Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

It is important to recognise that there is more than one type of AI, including generative AI and specific models. It is the case that AI is very dependent on the data put in, and there are risks of bias being entrenched. That is an important safety issue that must be looked at and that we must be aware of. On whether it is intelligent, the answer is that we are not in the era of general artificial intelligence but at an earlier stage. These are not yet fully intelligent machines. Whether they get to that and over what time period is something of an unknown, but we are in an era where we can do pretty remarkable things, and we should harness that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that there has been a tendency for high-tech and research investment to go overwhelmingly to the south and east of England in recent decades. I want to underline the regional dimension of AI. The supercomputer was going to be in Edinburgh, which has an excellent computing faculty and a large element of highly trained people. Leeds and Manchester also have useful workforces already trained for this. The renewable energy and the water—which I understand is necessary to cool these computers—is much more easily available in the north and west of the United Kingdom than in the south and east. Can the Minister ensure, to the best of his ability, that we do not yet again have facilities built in the south and east of England, thus increasing the pressure on housing and everything else in the south and east and leaving the north and west in poverty?