{"id":25641,"date":"2025-09-16T20:20:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T20:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/25641\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T20:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T20:20:09","slug":"stormont-education-minister-dismisses-ai-speech-accusation-as-cheap-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/25641\/","title":{"rendered":"Stormont education minister dismisses AI speech accusation as \u2018cheap shot\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stormont education minister Paul Givan has dismissed an accusation that a \u201clarge portion\u201d of a speech he delivered in the Assembly was written by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

The exchange with the leader of the Stormont Opposition Matthew O\u2019Toole came as Mr Givan delivered a proposal for an Executive-led investment programme into special education.<\/p>\n

Mr Givan asked for the support of all the political parties around the chamber for his proposal for a \u00a31.7 billion Executive-led programme to tackle spiralling demand for special education.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Stormont Education Minister Paul Givan addresses the Northern Ireland Assembly on Tuesday (NIAssembly\/PA)<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Toole put to Mr Givan that special education provision is a \u201ccritical issue\u201d, but said he was \u201coutsourcing responsibility for the budget to other parties, having insourced all of the most controversial things that you have done gleefully over the last year and a half\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut on the subject of outsourcing, I want to specifically ask you something very directly, and I\u2019d like a direct answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents and pupils are grappling with the use of AI, I think it\u2019s fairly clear and we have checked an online tool that a large proportion of this speech was written by AI, can you confirm that is the case?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Stormont Opposition leader Matthew O\u2019Toole questions Education Minister Paul Givan during a sitting of the Northern Ireland Assembly on Tuesday (NIAssembly\/PA)<\/p>\n

Mr Givan hit back, repeating twice: \u201cWhat an example of a useless Opposition\u201d and condemned a \u201ccheap shot\u201d and \u201cutterly shameful\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe come to this chamber to speak on behalf of the most vulnerable in our society, to talk about children who have complex medical needs, that need to have our support, and a clear plan as to how we can come up with that support, and the leader of the Opposition, the alternative to this Executive, fires a cheap shot around the use of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose listening to the contribution of the leader of the Opposition will come to their own conclusion about the utter lack of capacity that they have just outlined.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019ll not apologise to me, I don\u2019t expect him to. He should apologise, though, to the special schools and their families for his shameful contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Department of Education spokesperson said they could confirm the minister\u2019s speech was not written by AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stormont education minister Paul Givan has dismissed an accusation that a \u201clarge portion\u201d of a speech he delivered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-25641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}