Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, there are so many angles to this important subject. AI obviously has many very positive attributes. But I am reminded of a debate among AI experts and neuroscientists that took place on the “Today” programme a few months ago on whether AI could develop consciousness, whether that should be prevented and whether it is already too late in certain respects.

This chimes with a central theme of this debate—the distinction between being a human and being a computer. I will come back to that radio debate, but a well-known fictional example of an AI entity with consciousness is the character Data, an artificial lifeform resembling a human being, who was chief operations officer aboard the starship “Enterprise” in the television series “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. Although he is obviously science fiction, Data is an interesting case study of where AI could ultimately be heading and, I suggest, where it is already in some worrying respects.

Let us briefly remind ourselves about Data, who I shall refer to as a “he”—although that in itself rather pre-empts one of the questions about how we should perceive Data and how Data perceived himself. Data has many human qualities in the form of physical ability, intelligence, self-awareness and, yes, consciousness. He forms relationships and seeks to emulate human behaviour. Although he does not have a conscience of the sort we human beings are uniquely blessed with from above, he has a benign character and shows some sense of rightness and wrongness, and the importance of treating others with respect. He strives to be human but never quite makes it. For example, he lacks human instincts and human intuition. He has to be given an emotion chip since, like everything in his constitution, he is ultimately a robot operating on an AI program with a lot of electrical wires. But it is easy to forget this when he so resembles a human being physically and has a character of his own—and a loveable one at that.

That is where there is perhaps a lesson for us today, because of the dangers—the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, and others have alluded to these—of forming relationships with AI entities that appear friendly, even caring, but are not quite what they seem and lack the same benign moral compass as Data. There are a number of distressing recent examples of people, including children, becoming depressed and even committing suicide after developing an emotional online attachment to an AI chatbot with human characteristics such as a name, an ability to interact and an apparent personality.

The programming of these chatbots is designed to misrepresent them as real people, manipulating their users in a predatory way and fostering a dependency by those using them. At some point, the so-called relationship breaks down or is misinterpreted, with damaging or fatal consequences for the user. This is an example of where AI has been allowed to run amok in an uncontrolled way and where we have failed to grasp the enormity of the risks, which will only increase—and rapidly at that. So what lessons can we learn?

Let us go back to the debate on the “Today” programme I mentioned about whether AI could become conscious and, if so, whether we should allow that. The experts were sceptical but did not rule out the possibility that AI systems could one day become conscious, in the sense of knowing what it feels like to exist, being self-aware and then, conceivably, even demanding rights. But even if AI becoming conscious in this way—and a King’s Speech containing an AI rights Bill—is currently fanciful, it slightly misses the point. The fact is that AI systems are already so good at simulating human behaviour that they are deceiving people into actually thinking that they are conscious. It seems that an awful lot of people believe they are interacting with conscious chatbots; as we have seen, that inevitably creates psychological vulnerabilities for those concerned.

This is happening now but is largely invisible. It needs to become a more mainstream part of the online regulation debate so that the public, especially parents, are aware of the dangers. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has therefore done a real service in introducing this important debate with her magnificent speech on the impact of AI on human relationships, since there is a dark side to this if the technology is not properly contained and controlled.