Survey reveals quarter of Cork City Council members use AI

Using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, as a speechwriting assistant, has freed up Lord Mayor of Cork Fergal Dennehy to do the work he was elected to do for the people of the city, he said.

Now, a survey by The Echo has revealed that 25% of the members of Cork City Council use AI.

Mr Dennehy said last month: “In the past, I would have spent hours and hours writing, but my job is to represent the people of Cork, and I want to do my very best at doing that. From a time-and-efficiency perspective, it is wonderful. You can do something now in seconds that before would have taken hours.”

The admission generated a few column inches — most of them, presumably, written without the aid of chatbots — and a decent chunk of airtime, too.

He is standing by his admission in the aftermath, saying he did not accept that admitting to using AI left him open to criticism or ridicule.

Scaffolding

“As I said at the time, AI is a tool that I use occasionally as a scaffolding for some speeches if I need to.

“Ninety percent of the events that I attend, I’m familiar with, they’re community or sports related, and I don’t need AI assistance, and most of the time speak off the cuff, but there’s the odd occasion where I will need to use AI tools to assist me with my research. 

"But I will always fact-check, proofread, and put my own slant on anything that I present. It would be hypocritical of me to pretend that I don’t use AI while attending job announcements by companies that are spending millions on jobs utilising AI.

“Questions about using AI are akin to asking me five years ago if I use Google or spellcheck.”

Most newsrooms are wearily familiar with AI-generated press releases and speeches, and some particularly high-profile politicians are notorious for an apparent over-reliance on a little help from their robotic friends.

Once you’ve read or heard an especially egregious, AI-generated piece of oratory, it’s hard not to spot the over-the-top, grandiloquent style everywhere.

AI operates by reading absolutely everything and regurgitating it back, like a karaoke singer who knows the words and the tune but has no ear for music.

It is immediately recognisable from tics, such as its habitual “This is not just one thing, it’s the other” formulation, which is often broken up with em-dashes like the one following this word — beloved of AI, but only because it’s been trained on writing that makes proper use of it — and the flowery abuse of the oratorical rule-of-three, escalating synonyms and superlatives like a vaudevillian impressario pulling ever-larger handkerchiefs from his breast pocket.

“This is not just merely another ribbon-cutting photo-opportunity, where a public official marks the occasion with a hollow, routine, and meaningless speech,” an AI-generated speech might begin.

“No, this is very simply a milestone event in the social calendar of our rich, vibrant, and warm-hearted community — where we celebrate the integrity, the generosity, and the can-do positivity of the people of Insert Name Here.”

When the Lord Mayor announced his own use of AI, he claimed that other members of Cork City Council used it, too.

Mr Dennehy said: “You can tell, nowadays, with the questions coming in to the council and the motions being tabled: They all have the same subsections and formats that let you know it’s ChatGPT.”

Surveyed

Putting that claim to the test, The Echo surveyed all 30 of Mr Dennehy’s council colleagues on their use of AI.

In all, and including Mr Dennehy, eight of the 31 members of Cork City Council, or 26%, said they use AI in their work as councillors, and they all repeated a variation of the Lord Mayor’s assurance that he only uses it as an aid, not as a substitute.

Across the parties, AI usage is proportionally highest in the Social Democrats, with its sole councillor using it, while two of the Green Party’s three councillors use AI.

Two of Fine Gael’s five councillors use AI, while one of Labour’s three, one of Sinn Féin’s four, and one of Fianna Fáil’s nine councillors said they rely on assistance from chatbots.

None of the other three single-councillor parties on the council, the Workers Party’s Ted Tynan, the Socialist Party-People Before Profit’s Brian McCarthy, or Independent Ireland’s Noel O’Flynn, admitted to using AI.

Neither did the three Independent city councillors, former lord mayor Kieran McCarthy, Paudie Dineen, or Albert Deasy.

Niamh O’Connor of the Social Democrats said she uses AI for “a small number of administrative and planning tasks as a councillor”, but nothing beyond that.

“I don’t use it to write speeches, personally. I’ve never been someone short of an opinion. My issue is, generally, having too much to say!” she said.

Oliver Moran of the Green Party, who in his day job is a software engineer, quoted a maxim from IBM that “a computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision”. This, he said, was important to remember now.

Mr Moran said: “I certainly wouldn’t like it making decisions, like awarding grants or allocating housing. Everyone has the right to have decisions about them made by a human, not a machine.

“The most day-to-day use I have for AI is proofreading emails and other documents I write.

“I find that really useful and I’d say every email I write now I proofread with AI before hitting ‘send’, but the email itself is written by me.

“I think, what the Lord Mayor described as a ‘hybrid model’, not letting it loose alone or to take over from you, is the way to go.”

Mr Moran’s Green Party colleague Honore Kamegni said that while he uses AI “as a supporting tool”, he believes elected representatives are accountable to the public, not to an algorithm.

Under the political pact currently governing the city council, Fine Gael’s Damian Boylan is likely to succeed Fergal Dennehy as lord mayor. Mr Boylan said he employs AI as a basic office tool in limited circumstances.

“I use it for gathering random thoughts and using it to put them in a coherent document. I analyse large documents with it to pick out key points,” he said.

“Foolish to rely on it, foolish to ignore it.”

Supportive tool

His colleague, Gary O’Brien, said he similarly uses AI to provide synopses of different topics, such as planning and legislation.

“Technology has evolved and once we can embrace it safely and if the sources can be verified, then it’s a supportive tool,” Mr O’Brien said.

The Labour Party’s Ciara O’Connor said she uses AI “in a limited and practical way … to help initially condense long or technical documents in to key points, before exploring the document further, or to organise information I have already gathered myself”.

Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gould said: “My work is my own. I may use it to cross reference something, as I would with Google on the web, but, other than that, no.”

Within Fianna Fáil, the Lord Mayor is certainly an early adopter, being the only ‘soldier of destiny’ on the council to admit to using AI.

“Computer says ‘no’,” responded Colm Kelleher, when asked, and Seán Martin replied: “No: Old school.”

Dr John Sheehan said that while he doesn’t use AI in his work as a councillor, he could see advantages to doing so.

“I think it will be used more and more for reports, speeches, and press releases,” he said.

Mary Rose Desmond said that while she doesn’t use AI, she would not rule it out.

“I think there is a very valid role for it to assist our work: ‘Assist’ being the key word,” Ms Desmond said. “I would hate to see an only negative narrative grow around using it.”

Terry Shannon replied by text: “The only AI I know about is down on the farm”.

He helpfully added an emoji depicting a cow.

Noel O’Flynn, former Fianna Fáil TD and current Independent Ireland councillor, denied using AI in his work as a councillor, saying he relies on “pen and paper, my own notes, and direct engagement when preparing speeches or correspondence”.

However, he said the public should be fearful of “others choosing to use artificial intelligence”.

“Used properly, it can serve as a helpful starting point or support tool for some people,” he said.

“Ultimately, though, nothing replaces the human mind, personal judgement, or the power of an original idea shaped by lived experience and local knowledge.”

Perhaps as a result of Mr Dennehy’s cross-party personal popularity, there was no criticism of his use of artificial intelligence as a speechwriting assistant.

Fine Gael councillor Shane O’Callaghan said that while he doesn’t use AI, he could understand how someone like the Lord Mayor, “who has a very busy job and has to make speeches all the time”, might use it.

Ms Desmond said it was important that her party colleague’s integrity as a public representative not be overshadowed by any controversy around the use of artificial intelligence.

“You only need to attend an event with the Lord Mayor to see how often he speaks eloquently and passionately about various topics without referring to any speech,” she said.

The Social Democrats’ Niamh O’Connor said that while she felt the ethics around AI and its use are “complicated”, she could not criticise Mr Dennehy for using it.

Ms O’Connor said: “I have found him to be extremely hardworking as Lord Mayor and I imagine any time saved using AI has been applied to other areas of his work as Lord Mayor.”

One former lord mayor, Fianna Fáil’s Tony Fitzgerald, said the job was “non-stop” and it could often be very difficult to have a fresh and unique speech ready to deliver at each of multiple engagements over the course of the day.

Mr Fitzgerald said: “You’ll be given briefing notes, but that’s just so you don’t make a complete eejit out of yourself, but there’s nobody writing your speeches for you, so it’s often a tough job to have something fresh to say every time.”

“I don’t blame Fergal at all for using AI if it’s a help to him, and I would admire his honesty in admitting it, as long as he’s not letting a robot write the whole thing for him.

“He’s one of the nicest guys in here and that always comes across when he’s out meeting people. He’s very empathetic and you can’t fake that, AI or no AI.”