Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to undermine democratic institutions in Ireland, members of the Oireachtas Committee on Artificial Intelligence have been told.
The committee received evidence from the National Union of Journalists, Media Literacy Ireland and NewsBrand Ireland, reports RTE.
Topics under consideration include the growing spread of misinformation and disinformation, the use of AI-generated deepfakes, copyright concerns and the creation of fabricated news content.
NewsBrands Ireland is the representative body for 16 national news publishers across Ireland, reports RTE.
Its chair, Sammi Bourke, warned: “Publishers in Ireland are now under grave threat. As a result, so too is truth, and so too is democracy.
“[The] actions and decisions taken now will determine whether AI strengthens our democratic institutions or quietly destroys them,” reports RTE.
Ms Bourke stated that original journalism is being taken and used to train LLMs (large language models).
Tech companies “[refuse] to pay for” that journalism, a situation which she said is putting the future of the profession at risk, reports RTE.
Dr Eileen Culloty, head of the European Digital Media Observatory, said AI has triggered a surge in “scams and low quality slop”.
Although the technology offers convenience, she said it is “fundamentally unreliable”, reports RTE.
“Flawed and opaque AI systems are undermining human reasoning,” Dr Culloty told the committee.
NUJ Assistant General Secretary Séamus Dooley said AI should not be viewed purely as an economic force, but as something central to the functioning of democracy, reports RTE.
“There is an urgent need for oversight,” he said, pointing to recent redundancies at The Washington Post which occurred as its owner Jeff Bezos continued to make substantial investments in AI, highlighting what he described as a troubling imbalance in priorities.
He criticised “the wholesale robbery of material” by technology companies, saying content produced by NUJ members is often used without permission or payment, reports RTE.
Ms Bourke also said that more than 75% of people using AI-powered search tools do not click through to the original sources used to create summaries.
She added that traffic which previously flowed to news websites following Google searches has now largely disappeared, reports RTE.
Asked by Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan whether subscription models could help media organisations respond to these challenges, Ms Bourke said “content behind paywalls is still being scraped”.
Tell us your thoughts in the Facebook post and share this with your friends.
