Artificial Intelligence could be used to help redraw the Republic’s electoral boundaries in three years, an Oireachtas committee has been told.
The Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence also heard, however, that the State should be cautious about relying on a rapidly developing technology that is also set to be used by bad actors in the next election in attempts to undermine the democratic process.
Electoral Commission chief executive Art O’Leary said there will be a particular challenge with regard to the next election as the updated census figures are due in May 2028 and the general election by November 2029. The EU body which monitors democratic processes recommends that the boundaries not be altered in the year before the ballots.
“Normally, it takes a year to do. The last couple have been done by crunching Excel spreadsheets and maps, etc, but after we report, the Oireachtas has to legislate to introduce the changes, so we need to look at technology,” he said.
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Mr O’Leary said the impact of the deep-fake video posted on social media during the presidential campaign, which had suggested Catherine Connolly had withdrawn from the election, had been successfully minimised but was a warning of what might be to come in 2029.
He said the social media account that launched the video had been quickly shut down after an intervention by the commission with the platform, but acknowledged the video itself survived online.
Commenting on the speed at which the wider landscape is evolving, Mr O’Leary said: “In 2020 for the general election, TikTok didn’t exist, by 2024 it was the main communications channel for young people. Who knows what it will be in 2029.”
Executive chairman of Coimisiún na Meán Jeremy Godfrey agreed with Mr O’Leary that investment in digital education will be important to countering the attempts to undermine public faith in the democratic system with online misinformation.
“At the moment we are in a situation where people don’t know what’s true,” he said. “In fact, the whole concept of truth is being undermined and unless we are a society where we can at least agree that there is such a thing as truth, even if we disagree about what that truth is … that is really important."
Dr Dan McQuillan, senior lecturer in Critical AI at the University of London, said the dangers of relying on education to counter the malign use of AI were obvious in the problems being encountered by the education sector.
He said that if people were suggesting AI needed to be used in things like setting electoral boundaries because there was not enough time to do it another way, “then we need to ask why there is not enough time”.
Warning of the danger the technology poses, he said: “Unfortunately, society seems to have abandoned the idea that there should be a critical consideration of these technologies before they are introduced.
“We need to display a great deal of caution and erect as many safeguards at as many levels as possible. I think it would be very wise for people who have the responsibilities of the State to bear in mind that there’s a longer game here that’s about building up the sort of strengths that Ireland already has, in my understanding, which is a system of the social relationships that hold up society in the first place. But AI is fundamentally toxic to that. It is the asbestos of social relationships.”
