Advanced Artificial Intelligence

Lord Chartres Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chartres (CB)]

The noble Baroness has illustrated very eloquently the extent to which we already live in and are totally embraced by a technological system. I add my congratulations to my noble friend on securing this debate at a time when we stand on the brink of a transformation in human affairs every bit as momentous as the beginning of the nuclear age.

The technological system that the noble Baroness talked about has even intervened in matters spiritual. If vicars are scarce, you can get answers to questions from a new generation of IT resources. There is Robo Rabbi; a Polish Catholic competitor called SanTO, the Sanctified Theomorphic Operator; and a feeble Protestant version called BlessU-2. Confronted by technologies beyond the comprehension of the non-expert, some have even been tempted to treat Al pronouncements as semi-divine. Anthony Levandowski, a Silicon Valley engineer, established perhaps the first church of artificial intelligence, called Way of the Future. It may be some consolation to noble Lords to know that the sect has quietly closed down and liquidated its funds.

AI bots are in a totally different league from the technologies we have used in the past. Generative AI can simulate human emotions but cannot reflect on its actions; it has no empathy. Recently, the Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave was sent a lyric composed by ChatGPT in the style of Nick Cave. His response was very significant; he said that his

“songs arise out of suffering”—

he is a man who has suffered the grievous death of two of his sons. He went on to say:

“Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing”.


AI can simulate human emotions, but it has no spirit. Its advent raises very deep questions. Is there a form of logic, that human beings have not or cannot access, that explores aspects of reality that we have never known or cannot directly know? It seems to me that we can regard it as a tool, a partner or a competitor, and seek to confine it, co-operate with it or possibly even defer to it.

The speed of innovation, to which other noble Lords have alluded, makes a reconsideration of the kind of society we wish to inhabit very urgent. We are close to being able to manipulate human beings exactly as we want them to be—genetically, chemically, electrically —but we do not really know what we want them to be. There is an immense time lag between the advance of AI and our capacity to control it. The educational curriculum is increasingly dominated by technical subjects designed to serve the economy with a certain view of efficiency. That is not wrong, but unless we are careful and if educational opportunities and landscapes are narrowed excessively, human beings in our society will have fewer and fewer places from which to mount a critique of the technological system, which as the noble Baroness says embraces us all.