Artificial Intelligence: Regulation

Lord Fox Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

It is the turn of the Liberal Democrat Benches.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I thank your Lordships’ House. I will follow on from the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. Huge commercial benefits are possible from AI. We have talked about the dangers, but there are benefits as well. However, as the Made Smarter Review made clear, the management skills to implement the digital opportunities of today are insufficient, so they are quite clearly not going to be there to implement the benefits of the future. In conjunction with his colleagues in the business department, what is the Minister doing to make sure that we have the skills to be able to take advantage of this technology?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Yes, I thank the noble Lord for his point, which is a really important one. There is no defined curriculum of skills for AI anywhere, and there is such a very large range of different types of skills from data science, analytics and computer science, among others, to do that. I do not believe that anyone has produced what might look like a core curriculum of those things. We are, on the other hand, investing very serious funds into education at all levels, from school age to college age and advanced studies as well. I very much take the point, and driving global acceptance and adoption of AI is absolutely key to realising its value.