Mr. John Sherwin:

I have not seen too many examples yet. We discussed the Braille pen earlier. AI is not going to be only used in a way where it is explicitly visible. AI can drive solutions in an invisible way behind them. The way we have seen it most visibly at this point is in relation to English language tools, such as ChatGPT, helping people to write more effectively. The avatars are being used currently for children's programmes. That reduces costs and therefore makes ISL more available, more broadly at a cheaper price. We have concerns that this will become seductive and then people give the green light to substandard ISL that is ticking an accessibility box but is not actually communicating or, worse, is teaching children something that is incorrect.

AI is going to be employed in the background in terms of developing care decisions, as in the example in the UK. That is completely invisible to disabled people. They are not even going see the influence of AI in that cost and time-saving product that is working in the background. We see the potential there, but we have not seen so many examples of it in place yet. It is racing at such a speed and the guardrails seem to be lifted in countries that are leading in developing these technologies in order to compete in a race. We are concerned that, by the time we see bias and influenced decisions that are negative in practice, we are then in a situation where we are trying to reverse something or fix something that is already in place and widespread. The guardrails element in development is critically important.

To answer the Deputy's question as to whether we can see other positive examples of AI in place at the moment, there are more planned and there are more optimistically coming down the road than there are examples that actually affect people's lives at the moment.