Dr. Patricia Scanlon:

That is always brought up in the conversation on innovation and regulation. The business I had over ten years was using voice AI for children. While the EU had the GDPR, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA, rules in the US predated it. We proactively chose, before we were required to do so, to respect data privacy laws. We also went a step further on the ethics side to make sure the technology worked for all kids, regardless of socioeconomic background or accent, because that is the right thing to do. We recognised, as parents and as citizens in society, that we need to make sure it works for everybody. It did make us spend a little more. It maybe made us a little slower. However, not to the point where we were not competitive. It stood to us in the long term. We built a better business. We had a better reputation because people understood that our technology was equitable as well as respecting data privacy rights, and that is part of a brand. People often think it is a case of regulation or innovation. My answer to this is always that regulation can be done well and that you can help businesses navigate quickly. We talk about this with well-resourced regulatory sandboxes, which I would love to see Ireland. We can do this correctly, but we cannot create bottlenecks.