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Technology Hub of Europe: Why companies choose Ireland.

  Innovation: IDA Ireland offers collaborative funding and tax incentives (e.g. 25% tax credit) to eligible R&D investments. This dedication to innovation is reinforced by the Irish government spending €4.7 billion on R&D in 2021. Highly Educated: Ireland is celebrated as having a highly educated workforce, with  "62.3% of Irish people aged 23-34 having completed third-level education" and the "Highest level of STEM graduates per capita in EU among 20-29 year-olds" (IDA Ireland, 2023). Corporation tax: Formerly, Ireland's tax rate was 12.5%, the second lowest in Europe behind only Hungary (9%) (Bray, 2023). Due to this, multinational corporations were incentivised to locate in Ireland to improve profit margins through a lower tax rate. As of budget 2023, legislation is being prepared to formalise this 15% corporation tax but it should be mentioned this rate only applies to corporations with revenue in excess of €750m (Taylor, 2023). English speaking: Wit...
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Big Data: The ethical and social implications.

Trust

The majority of information being processed on people is by private corporations, this means there has to be strong elements of trust between the private corporations and the person whose information is being gathered. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) mentioned in their 'European strategy for data' report in 2020 that, "big data comes with big responsibility". Legal framework such as the EU's GDPR holds organisations to a high standard in terms in how they collect, process and store the data of users, the EU are strict on making sure these laws are followed and issue large fines to corporations found guilty. The Irish Data Protection Commission fined Meta (formerly Facebook) a record €1.2 billion in May of this year for breaches to GDPR.

1.2 billion euro fine for Facebook as a result of EDPB binding decision | European Data Protection Board (europa.eu)




Social cooling

Social cooling refers to idea that 'if you feel you are being watched, you change your behaviour'. we have all felt this before, if you are driving your car or in a shop and there are police nearby, you will be worried and self-conscious even if you are doing nothing wrong. With big data, information is constantly being gained on a person and they may be inclined to change their behaviour. This could have long-term negative side effects on our society with self-censorship, increased risk aversion and the lack of expression of free speech becoming problems due to big data.

Social Cooling - Big Data's unintended side effect





Bias

In a report published by McKinsey & Co., in a study on the state of AI, only 27% of some 1,000 respondents said that their data professionals actively check for skewed of biased data during data ingestion. While outright is obviously bad, it is easily identified, implicit biases are a far more dangerous prospect of big data, AI and Machine Learning (ML). If the information big data is pulling from, whether that be manually from a person, or from a study, if this the information contains bias e.g., not a diverse sample group, preconceived or outdated assumptions etc,. the AI/ML will 'double-down' on these biases as it exponentially analyses data with these biases as its foundation. 




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