New AI minister Niamh Smyth has never used ChatGPT and doesn’t have DeepSeek – but says she’ll learn fast
The new junior minister whose brief includes artificial intelligence (AI) oversight admits she has much to learn about the evolving technology and will have to get to grips with it fast.
www.independent.ie
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New AI minister Niamh Smyth has never used ChatGPT and doesn’t have DeepSeek – but says she’ll learn fast[/HEADING]
Niamh Smyth has described her new role as a minister of state at the Department of Enterprise as a ‘learning curve’. Photo: Tom Burke
Senan Molony
The new junior minister whose brief includes artificial intelligence (AI) oversight admits she has much to learn about the evolving technology and will have to get to grips with it fast.
Niamh Smyth was last week appointed junior minister at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with special responsibility for trade promotion, AI and digital transformation.
She says she has never used ChatGPT and doesn’t have DeepSeek downloaded on her phone, even though hundreds of millions of people have installed the new Chinese app on devices across the western world.
“It’s all a new learning curve, but I will learn fast and apply myself to the new role,” said Ms Smyth, who received praise for her chairing of the Oireachtas media committee that resulted in a series of revelations about RTÉ in the last year.
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The new junior minister is aware that AI is now increasingly a problem with homework in secondary schools, not just at third level. She joked that she hoped her eight-year-old daughter Juliet is not using AI to do her homework.
“I have met with the secretary general of the department to discuss my new role,” Ms Smyth said.
“We discussed the importance of supporting businesses and providing education around the benefits of artificial intelligence to create efficiencies to demystify the use of AI.”
She said she had been in awe of Malcolm Byrne, her fellow Fianna Fáil member, for the way he addressed AI issues with senior tech executives when it was discussed in committee.
But she added that she felt she knew “as much as any colleague” in the Oireachtas generally, having chaired briefings on the topic “at various points at committee during the last term”.
It has been predicted that the advent of AI will pit a colossal challenge to employment across the world as computers become able to interact with humans.
An AI-taken photograph won an award while AI-created songs have gone viral, featuring deep-fake recreations of the voices of real musical artists appearing to sing computer-generated lyrics.
Last month, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle of the last Dáil, Catherine Connolly, came close to suggesting that the Programme for Government might have been computer-aided.
“I am very concerned about the Programme for Government. It smacks a little of artificial intelligence when we look at the wording in it. It is very vague and aspirational,” she said, without making an outright allegation.
Catherine Connolly
Last November, Paschal Donohoe TD told the house that there would be a new Oireachtas strategy for information and communications technology.
There would be money provided for new initiatives to help deal with emerging requirements, such as cyber-security and AI, he pledged.
There is no overall Government strategy in place to address the many questions posed by the accelerating rollout of AI – except to add it to the title of new junior minister.
