The rapid development of artificial intelligence is raising valid concerns about the prospect of job losses, as machines will perform more and more tasks. One place where AI is already leading to job creation, however, is Dublin.

On Wednesday, I reported on the fast rise of the new Irish office under development by the industry’s global leader, OpenAI. Six months ago, the company did not have a single employee in Ireland. Today, it has dozens. The exponential growth of its Dublin presence, to be confirmed at a public announcement in March, is illustrated by its current job offer for an enterprise platform sales manager, who will in turn be “recruiting and leading a team of API sales professionals”.

Next month, as it increasingly turns its leading generative AI application ChatGPT from a demonstration tool into a “business product”, OpenAI will start booking European sales (and the resulting profits and taxes) in Ireland. Dublin will also become its European compliance centre on issues like data protection. This is the other area where continuing international tech investment in Ireland will create jobs.

The EU is on a resolute path to regulate the impact of technology multinationals on people’s lives in a way that their home jurisdictions in the US or Asia are not willing to embark on. It is easier for Europe to take on that role as it lags behind other regions on digital innovation, and is therefore not running the risk of making its own companies less competitive in the process.

As the main interface between global tech giants and the EU market, Ireland is where the enforcement of this regulation increasingly takes place. OpenAI Ireland will fall under the proposed EU AI Act after it becomes law, probably this year. The legislation will rank AI applications by level of risk and give national regulators the responsibility to enforce rules applicable to each level. 

This is similar to how Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) is in charge of enforcing GDPR rules as transposed in Irish law for all multinationals collecting user data via their European headquarters here.

For example, the future Irish supervisory authority for AI, under the European Artificial Intelligence Board, will be responsible for checking that OpenAI’s ChatGPT follows transparency obligations and informs all European users that its output was generated by a machine and not a human.

In Francesca’s comprehensive review of the past year in the courts on Tuesday, Arthur Cox partner Eve Mulconry namechecked OpenAI’s growing Irish presence as one of the signs that regulatory practice will continue to expand as a source of business for Irish law firms. This is only the next step in a well-established direction, she added: “We are expecting and are actively involved in lots of work in relation to DPC decisions that will end up in the courts. But it is leading to a lot of advisory work as well for litigators and that is a trend which is set to continue.”

Regulation has been spilling into litigation more and more frequently, with multinationals streaming into the Four Courts in growing numbers. In the past few days alone, Google launched its first-ever legal action against the DPC. Meanwhile, Tumblr followed Reddit in challenging its designation as a video-sharing platform by the new media regulator Coimisiún na Meán.

The 10 platforms on the list face more stringent legal obligations about online safety, particularly child safety, under a new draft code, currently subject to public consultation. 

For example, platforms will have to impose robust age verification, to make sure children are not exposed to inappropriate content including pornography, cyberbullying, and material promoting eating disorders or self-harm.

Coimisiún na Meán will be able to impose fines of up to €20 million for breaches of the code, which is likely to be published in finalised form by mid-2024. It will form part of Ireland’s overall online safety framework based on the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022, the EU Digital Services Act and the EU Terrorist Content Online Regulation. 

This will soon be complemented by the EU AI Act, under which fines of up to €30 million or six per cent of the offender’s global revenue are proposed. Regulators, too, are about to advertise for more jobs.

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Elsewhere last week, Ireland’s Climate Change Assessment published on Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency warned that the effects of extreme weather events and disruptions to supply chains caused by global warming would cost the country billions of euros per year by 2050. 

The academic authors of the publication wrote: “Currently, the scale of climate change risks to the banking and financial sector in Ireland has yet to be quantified. Climate risks are not well reflected in the pricing of insurance, investment and lending. As these risks become more fully integrated into financial processes, they will affect access to capital and insurance.”

On Thursday, Niall covered the specific issue of flooding and the shrinking insurance cover available for this risk as more and more areas become known recurrent inundation spots, leaving the taxpayer on the hook to either build flood defences or pay for the damage. We will soon return to the effects of the changing climate on Ireland’s agri-food industry.

The Housing Needs and Demand Assessment (HNDA), a little-known policy tool designed to direct population growth to various regions around the country, was at the centre of two columns in the past week. Ronan examined its impact on housing supply and prices, concluding that it had led to a “postcode lottery”.

Sean, too, was critical of the HNDA when looking at its impact through the lens of the curious Zipf’s law of city sizes applicable in most countries, but not in Ireland. Both articles shed informed light on the gap between policy intentions and achievements, a topic Stephen also approached in his piece on the lack of national seriousness illustrated by the recent knee-jerk public debate on the potential relocation and redevelopment of Dublin Port.