AI Safety

Ayoub Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) for securing this crucial debate.

Many aspects of democratic life are under immense pressure, but when we look at developments that threaten to dislodge society on a mass scale within a matter of years, there are few things that pose greater risks than artificial general intelligence. AI has undoubtedly presented us with opportunities for innovation and growth—so much so that the Government have pinned their hopes on AI to improve public services on a lower budget. But it has also played a role in creating an incredibly challenging environment, where information is no longer subject just to interpretation, but to direct and unfettered manipulation, where both the state and society risk becoming dependent on a technology that we cannot control or fully understand.

In their manifesto, Labour pledged to tackle the growing emergence of hybrid warfare, including cyber-attacks and misinformation campaigns that seek to subvert our democracy. That commitment only grows more timely and essential by the day, and yet we are falling ever further behind. Even at this stage of AI’s development, we are already seeing how it can distort reality at speed and on a scale far beyond anything we have seen before. This is not a theoretical problem. It is happening right now in real time around the world. And as time goes on, the practice of effectively determining what is real and fake will not only become a more central feature of our political reality, but will get increasingly difficult, with the consequences of making the wrong calls becoming ever more fatal.

What makes the AI revolution more dangerous is the powerful algorithms that amplify dangerous posts and trends.

What makes the AI revolution more dangerous is the power of algorithms to amplify dangerous posts and trends. On social media, where the rules reward provocation and engagement over truth, increasing use of advanced, unregulated AI only makes for a perfect storm. Increasingly, we see Governments, extremist groups and political networks deploying AI-driven bot networks to flood online spaces with co-ordinated narratives, drowning out facts in the process. These bots can mimic real people, fabricate grassroots movements and create the illusion of public consensus when there is none.

This phenomenon is widely known as astroturfing. When thousands of synthetic accounts amplify the same message, that message gains legitimacy, not because it is true but because it seems popular. AI-powered information operations are fast becoming the norm, not the exception, and they are increasingly proficient at replacing actual reality with a reality of their own making.

AI is not our enemy—it is a tool that is being developed and tested across our society—but unregulated AI that is unchecked, unaccountable and weaponised by those who seek to deceive is a threat to democratic stability. At this early stage in the adoption of AI, we have a unique opportunity to build the very guardrails that will protect our freedom of expression without undermining the integrity of our public discourse. If democracy is to remain strong, truth must remain strong. That is why we must confront the challenges of AI safety and AI-driven misinformation with urgency, because once trust is lost, our democracy will fail.