Ms Caoilfhionn Gallagher:

I would like to follow up on the question about the UNICEF guidelines. The two principles raised by Senator Ruane were principle 6, on providing transparency, explainability and accountability for children and principle 9, on creating the enabling environment.

To add to what Professor O’Sullivan said on principle 6, one of the key things the UNICEF guidelines make clear is that age-appropriate language should be used to describe AI and children should be explicitly addressed when promoting the transparency of AI systems. Something the committee might find very helpful is a series of pilot case studies from different countries. One that is particular good on principle 6, which I would recommend, is on page 49 of the guidance document. It is from Helsinki University Hospital and it is called Millie the chatbot in Finland. It is an AI-powered chatbot that uses natural language processing to help adolescents and teenagers in Finland open up to learn about mental health issues. The application was the result of precisely the kind of collective effort Ms Daly was talking about earlier, where interdisciplinary experts and practitioners worked together to design it with children also involved in the design. The result was that Millie’s avatar was redesigned to appear in a way that worked for children so we had experts assisting in the design but with children also being a key part of the design. That is a very good example.

On principle 9, creating an enabling environment, the short answer is that, No, we are not doing enough. I agree about Ireland having the potential to be world leading and having an obligation to try to be world leading in this space. On that, I would recommend in the guidance, pages 42 and 43 are very good on this final topic about creating an enabling environment. They set out four standards that countries should strive to meet. They are, first, supporting infrastructure development to address the digital divide aiming for equitable sharing of the benefits of AI. They are emphasising there that that AI-related policy, strategies and systems exist within a broad ecosystem. Just focusing on policy and practice at the end is not enough. We need to think about the infrastructure from the outset. The second standard is to provide funding and incentives for child-centred AI policies and strategies. The third is supporting research on AI for and with children across the systems life cycle, including in the design phase. The final standard is engaging in digital co-operation across border and learning lessons.

I hope those pages are particularly useful. I realise that we have all given the committee members a long homework list of documents to read but, very much, pages 42 to 50 are very good on those two principles raised by Senator Ruane.