Lynn Ruane (Independent)

In thinking about fearmongering and stuff like that, I do not like the way that was framed. At the end of the day, AI, social media and even automated telephone lines are already impacting people's lives, compounding inequality and poverty and pushing people out of conversations. I need to feel that there are champions, advocates or people pushing for the element that reduces the harms AI can do. I do not need to have the conversation on whether we can pull certain things back. It is about how people engage with it, how it impacts their lives and how it compounds certain inequalities. My fear is that the education system is already biased and inequitable. Even without computer systems, social media or AI, the system is already reinforcing inequality, lack of aspiration and lack of engagement in certain dialogues. Most schools do not even have student councils or the ability to have a debating club. When I ask questions about AI and how we will protect against it being another tool that widens the gap between people, I get the same kinds of answers, namely, it needs to be equitable and accessible and we need to make sure people have access to it. We have heard that about everything. There is now this other big powerful thing we are saying is transformative and I am supposed to accept it will have all these things and we are going to make it accessible and give people digital literacy when there are people who do not have literacy in general, never mind digital literacy. There are people in communities who no longer go to the doctor because they cannot get a human on the phone. They will not even ring because they do not want to have to press one, four and six and get confused by what is feeding back to them. For me, it is about the here and now of people's lives.

What I need to know from as many of the witnesses as possible in the time I have is what the warning is in making sure that people from marginalised communities are protected.

They will be the ones who bear the brunt politically in terms of poverty. I need to know that people will, for example, go after the Department of education to say what its guidelines should look like, so it is not just the language of accessibility. I am not sure there is a question in this, but I need to know that someone truly gets this and understands it without it just being the language of understanding it, if that makes sense.