{"id":624087,"date":"2026-09-14T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T06:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624087\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T06:00:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T06:00:28","slug":"minister-says-ai-risks-will-be-assessed-after-warning-technology-could-kill-all-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624087\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister says AI risks will be assessed after warning technology could \u2018kill all humans\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The enterprise minister has said he will not \u201cput in a formal request\u201d to the Government\u2019s artificial intelligence<\/a> office to investigate experts\u2019 suggestions that AI could wipe out humankind in the next decade.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Fine Gael<\/a> think-in in Gorey, Co Wexford, Peter Burke, who oversees the department with responsibility for artificial intelligence (AI), said the Government must make sure that \u201cappropriate safeguards and guidelines\u201d are in place.<\/p>\n

However, he said that \u201crisk models\u201d will be conducted.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Evan Hubbinger, a safety researcher at Anthropic, warned that he believed there was a 10% chance that AI could \u201ckill all humans\u201d in the next decade.<\/p>\n

When asked if he would task the National AI Office with examining these comments, Mr Burke said he would not be submitting a \u201cformal request\u201d as it was an \u201cindependent office\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what one person said,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEssentially, we have to assess these things. We have to ensure that we are compliant with the law, which is very robust in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing about Europe, it’s been challenged, is that the regulation has been very strongly, and we’ve come forward early and quickly, and then we have reassessed it because AI is moving so fast; change is happening, almost by the day in relation to artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Burke said that AI is \u201chere to stay\u201d and that appropriate \u201csafeguards\u201d have to be put in place, as he vowed that the AI will \u201cessentially do a risk model on some of the advancements that are happening, but also look at the opportunity\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a huge amount of opportunity in AI, and there are equally very significant challenges, particularly from our labour market in the first instance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s the first challenge we’re going to and are currently grappling with.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see, the period of transition that our labour market is in right now before our eyes, when you see the collective redundancies that are coming in in key vulnerable areas, and that’s why, as a Government, what we’re doing is we’re looking down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

Call for Michael O\u2019Leary apology<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Mr Burke called for Ryanair<\/a> chief Michael O\u2019Leary to apologise over comments he made trivialising rape.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Leary repeatedly referred to other airlines as \u201chigh-fare rapists\u201d<\/a> at a press conference in Dublin on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"RyanairRyanair CEO Michael O’Leary at the Ryanair AGM, at their offices in Dublin. Picture: PA<\/p>\n

He told reporters at the company\u2019s headquarters: \u201cYou might find some people will choose not to fly with Ryanair \u2013 but you know they\u2019ll be overrun with the people abandoning Aer Lingus, Lufthansa, BA, and others desperate to get to Ryanair\u2019s low fares because they can\u2019t afford to fly with the high-fare rapists around Europe.\u201d <\/p>\n

He later repeated the \u201chigh-fare rapists\u201d comments.<\/p>\n

Asked whether this was appropriate language, Mr O\u2019Leary told reporters: \u201cAbsolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024, Mr O\u2019Leary found himself in further hot water when he made comments at the launch of Mr Burke\u2019s general election campaign about teachers.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Fine Gael think-in, Mr Burke called on Mr O\u2019Leary to apologise over the \u201crapist\u201d remarks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should never trivialise sexual violence in this country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the comments were not appropriate. Victims of sexual crimes deserve our respect, deserve our support, and we’ve heard a number of agencies who do that support and work in the field really say how hurtful it has been.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Michael should reflect on those comments. I think he should apologise.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The enterprise minister has said he will not \u201cput in a formal request\u201d to the Government\u2019s artificial intelligence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,2334,219,3775,61,60,1899,80],"class_list":["post-624087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-fine-gael","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ryanair","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624087","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=624087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}