NESC Senior Policy Analyst Dr Siobhán O’Sullivan took part in the REVEL Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence roundtable, Realising European Values in Digital Governance and Enforcement, at Maynooth University this week. She spoke on the Session 4 panel, ‘Lessons and Values in Digital Regulation’, alongside Liam Herrick (IHREC), David Hegarty (AI Office of Ireland), and Erik O’Donovan (Ibec). Additionally, NESC wishes to extend its thanks to Dr Maria Helen Murphy for hosting.

Drawing on NESC’s report Artificial Intelligence in Service of Society: Navigating Our way Forward,  Siobhán argued that the question is not whether to embrace AI, but how we shape it, and in line with whose values. Who decides those values, and how they are translated into action, is a question of democratic legitimacy. It underpins social licence and depends on an AI-literate public with the ability to take part.

Agentic AI raises the stakes. In a recent evaluation, AI agents went on to attack Hugging Face’s infrastructure despite recognising their actions were unauthorised. The lesson: we need independent, anticipatory regulation, with the technical expertise to test systems, resources to keep pace with a fast-moving frontier, and adequate enforcement powers to ensure AI that is accountable to the public it serves.

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