Space Weather

Lizzi Collinge Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner, and I thank the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) for securing this important debate. Space weather has profound effects on our planet, particularly now that we rely so heavily on technology that can be affected by radiation or changes to the magnetosphere. What is space weather? Basically, it is the sun chucking out gas and particles into space. It varies over time, and has peaks and troughs. We are currently just past the highest peak, but we are still in a very active period.

Three main types of solar weather events affect us on Earth: solar flares, solar energetic particles and coronal mass ejections. Those travel at different speeds, have different make-ups and have different impacts. Essentially, they all sneak past our normal protections—the magnetosphere and our atmosphere—and cause problems for us on Earth. The extra radiation and geomagnetic storms from the events can cause high-frequency radio blackouts and affect all sorts of electronic systems, both in space and on the ground. I also wanted to discuss the Carrington event in 1859, but time is short, so those watching at home will have to google it.

What can we do about the risks of space weather? First, I support the calls of the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley. I asked my friend, astrophysicist Dr Alfredo Carpineti—I always keep a tame astrophysicist on hand—what he thought Parliament needed to know about space weather. He agreed with me that we must continue to invest in the Met Office space weather operations centre, which monitors and forecasts space weather, and promote its work. It has done a great job in reaching the public with its aurora forecasts, and I would love people to know more about the rest of its work.

I have very much enjoyed educating my colleagues about space weather this week. Dr Carpineti told me that we need more research on how the UK would cope with a Carrington-level event and work out how to mitigate the potential impact. Another key research topic is around the degradation of technologies from the continuous stream of particles from space. I am told that that is particularly relevant for British territories and facilities at higher latitudes.

I am very pleased that this debate is taking place, and pleased that I could contribute.

Intellectual Property: Artificial Intelligence

Lizzi Collinge Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) for securing this important debate.

The question about machine learning tools—AI—and their use in intellectual property is a key test of our time. What we decide to do now will have ramifications culturally, socially and economically long into the future. Large language models, a form of machine learning such as ChatGPT, have already used pirated and copyrighted material without the consent of the people who created it to train their models. It should be self-evident that that is a problem. It is a well-established right that people retain ownership of their work, with limited exceptions for education or critique. We have clear copyright laws. We have collective licensing schemes, yet those have been ridden over roughshod by machine learning developers.

I am not a luddite. I am very excited about the potential for machine learning to make our lives better, just as other technology has done before. The potential for large datasets to identify health concerns and make diagnostics more accurate—with a programme able to predict the folds of proteins, saving scientists time that they can spend on the next thorny issue—is exciting stuff. It is important to remember that technology is morally neutral. The technology itself is not good or bad. It is a tool—nothing more, nothing less—and we as humanity get to decide how we use that tool. To use that tool, we need to understand it, at least in terms of how we interact with it.

For example, we need to know that AI can lie. It will invent things. One of the best examples I have heard was when a large language model tool was asked by a huge “Doctor Who” fan to tell him about “Doctor Who” episodes and it simply made some up—perfectly plausible episodes that did not exist and have never existed. If anyone here is ever tempted to ask ChatGPT, be warned: it might not tell you the truth.

As well as understanding the potential and limitations of the technology itself, it is also important that we create frameworks that align with our values and do not roll over for mega-corporations that really do not care for our values. Meta, which owns Facebook, has argued that individual creative works have no value in themselves as they individually barely affect the performance of large language models. As a Vanity Fair article pointed out, it is a bit like an orchestra arguing that it should not pay an individual musician because the solo bassoon cannot play the whole piece by itself.

If large language model tech as a whole relies on creative works, and it does, then some form of respect for the rights of creatives must be found. We have existing copyright laws. We could simply enforce them and ensure that the tools are there to do so. I urge the Government to treat machine learning for what it is: a tool to be used well or used badly. Let us choose well.