Congratulations to Professor Deirdre Ahern, School of Law, who appeared before the new Joint Oireachtas Committee on Artificial Intelligence on 24 June 2025. A specialist in AI regulation, Deirdre is a member of Ireland's AI Advisory Council.
In her testimony Deirdre elaborated on the work and recommendations of the AI Advisory Council. She emphasised the importance for Ireland’s competitiveness of establishing a well-resourced AI Office and a dedicated AI regulatory sandbox.
The AI sandbox, Deirdre argued, would help businesses, especially start-ups, to test their AI product or service under regulatory supervision before putting it on the market to get advice around complying with the EU AI Act and mitigating any potential risks such as the potential for algorithmic bias leading to discriminatory outcomes in decisions.
She also highlighted the importance of the EU revisiting the Copyright Directive to fairly address the creative industry’s outputs being used in the training Large Language Models.
Please click this link to watch a recording of Professor Ahern’s appearance at the Committee meeting on Oireachtas TV.
Please see also an Irish Times article about the Committee meeting and Professor Ahern here.