Artificial Intelligence: Regulation

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I am pleased to say that the Government spend more on AI safety than any other Government of any country. We have assembled the greatest concentration of AI safety expertise anywhere and, based on that input, we feel that nobody has sufficient understanding of the risks or potential of AI at this point to regulate in a way that is not premature. The result of premature regulation is regulation that creates unnecessary friction for businesses, or runs the risk of protecting or failing to protect from emerging dangers of which we are as yet unaware.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, we learned again just this week that our own public sector is already using this very powerful technology across the board in Whitehall on matters such as criminal justice, health and education, with great opportunity but great risk. Where is the statutory framework for that current use of the technology? At a time when so many of the Minister’s colleagues in the Government want to walk away from international agreement, what hope is there for us to deal with technology on a global scale without new agreements, not fewer ones?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I certainly do not recognise a situation in which many of my governmental colleagues want to walk away from international regulations; indeed, I have just provided quite a long list of them. It is entirely appropriate that, within the bounds of safety and their remit, different public sector bodies use this crucial new technology. They do so not in an unregulated way but with strict adherence to existing regulations.