Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Lord Cashman Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this is a stimulating debate, and I believe that it shows the House at its best, sharing our expertise and opinions— and opinions that could so easily be reflected by the people on the street or the Clapham omnibus. I am always slightly nervous when I am in a debate where I agree with not only the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury but Pope Leo XIV. However, as a born-again atheist of 75 years old, I am used to dodging the lightning.

I want to reveal to your Lordships something that happened one 17 June—it is coming up to my second anniversary of it. I woke up one morning after a disastrous tweet that brought the Westminster glasshouse down on my head, and on that day, I gave up not only social media but alcohol. While I would not recommend giving up alcohol, I certainly would recommend giving up social media. In one day I was freed of three addictions.

The difference with AI is that I will not have that freedom of distancing myself. My concern about AI—despite all the enormous benefits that we have heard about, most of which I agree with—is that, as my noble friend Lord Griffiths of Burry Port said, it will distance those most in need and those already disenfranchised, through a lack of internet connection or understanding thereof, from the very services that AI will be supplying.

It is right that we look at the benefits, but it is also right that we question the stranger bearing gifts. I look back many years to the con man who sat in my mum and dad’s council flat, proffering cigarettes after cigarettes and bottles of booze. We were not aware of what he would take away—the family, my childhood and so much more that is still unknown. That is the threat with AI. It is here in our legislative programmes. We use AI to model legislation that comes before the other place and this place. Some in this Chamber table amendments based on the advice of AI, but where are these AI models being developed? In China and the United States of America. I want neither of those countries taking away my democracy, my rights, how we educate our children and how we organise our society.

We should remind ourselves of what was said at the very beginning of the debate by my noble friend whose name I have immediately forgotten. That is the amazing thing about age—your brain has an idea and your tongue forgets it. Jack Clark, the co-founder of Anthropic, said only yesterday that AI technology is developing to a point at which it could develop without human input. It is being used now in health, public services, all the things in the background that we take for granted.

Therefore, I urge the Government—if they do not already know this—not to reinvent the wheel but to look at the Luxembourg Declaration of 2025 on artificial intelligence and human values. It was as a result of the representatives of the global humanist community that the Luxembourg Declaration was passed. It is a worthy and notable declaration on the principles of AI in relation to human judgment, the common good, democratic governance, transparency and autonomy, protection from harm, shared prosperity, creators, artists, reason, truth, integrity, the future generation, human freedom and human flourishing. Those are the principles that we need to focus on—those that will benefit the many, not the few. Terrifyingly, I see Governments rightly obsessed with economic growth but fixated like rabbits in the headlights of the approaching vehicle.