King’s Speech

Baroness Shields Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shields (Con)]

My Lords, His Majesty’s gracious Speech addressed Britain’s security, prosperity and position within an increasingly fractured international order. Yet it made no mention of artificial intelligence, the technological force now profoundly reshaping it.

AI is not just a sectoral or domestic policy issue. It has become foundational to how nations project power, defend their citizens, secure critical infrastructure and maintain sovereignty. AI is not arriving in a stable world. A decade of algorithmic conditioning on social media has already separated people into parallel realities, eroding the shared reference points of international order and co-operation. Today, AI systems capable of matching human cognition are beginning to participate directly in human judgment itself.

The frontier AI systems on which much of the world will depend are being shaped by an extraordinarily narrow concentration of people, power and data. Most nations are not participating meaningfully in this process. They are inheriting it. I believe AI has the potential to usher in the greatest civilisational uplift in human history, but that outcome is not guaranteed. It depends on whether international communities can establish credible frameworks for stewardship before competitive pressures harden into permanent norms.

At present, the opposite is happening. Across the world, the centre of gravity has shifted away from shared safety frameworks towards acceleration, sectoral advantage and national competition. While principles have been written and summits convened, the trajectory of artificial intelligence is increasingly being decided by a handful of individuals—unelected, unaccountable and operating at a scale that democratic institutions were never designed to oversee.

I know from personal experience that many of those building AI systems care deeply about their responsibilities. But private capability, however well intentioned, is not the same as democratic legitimacy. The majority of the world’s nations, representing the majority of the world’s people, are not part of the equation. In the absence of governance, restraint becomes a competitive disadvantage. This is no longer a theoretical question of future risk. It is a present contest over power, incentives and control. A few weeks ago, one major frontier AI company refused to allow its systems to be used in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of citizens. Its competitors agreed to the conditions of unrestricted use and secured the contract.

We are facing a new magnitude of technological power, and the window to shape what comes next is rapidly closing. Sir Demis Hassabis, Nobel laureate and founder of DeepMind, has described this moment as 10 times the Industrial Revolution at 10 times the speed. Other institutions are recognising the scale of this moment. On 25 May, the Holy See will publish Magnifica Humanitas, the first encyclical on artificial intelligence. It was signed on the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the Church’s landmark response to the human and social consequences of the Industrial Revolution. The Holy See recognises that this technological transition will profoundly shape the moral conditions of human society—and that the time to act is now.

The United Kingdom has historically been the country that convened coalitions capable of shaping international order at moments of profound transition. This is such a moment. The question is no longer whether artificial intelligence will shape the future international order—it already is. The question is whether democratic nations will help shape that order together or whether they will gradually surrender agency to systems, norms and concentrations of power designed elsewhere. Britain has the credibility and alliances to convene that coalition. I urge His Majesty’s Government to place this transformation at the top of the agenda for the United Kingdom’s G20 presidency in 2027.

King’s Speech

Baroness Shields Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shields (Con)]

My Lords, I offer my warmest congratulations to the new ministerial team and my support to this new Government at a time of unprecedented challenges in foreign affairs and defence. I rise today to address an issue of profound importance that strikes at the very heart of our democratic values and national sovereignty. Disinformation and divisive narratives, particularly those propagated through AI-enabled platforms, are undermining the sanctity of our democracy and the integrity of our global information ecosystem.

Our digital public square, comprised of leading social networks and communications platforms, has become a modern equivalent of town halls and community gatherings. These are spaces where ideas are shared, debates are held and public opinion is shaped. However, the very mechanisms that drive these platforms are now being exploited to manipulate free will, spread misinformation and sow division among our citizens.

Over the past decade, the entrenchment of a surveillance advertising business model has built these platforms into trillion-dollar companies, at the expense of quality journalism. Advertising, once the lifeblood of news sites, now flows primarily to these companies and their platforms, relegating fact-checked and researched journalism behind paywalls. This dynamic has transformed truth into a luxury good, accessible only to those who can afford it, while misinformation and disinformation spread freely. A recent Harvard study confirms this trend, highlighting a shift in how young people consume news, with 25% relying on YouTube, 25% on Instagram, and 23% on TikTok as their primary news source.

Jack Dorsey, the founder and former CEO of Twitter, spoke compellingly at the Oslo Freedom Forum last month about the dangers of unchecked social media algorithms manipulating our free will and undermining human agency:

“We are being programmed based on what we say we’re interested in, and we’re told through these discovery mechanisms what is interesting—and as we engage and interact with this content, the algorithm continues to build more and more of this bias”,


thereby deciding for us what we see. He warned that, soon, AI tools will know us better than we know ourselves and, either through design or by default, influence our thinking at a subconscious level. The risks are enormous.

Algorithmic manipulation is already dividing us. Provocative misinformation is exponentially amplified, while factually correct posts receive minimal exposure. Algorithms decide what we see and shape our perceptions of truth. They are designed to amplify extremes, provoke emotions and increase user engagement. Over time, these reinforcement mechanisms isolate and separate people into groups of “us versus them”, creating the conditions for political tensions to escalate into violence and civil unrest.

In the age of social media, we are conditioned to watch, like and share the very disinformation that undermines our democracy, making people vulnerable to manipulation and “influence operations” propagated by adversarial states. Recently, false narratives surfaced about the attempted assassination of former President Trump, suggesting the plot was either staged or orchestrated by government. These stories spread like wildfire, influencing millions and raising critical questions about the impact of algorithms and divisive rhetoric on public discourse.

We simply cannot accept a world where forces beyond our control or understanding are programming our thoughts and feelings. Privacy, free speech and the exercise of free will—fundamental values in a liberal democracy—must be protected by regulatory frameworks that ensure transparency and choice in algorithmic processes and preserve our individual autonomy.

The timing of our discussion today is critical. We find ourselves midway through a global election cycle that will see 50% of the world’s population go to the polls in 73 national elections. Much of the media attention has been on the technological capabilities of AI to generate sophisticated disinformation in the form of audio and video deepfakes. Little attention, though, has been paid to algorithmic amplification and viral distribution of this content, which erodes social cohesion and poses immediate threats to the integrity of our information ecosystem.

For more than a decade, Governments have attempted to work with big tech on voluntary compliance to detect and remove harmful content, but the incentives to co-operate remain misaligned. While we have responded with legislation like the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s AI Act, Governments are reacting urgently to harms and crimes without addressing the underlying causes—the very business models these companies are built on. It is time for us to take a step back and re-evaluate our approach.

The UK, through the efforts of the last Government, demonstrated leadership in addressing AI safety concerns, exemplified by the global AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park and the subsequent establishment of the AI Safety Institute. These initiatives align with warnings from experts about potential existential risks from advanced AI systems, especially in the areas of critical infrastructure and autonomous weapons. While discussions about future AI capabilities must continue, the most advanced AI systems in operation today—those that have driven our digital economy for over a decade—remain largely unregulated. The stakes could not be higher. We must act now to safeguard the future of democratic discourse and ensure that emerging technology serves humanity, not the other way around.

To achieve this, I ask the Government to elevate these issues to the forefront of our foreign policy agenda.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I remind the noble Baroness of the remarks of my noble friend the Chief Whip. Could she start winding up?

[Baroness Shields (Con)]

Okay—I am nearly finished.

The United Kingdom has the opportunity to lead by example, advocating for a global governance framework that upholds the integrity of our information ecosystem, protects our free will and human agency and preserves our democratic values.