Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my relevant interests as adviser to the Crown Estate, Endava PLC and Simmons & Simmons LLP.

I congratulate the most reverend Primate not only on securing this debate but, much more importantly, on the short journey she has taken from Saint Paul’s to Lambeth Palace and, through that, the magnificent distance she has travelled for all those who will follow and for the entire global communion.

In considering that question of travel, it is worth considering how far AI has travelled. A good place to start is with the good book. Some decades ago, a basic ML sought to translate the Bible from English into Russian. For Matthew’s sage comment,

“the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”,

the translation came up with “the vodka is good, but the meat is rotten”. We have all experienced such meals from time to time.

It is fair to say that AI has travelled more than a cosmos since then, and it is for that reason—putting the human and the social context on this—I wrote a report last year, 8 Realities, 8 Billion Reasons to Regulate, taking eight human experiences and archetyping them for general effect. Let us take the school, the workplace and the therapy setting: just three.

In school, a smartphone could be such a positive deliverer of personalised learning, not least for those who find themselves all too often at the sharp end: those with special educational needs or disabilities. Yet, because of the platforms on those smartphones, we are on the brink—understandably and desperately unfortunately—of a ban. Those smartphones could still, potentially but not inevitably, be such a powerful classroom assistant for all in education.

Then there is the job seeker who is constantly rejected, not making the shortlist and not even knowing that AI is often behind sometimes biased decisions. Even if she or he knew that, they have no right or place to seek redress.

In the therapy setting, there is such positive potential from AI, yet we all know the horrific stories, many of them currently in the courts. Even the changes that have been made do not solve this issue. They offer management and legalistic solutions that simultaneously drop people mid-conversation and are similarly damaging to the most vulnerable in our societies. In short, how do we consider the outcome of hundreds of millions daily seeking online therapy and getting relational cues from bots that have no relational capacity? None of us knows the outcomes.

Ultimately, as ever, this is a question of belief: credo. Can we believe in the developers, deployers, designers and sellers of these systems? Should we believe in the business models that are built around them? Can we believe that our data—sometimes our most sensitive personal data—will be treated with dignity, respect, privacy and lack of bias?

Credo, credo, credo; we need more than good intentions. We know all too well what they have the potential to pave. We need urgent government action to bring forward principles-based, outcomes-focused, inputs-understood, right-sized, cross-sector legislation and attendant regulation. We need international connection and collaboration, working on international standards and agreements, all imbued with human values. We need to see the convening of public engagement the like of which we have never seen across our United Kingdom, so that everybody can express their fears and their hopes and see how they can share in the prosperity and the possibilities of these technologies.

Without this and more from government, I am afraid that government efforts with AI in the UK are “credo, not so much”. We find ourselves not in a position to optimise. We find ourselves, I am afraid, more like flies to little boys. We are flies to the bots. They kill us because they are bored.