Viscount Camrose
Main Page: Viscount Camrose (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)(1 day, 8 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for all the work she did when she was a Minister at DSIT, especially in this whole area of AI. The AI and the Future of Work Unit is designed to ensure that AI adoption strengthens rather than fragments local economies. Working with mayoral combined authorities, local enterprise partnerships and skills providers, the unit will tailor programmes to regional strengths, whether in advanced manufacturing, financial services, life sciences or the creative industries. By aligning AI skills, business support and innovation funding with local growth strategies, we will unlock productivity gains and high-quality employment across every nation and region of the country.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
My Lords, the misguided use of AI in the recruiting marketplace is deeply and unnecessarily disruptive. Mass automation of largely synthetic job applications means that there are far too many applications for most jobs, often by tens of thousands. These applications are, in turn, assessed often only by AI agents, with the result that the marketplace for jobs has become slow, inefficient and ineffective. Does the Minister agree that fixing the recruiting marketplace may be the quickest way to increase employment prospects and productivity for everyone, and can he outline what steps the Government plan to take to do so?
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, first, I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his long-standing work in this field and for the consistent attention that he has brought to this very important matter.
We have published the Responsible AI in Recruitment guidance, which sets out good practice for procuring and deploying AI systems for HR and recruitment. This guidance highlights the mechanism that can be used to ensure the safe and trustworthy use of AI in recruitment. As highlighted in the AI Opportunities Action Plan: One Year On, where we have achieved some 38 out of 50 commitments that we set ourselves, we have taken steps to build the AI assurance ecosystem that underpins safe and responsible use of AI. I will reach out to the noble Lord and meet up with him, together with my officials, to explore this further.