People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said “Yesterday Big Tech got a major boost with publication of the Programme for Government. This ‘Programme for Big Tech’ is full of excited talk about AI as if it's a magic dust that, if sprinkled liberally, can deliver everything and anything at no cost. But the reality is that corporate-controlled AI represents a massive threat to our climate, to jobs and to journalism.
Big Tech is further boosted by the Programme for Government commitment to ensure Ireland is ‘the most secure location for data storage, management, and services within the EU’ and that the government ‘will recognise the central role data centres play in contributing to economic growth and the enterprise economy’.
This is a recipe for disaster. Data centres already consume over 21% of electricity and this will continue to increase sharply. A Friends of the Earth report published just last month makes it clear that proliferating data centres will make it impossible for Ireland to meet its climate and clean-energy commitments if their continued growth is not halted. But the Programme for Government not only fails to commit to halt growth of data centres, it will turbo-charge their growth and accelerate the charge toward climate disaster.
It is also worth noting that the Programme for Government will enable the Gardaí to use Artificial Intelligence for investigations; to deploy facial recognition technology (FRT) and introduce live FRT. There are enormous risks associated with further empowering the ‘surveillance state’ to monitor protest and resistance movements. Coupled with the commitment to ban the wearing of face coverings at protests, a particular risk for disability and other campaigners who wear masks for medical reasons, these commitments in the Programme for Government are likely to further empower political policing of the climate justice and Palestine solidarity movements and other campaigners.
This ‘Programme for Big Tech’ represents a huge threat to environmental sustainability and to those who are resisting climate breakdown and injustice and People Before Profit will oppose these disastrous commitments.”