Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 6 February 2025
88. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Education to provide a detailed breakdown of all funding allocated for the year ahead or spent in the past fiscal year by her Department on artificial intelligence systems or artificial intelligence research; what programs or Department operations, if any, are conducted using artificial intelligence tools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3704/25]
View answerThere was nil spend in the last fiscal year on artificial intelligence systems or artificial intelligence research.
In the fiscal year ahead, there is €500,000 allocated for artificial intelligence systems and artificial intelligence research. The breakdown of this is as follows
(i) the implementation and operational use of optical character recognition (OCR) and processing of suitable invoices for payment into a bespoke system used by the Education Shared Business Services (ESBS) for €250,000.
(ii) Several proof of concepts and limited pilots of AI systems, that may include Generative AI and Document Understanding, have been allocated a budget of €250,000.
A limited trial is underway by my Communications Department to assess the opportunity for productivity gains of AI services which includes the transcription of public audio recordings to text, grammar and spelling assistance, translation of public information, and editing text in plain English to make it more understandable. All text is reviewed and verified by a human
My Department has no AI systems in place that processes citizens information.
My Department recognises the potential offered by AI and is aware of the Interim Guidelines for Use of AI published. My Department will continue to assess the suitability of AI on a solution by solution basis.
The information in respect of state bodies, within the scope of the Deputy’s question, is not held by my Department. Contact details for these bodies are set out at the link should the Deputy’s wish to contact them directly with this query.
