Dr. Patricia Scanlon:

I thank the Senator for her question.

The ethics thing is really important. That is why, when I first took the role of AI ambassador, it was because Ireland had chosen to take an ethical AI approach, as did the EU AI Act. My own experience in recent decades has been in trying to ensure we delivered our own AI system that was ethical for different socioeconomic backgrounds and different accents. In our implementation, we must not shy away from the EU AI Act and not try to dilute it, which there will be a lot of pressure from commercial interests to do, in order for them to able to innovate and not regulate. We must stand firm on it. When AI will make a decision that will influence somebody's life, in a system that is not regulated well, bias can creep into decision-making and further increase inequalities. People in certain areas will not get a loan or somebody with an accent will not be understood. We need to ensure that does not happen. That is what the EU AI Act will do.

The second objective is to make sure we have AI literacy across all sectors of society and that is not just people who are privileged or who have technical backgrounds who can understand AI and its implications. It is really important that everybody in society understands the powers and limits and that they can actually access it. It will be a game-changer for education. We want to make sure that everybody has access. Arguably, if done well, it could level the playing field for people because access to expert knowledge would be at people's fingertips. That is one way in which I see it as a positive, as there is a whole lot of other problems.