Dr. Dan McQuillan:

I would like to question the concept that education is the answer, not to directly criticise my colleagues but just because it has come up several times. It is incumbent on me as a member of the higher education sector to say that education is exactly what is most being undermined right now. Education is the front line of the social impacts of AI. If we are thinking about education, we need to think about what is happening to it right now and not place hopes in what it might do in the future because it is education that is really struggling under the impact of these technologies.

What I would promote, in line with my earlier suggestions, is a great deal of caution and the erection of as many safeguards at as many levels as possible. I do not actually accept the premise that AI is here to stay. I would say look at some of the pronouncements as in today's news by Sundar Pichai about the likelihood of a massive correction on AI. On thinking "But never mind, it will still have a future afterwards", there are indicators that maybe it does not have a future after this and definitely not in this form. It would be very wise for people who have the responsibilities of the State to bear that in mind. There is a longer game here that is about building on the strengths of something like Ireland already has in my understanding, which is a still-existing system of social relationships that hold up society in the first place. AI is fundamentally toxic to that. It is the asbestos of social relationships.