A new government minister for AI has yet to use ChatGPT | Digital Transformation News
Ireland’s newly appointed minister for AI oversight has admitted that she’s never used ChatGPT and hasn’t yet downloaded the hot new chatbot DeepSeek to her phone, the Irish Independent reported on Tuesday.
Minister's Responsibilities and Comments
Niamh Smyth’s new role as junior minister at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment involves responsibilities for trade promotion, AI, and digital transformation.
Commenting on the transformative technology, Smyth said that it’s “all a new learning curve, but I will learn fast and apply myself to the new role,” adding that she felt she knew “as much as any colleague” after leading briefings on the subject in recent months.
Smyth said that one of her immediate concerns about the AI-powered technology is the degree to which high-school students may be using it to take care of their homework, though she’s also looking at the “importance of supporting businesses and providing education around the benefits of artificial intelligence to create efficiencies to demystify the use of AI.”
Similarities with Past Incidents
The story has echoes of the bizarre episode in 2018 when Japan appointed a cyber-security minister who then admitted that he’d never used a computer.
During a parliamentary session, Sakurada drew criticism when he appeared confused about basic technology-related questions.
Developments in AI Industry
Shortly after taking office, Donald Trump touted a new private business venture, led by OpenAI, which plans to spend half a trillion dollars over the next four years building the data centers and power production plants that America's growing AI industry relies on.
The AI industry is abuzz with chatter about a new large language model that is taking the fight to the industry’s top dogs like OpenAI and Anthropic. The name is DeepSeek.
OpenAI's Latest Product
In an announcement post, OpenAI unveiled its newest product on Tuesday, a "tailored version of ChatGPT designed to provide U.S. government agencies with an additional way to access OpenAI’s frontier models." ChatGPT Gov will reportedly offer even tighter data security measures than ChatGPT Enterprise.
According to OpenAI, more than 90,000 federal, state, and local government employees across 3,500 agencies have queried ChatGPT more than 18 million times since the start of 2024.
The new platform will enable government agencies to enter “non-public, sensitive information” into ChatGPT while it runs within their secure hosting environments and cybersecurity frameworks.
Felipe Millon, Government Sales lead at OpenAI, mentioned that this enables each agency to "manage their own security, privacy and compliance requirements.”
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