King’s Speech (4th Day)

Lord Fairfax of Cameron Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fairfax of Cameron (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the two main speakers on their impressive —or, in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Petitgas, perhaps it is better to say “formidable”—maiden speeches. I also declare an interest as the co-editor of a forthcoming book, to be published by Springer Nature, on the future of artificial intelligence.

In the King’s Speech, the new Government said that they will

“seek to establish the appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models”.

That is more than the last Government were willing to do, but it is still not an AI Bill. Given that the leading tech companies continue to compete fiercely against each other to be the first to achieve artificial general intelligence, for the sake of the world I sincerely hope that this proves to be the right approach, especially as the Government’s safety institutes and tech ministries are still playing catch-up on AI, especially its frontier models.

However, what I really want to address very briefly this evening is the future of jobs and work as the AI wave starts to wash over the world, and to hope that this new Government will devote the necessary time and resources to think about and plan for the potentially massive employment, economic and societal consequences of that wave.

Discussions about the possible need for a universal basic income have been around for years. More recently, McKinsey wrote about the future of work in the new world of AI eight years ago and has just done so again, including a finding that by 2030 up to 30% of hours worked in the world could be automated. Goldman Sachs wrote last year about the possible loss of 300 million jobs worldwide to AI and automation, and just last week my noble friend Lady Moyo wrote:

“many fear that AI will contribute to long-term structural unemployment, creating a jobless class that will include both skilled and unskilled”

labour. At the extreme, Elon Musk has expressed the opinion that in future AI will take all human jobs, because it will be able to do them more cheaply and efficiently than humans can.

The societal impact of any of these scenarios is potentially seismic for this country and the world. I emphasise that I am not falling into the trap of not taking into account the many new jobs that AI will create that did not previously exist—head of AI positions and prompt engineers, to name but two. However, many very informed people consider that this time is different, so because the societal and employment impacts of this AI wave will be so seismic, I hope that this new Government will start to think seriously and deeply about planning for the new world of AI, which we and the rest of the world are just entering.