Richard Boyd Barrett: AI Threatens Artists - Government Must Act
Richard Boyd Barrett addresses the house in support of artists and organisations campaigning against unchecked AI use. He warns that AI corporations risk stealing creative work, deepening poverty among artists, and consuming vital resources unless government acts.
Motion and support: Richard Boyd Barrett opens by thanking Sinn Fein and affirming People Before Profit's backing for artists, musicians and organisations pushing this motion. He urges the government to take the motion seriously rather than simply not opposing it in name only.
Artists in crisis: Barrett highlights the scale of poverty among professional artists, noting that about 50-57% live on or below the poverty line, far above the national average. He recalls campaigns for fair pay, buy-out contract issues in film and TV, and the everyday precarity many creators endure.
AI and corporate power: He criticises billionaire-controlled AI firms for trying to appropriate artistic and creative output en masse for profit. Barrett argues the government's current posture is overly deferential to tech companies, including generous tax breaks and encouragement for data centre expansion.
Environmental and ethical risks: Barrett raises the environmental impact of data centres, their heavy electricity and water use, and broader ethical concerns and pointing to the danger of replacing human creativity with automated systems.
Demanding a solution: Barrett insists that any reasonable approach to AI must be subordinate to the needs and wishes of artists and their representatives. He calls on policymakers to consult the people in the gallery and to act to protect creative labour and the cultural commons.
Motion and support: Richard Boyd Barrett opens by thanking Sinn Fein and affirming People Before Profit's backing for artists, musicians and organisations pushing this motion. He urges the government to take the motion seriously rather than simply not opposing it in name only.
Artists in crisis: Barrett highlights the scale of poverty among professional artists, noting that about 50-57% live on or below the poverty line, far above the national average. He recalls campaigns for fair pay, buy-out contract issues in film and TV, and the everyday precarity many creators endure.
AI and corporate power: He criticises billionaire-controlled AI firms for trying to appropriate artistic and creative output en masse for profit. Barrett argues the government's current posture is overly deferential to tech companies, including generous tax breaks and encouragement for data centre expansion.
Environmental and ethical risks: Barrett raises the environmental impact of data centres, their heavy electricity and water use, and broader ethical concerns and pointing to the danger of replacing human creativity with automated systems.
Demanding a solution: Barrett insists that any reasonable approach to AI must be subordinate to the needs and wishes of artists and their representatives. He calls on policymakers to consult the people in the gallery and to act to protect creative labour and the cultural commons.
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Transcript
First of all let me thank Deputy Snoddy for bringing this forward. People Before Profit, as Paul indicated, are very happy to support and commend all the artists and organisations, musicians and so on who are campaigning to bring this forward. I hope the fact that the government isn't opposing it means that they're actually going to take it seriously and do something in response to this motion. I have to say I have my doubts about that. Before we even started to discuss in a serious way AI in this house, I don't know how many times the same organisations who are campaigning for this have asked us and we have to raise the extreme poverty that so many people who work in the arts and music have to endure in this country. It is absolutely incredible that about 50-57% of all professional artists in this country live on or below the poverty line. Three times the level of poverty in Irish society generally. So the people that we're very happy to jump into photographs with when they win an award or achieve something wonderful because of their artistic ability, but on a day-to-day basis the government fails abysmally to actually keep them from living in poverty and to actually truly value the contribution that they make to our society and our culture. I don't know how many times we came in here campaigning on behalf of Equity and others who are campaigning for their fair and equitable remuneration for the work they do in areas like film and TV. That still has not been accomplished as they are forced to sign buy-out contracts, not given proper payment for the work that they do. Against that background we're seeing these billionaires who run AI looking to steal en masse all of the artistic and creative output of humanity and to profit from it. The artists rightly are saying, what is the government going to do to prevent them from making a bad situation for most artists and performers even worse? What are you actually going to do about it? As Paul said, the government's approach to AI to date has been to get down on their knees and say, just what do you want to the tech bros? Massive tax breaks to the tunes of tens of billions every year and anything they want in terms of the proliferation of data centres. I'll tell you one thing, when you think about 80% of the electricity in Dublin being used by data centres now, it's absolutely unbelievable. On a global level, the consumption of electricity by data centres is due to go up by 11 fold by 2030. They are hoovering up the resources, water resources and electricity resources of the planet. There will not be much human creativity or art or music if we have no water and no energy. That's what's going on with these people. They are literally hoovering it up. The government, as has been said, have bought the Kool-Aid, as have, it seems, the European Commission. Certainly Donald Trump doesn't pretend about his relationship with these monsters, quite frankly. In many cases, when you think about Palantir and Peter Thiel and what they do with AI, using it to help prosecute genocide in Gaza, these people are horrific. The idea that this is anything useful to contribute, I'm not saying AI has no value at all. When you think these people actually want to replace human beings and human creativity with AI, that to my mind is the road literally to disaster for humanity. Why the Neanderthals? Some people think of AI as if it's cutting edge, the most advanced thing possible. But actually, AI is like the Neanderthal. The Neanderthal had a bigger brain than the human beings. But it went extinct because its huge brain was mainly dealing with memory and sensory processing. But it wasn't able to do the higher functions that our brain, the human brain, did. Because what actually makes us unique and what made the human being adapt more successfully, while the Neanderthal died out, was its creative capacity. Its capacity to imagine things that don't exist, not just to scrape memory. The problem with that is you're not actually developing something new. It's not real innovation. It's just mixing around existing memories. And that was why the Neanderthal went extinct. So if we leave creativity and the future of human society, and that's what's happened to, and I'm beginning even to wonder with parliamentary questions, people generating parliamentary questions, how soon before they'd be answered with AI? So AI will be asking the questions and AI will be answering the questions. This is where we're going. We have to stop. The government shouldn't buy this nonsense. It may have some uses if it's subordinate to, in this case, what the artists and musicians and their representatives want. So if you want a solution to this problem, talk to the people in the gallery.