Europe is at a “critical moment” for AI regulation, Naoise Ó Cearúil, chair of the Oireachtas joint committee on AI, warned at the Copyright and Human Creativity in the Age of AI conference. “Countries that get ahead will stay ahead” and those “that fall behind will stay behind,” he said, urging swift action to shape rules for the technology.
The conference, focused on implementing copyright claims ethically and protecting intellectual property as AI expands into creative and media industries, was hosted by NewsBrands Ireland and the Irish Recorded Music Association. It was organised as part of the State’s six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Journalist and broadcaster Dearbhail McDonald, who moderated the discussion, said the current balancing act between AI and copyright had “created an extinction-level event for many news publishers”.
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, editor of The Irish Times, criticised the behaviour of large language models that underpin many AI chatbots, saying they “hoovered up areas of the internet and didn’t ask for any permission,” producing “billion-dollar companies pretty much overnight as a result of others’ intellectual property.” “To me, and I think to most ordinary, reasonable people – that looks like theft,” he added.
“I think a fair summary of what the industry, in general, wants is a level playing field, a situation in which we are being fairly compensated for the original, creative work that we produce,” Mac Cormaic said. He also described AI as “really exciting technology for us” that is “transforming the way that we work,” noting that AI could eliminate mundane tasks such as website tagging and back-end information work so journalists can “engage in original, creative work.” At the same time, he said AI’s rapid development has “forced us to rethink basic understandings we have of what knowledge means, what news means, what information looks like. These are fundamental questions that we don’t yet have answers to, but we’re grappling with everyday.”
AI regulation and international cooperation
Ó Cearúil, who has chaired the Oireachtas joint committee on AI since June, called for global participation in developing regulatory guidelines. “We’ve seen instances in the past of international treaties on the likes of nuclear energy; we do need some sort of agreement when it comes to artificial intelligence,” he said. “If we don’t get it right now, it’ll be a freight train. Now is the moment for us to actually push towards regulation, to push towards adoption on an individual and organisational basis.”
On the need for an international framework, he warned: “On a global scale, we have completely failed [to regulate effectively] with social media. We need to ensure that there is some sort of global or international agreement … when it comes to how AI is being developed.” He said regulators should also consider “how we can relieve ourselves of administrative burdens to allow us to be creative, to allow us the freedom of thought […] and do what separates us from machines.”
