Letters to the Editor: AI in schools is an inhumane practice
what’s next? AI replacing teachers altogether? What happens if our wifi fails? File Picture
How many times must the indomitable human spirit be crushed to the ground by artificial intelligence for it to be completely abolished from schools?
I go to a secondary school in Cork, where AI is encouraged, specifically in the arts subjects, such as art and music. Recently, while staying back after class to finish my art project, I overheard a teacher encouraging the use of AI- generated images in the classroom-based assessments of the Junior Cycle students. I was outraged, but I know that there truly isn’t anything I can do to stop this inhumane practice.
Ireland’s economic direction has been dominated by sniffing the wind for areas of growth and going full throttle when it picks up a scent.
Ireland is now killing our biodiversity with pollution from beef and dairy farming: Our rivers are poisoned, our lands drained, our hedges sheared down to rectangular walls where nothing can live.
No hedgehogs, no hares, no curlew or corncrakes. Just grass and cattle. We export 90% of our beef and dairy — yet we’re being told it's our heritage and culture and the best, most natural industry, and its sustainable and green grass fed, and that we must increase production for our small farming community.
Meanwhile, we have pine tree plantations overtaking natural forests, one-off houses, and dying villages.
Our hills are nibbled down deserts, while we are chasing data centres.
Irish people have an opportunity for real sustainability — in renewable energy, sustainable living with more tillage opportunities like beans which we are growing to feed cattle, oats and barley, we should be exploring new food products away from intensive animal agriculture. Economic systems need to change. We need to focus on real sustainability.
Good people in the world
It can be easy to feel despondent about the state of the world with a war going on somewhere and reports of murders and assaults in the daily news reports.
It is why it is reassuring to see the good that people do in society. I admire, for example, the great work of the Cork City Missing Persons Search and Recovery group. They were founded in 2001 and are based on Cork’s Horgan’s Quay. They do land and water-based searches and can co-ordinate with the gardaí, fire brigade, RNLI, coastguard, and National Ambulance Service and airport police.
They get call outs from emergency services and families.
2026 is the 25th year of their service to assist families in need and they do it in a low-key way. When they succeed in finding a missing person; it is done quietly and with respect. One person they recovered by chance had gone into the river in a car a long time ago and was found when they were trying out a new sonar.
They have four boats, drones, sonar, the best of modern diving equipment and 2 vans to do the searches as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
They have currently 21 volunteers from all walks of life. Some of whom lost a relative in similar circumstances.
Buddy up for transport
With the price of fuel rising to dangerously high levels and the public urged to take public transport as much as possible, perhaps there is a novel way to make this happen.
Take the case of a businessman or woman who intends to drive by car from Dublin to Cork, Galway or another city or town. If that person were to ‘buddy up’ with someone over 70 years of age who is in possession of a free travel card plus companion, they could both use public transport for free, including bus, rail, Luas, and Dart. The only criterion required being that they are over 16 years of age.
Such a scheme might operate effectively if WhatsApp groups were set up in each locality by chambers of commerce or similar organisations, to identify willing participants. Groups could have a title such as ‘seniors to the rescue’ or another apt name. Some of the benefits would be, savings in fuel and costs, elderly people getting out for the day and being of great help to the nation by their actions. They might not have to bring sandwiches for the journey if the travelling companions agreed to buy snacks or meals for them.
The debate on greyhound racing raised some interesting questions about the ethics and economic viability of this “sport”, in the wake of the bans in Scotland and Wales.
I am one of those who believe that greyhound racing is indefensible, given the fact that the dogs are subjected to unnecessary injury, disappear without trace, or end up being culled or abandoned, either because they don’t make the grade, are underperforming, or are too old to race.
It may well be, as an industry spokesperson said on the programme, that fewer greyhounds are disappearing, or getting injured now than prior to the 2019 RTÉ programme, but any number of injured or disappearing dogs is surely unacceptable from an animal welfare point of view.
But even if greyhound racing were the most humane pastime on earth, it still does not deserve to be propped up by State funds.
It got a whopping €19.8m in the most recent budget allocation. If indeed the industry is thriving and is immensely popular, as its apologists claim, then why does it need this financial crutch to lean on?
The industry spokesperson on Tuesday’s programme opined that without State funding “there might be a different model of greyhound racing”. He’s entitled to that opinion, but I suggest the industry would, in fact, collapse without the funding.
That the industry receives such generous State backing is all the more outrageous when you consider that other sports are grossly underfunded, such as volleyball, squash, badminton, camogie, and League of Ireland football.
Is it because these sports lack the political clout of the greyhound industry?
It certainly looks like it, especially when you recall that it got its annual funding even in the worst of the austerity years, when so many families struggled to put food on the table, and belt-tightening was the order of the day.
It’s about time the Government switched off the life support to this industry that, for all its alleged heritage value and economic prowess, has become a drain on the exchequer and a pit of misery for greyhounds.
