Human hand-on quality is really, really important. “AI is helping in offices and I’ve had a lot of people come in and try to sell us AI products, but when you actually get into the weeds, all they’re selling are clever spreadsheets. AI is not adding massive value to manufacturing at our level just yet to a point that you would actually go ahead and invest in it.”The factory floor of Keogh’s Farm in Westpalstown, Oldtown, Co Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times