Three headlines caught the eye of our Founder and CEO, Ellen Gunning, last Friday (30th May 2025). Here are her observations:
- 1. A white House Report on Children’s Health referred to scientific papers that did not exist. (New York Times)
2.MEP used AI to compose letter to Von der Leyen on Gaza (RTE)
3.An Bord Pleanala raised concerns over use of Chat GPT for Inspectors Report. (Journal.ie)
Over the course of an 8-hour day, I found myself reading about politicians and their researchers putting their confidence in AI systems that accessed both real and fake news, and also generated hallucinations in order to create satisfactory responses (lies) to queries.
Mettacomms,as you know, provides 100,000’s of validated sources of information. Data that is reliable, fast, and guaranteed not to cause fact-check alerts if you use it.
Lets consider the detail of the three articles a bit more.
- 1. The New York Times wrote about the MAHA report: “Making our children healthy again”. They said that the Trump administration billed the report as “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues. But the report cited studies that did not exist. These included fictitious studies on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, mental illness and medications prescribed for children with asthma.
2. In a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Ciaran Mullooly an elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) reportedly referenced a story of a young girl who lives in Rafah, which turned out to be fictional. Mullooly confirmed that he used artificial intelligence to write the letter.
3. And finally, The Journal reported a story that Aughenish Alumina (450 employees in Limerick, Ireland) was granted planning permission to expand its waste storage at the site in March 2025. An Bord Pleanála (the Irish Planning Board) said that it learned that “unapproved technology” was used for “editing and formatting certain aspects” of a report after an employee reported their use of ChatGPT. The use of AI now forms part of a challenge by Environmental Trust Ireland to halt the expansion of the site. Papers for two judicial reviews have been lodged with the High Court.
It is shocking that people in positions of authority, respect, power, influence and decision making, are using AI networks as if they were the Encyclopedia Britannica, filled exclusively with valuable and reliable information. They are not. That is not how they were built.
For the sake of democracy, civil servants internationally need access to Mettacomms to ensure that the information they provide to our politicians – whether that is in the form of a health report, or a letter to the Commission President, or a planning evaluation – is 100% reliable.
If you are facing this challenge, please contact the Mettacomms team.
