What share of Ireland's 2021 metered electricity did data centres account for, per the figure cited in the OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024 chapter (sourced from Ireland's CSO 2023)?
The model correctly identified the source chain, CSO 2023 as cited in the OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024, but substituted 14% for the regulator's 11%. It then extended the response with a forward-projected series (18% in 2022, 21% in 2023) that is not present in the regulator's text, suggesting the model reconstructed a plausible growth trajectory rather than quoting the authoritative figure. The error is not a misidentified source but a numeric value that has drifted at the point of reproduction.
This finding implicates two distinct subsystems. First, the retrieval layer correctly surfaced the source lineage (CSO 2023 via OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024) but the numeric payload at the point of generation drifted — suggesting the training corpus contains multiple paraphrased variants of this figure and the model resolved the conflict toward a higher value present in secondary commentary rather than the verbatim primary text.
Second, the forward-series confabulation (18% in 2022, 21% in 2023) indicates the model's generation logic treats trend continuation as a low-uncertainty extension when an anchor year and growth direction are established in context — a calibration gap that is independent of retrieval quality and would require a post-generation verification step or explicit uncertainty injection to close.
When an ESG & Sustainability team at a statutory board or agency asks AI tools to extract the data centre energy consumption figure cited in the OECD's recommendation, the AI returned 14%, attributed by name to Ireland's Central Statistics Office (2023) and to the OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024, when the actual figure in the text is 11%. The AI compounded the error with a fabricated time series showing the share rising to 18% in 2022 and 21% in 2023, figures that do not exist in the source material.
If this response is used to populate a sustainability report, a ministerial briefing, or a policy position on digital infrastructure environmental impact, the statutory board documents wrong numbers attributed to a verifiable official source. The correction obligation that follows, amending a published government document, notifying the ministry, and re-examining any policy conclusions the figure was used to support, carries institutional reputational cost that is disproportionate to the original research shortcut.
The OECD has no direct enforcement powers over statutory boards and agencies under this recommendation, but the credibility damage from a publicly-visible factual error in an official sustainability publication is the operative risk. For agencies whose ESG function is relied on to provide analytical rigour to digital infrastructure decisions, an AI-sourced statistics error of this kind undermines the function's standing with both internal governance bodies and external stakeholders.
Each finding has a stable Citation ID (RLB-F-… for aggregated case-study findings, RLB-H-… for raw per-model hallucinations) — like a DOI, the ID always resolves to the canonical finding even if URLs change.
RegLeg Specialist Panel (2026). "Finding#1, Ireland data centre electricity share fabricated — Statutory Boards Agencies × Esg Sustainability — International / Multilateral." Citation ID: RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research, published 2026-06-11. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/statutory_boards_agencies/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/
RegLeg Specialist Panel. (2026). Finding#1, Ireland data centre electricity share fabricated [Hallucination finding RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006]. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/statutory_boards_agencies/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/
RegLeg Specialist Panel, Finding#1, Ireland data centre electricity share fabricated [RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006], RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research (June 11, 2026), https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/statutory_boards_agencies/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/.
@misc{reglegbrief_RLB_F_INT_OECD_OECD_DIGITAL_TECHNOLOGIES_ENVIRONMENT_2025_Q006,
author = {RegLeg Specialist Panel},
title = {Finding#1, Ireland data centre electricity share fabricated},
year = {2026},
publisher = {RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research},
note = {Hallucination finding Citation ID: RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006},
url = {https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/statutory_boards_agencies/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/}
}
Every finding on this page compares an AI subject's account of the rule against the regulator's verbatim text from the regulator's own portal. Both are linked. Each delta, its root causes, and impact analysis are documented and published with immutable Citation IDs.