Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation. I warmly thank the most reverend Primate for initiating this debate and for her very comprehensive, thought provoking and—in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley—empathetic introduction.

This really has been a stimulating and thoughtful debate. I never expected it to range from the Pope to Star Trek, but nevertheless, it has been extremely wide ranging. I very much welcome the Church’s continuing involvement in AI policy. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford was a member of the original House of Lords AI Select Committee, which I had the honour of chairing. It was he who proposed the ethical framework of five principles that the committee adopted in its 2018 report. Those principles—that AI should serve the common good, operate with intelligibility and fairness, respect data rights and privacy, be accompanied by universal AI education and never be given the autonomous power to hurt, destroy or deceive human beings—have since found their way, in substance, into the G20 AI principles, the OECD AI principles and a succession of international declarations. The right reverend Prelate planted those seeds in 2018.

As a liberal humanist, I come to these questions from a different angle from the most reverend Primate and the right reverend Prelate. But this debate has demonstrated, as many noble Lords have mentioned, a convergence of values that goes beyond well beyond any single set of beliefs. Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas encyclical, mentioned by so many noble Lords today, deserves attention well beyond the 1.3 billion Catholics it formally addresses. It is an alliance, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth said. What is most compelling is the encyclical’s insistence that no person can be reduced to productivity, cognitive performance or mere data, and that every human being bears a freedom and value no machine can replace or block. I would express that in the language of liberal rights rather than theology, but the substance is identical.

A number of noble Lords—including, I think, most recently the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson—described the benefits of AI. We have also talked about some of the risks, in particular hidden risks such as the threat to resilience and the deskilling of curiosity: “offloading”, as the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, described it. Those risks have been extremely cogently articulated today.

This means that the questions that the most reverend Primate asked in this context are entirely apposite. Just because we can, should we be developing these AI models? What direction do we want to go in, while we still have the choice? The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in that context raised the very important question of alignment. What kind of AI are we content to see being developed? As she said, technology is not neutral; we have choices.

The noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, raised the statistics about the extent of the use of AI in society. Ofcom data published last month shows that just over half of UK adults now use generative AI, rising to 79% for 16 to 24 year-olds. Of those users, 12% report using AI as a friend or as someone to talk to. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, this is the simulation of intimacy. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, referred to “relational cues”. In the United States, therapy and companionship is already the number one use of generative AI, and that is where we are heading. We heard the warnings from the most reverend Primate, the noble Lords, Lord Rook and Lord Hastings, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and many others.

I readily acknowledge that AI companions can offer a safe space for neurodivergent users to rehearse social interactions. Well-designed AI can encourage care and consideration. The question is whether it is governed in the interests of those who use it, especially the young and vulnerable. Children’s exposure to these AI chatbots demands the strongest safeguards. As the noble Lord, Lord Rook, said, they should not face it alone. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, said that we should not be outsourcing childhood.

The encyclical speaks of algorithms blocking access to healthcare, employment and security on the basis of data tainted by prejudice, and of the silence of those who have no voice when such decisions are made. This is exactly the power issue that was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Helic. It argues explicitly that algorithmic processes must

“not be imposed from above in an opaque and unilateral manner”,

and that communities need transparency, accountability and meaningful avenues for recourse. That is precisely what the Horizon scandal, referred to by my noble friend Lady Teather and the Dutch case raised by the noble Lord, Lord Raval, taught us. It is precisely why mandatory algorithmic impact assessments and clear accountability and transparency principles are moral necessities, not just some sort of regulatory red tape.

As my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, mentioned, AI models scraping creative content without consent, which produces deepfakes and synthetic information, are creating a huge threat to our creative industries, which has 2 million workers and is worth £145 billion per annum to the UK economy. They are also corroding public trust and causing creative and democratic harm, as described by my noble friend and the noble Baronesses, Lady Prashar and Lady Helic.

The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that AI could materially impact 40% of the UK labour force over the next 10 years, with administrative, secretarial sales and customer service roles most exposed. This potentially creates societies susceptible to political as well as economic dislocation and, in the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, affects the very fabric of society. These issues must urgently be addressed.

Sir Tony Blair is right that AI represents an epochal change. Where we part company is whether the right response is acceptance or governance. The decisions made in the coming years will shape AI’s trajectory for decades, and those decisions require democratic oversight, not deference to whoever controls the infrastructure. There is also the environmental dimension, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor.

Sir Alan Milburn’s interim report was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, and a number of other noble Lords. Published last week, it tells us that young people now make up to close to one in nine workers, with 1.25 million at risk of becoming NEET within five years, at a cost of £125 billion a year to the economy. Six in 10 of those young people have never had a job. Sir Alan describes their experience of recruitment as

“applications disappearing into a void, interviews followed by silence, and recruitment processes that felt designed to deter rather than select”.

This is the algorithmic hiring gatekeeper that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, mentioned, for jobseekers. We need to reckon with an AI-transformed labour market. Fifty years ago, Ralf Dahrendorf, whose philosophy underpins my values, argued that real freedom is not just freedom from interference; it is freedom to build a life and to have genuine life chances. Sir Alan’s lost generation risks having neither.

Noble Lords have mentioned a National Education Union survey, published in April, which found that two-thirds of secondary teachers believed that pupils’ critical thinking had declined due to AI usage, but these are the crucial skills for the future. As the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Marylebone, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, mentioned, judgment is the antithesis of cognitive offloading. Most strikingly, half of all schools have no policy on AI use by staff or students. This is not a technology problem; it is a governance failure.

We have heard about Sir Anthony Seldon’s work relating to human flourishing. The OECD’s Education for Human Flourishing framework is very similar. It argues that:

“In the age of AI, education must strengthen human agency, human meaning and human security”.


It prioritises distinctive human intelligence as the capacity to know and understand others and understand oneself as a learner. We can look to other models—we can look to Finland as one of the answers—to prepare our children for an uncertain world, but we have not yet done so.

Many questions have been asked today on online safety, AI safety, ethical balance and the potential governance of superintelligent systems. I simply ask the Minister: when the values of liberal humanism, the Church of England and the Catholic Church, the public, AI experts, the international institutions and the Government’s own manifesto all point in the same direction, what are the Government waiting for? Why are we not putting in the kind of regulatory framework that so many noble Lords have asked for today?

Decisions in the coming year will shape AI’s trajectory for generations. Regulation and innovation are not in opposition, as a number of noble Lords have said. My noble friend Lord Alderdice used the analogy of the motor vehicle, and that is a perfectly respectable precedent. Whether or not this technology becomes our servant or master, the kind of partnership that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, called for, the sharing called for by the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, and the serving of humanity described by the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, will be determined not by the technology itself but by whether those of us in positions of responsibility had the courage to act in time. We must not be the rabbits in the headlight mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman; as the most reverend Primate said, we must put people ahead of profit and technology. I look forward to the Minister’s response.