Ms Sinéad Keane:

Chairperson, Deputies, Senators, I thank the committee for the invitation to myself and my colleague, Dubheasa Kelly, to support its important work on safeguarding rights and mitigating risks related to artificial intelligence.

Spunout is Ireland’s youth information and support platform. Each year, we reach over 800,000 young people with factual, non-judgmental information. This year alone, we have spoken directly with more than 30,000 individuals through Text About It, our 24-7 crisis text service. We are in the business of empathy at Spunout, something which AI cannot replicate or replace. We believe that regulation of AI must be carefully considered and crafted in full consultation with the young people whose lives, careers and educational opportunities are most impacted by this technology.

For us, successful regulation would be based on a foundation of respect for transparency, responsibility, accountability and ethics in the provision and operation of AI technologies. Young people in particular must be protected from harm in this space, whether from inbuilt biases in AI models or from irresponsible delegation of decisions to AI, which would most properly sit with a qualified human being. Two areas in which this will be of the highest importance are in the provision of mental health support and in stemming the growing tide of misinformation and hate online. The recent EU loneliness survey has shown that young people in Ireland have the highest rates of loneliness in Europe and are at a growing risk of social isolation. We need to ask serious questions about the potential harms and indeed the existing impact of chatbots and other AI tools in this space.