Artificial Intelligence: Public Services

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Once again, that is a very important question. The noble Baroness is absolutely right. It is as true for AI as it is for other systems: rubbish in, rubbish out. Well-curated, properly understood datasets are crucial. It is one of the reasons that where there are well-documented, well-curated datasets that can be used to train models for government purposes, we will be pursuing those. We will use the AI assurance mechanism that I discussed previously to try to make sure that we identify where there are systems that carry risks such as the one the noble Baroness raises.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that the US and China are currently responsible for the 80% of the world’s largest AI models. Does he agree that in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment, and with clear evidence of diversions on values, Europe’s dependency could quickly become a vulnerability, in terms of not just public services but the upholding of our democratic values? Given that the EU and UK have complementary strengths and values in common, will he persuade the Government to pursue, with the EU, a shared attempt to close the competitive gap? Might this be on the agenda at the EU-UK summit in May, given that the trade and co-operation agreement is totally silent on AI?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

We are working closely with our friends in Europe on AI, both at the safety and security level through the AI Security Institute and more broadly. We have a bilateral meeting with France coming up in July, where this will be discussed. There is a need for all of us to think about which models we want to rely on and become dependent on and, indeed, where models can be made that are not general-purpose, wide, generative models but narrower models that can answer the questions we need to answer. Not everything comes down to broad, generative AI.

Online Safety

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister quite rightly mentioned children in his initial Answer, and we all want to protect children primarily, but will he also recognise the harm that can be done to vulnerable adults? I think particularly of those with addiction problems, eating disorders and people with learning disabilities, who are not as safe online as we are. Can he say whether the Government have made an assessment of the different types of harms that are on these smaller sites that fall outside the regulations? Have they broken down this type of harm by distinct categories and will they make this information available?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The so-called Small but Risky task force that was set up in response to an exchange of letters between the Secretary of State and the CEO of Ofcom is undertaking a review of all the risks of these small units. I do not know the detail of whether it has broken it down into the categories suggested by the noble Baroness but I think that is an extremely good idea and I hope it will do it, because it is an important activity.

Advanced Research and Innovation Agency

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Whether we reassociate to Horizon or go down the Pioneer alternative, ARIA is designed to be complementary to those programmes. It has a higher tolerance of risk and seeks more long-shot opportunities, one advantage of that being that rapid lessons learned can quickly be transmitted to organisations with a necessarily lower tolerance of risk, thereby allowing everybody to benefit from its learnings.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, there is clear logic in protecting big and bold thinking from the constraints of bureaucracy, but it would be a mistake to think that there are two types of invention: the big ideas and the day-to-day research that goes on in our institutes and universities. Big ideas often start small. How can the Government ensure that the ring-fence is permeable so that the investment in ARIA benefits the entire research ecosystem?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Indeed—again, the point is well taken. We cannot have these types of organisations existing in separate universes and not talking to each other. It is crucial that they exploit their complementarity in this way.