In my advanced years I may have become a dinosaur, or considered a cranky luddite, but I don’t believe that is true. Since I left school, and not long after Mafeking was relieved, my approach was mostly driven by rationality, logic, science, the wisdom of experience of others, and all the available data.

So why is it my instincts are ill at ease with the phenomenon we call AI.

A chance view of an interview between Tommy Teirnan and a Mark Little on the television station RTE identified the cause of my anxiety.

For those not familiar with the Tommy Teirnan Show it is not like any other interview programme you have ever seen before. It certainly isn’t a Michael Parson or perhaps the closest a Terry Wogan given its strong Irish overtones. The modus operandi for the programme is a set of three real and unrehearsed conversations with very interesting people, not always a celebrity. They could be a minor actor, troubled professional footballer, or the most bizarre recently the person who cleans up after the dead bodies are found often from very violent events. Thrown into the mix are musicians and authors. Tommy is not given advance warning (if true) who the guests are, but he has the skill of any interrogator of eliciting the background and character of the interviewee sometimes touching on raw experiences.

At first I questioned how Tommy got passed the reception desk never mind HR. He wears a woollen hat, a liberal variety of tattoos, wears boots and a beard. He takes regular breaks of silence whilst forming the next probing question in his mind, always with a cheeky sense of humour. I asked myself would I have recruited any such person in any executive position based on first impressions!

The great thing about his show is you feel you have learnt something on the way and have a deeper understanding of others. Just an example, I had been invited to produce an audio version of my latest children’s book, and I had doubts over its merits. An actor came on I had seen in a minor role in a TV series. He was working as a theatre impresario developing new acting talent and as part of the conversation illustrated the power of the voice to portray a character. That clinched my decision to go ahead rather than let my innate caution prevail.

During the Mark Little conversation he revealed succinctly the cause of my anxiety over AI backed by the credibility, earned over many years, of his background and insight into journalism and the digital world.

Mark Little is an Irish journalist, television presenter, and author. He undertook a variety of roles at a senior level including the first RTE Washington Correspondent in 1995, returned to Dublin to be Foreign Affairs Correspondent and in 2001 even won an award as TV journalist of the year at the ESB National Media Awards. In his time with RTE he met US politicians and Presidents. He worked for RTE until December 2009 when he took a year of absence to pursue a project concerned with digital media and global journalism that led to the creation in 2010 ‘Storyful.’

The concept was based upon linking through the digital network news stories that had both interesting perspectives as well as importantly veracity.

He joined Twitter and worked for Robert Murdoch until 2016, he then left and in 2018 launched Kinzen until acquired by Spotify in 2022.

Here was a man who had straddled conventional professional journalism and the dark arts of the Social Media Platforms.

During his conversation prompted by the probing of Tommy he made some startling revelations that at first sight were obvious to me, but he added the trigger and the profound risks.

In my casual observations in everyday life, I have noticed a deepening trend to use the I-phone as a constant companion and source of interaction. To me steeped in the enjoyment of other people’s company and interactions with youth and children the behaviour patterns were bizarre. People waiting in doctors waiting rooms, sat on a train, having a coffee or a meal they were oblivious to the presence of others. One day I passed a café outside the Saint Malo Railway Station and a family of five were having a drink whilst waiting for their train, suitcases at their side, all of them on an I-phone. Twice a week I go to a gym to see people sitting at the various machines of torture engrossed on their phones whilst others were trying to go through their set programmes constantly asking if they had finished.

I value my I-phone for the support it gives me. It can tell me where I am, translate a phrase, give me the opening hours of a shop, buy articles I can’t find in the stores, verify historical facts and in an emergency a communication device to muster help. Yes, and it even allows me to speak to more people than I normally could in a day wherever I am.

That was because I was using the device for what it was intended. Access to good information, open, collaborative, and appropriate filters to guide me to the information I required. AI was supposed to be a further development that not only used filters but would also pick up other appropriate information that may be of use. If you were a lawyer it would be a fantastic tool to list all the relevant statutes and case law surrounding a particular issue without reference to memory or libraries of books.

Mark Little pointed the finger at the source of my anxiety. AI has a devil in disguise. It uses algorithms not to widen the information base but to narrow it, forcing a purchase decision. The algorithms have an inbuilt bias that probably only 200 computer engineers in the world know how they work, have limited control and governance and run by a tiny elite purely for the profit motive. In other words the digital giants are only interested in driving revenue. They have poisoned the system and enhanced anti-social addictive behaviour. The controls and creativity derived from social interactions are being coerced for the benefit of the few. Divorcing people from the real world to the dependence of a hidden master.

Unlike the Industrial Revolution based on grassroots mass flourishing, AI is more sinister. It’s power has to be decentralised and biased algorithms removed.

Fortunately, the youth borne into the digital age has wised up to this and are beginning to resist. So for the sake of humanity, put that phone away and be disciplined in its use. Pay more attention to others, it is just plain rude to talk on the phone in the presence of company. When this happens to me I just walk away. But then I am a dinosaur and a cranky luddite.

If you do get the opportunity to listen to one of Mark Little’s talks I am positive you will find it interesting and you don’t need AI to confirm it.

Ron Kirk

Cancale

March 2026