138. Deputy Sinéad Gibney asked the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment the steps his Department is taking to implement the recommendations of the recent report of the Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport around the use of recommender algorithms on social media platforms; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45933/26]

Sentiment score: 0.01

Increasingly, large amounts of different groups are recommending that toxic algorithms be turned off by default. Most recently, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and sport, of which I am a member, made such a recommendation in our report. I would like to hear the steps the Department is taking to specifically deal with that measure to turn off algorithms.

Sentiment score: 0.12

It is clear that the current legislation and regulatory framework are not working. The Minister of State talked a lot about the obligations on these platforms to allow users to adjust their settings and basically push back against algorithmic profiling and so on, but it is clear that it is not working. There have been multiple US cases recently where we see that the design of these products themselves promotes addiction, and the secret sauce behind all of them is the algorithm. Whatever the Minister of State is describing in terms of the existing regulatory framework, it is not working. The Data Protection Commission, DPC, essentially failed because if it had properly enforced the GDPR, we would not have had to set up Coimisiún na Meán. It now has a whole suite of European Union regulation to enforce, but it is still failing. We are now setting up an AI office within the Department of enterprise, which is just going to add to the complexity of a regulatory framework that is not working. This is not just about children. These algorithms are toxic and problematic for all of us. I will go into detail on how. This is not working as it stands. Users are not to be blamed.

Sentiment score: 0.01

As I said, they are not working. I am not proposing a ban on algorithms. What I am saying is that algorithms are the way these products are being made addictive. We are all suffering as a result. They are radicalising people, promoting harmful content and polarising our society. We need to turn them off by default, and turn them off entirely for children. There are no unintended consequences in that regard. It would bring us back to the Internet that we used to enjoy, where we were not constantly bombarded with material that is trying to sell us things or keep our eyes locked on a screen. This is more important than ever as AI develops. AI will go further than just keeping our eyes on the screen. It is seeking to make emotional connections with us that would exploit us further and make us more addicted to these products. We have to turn off the algorithm by default. We are going to spend the next year discussing this ban for under 16s, which is not going to work because it penalises children and raises major privacy concerns, when we know the solution is to turn off toxic algorithms by default and fully for children. That is what we need to do.

Sentiment score: 0.03