Industry Takes 82% of Speaker Slots at Ireland AI Summit

Industry executives hold 82% of the speaker slots at Ireland's International AI Summit next week, Tech Policy Press fellow Liz Carolan reports: 37 of 45 slots, and "no civil society organizations appear on the agenda, and no academics are listed among its speakers." The remaining eight go to three European Commissioners, the Taoiseach and three Irish Government ministers, and a single trade union representative.

The one-day event lands at the Royal Dublin Society, "a cavernous, historic venue a few hundred meters from the US Embassy," as Europe "enters the final stages of negotiating the Digital Omnibus." Ireland currently holds the EU Council Presidency.

The lone union slot went to John Bohan of the Communications Workers' Union, who argues the broader AI debate is "massively one-sided in favor of corporate interests." The CWU is running a parallel Workers' AI Counter Summit that Bohan says will be "far more representative of the real experiences of AI on workers and communities than the government's flagship event." Public sector unions have called a one-day strike to coincide with the summit, and Ireland's Centre for Digital Ethics is hosting its own "complementary public-interest conversation" focused "not simply on what AI can do or how quickly it can be deployed."

Carolan places the political economy plainly: two tech firms, Microsoft and Apple, together made up about 40% of Ireland's total corporate tax receipts last year.