Paul Murphy confronts Enterprise Ireland on AI transparency

Thanks a lot, thanks for coming before us. Just to start with Enterprise Ireland, question, was AI used in the writing of your opening statement? Jane might verify, no as far as I know, in terms of I think it was written by ourselves using our own templates for preparation for the committee. But we do, sorry just to be clear, we do and are encouraging the use of AI right the way across the organisation as I said earlier on to enable us to deliver better services to our clients. So Turnitin AI detector says that your conclusion was 91.2% detected as AI. We do co-publish internally and we're encouraging, as I said, to use it internally. So to help with editing and summarising and to make sure everything is accurate, you know in terms of accuracies, spelling grammatical, the rest is built entirely on AI. If you can just come up to the, if you want you can repeat it for the record. I think what Emma Jane said was that we use co-pilot in terms of the document of preparation and to validate the grammatical errors etc that we use, but it was in the content, the statement was prepared in our own way. And do you think it's important that we have like transparency over things like this? I'm not saying inherently there's anything wrong with you having used AI to write the statement, but do you not think if you're coming to make a statement before a committee that really people should be upfront about it? I mean the reason that I had this thought is because one of the people who came before us I think last week said just to be clear I didn't use AI in the writing of this document. Do you not think that at a minimum, like internally you should have this process and when you come before a DAW committee? Absolutely and just to be totally transparent, I didn't put a true AI myself, okay, so just to be absolutely clear, but I would totally agree and would be totally transparent and upfront about how we use AI and where we should use it, so I definitely absolutely would agree with you that transparency in terms of use of AI is, yeah. Turn it in, uses AI itself. Okay, but so what? So what? I asked a question, was it written by AI? He said no, I presented the evidence to say he did and then we found out it was used by AI. That's what just happened here a few minutes ago. I just think just to maybe come in on that, like we use AI, well I certainly use AI on a daily basis to support in summarising documents and checking for flow and checking for grammar, things like that, I think that we're very much encouraging both internally and encouraging our clients to use an efficiency tool to be as efficient as we can. I think that there's a difference between that and between asking AI to replace the human, and I think that's at the centre of kind of everything that we're doing and everything that we're seeing across the bases, it is that human at the centre, so I think it is a tool that is used in the same way we've been using spellcheck, well I've certainly been using spellcheck throughout my career, so you know. What's the difference between AI as a tool and spellcheck as a tool in the context of what we're here to discuss? I do think, and there are rules about kind of flagging the use of where it has been used in certain specific sensitive use cases. No, but we're here to discuss a particular topic, we're here to discuss the impact on the environment, what's the difference? Yeah, but I mean obviously using AI and that's something that is in our internal policy, nobody should be using AI as a search engine, nobody should be using AI for something that you don't need to use an AI tool for, it's that judicious use of AI. I mean I trust your ability to write an opening statement to an AI committee, I don't think you need to use it, but my question is, and it doesn't surprise me right, that yes you encourage the use of AI throughout the organisation etc, have you done any analysis of the environmental impact of that, of the extra energy usage flowing from Enterprise Ireland as a consequence of everyone, presumably from top to bottom being told we need to get on board this train, we all need to use AI, how much extra energy is Enterprise Ireland using as a result? I don't have those numbers, what I do, and sorry just to be absolutely clear for the record if I may, when I said I did not put the statement through AI, so just to be absolutely clear Deputy in terms of the question that you asked me directly, I don't have the numbers in terms of energy costs associated with a use of technology or AI, we do track our sustainability footprint as an organisation and it's something we look at on an ongoing basis, not just in Ireland but indeed in our regional footprint as well. Sorry not just in Dublin, in our regional footprint as well. Let me turn to Ibeg first of all, I'll ask the same question to you, as I used in the creation of your statement. Yes I would refer you to our systems as well, similar to our EI colleagues, we are encouraged yes for anything where we're generating... And any environmental impact study by yourselves of the impact of that? Not by ourselves, obviously in a similar vein where it's not used as a search engine but for the work appropriate reasons, and again that's been encouraged. You mentioned, and it's been mentioned again, the European Commission being clear about a target to triple Europe's data centre capacity over the next five to seven years. Obviously Ireland is an outlier within the European Union in terms of the amount of data centres we have here, the amount of our energy that is currently going to data centres, 22% plus at this stage on a very steep, awkward trajectory. Do you think Ireland should triple our data centre capacity over five to seven years, or is it different for Ireland because we're already ahead? Yeah I think it'll be different for Ireland because we're already ahead. It's certainly not, from our perspective, we're working on that managed growth model as I mentioned, working closely with both government and all the grid management and all stakeholders to do this in a way as... We're very clear Ireland is leading from a European perspective, so we probably don't have as far to go as others. Now it still means we support growth, but we do it in a very managed way that can be sustained with the hyperscale data centre operations bringing the renewable energy to the market that they required. And you mentioned that if the data centre growth takes place elsewhere, Ireland forgoes the economic benefits. Can you tell me how many people are directly employed in data centres? The lobbyist organisation said it's 1,800 in this country. Do you think that's accurate or do you have a different figure? I think it's probably more than that, but I don't have exact numbers. There's over 70 total data centres in Ireland and over half of those are hyperscale data centres. In terms of numbers directly employed, we're not going to sit here and claim that they are huge, but the overall digital economy is huge and that's what they support and that's the part that we have to really... The whole point of data centres is that they can be anywhere. We have seven minutes, we're moving on. Data centres don't have to be here to get the benefit of a digital economy. You had your time. The deputy had his time, we're moving on.