Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 May 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Businesses: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Jeremy Rollison:

The Deputy has captured one of our biggest priorities and concerns about that space right now. This is a tool that can be misused by bad actors. Let us face it, there likely will be bad actors around the world. The good news is that, where we see the best advances in the technology at the moment, there is consensus among some of those like-minded governments about where we want to draw the line at prohibited practices and how we want to protect some of the technology that might currently be only in the hands of select jurisdictions from entering the hands of the bad actors. It is all the more reason that international meeting and alignment of the minds on what the appropriate regulatory authorities and approaches should be is part of the story we are trying to pitch as much as we can. The EU AI Act is one element of that. International alignment on these definitions of risk and how we protect this from falling into the wrong hands is one of the biggest priorities we have been advocating for, whether in the OECD context or the Hiroshima process. The good news is that we are seeing many leaders around the world recognising exactly that threat. The bad news is that there is that threat. There are a lot of things we can do and it is a good conversation to continue to have, especially as we see some of this technology advance. I share the Deputy's concern and the company shares that concern. It is stimulating the type of conversations around the globe right now that, increasingly, politicians are looking at, even from the standpoint of security implications. I can only say that it is recognised. We have a lot more work to do. It is a very true concern.