Paul Murphy: No More Data Centres - AI Is Not Neutral
Deputy Paul Murphy challenges the rapid expansion of AI and data centres in Ireland, arguing that citizens are being pushed towards technologies they never chose. Climate researcher Professor Hannah Daly warns that projected data centre growth could create a major future compliance gap for Ireland's climate targets, while Professor Jennie Stephens argues that governments should stop promoting generative AI tools and instead create space for people to reject them.
The discussion explores AI's growing role in public services, education, energy consumption, and climate policy, raising questions about whether people should have a right to opt out of AI-driven systems.
We publish thousands of recordings to make Irish politics transparent and resistant to manipulation. Spotted an error? Report it — together we are building a reliable archive of Irish politics.
Yeah, thanks a lot. Okay, firstly to Professor Daly, there's a key thing you said in your opening statement that the proponents of more and more data centres, more and more AI like to ignore, it's this. Since 2017, growth in electricity demand from data centres has approximately matched or exceeded the growth in renewable generation. Would you say that the growth in data centres is like a predominant reason why we're not coming close to meeting our climate targets? Because we add more renewable energy, maybe insufficient renewable energy, fine, but then we keep expanding our usage. Currently I would say no. So historically the reason why I suppose we haven't, and we are, I think the EPA has published a report to say that we are just about within our first carbon budget period. The compliance issue is in the future. The trend that you discussed, that you raised, that demand from data centres outpaced renewables generation, that would have contributed to more emissions but not to the same extent as, you know, the failure to provide public transport or the growth in agricultural emissions. Other sectors are much larger. When I undertook that research that came up with that finding, I suppose I wouldn't have been that concerned on the big scale of things about data centres in the context of Ireland's carbon budgets, but it is now when 5.8 gigawatts are projected to grow potentially for six years initially on the basis of fossil fuels, that creates a very significant compliance gap. So it is the projection forward that creates the biggest compliance concern rather than the historical. Yes, and it gets worse and worse. And then to Professor Stevens, I really like the conscientious objector framing. I think that's, you know, it's a way of asserting that we have choice here, because I think they're attempting to eliminate any choice. And I think this is, AI is not a neutral technology. It's a technology which has the values of venture capitalism, which are deeply anti-humanist, kind of embedded within them. A question about what can we do? So obviously, the most simple thing we can do policy-wise is no more data centres in Ireland, right? That's what we should do. I think that's really clear. But obviously, even if you do that and you still have a pushing of AI onto people across the country, we can't have no more data centres here, but we can be expanding our energy usage and affecting the climate in the whole world and still having a negative impact. So what other measures can we have? For example, the right of people to opt out of AI, because we're forced into AI in various ways in terms of our work, in terms of public services, in terms of just using the internet, the AI has kind of pushed on us. Do you have any other proposals about how we can get off this train? Well, I see two ways that the Irish government has been promoting AI. One is by supporting the data centres, and the other is by pushing it in all of our public services, in education, in higher education. And the AI Ready programme, from what I've read about it, it actually encourages people to sign up for Gen AI, Gemini and ChatGBT. So it's actually promoting these chatbots, which are the bad AI, right? They're the ones that actually are bad on so many levels. So I think we need to create spaces within society to acknowledge the harms and to acknowledge that people do have agency, we all do have agency, and we don't have to use it if we don't want to. And especially trying to encourage older people to get on these tools is just causing all kinds of angst and frustration, and the fact that the government has been promoting it, and really Microsoft has been intricately involved in developing this government programme to get everybody... And then I also just wanna mention the gender dimension once again. It's widely acknowledged that women are more sceptical and don't wanna use these tools as much, and yet I've heard big tech executives say, that's exactly what the AI Ready programme should do, get more women to use more AI tools. And it's just... A government shouldn't be, I don't think, promoting technology like this in that way.
Thank you for downloading 🙏
If you publish this material on social media, we would be very grateful if you tagged VideoParliament. It helps us reach more people and keep building a transparent archive of Irish politics.
