Like any technology, there are pros and cons when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence. It has the potential to be incredibly important in areas like healthcare, science and technology. We saw that at the Young Scientist exhibition last week in the RDS, where many of the projects demonstrated to us how it could be a force for good. A school from my own constituency, Gaelcholáiste Reachrann, had a really impressive project on how AI could improve mental health supports. Indeed, the overall winning project also used AI as a part of a brain cancer diagnosis tool. Unfortunately, in recent months, we have all seen how this technology can be abused, the most obvious being its use on X to produce illegal sexual abuse material and other images intended to humiliate people. It also led to a huge increase in misinformation, not to mention serious copyright and privacy laws infringements. We have also seen the use of AI systems by militaries, particularly by Israel in Gaza to completely blur the lines of accountability when it comes to the responsibility of war crimes. Like any new technology, the regulation governing its use needs to evolve at the same pace. We have all probably heard about situations where AI is being used to screen applicants for jobs, for example. There are concerns that this could result in applicants of certain backgrounds, class, gender or race being excluded from a shortlist when CVs are filtered through the system. That can just be down to the original data used to train the system not being reflective of society as a whole. There needs to be strict monitoring and regulation of AI systems used for this purpose. The big issue here, and it is something that the National Youth Council of Ireland mentioned recently, is the need for proactive public engagement and education on AI systems. Digital literacy and education for young people is particularly important because the reality is this technology is not going away, so they need to understand it. They need to know the rules around it and they need to be equipped for the challenges that it also poses.

Sentiment score: 0.17