Newly inaugurated U.S vice-president J.D Vance unsettled transatlantic relations Tuesday as he lambasted Europe’s slide towards “authoritarian censorship” when it came to online censorship – with significant implications for Ireland.
Vance was just one of many of dozens of world leaders, including Taoiseach Micheál Martin, in attendance at the Artificial Intelligence summit in Paris which hoped to establish the global ground rules for the rollout of AI technology.
The Ohio politician’s first international trip since taking office in January, Vance used his time at the podium in Paris to decry EU attempts to impose “ideological bias” on emergent AI technology as he criticised Eurocrats for what he sees as an attempt to regulate the new technology out of existence.
“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias, and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship” Vance proclaimed, taking direct swipes at both the Digital Services Act (DSA) which permits the European Commission to censor content hosted by American social media platforms as well as the regulatory burden of GDPR.
Already struggling to grapple with a combative Trump’s trade policy when it comes to tariffs reshoring American corporate profits away from Dublin, Vance’s speech is yet another bad omen for the Irish government.
The past 18 months has seen Dublin transform into Europe’s de facto censorship capital courtesy of its role in administering the DSA, with Ireland’s new EU Commissioner Michael McGrath cultivating Ireland’s image as Brussels’ digital censor in the course of taking up his new role. The DSA was first tried unsuccessfully during the Dublin riots, and is expected to come into effect for February’s German elections as well as re-run of the cancelled Romanian presidential race.
Much to the annoyance of Washington, Ireland has already cemented its place as the EU’s watchdog when it comes to fining U.S multinationals for GDPR breaches with Vance previously calling out the Irish state’s push for hate speech legislation which many suspect could go global due to the DSA.
This pattern of politicised overregulation by Brussels through Dublin against American capitalism could further multiply by the EU’s AI Act, which dictates fresh regulations against Silicon Valley through their Irish intermediaries.
The act has been criticised by Facebook’s top EU lobbyist, Joel Kaplan, as a de facto “tariff” against American Big Tech. Dublin will have a frontline seat in introducing the AI Act because almost all major U.S. tech firms have their European headquarters in Ireland. These include tech giants such as Google, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft.
“America can not and will not accept that” proclaimed vice-president Vance directly to the Taoiseach and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, with the free speech issue serving as perfect moral ammunition for Washington to argue its case.
Under the AI Act, which comes into effect over the next two years, similar to GDPR, enforcement will often fall to the regulator in the EU country where a company is headquartered. Since many U.S. tech giants are based in Ireland, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), or more than likely a new AI-focused regulator, could oversee compliance.
Considering the hostility shown towards EU regulators by Vance, this puts the Irish government in some very choppy water.
In addition to the regulatory burden, the ideological biases of AI will be another defining issue for Ireland to grapple with the EU specifically putting in place pro-diversity mechanisms when it comes to anti-racism protocols and crippling the ability of AI to be used by border agencies.
Our own Department of Enterprise is currently working with Brussels to establish a framework to take AI creators to task from Dublin with the government to decide on which agency will handle the eye-watering caseload by August of this year.
Similar to our pro-Palestinian stance and our military overreliance on NATO (nevermind awkward tax policies with regards to Silicon Valley), it looks likely that AI will be a new front against Ireland in the coming Trump presidency and this will not be helped by our own government’s war against free expression.