Irish Examiner view: Well done Greg

Nita and Richard Tarr with their son, Greg. Greg has taken home the top prize of €7,500 and the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition trophy for his project titled “Detecting state-of-the-art deepfakes”. Picture: Chris Bellew /Fennell Photography

What a joy it is at anytime to recognise excellence; what a joy it is to bask, even precariously, in its reflected glory. What a particular joy it is at time when so many of the certainties of our world are challenged in novel ways to recognise the kind of excellence that enables science to overcome those challenges.

Greg Tarr, a Leaving Cert student at Bandon Grammar School in Co Cork, has been named the overall winner of the 2021 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

He did not identify another Covid-19 vaccine but he developed a computer program to counteract the other great plague of our age — online disinformation and misinformation. Greg built a computer program using artificial intelligence to detect “deepfake” videos, which have caused havoc in our world via unpoliced social media channels. It is more efficient than many current state-of-the-art detection systems, the judges found. By these small but significant steps, our world and our civilisation will endure.

Well done Greg, and well done Bandon Grammar School.