Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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When the need for a global pause is talked about, it is worrying that 40 years on from being alerted to climate change we are still struggling to get countries on board. It is a worry. The EU has governance such that a fair degree of confidence can be had that it will protect citizens first. Not all governments would see the advent of such a powerful technology in that light. There is a risk of this being weaponised, similar to an arms race, between those who seek to regulate and those who do not. I am interested in hearing comments on that issue.

To go back to the principles the EU says should be applied in trying to regulate this, such as respect for human autonomy, prevention of harm, fairness and explainability, it surprises me there is not more attention to control, governance and the inputs used. Those are all outcomes a judge would have to evaluate after the fact to ascertain whether something is fair. If we are trying to regulate, it has to be auditable and explainable ab initio, as opposed to after the fact, whether something turns out to be fair. In practical terms, how ought governments think about - it will probably not be governments but global institutions - regulating this sector? Should we be applying rules around control, scale, monopoly situations and governance requirements?

An allied question strikes me regarding liability. How do you prove someone intentionally did something or other, if that person created a Frankenstein monster that goes and does its own thing? What is the enforceability against standards such as fairness? Presumably, whoever is in the dock would just throw their hands up in the air and say, "I did not expect this to happen". I am interested in those sort of principles. Should we approach this much more around insisting on reasonable care, dispersed ownership and not allowing certain inputs to go into the framework used to generate these decisions? That is the area that worries me.

Do we have the tools in the regulatory armoury to address something of this nature even if we move quickly?