Paul Murphy: AI is a 'warped' industrial revolution driven by big tech

Thanks, Ken Corle. There was an interesting opinion poll a few weeks ago which showed that only 27% of Irish people have a positive view of AI, compared to 48% who believe that it will be a force for bad in the coming years. Research by Red Sea found that Irish people have among the lowest levels of trust in AI in the world. I think that demonstrates some good sense. Why? I think it's because people smell a rat. This is being forced down our throats by big tech, by propaganda, by a government that is in thrall to big tech. And people get it. This is not improving my life. It's not making my life easier. Last year, the Taoiseach told us that AI, quote, is in the same realm as the Industrial Revolution and the printing press. I challenged him on this on one occasion and he stood over it 100%. This is just as significant as the printing press or the Industrial Revolution. His conclusion was that the EU needs to innovate more and regulate less when it comes to AI. That it must not, quote, tie companies up in knots so that we do not over-regulate to the extent that we paralyse certain sectors of the economy. On Tuesday, he said that arresting the people in X who are responsible for grok-producing child sexual abuse imagery would be like 1984. How low can he go in bending over for big tech? So, we now have the rightful and righteous kind of horror of people about the realities of AI and what it's being used for. But the government is going to continue on its same track of being fundamentally subservient to big tech. What's really Orwellian are the breathless claims that AI is some kind of fourth industrial revolution. The government has drunk the big tech Kool-Aid big time if it believes that churning out child sexual abuse imagery, misogynistic image-based sexual abuse of women on an industrial scale of over 160,000 images in one 24-hour period at the start of this year is an industrial revolution. If it is, it's an industrial revolution that ordinary people want no part of. This is a revolution of the warped, big tech billionaires and their government cheerleaders. They want this pollution in our lives because it makes them so much money. You look at Musk's reaction to the scandal. It was to say, we're going to limit it to subscribers in order to monetize it. For depraved billionaires like Musk, like Zuckerberg, like Bezos, there's no such thing as bad publicity, only free advertising and opportunities. To hell with the human or the environmental cost. You look at their latest reaction to attempt to assuage public concern. Oh, don't worry, we're going to geo-limit it. In other words, if you have a VPN, you'll be able to continue to access and produce this abusive and illegal imagery. The background to the latest AI scandal is the Covalent strike. Content moderators hired by big tech, outsourced to police the Wild West that they have created, are to be replaced by AI. Anyone worried about AI should support this strike. Without humans moderating it, without humans moderating social media, it will become even more of a hellscape than it is already. Content moderation is an incredibly hard job that is traumatic, that should be highly paid, that should be carried out by humans. Otherwise, child protection is going to be left to AI. Does any parent want that? The only way that the AI revolution is genuinely industrial is in the escalating demand for power and for water-hungry data centres. The 19th century Industrial Revolution turbocharged the burning of fossil fuels for profit, ultimately laying the basis for the climate crisis. The AI revolution is doubling down on that, accelerating climate collapse. Donald Trump told the World Economic Forum last year that he wants to double US energy production to power AI and big tech, can fuel it with anything they want, including coal. Our government is following Trump's lead by bending over backwards to facilitate data centre expansion. They are already maxing out the grid, they are already swallowing up the electricity that we need for housing, for public transport, even though we do not know what is going on. We have a glimpse from the genocide in Gaza, where Irish data centres were holding IDF intelligence data used to target and murder whole families. We know that they are used to train AI using vast amounts of stolen data created by artists, by creatives, by ordinary people in their social media posts. We know that they store vast amounts of our personal data that they use to target us with advertising and algorithms. Next week, I will be introducing our online safety recommender, Algorithms Bill, to turn off these hateful, toxic algorithms for children under 18 and to turn them off by default for adult users. Deputy Board Member