Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, in the last four years, in the role of the First Civil Service Commissioner, I have increasingly seen AI being used in all stages of recruitment. The Civil Service uses AI and so does the commission, but we have always been very clear that AI is supposed to support the human decision-maker, rather than to remove the human decision-maker.

The Cabinet Manual, which we were told earlier this week would be updated, does not make any reference to AI, but it does say:

“Ministers have a duty to give fair consideration and due weight to informed and impartial advice from civil servants, as well as to other considerations and advice in reaching policy decisions”.


The core value of the Civil Service is objectivity, and basing your advice and decisions on rigorous analysis of the evidence. But where does that advice come from? What is the basis? What is the information we are using? AI is increasingly giving us a vast number of sources and data, but at some stage someone has to make a decision and, more to the point, someone has to use their judgment.

I then thought that I would use AI to ask about how to make judgments. It gave me two spellings: without the e, it is a court judgment, and the one with the e in it, which is slightly more nuanced, it told me was rather old-fashioned and falling out of use. I thought, “It may be old-fashioned, but I still quite like the nuance of those two”. I went back and thought, “Right, what do I do when I use judgment?” The advice came back with a whole checklist on when I use my judgment and examples of how you use your judgment, whether it is as a customer service manager or whether you decide to stop the car because the rain is too heavy.

But then I thought, “What will it say if I say that I am bad at making judgments?” It came back and said, “Would you like some help with self-assessment for professional applications?” I said, “Yes. What do I say in my self-assessment when I’m bad at making judgments?” It came back and said, “Don’t use the word ‘bad’. Say you are actively working to refine your decision-making processes”. I said, “But what if I always get it wrong?” It said, “Well, show how you learn from mistakes”. I thought, “How far do I have to go before the answer comes back, saying, ‘Well, maybe you’re not the right person for this job’?” It never did.

With that positivity bias, on the one hand, you could say, “Does it matter?” I would say “Yes, it does”, because all these things have underlying assumptions. In this example, they are very easy to spot, but with a great many others it is much more difficult. It gives you the strange belief that all you need is more information and you can resolve whatever question is coming your way.

I cast my mind back to many a Friday in the last Session which we spent on the assisted dying Bill. If I were to ask, “Would a society in which assisted dying is normalised be better because it has enhanced personal autonomy and reduced suffering, or worse, because it has devalued lives that others have judged are not worth living?”, I am afraid that AI could not help with that. We still have to develop the ability to make judgments. Technology is a tool, and we should always use it as a tool. Those who look to AI as a salvation, as the planetary superintelligence that echoes the absent god of monotheism, will be disappointed. But the sociopolitical shock of our workforce and the realisation that human intelligence is losing its scarcity value is a real one, and it is coming. The knowledge class will experience what the agricultural labourers experienced during the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites may have tried to smash the spinning jennies, but that never resolved the problem.

However, there is something that we can do, and something we can prevent, and it is our individual responsibility to do so. It is that human redundancy does not happen in personal relationships and it does not happen in our perceptions of reality. It is our own sense and responsibility to be clear that we do not end up saying, “Alexa, it’s over to you, you’re in charge now”. Ultimately, we remain in charge of our decision-making. We have a responsibility in our decision-making, and we have a responsibility to the next generation to allow them to make their judgments, to learn from their errors and to actually realise that moral judgment is what makes us human.