Artificial Intelligence: UK Preparedness
Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Leong
Lord Leong (Lab)
The noble Earl makes an interesting point. Progress has never been risk-free. Every major leap forward has come with doubts, critics and problems to solve. If it had not, we would never have heard,
“one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”,
and Henry Ford would not have been making cars. With that same spirit, we are investing £500 million in our sovereign AI capabilities. It is why we are creating AI growth labs and growth zones. These are places where the private sector can invest, experiment, scale and turn ideas into real products. The facts are on our side. We are the third-largest destination for AI investment in the world, behind the US and China. We have world-class talent, ambitious companies and a drive to lead.
Lord Markham (Con)
My Lords, maximising the opportunities from AI while managing the risks rests on three pillars: compute power, skills and regulation. However, in each case, the government pace of delivery is being overtaken by the speed of technology change. Attempts to increase compute and energy centres are being held up by the planning system. The Government’s framework for AI and the national curriculum are still in the planning stage, and regulators are constantly playing catch-up with AI. It is clear that traditional methods of governance cannot keep pace with the speed of AI. What plans do the Government have to change this?
Lord Leong (Lab)
The noble Lord is right to draw attention to this matter, on which he has been a long-time thoughtful voice. All I can say is that we are investing in this sector. We have put aside £500 million to develop our sovereign AI capabilities. We are going to establish AI growth zones and AI growth labs, where companies can invest, scale and test products before rollout. We are doing a lot more and, at the same time, are leading internationally in ensuring that the safeguards are there so that the products that are rolled out are safe for everybody.
Public Services: Online Communications
Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Leong
Lord Markham (Con)
I am a big believer in the use of AI and digital communications to improve public services for everyone, in the NHS and elsewhere. At the same time, I am aware that groups with learning difficulties are in danger of being left behind. But the way to square the circle is to make sure that they are involved every step of the way in the design of services, whether analogue or digital, and to use things such as AI to have voice-activated conversations. The Netherlands ministry of health is probably the number one player in involving people with learning difficulties every step of the way. Can we make sure that we do the same with our services?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. It is not only in the Netherlands but in other countries in Europe—for example, Estonia as well. Let us not forget that the UK Government are committed to ensuring that our adoption of AI across the public sector is ethical, safe and responsible. The Government Digital Service suite of responsible data and AI tools, such as the data and AI ethics framework, helps teams across government to build and display AI in the right way. Our ambition is really for AI to benefit working people directly by improving their health, care and education, as well as how citizens interact with the Government, while opening up new opportunities, as the noble Lord mentioned, rather than just threatening our traditional patterns of work.
Space Debris
Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Leong
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that point. As it stands, DSIT is playing a major role in developing UK space surveillance. This covers debris and satellites. Through the space clusters and the infra- structure fund, we are backing new ground-based observatories and analytics platforms. We are also co-ordinating with the UK Space Agency, academia and the defence sector to integrate civil and military space surveillance assets into a national capability, thereby reducing dependence on foreign data and supporting strategic autonomy.
Lord Markham (Con)
My Lords, I will attempt to boldly follow the line of questioning of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, around the US building into its licensing requirements that commercial operators take this into account. It has a regulation that there is five years for the de-orbiting of low earth orbit satellites. We do not do that: we work on a 25-year basis. Surely it is about time we tried to catch up in this area.
Lord Leong (Lab)
The noble Lord makes a good point. We have to work with international partners, whether the US, Japan or the European Space Agency. Currently, the Government are developing space sustainable standards with commercial space sector investors and insurers as part of our wider regulatory reforms. We must bear in mind that reforms have to be outcome-based and have clarity and certainty. This is why we are attracting a lot of foreign-based companies that are establishing operations in the UK, such as Astroscale, which I mentioned earlier.
Amazon Web Services
Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Leong(3 months ago)
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Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, the departments impacted were HMRC, the Home Office, the DVLA and the DWP. I am not aware that the Ministry of Defence was impacted, but I will write to the noble Lord if it was.
Lord Markham (Con)
Unfortunately, as Health Minister I saw at first hand instances of lack of resilience in the health systems, not just in the NHS but among a lot of its suppliers. Many noble Lords will recall the cyberattacks on the blood testing services in summer 2024. I did not quite hear in the noble Lord’s response to the question from the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, that we will make sure we can really understand the costs and the lessons learned from all this. Given the nature of these sorts of incidents, is the Minister willing to do this?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for reminding me. Yes, of course we have learned from what happened last year with CrowdStrike. As we know, in July 2024 the Government committed to a review of the lessons learned from the CrowdStrike incident, which was co-drafted between DSIT and the Cabinet Office. The Government have made a number of changes since that incident, including announcing a forthcoming cybersecurity and resilience Bill and bringing the Government Digital Service, including the newly formed government cyber unit, into DSIT as part of the digital centre of government.