Advanced Artificial Intelligence

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)]

My Lords, in the rather stressful five years that I spent as deputy leader of the Labour Party, I enriched myself and maintained an equilibrium by reading the works of some of the world’s great technologists. I was struck by two very powerful ideas, which is why I congratulate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on this very important debate today.

The first is the idea that, contrary to 2,000 years of conventional wisdom, technological advance is exponential, not linear. The second is the idea of the technological singularity: a hypothetical point in time where technological advance becomes uncontrollable and irreversible. The context that you put your life in when you realise the enormity of those ideas got me through most Shadow Cabinet meetings, but it also allows me to contribute a couple of things to the security discussion that we are having today.

The first of these—I note the caveats of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond, about there being contrary views—is that the singularity is no longer hypothetical but inevitable. The second is that, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Chartres, said, AI can enhance human life beyond our imagination. It can prolong our lives, eliminate famine and reduce illness; it might even reverse global warming. However, if infused with the consciousness of people with dark hearts—the autocrats, the totalitarians, the nihilists—it could destroy us.

When addressing these security threats, there are a couple of things that we have to understand. Unavoidable and sad, the situation in which we find ourselves is that we are currently in an international prisoner’s dilemma. The UK has to maintain investment in areas such as cybersecurity and R&D towards our own sovereign quantum computing capacity. I also think that autonomous machines are probably as inevitable as the next pandemic and our preparedness for that has to be as urgent, and at the same scale, as our current deployment on pandemic management.

We have averted nuclear war for the last 60 years through proper statecraft, political leadership and defence cogency. That context is important here, is it not? Whatever our current disagreements with countries such as China, Russia or Iran, humanity’s interests align when faced with the consequences of uncontrolled AI.

When it comes to economic threats to this country, the situation is much less bleak. Government’s approach to economic growth in the creative industries could be to divide generative and assistive AI when it comes to regulation. Much has been said in recent months on the impact of AI on the music industry, for example, in which I declare an interest as the chair of UK Music. It is important to acknowledge that music has used AI for many years now as an assistive tool. For example, Sir Paul McCartney has recently announced a new Beatles song using AI-based tech to clean up old recordings of John Lennon’s voice. The Apple corporation used AI to create the “Get Back” film on the Beatles, which allowed Sir Paul McCartney to sing a duet with a virtual John Lennon at the Glastonbury festival last year.

The crux of the issue for commerce is consent. With the Beatles examples, permission would have had to be granted from John Lennon’s estate. Consent is that crucial theme that we need to enshrine in AI regulation to protect human creativity. So, in concluding, I ask the Minister to confirm that, at the very least, the Government will rule out any new exceptions on copyright for text and data-mining purposes. Can he do so in this debate?