Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Baroness Helic Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the most reverend Primate for securing this debate on a matter that goes to the heart of what kind of society we wish to be and what kind of humanity we wish to embody. Many of my points have already been made by noble Lords across the House. I shall none the less repeat some of them as they warrant repetition.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant prospect. It is reshaping our economy, our public life and how we relate to one another, at a speed that our institutions, our laws and our moral frameworks struggle to match. As other noble Lords have pointed out, there is much to welcome—advances in medicine, scientific discovery, productivity and the potential for better public services—but there is also much that should give us pause.

This is not, at its core, a debate about technology; it is a debate about power—who holds it, how it is exercised and whether human beings remain AI’s authors or become, by degrees, its subjects. The concentration of data and computational capacity in the hands of a small number of corporations is not a technical detail; it is a political fact, with consequences for sovereignty, democratic accountability and the rights of ordinary citizens, who have little influence over how these systems are designed or deployed. The question before us is not whether artificial intelligence will continue to advance. It will. The question is whether democratic societies will exercise meaningful control over how it shapes our lives or whether we drift into a future increasingly governed by systems that few understand and fewer still can challenge.

This question bears particular weight on the young. As has already been said, we hear from students and graduates who are uncertain about the future for which they have prepared. Job offers are being withdrawn, entry-level roles are disappearing and career pathways are becoming less clear. What assessment have the Government made of AI’s impact on graduate employment and social mobility? How will they ensure that the gains from this technology are shared rather than concentrated? Progress that excludes a generation is not progress at all.

It is sometimes argued that innovation should simply be allowed to take its course and that markets will determine the best outcome. However, markets do not safeguard human dignity, uphold democratic values or distribute benefits fairly. These are matters of governance and political judgment. To abdicate that responsibility in the name of competitiveness would be a serious failure of duty.

Our democratic life is also at risk, in ways that we are only beginning to understand. AI systems increasingly shape what people read, hear and believe. They influence public debate, political discourse and the formation of opinion. What safeguards do the Government believe are necessary to protect democratic processes from AI-enabled manipulation and disinformation? How will citizens know that the information they receive has not been generated, altered or amplified by artificial intelligence?

Nowhere are the stakes higher than in warfare. Artificial intelligence is already embedded in surveillance and military decision-making. Systems are now being developed that can select and engage targets with diminishing levels of human intervention. The question of who is accountable when such a system fails and leads to the loss of civilian life—for instance, the terrible recent US bombing of an Iranian primary school for girls—has no satisfactory answer. Existing legal frameworks were written on the assumption that human beings would exercise judgment, restraint and moral responsibility and that such matters would not be left to machines.

What is the Government’s position, therefore, on maintaining meaningful human control over the use of lethal force? Do they support international efforts to regulate or prohibit fully autonomous weapons systems? A phrase increasingly heard in defence and arms-control circles is the “Oppenheimer moment”. It reflects a growing recognition that autonomous weapons may represent a technological threshold comparable in significance with the advent of nuclear weapons. Unlike nuclear weapons, however, autonomous systems are comparatively cheap, scalable and accessible. The barriers to proliferation are low while the potential for misuse is considerable.

Yet we are not witnessing the kind of sustained international negotiation that the gravity of this challenge demands. It is shocking that there is still no prospect of any comprehensive international framework governing autonomous weapons. What leadership is the United Kingdom providing in building one? This matters morally as well as strategically. One of the most troubling features of autonomous weapons is the distance that they place between the act of killing and any human sense of responsibility. That distance does not lessen the suffering of victims but merely removes the human conscience that might otherwise have prevented it.

Artificial intelligence must serve humanity, not the other way around. Its development can be justified only if it remains anchored in human dignity, democratic accountability and moral responsibility. The choices that we make now will shape not only the technologies of the future but the character of the society which that future inherits.