Mr. Joe O'Brien:

Democracy shield is European legislation that Michael McGrath has responsibility for. Our main recommendation under that relates to the recommender systems. This is a form of AI that has been running and causing damage in a variety of ways for many years. It is not that new. There are issues with the recommender systems in terms of the damage they are doing to democracy. Our recommendation is that recommender systems be automatically turned off so the person has the choice about whether they want a particular orientated feed coming into their phone. At the moment everyone is getting the preferred feed and algorithm of people in other countries and the billionaires Dr. Shrishak referred to. That is what is coming into our social media feeds. That is causing a problem not just in communities and nationally, but across Europe and particularly at election time. We have been pushing the Commissioner to do something about the recommender systems. This is an obvious example of a negative of AI and how it can be used and abused.