Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I have to say it has been a pretty depressing debate so far, with a few honourable exceptions. Most of the Deputies have swallowed and then regurgitated the spin from big tech. I find it incredible that we had a speech from the new Minister of State with responsibility for AI and its only reference to climate change is about AI being used to help us address sustainability and climate action. There is no mention of the suggestion by many, including Donald Trump, that it will result in a doubling of our power need. Trump envisages that will be filled by coal. The Irish Government clearly envisages that it will be filled a fuel even dirtier than coal, by importing LNG from America.

What is AI going to do for workers? The Taoiseach claimed yesterday that if we do not enable data centres to massively expand fossil fuel usage, it will damage workers. However, in many cases it will put them out of a job. The Government's own research has found that 30% of Irish workers are in danger of being replaced by AI. Women and people in administrative and creative roles are disproportionately at risk. The World Economic Forum estimates that 85 million workers will lose their jobs to AI in the coming years. We need less of this capture by big tech and more cop-on and the asking of basic questions, like where the massive amounts of rare earth minerals are going to come from. Where is the water going to come from? Where is the energy going to come from? Is it worth trashing our planet and throwing millions of people out of work for the sake of AI-generated slop? Do we want crappy paraphrases from ChatGPT taking over the Internet? Do we want uncanny valley videos of people with six hands walking down? Is that the way we want to spend our energy? Is that how we want to use our water? Do we want more far-right content with AI-generated fake videos fomenting hate? Is that what we want?

I think we need to look back in time to a previous movement that engaged with new technology and said, "Yes, we want technology, but we want it for the benefit of people. We want it in the control of society, not big corporations." I am reading a book at the moment about the Luddites. The Luddites must be the most maligned movement in history. If you look up the definition of the word Luddite, it means someone who is opposed to technology. The Luddites were not opposed to technology. They were skilled workers confronted with the implementation of new technology that was used to impoverish their communities, to lower the quality of the products they were producing, to take away the autonomy they had previously and to drive child labour. They started off not by breaking machines, but by petitions to the king and the government that fell on deaf ears. They were then forced to resort to insurrectionary practices. They were ultimately crushed by massive state repression, occupation and thousands and thousands of soldiers, but basically the Luddites were right, and we could do with applying the lessons today when it comes to big tech.

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