Artificial Intelligence: Regulation

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

This is an area where there were something like 100 new start-ups in the last year alone. We have something like 4,000 small companies. It is an area where small companies are critically important and must be involved in the discussion. It is worth remembering that some of the enormous companies were small companies not very long ago in this space; it is moving fast. I will also take this opportunity to say how fantastic it is that, in our own country, we had a Nobel prize awarded to Demis Hassabis for his extraordinary work and that of his colleague John Jumper at Google DeepMind.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I was delighted to hear the Minister’s response to my noble friend Lord Camrose. I am so pleased that the Government are taking advantage of this Brexit opportunity. Last week, I got a new iPhone—for the first time in 10 years —and it came with an Apple intelligence function that was not available on the iPhones released on the same day in the EU. Will the Minister confirm that we have no plans to follow Brussels in imposing needless regulation that is hostile to growth and innovation?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

We are very minded of the opportunity of AI—the report by Matt Clifford on AI opportunities will be coming out shortly. We want to see this as a growth industry in this country and, as I said, we are developing in the AI Bill an approach that is only about those general models and is not sector-specific regulation, thereby differing from the EU currently.