The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has exploded in the last year. According to the article published by ExplodingTopics and surveys conducted by Forbes, IBM, and McKinsey, nearly 78% of businesses are implementing AI in at least one business function.  

How is the Irish Government aiming to actualise the use of AI and regulate the use of AI by businesses? 

In January, the Irish Government appointed Niamh Smyth as Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with special responsibility for Trade Promotion, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transformation.  

Although Smyth admitted to “not using ChatGPT or DeepSeek” , which are AI tools which can be used as search engines. She has proposed that Ireland host a global AI summit and said that Irish people will lose jobs over AI, but is not sure how many.  

The use of generative AI, as well as its everyday use by companies has not been met with much public resistance, perhaps because people dont fully understand AI’s potential.  

This study by Pew Research Centre shows that there is a low percentage of people who are excited over the use of AI in daily life.  

Although most AI services that are being implemented are still in their infancy and thus make mistakes, they are nonetheless being used by a plethora of media companies. 

Google’s Gemini, Meta’s MetaAI, X’s Grok and Microsoft’s CoPilot are now integrated on nearly all levels of their respective sites, with those just being a few of the companies implementing AI on a large scale.  

Many search engines now give answers generated by their AI models first, before a reputable source, with examples of the AI answers having little to no relevancy or correct sourcing to the search enquiry.  

Similarly, many websites use AI as their chatbots for complaints and enquiries before passing it on to a human representative, with the same being seen in some drive thru resteraunts in the United States, who have AI take their order with a human counterpart on standby should the AI confuse or mess up an order. 

In addition, the most valuable company in the world by market share- Nvidia, an American based company which has soared to the top of the rankings, valued at over 5.1 trillion dollars, equivalent to the GDP of countries like Germany, Japan and India.  

The cause of this astonishing valuation is the demand for their AI chips. In the past 5 years, Nvidias stock price has risen an eye watering 1290%.  

A new dangerous phenomenon is now rearing its head in the past 3 years, with the rise of AI, in the form of student cheating.  

Students in third level education now have access to the biggest technological advancement since the introduction of Wikipedia. However, the use of AI in essays and bibliographical sourcing is plagiarism.  

In another study conducted by Forbes, over 85% of students admitted using AI for both homework and assignments, but many don’t consider it cheating. 

One of the most dangerous effects of normative use of AI, is the use of generative AI for images.  

AI programmes such as ChatGPT, Grok and image focused websites can now generate fair quality images of famous personalities, dead or alive, in situations they have never been in.  

George RR Martin, writer famous for his books and series, ‘Game of Thrones’, is involved with a cohort in a lawsuit against ChatGPT over the training of AI models using his work without permission, which will look to set a precedent over a new copyright law to prevent the copying of licensed IP’s by AI companies.