Alice-Mary Higgins: Calls for Ireland to Lead on AI Weapons Law

Thank you very much. In relation to autonomous weapons systems, it was disappointing last week that we had the Department of Defence when I asked them. We know that, and I'm sure you're very aware, in 2023 there was a resolution from the General Assembly, maybe not as strong even as it could have been, but Ireland was clear on a position then, but when I asked about it I was quite surprised because the Department of Defence didn't seem to know. I would share your perspective that Ireland could and should be giving leadership in this area and I was particularly struck by the comment you made of the importance of finding common grounds on limitations and prohibitions before they become so commonly used that it becomes more difficult. I'm thinking of the role Ireland played in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as the first, and of course in relation to cluster munitions where there was a similar high risk of civilian indirect, you don't know who the bomb will hit effectively, and it's something quite similar. I would like if you could comment on that, maybe where Ireland was in 2023, the importance of giving leadership in that, and I should flag that I have my own legislation pending. For example, if Ireland was to bring its own legislation in relation to autonomous weapons, presumably as this is uncovered by the AI Act, it's open for national states to bring their own legislation and give leadership there, and perhaps that as a prompt to discussion and to moving forward on it. So if you could comment a little bit on that. Yes, I was also surprised about that intervention last week, and listening back my sense is that there might just not have been an understanding, there might have just been a misunderstanding. I believe that Ireland's position on the lethal autonomous weapons system is clear, that these have no place in any civilised military, so I don't think there's any dispute there. There's something that's really unique about AI-enabled weapons systems, and that is that all of the systems that you mentioned before, they're extremely expensive, so it is extremely difficult to acquire these types of technology. That's not the case with AI technology. You can build, once you've got a laptop and an internet connection, you can start building essentially weaponised AI systems that are effectively weapons. There was one remark last week that was made, I don't know who made it but I didn't quite agree with it, and I think the statement was something like that cyber security doesn't kill people. Cyber security absolutely kills people because if you're attacking a piece of critical infrastructure that's related to safety, for example, people may very well die. So maybe it doesn't happen directly but it happens indirectly. So I think it would be fantastic if Ireland did take a strong position and I think in writing that legislation I think Ireland should take a global position on it and see it not just as legislation for Ireland but a model for other countries to sign up to or to be, maybe they won't sign up to be bound by it but at least that the mechanisms that could be identified in it could actually scale globally. And I think that would be enormously helpful. In my experience, so the track two diplomacy world, just in case it's a term that people are not familiar with, you're all familiar with track one diplomacy, you're all elected officials and ministers, so Minister A goes and talks to Minister B, that's the track one diplomacy route. The track two diplomacy route is where there are topics that can't really be discussed for political reasons or otherwise at that official level but there can be conversations had by experts to explore an area and I think that does reveal that there's a lot more commonality than might be publicly and at a track one level believed to be the case. Just a very brief follow-up on that because I do have a question from Miss Pascal as well but another area then is in terms of cyber security, I think it's important to note that dual use technologies, which again sometimes can be kind of as if they may have, but dual use technologies, I mean, is there a need for Ireland in that global leadership space to be more rigorous and more vigilant in relation to how we manage that area of dual use technologies and the experts in relation to them? Particularly we've seen how they've been used directly in Israel, for example. Yeah, sure, absolutely. So yes, we do. We do need to take a very strong position on dual use technologies. Now, of course, dual use technology these days does cover a multitude of technologies, so it's that what falls under that umbrella is really increasing dramatically but I think we do need to, you know, we see, I won't mention any company's names but you can easily find them. Well-known companies in Ireland are actually not keeping as tight an eye on where their technologies are being exported to and used as they should be. So I don't think it's something that is universally observed in the strongest possible sense but also I think we need to be aware that even the definition of dual use technology is something that could also be used against us because we do rely on the import of technologies that are dual use. And so particularly the United States are taking a very, very strong reconsideration of what's included in dual use and who can actually access it. And you might have noticed that under Biden before he finished, probably for the first time ever, the United States took a very state-by-state approach to the EU in terms of export controls where it hadn't done that before. So I think that the whole world, the whole narrative around dual use technology is something that we really need to take a lot of attention to. Thank you very much. I should mention I have legislation pending tomorrow. Very briefly, Ms. Pascale, as a last question, I had a few and perhaps in a second round I can come back. In terms of threats, you mentioned procurement as a key piece and I want to speak specifically around Microsoft. You'll be aware that they've said under oath that they will allow U.S. access to data in Europe. And we know that I think Germany, France, Italy and Denmark have moved away from public usage and public systems reliance on it. Yet in Ireland we've seen widespread use of it within the Iraqis and in fact a new move to have all of our telephone systems move to Microsoft Teams in the Iraqis and indeed in a number of government departments. Is that a security risk that we should be examining? Yes, it's a security risk. Because we are mentioning the vendor and the product, Microsoft of their co-pilot, which is the large language model which Barry mentioned, is a generative AI technique that is integrated now in all their tools. And there has already been documented attacks to Microsoft co-pilot and its related tools. So using Microsoft product into the public, into university, into other organizations poses tremendous threats for different reasons. First, these technologies are not secure, have been aggressively integrated without sufficient testing, I believe, as demonstrated by recent attacks. And second, they can access data, personal data, and potentially violate GDPR. And actually Microsoft is currently using, UCD is going to be using UCD, and there are a lot of talks and discussion about there should be allowed access to sensitive data set that we have currently. So this is a menacing and insecure. There is a geopolitical also threat because US could be targeted by third other countries. And so they could target US products that are also used in Europe. And the US has indicated, you know, they've indicated that quite publicly that they will share data with the US. Yes, so this is a privacy threat. Because this system access personal data, data set in university that have sensitive data. So it's... And from a defense perspective, when we think of national security, there's a sensitive threat. To the extent that attacks would face over Ireland. Yeah. Thank you. Very briefly. So this is a point in the whole debate around sovereignty, on technological sovereignty. And so it is something from a national resilience point of view that we do need to look at. And in the whole debate around sovereignty, on technological sovereignty. And so it is something from a national resilience point of view that we do need to look at. And it isn't just about what software we use and where we store our data. It's much more complex than that. Also where the hardware comes from. And so I think taking a... Looking at analyzing that from the macro point of view would be very, very interesting. Okay.