King’s Speech

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a truth universally acknowledged that an Anglican bishop making her maiden speech in the House of Lords is likely to be able to cope with being followed by a Methodist. I was delighted to receive the honour of being chosen to speak at this moment, and I hope very much that we have just had a foretaste of the nature of the contribution to our debates by—as I must learn to call her—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. She has much to bring, and has hinted at some of it. She was the first woman priest to be ordained in England to become a bishop but, because this was before women bishops could be made in England, she found herself the Bishop of Waikato and Taranaki down in New Zealand. The ministry there, as has also been hinted at, crosses all the borders between the Māori, Polynesian and English populations, so leadership styles have been developed such as co-primates and co-diocesan bishops. A Church of England without hierarchy seems like an oxymoron. Still, for all that, it is marvellous to hear the tones that we will hear more of in future.

One final thing before I turn my attention elsewhere is that the noble Prelate—I cannot ever get it right: as a Methodist, one is just “the noble Lord”—is a trained and deeply thoughtful theologian, and I am looking forward to hearing the insights of the deep studies she has undertaken finding their way into giving colour to the policies that we adumbrate together in this House. She has a challenge and we are very grateful at the prospect of listening to the noble Lady the Prelate. Oh, for goodness’ sake: in the Methodist Church, we have sandwiches, while the Church of England has those fancy little cakes—it is the same with language.

I must turn from natural intelligence to artificial intelligence in the remarks I wish to make. We have just hot-footed it from our committee, and I need not go over the ground that has already been rehearsed by the feisty chair of our committee—the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—who has forged a terrific band of people asking awkward questions and bringing them to the Floor of the House eventually. Today, we had the pleasure, if it was that, of listening to top people from Meta and Microsoft, and we explored the various things that have already been mentioned in this debate. I do not want to fix my attention there; I just want to say what a pleasure it is to sit under her chairmanship and to be able to say so in this House. The more bipartisan things that we say about each other as we try to find our way forward, the better, it seems to me.

In the King’s Speech, there was just one sentence on the subject, was there not? It was:

“The United Kingdom will continue to lead international discussions to ensure that Artificial Intelligence is developed safely”.


It is “safely” that preoccupies me. In the National AI Strategy published by the Government, there are three bullet points. It is a 10-year plan, with forward thinking and long-term thinking. First, we must

“Invest and plan for the long-term needs of the AI ecosystem”.


That is easy to agree. Secondly, we must

“Support the transition to an AI-enabled economy”.


Again, I have no problems. Thirdly, we must

“Ensure the UK gets the national and international governance of AI technologies right to encourage innovation, investment, and protect the public and our fundamental values”.


That is, once again, the area of my concern.

I hope noble Lords will be patient with me if I refer to a conversation I had a number of years ago and that I shall never forget, with Joseph Rotblat, a nuclear physicist and very eminent man, holder of the Nobel Prize for peace. He escaped from Poland, although tragically he left his wife behind and she suffered in the way that so many others did. He was part of the Manhattan Project, developing nuclear physics for, as the scientists thought, the benefits of the world. There was a war on. He subscribed to continuing his research into the application of his science to the making of a bomb only because the story was that the Germans were producing a nuclear weapon themselves. When it turned out that they had abandoned their research, he resigned from the Manhattan Project and came back to Britain, to Liverpool, and began a series of conversations called the Pugwash conferences.

Those Pugwash conferences gathered together leading people in the field of nuclear physics who all had ethical concerns about the science they were doing and the application to which it was being put. In case anybody thinks that ethics is about something sentimental, romantic or non-substantial, let it be said that those Pugwash conferences led to treaties, bans, agreements for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, for the banning of nuclear testing and all the rest of it. Ethics has outcomes that are measurable, but this man, towering above his community, set the standard.

I had a cameo career on the Front Bench before Covid—as well as old age—destroyed that. However, during that time with DCMS, and on the committee since, I have been looking in the start-up companies and at people in the field that we have been talking to where they work, and as they come to be interrogated at the committee, in the hope of finding from within the science itself that authoritative voice that will help us poor lawmakers who take for ever to catch up with the science—although we never do—to set the tone and the direction. Rotblat did it for nuclear physics; who will do it for the technologies we are currently developing? The ethical side of things is the answer to what we heard earlier: the need for transparency and openness and to offer explanations to a public who are bemused. We long for that voice.

I come off the committee in January. I have had the privilege of engaging with ideas that are well beyond my competence, but I find at the heart of it the desire to get that voice that will set us off in the right direction: that authoritative voice from within.