Debate contribution: Artificial Intelligence Strategy

Debate contribution by Mr Peter Martin on 14 September 2026.

MLA: Mr Peter Martin
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 14 September 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Opposition Business
Heading: Artificial Intelligence Strategy
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5686066

Text

When I read the title of the motion, I thought that Mr McGrath was going to be talking about Cyberdyne or Skynet systems or, perhaps, that he might even get on his feet and say, "I'll be back". Perhaps he is too young to know that cultural reference. I welcome the motion's acknowledgement that there could be significant benefits in the expansion of AI. I happen to agree with that. Northern Ireland definitely needs more FDI and jobs to make it successful. Data centres could deliver those. AI is very much like the internet: it has positive and negative aspects. I will make my position on it clear to the Assembly. There are two aspects to AI. First, there is what we might call "domain-specific", which is discrete and does one task very well. It can be used for interrogating health waiting lists, for example. Secondly, there is "superintelligence" which is more akin to Skynet — I referred to it earlier — which is probably what the head of Anthropic AI was talking about over the weekend. Ms Nicholl made reference to it. I certainly have my concerns about the latter. At the weekend, Dario Amodei said:
"I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong".
There is plenty of evidence, particularly from such foreign Governments as China's, that they could use superintelligence AI, not domain-specific AI, to target our defence systems. I agree with what has been said about the waste water challenges that have been highlighted, but, in that regard, I do not believe that AI is the hill to die on, as my colleague just referenced. We need to solve our waste water problems. As I mentioned to the Economy Minister earlier, we are about to lose about a quarter of a billion pounds of GVA over the next three years due to waste water connection problems. The motion includes a concern about the use of water. As Ms Nicholl said, there are two types of systems — closed-loop liquid cooling and evaporative cooling. The system that she referred to is where water is recycled round and round. That is highly effective in minimising water use, but its use of electricity is extremely high. Evaporative cooling is very, very different: it uses a lot of water but its electricity load is less. I do not agree with having a moratorium on new data centres. As my colleague referenced, we want to encourage FDI into Northern Ireland. That is exactly what we want to do. It encourages well-paid jobs and tech into Northern Ireland, and that is what we need for Northern Ireland to flourish.

468 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.04 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.88).
No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.02	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.03	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.01	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.05	No
Controversy escalation	0.05	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.88	Yes
Overall judgement	0.04	At or below not-flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	1.00
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.00
Adopts it	0.00

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
No identity-related subject	0.91
Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups	0.09
Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials	0.00
Parades, bonfires and commemorations	0.00
Irish language, Ulster-Scots and language policy	0.00

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 16:16 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification