AI-generated Public Services

Lord Allan of Hallam Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I very much agree that, to ensure public trust, you want services that are accessible by design. Coming from the retail sector, I have a slightly less rosy view of labelling. Like earlier data changes, AI is part of a continuum of technological change. The key thing is to have proper arrangements, such as, for example, the AI Safety Institute, which we have now set up following the Prime Minister’s AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park with international partners. This is to make sure that we are aware of what is happening, because there are opportunities as well as risks to AI. I have a whole list of opportunities, which we can go through, but I would like to hear some more questions.

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, I will follow up the Minister’s previous answer. The public sector can benefit from many kinds of artificial intelligence that are a long way from the image of a killer robot threat to mankind, which often features heavily in the public debate. AI can improve hospital bed management, care worker rostering, public procurement and many other dull but very valuable tasks. Does the Minister share my concern that the killer robot narrative may overshadow the adoption of these much less controversial AI systems? What are the Government doing to encourage and accelerate their deployment?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not think that list is dull. I have other examples, such as the world-leading child abuse image database, which the Home Office is working on. My son, as a detective in the Met, thinks it will be a marvellous opportunity to make the police’s job easier and less awful. The noble Lord is right that the robot vision has to be moderated by an understanding of the usefulness of AI on many things, such as conversational front ends to public services on GOV.UK. These things will make life easier and more accessible, which is why it is good that we are debating them and can reassure people. Of course there are fears, which is one of the reasons why we are working on guidance on frontier AI—that is in the pipeline.