This week the Government published new AI guidelines for the public sector, which got David, Katie, and Fran thinking about the tech's rapid growth.
AI is proving transformative for many industries, like health and education, but it is also threatening jobs, a generator for misinformation, and being used for scams.
The trio discuss the technology’s rise, and how it will impact us all in the near future.
"While everybody's attention was focused on the chimney on the Sistine Chapel and Fran and all his pals were waiting in St Peter’s Square for the white smoke there was a significant enough development yesterday with the Government publishing guidance for the responsible use of AI." David said.
"It’s quite interesting because it is advising against the use of free generative AI, things like ChatGPT and DeepSeek. But it says it is acceptable to use AI to generate draft reports, and that it can be used for the work of the public sector – things like using chatbots on government websites or language translation and so on."
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Katie added: "If you’ve got kids in secondary school, or particularly maybe primary school as well, there’s a lot of talk around the use of artificial intelligence to produce reports and it’s coinciding with this moment where they’re changing the Junior Cert and changing the Leaving Cert and they’re putting a huge amount of the emphais and the marks into these reports."
Fran noted that huge leaps are being seen in the healthcare sector from it.
"We know it is being used in the scheduling of MRIs.
"It’s even being used as an admin-based system in the hospital in Galway where discharge letters are being issued by AI – now they’re being overseen by a human and I think that’s the important bit.
"AI can be very dangerous, but it can also be very useful if it is being used in conjunction with humans who can oversee it."
The team go on to have a look at some recent stories revolving around the technology, including one case in the US where AI was used to generate a victim impact statement from a man who was killed in a road-rage incident.
They also looked at the knock-on consequences it may have on human creativity.
You can listen to David, Katie, and Fran's analysis on the situation on Behind the Story which is available on the RTÉ Radio Player.
You can also find episodes on Apple here, or on Spotify here.
