Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to speak in this debate. It will sound increasingly like an echo chamber in the themes that are raised but, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, with all that she has done in this sector, is remarkable.

I start by paying tribute to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. She gave a magnificent speech. I speak on behalf of many, I believe, in saying how delighted we are that she is the Archbishop of Canterbury. She learned humanity at the bedside. Those of us who have been involved in health know that it is the nurse who really is closest to the patient at times of suffering, difficulty and frailty. That shone through in her remarks today. We are privileged indeed that she is our archbishop. We all pay tribute to her for the topic of the day, following on from the Pope’s encyclical.

The most reverend Primate cannot have all the glory, however, because the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford deserves a great deal of recognition for his steadfast tenacity on the importance of ethics in relation to AI and human-centred AI. Indeed, former Archbishop Welby, who made such a big and profound difference for so many of us, supported the Rome call for AI ethics in 2024, so there is a continuity about this.

As the most reverend Primate said, artificial intelligence already offers enormous benefits to humanity across science, education and industry, with the potential to increase productivity, solve complex problems and improve quality of life. We welcome those advances, nowhere more than in healthcare. As the most reverend Primate said, AI is helping clinicians detect diseases, personalise treatments and improve patient outcomes. It is transforming medical research; the work of DeepMind, through AlphaFold, and of Isomorphic Labs, has demonstrated AI’s remarkable potential to accelerate drug delivery by predicting the structure of proteins and helping researchers identify promising new treatments at unprecedented speed. What once took years of painstaking laboratory work can increasingly be accomplished in a fraction of the time, bringing hope to millions. It reminds us that AI is not just a technological advance: it has the potential to become the greatest tool for human flourishing ever created. If harnessed wisely, it can help us live longer, healthier and more productive lives.

Of course, innovation and governance must go hand in hand. This week, noble Lords have been rediscussing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which was my first Bill when I became a Minister. This was a new technology, creating a life outside the body, and it needed different regulation: subtle, complex and long-lasting. Now, it needs updating. It was difficult to organise that regulation and this is a whole new challenge—but it has to happen. We have to strike the right balance between encouraging the development of technologies that benefit humanity while ensuring that they do not undermine human dignity, security, freedom or well-being.

We need not only to address the problems of AI that are here and now, but to understand and forestall the problems of AI that are to come, which could dwarf those we face today. There are the fast-burn problems of advanced AI in the hands of bad actors or the loss of control of an advanced AI; there are also the slow-burn problems we are just starting to confront, including the erosion of jobs leading to many of people being deprived of a job, career and sense of purpose in their lives, and the threat of gradual disempowerment and enfeeblement of human beings, as has been said. No one knows how to avoid the fast-burn problems, but supposing those potentially catastrophic threats are solved, it is the slow-burn problems we will have to contend with.

Rather than addressing the problems of today—troubling though they are—we must show our concern for the rapidly advancing future. It is a future we have not asked for that is being imposed on us by a few tech barons, backed by massive amounts of money. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford rightly asked in his response to the King’s Speech, where are the laws binding development of superintelligent AI? Those who want to have several sleepless nights need only read Yudkowsky and Soares’ recent book. Do we want AI that is more capable than a human in all significant respects or and AI that none of us knows how to control?

Enlightened governance, transparency and safety measures are not obstacles to innovation; they are essential means. We must address the potentials of the future now. Humanity has a challenge on its hands; it is one we can meet, but only if we combine wisdom with innovation, ethics with progress and a steadfast commitment to ensuring that technology remains the servant of humanity, not its master.