Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords, there can have been few Private Members’ Bills that have set out to address such towering issues as this Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. He has been an important voice on the opportunities and challenges arising from generative AI in this House and outside it. This Bill and his powerful introduction to it are only the latest contributions to the vital issue of regulating AI to ensure that the social and financial interests and security of consumers are protected as a first priority.

The noble Lord also contributed to a wide-ranging discussion on the regulation of AI in relation to misinformation and disinformation convened by the Thomson Foundation, of which, as recorded in the register, I am chair. Disinformation in news has existed and grown as a problem since long before the emergence of generative AI, but each iteration of AI makes the disinformation that human bad actors promote even harder to detect and counteract.

This year a record number of people in the world will go to the polls in general elections, as the noble Lord said. The Thomson Foundation has commissioned research into the incidence of AI-fuelled disinformation in the Taiwanese presidential elections in mid-January, conducted by Professor Chen-Ling Hung of National Taiwan University. Your Lordships may not be surprised that the preliminary conclusions of the work, which will be continued in relation to other elections, confirms the concerns that the noble Lord voiced in his introduction. Generative AI’s role in exacerbating misinformation and disinformation in news and the impact that can have on the democratic process are hugely important, but this is only one of a large number of areas where generative AI is at the same time an opportunity and a threat.

I strongly support this well-judged and balanced Bill, which recognises the fast-changing, dynamic nature of this technology—Moore’s law on steroids, as I have previously suggested—and sets out a logical and coherent role for the proposed AI authority, bringing a transparency and clarity to the regulation of AI for its developers and users that is currently lacking.

I look forward to the Minister’s winding up, but with my expectations firmly under control. The Prime Minister’s position seems incoherent. On the one hand he says that generative AI poses an existential threat and on the other that no new regulatory body is needed and the technology is too fast-moving for a comprehensive regulatory framework to be established. That is a guarantee that we will be heaving to close a creaking stable door as the thoroughbred horse disappears over the horizon. I will not be surprised to hear the Minister extol the steps taken in recent months, such as the establishment of the AI unit, as a demonstration that everything is under control. Even if these small initiatives are welcome, they fall well short of establishing the transparency and clarity of regulation needed to engender confidence in all parties—consumers, employers, workers and civil society.

If evidence is needed to make the case for a transparent, well-defined regulatory regime rather than ad hoc, fragmented departmental action, the Industry and Regulators Committee, of which I am privileged to be a member, today published a letter to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up about the regulation of property agents. Five years ago, a working group chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Best, recommended that the sector should be regulated, yet despite positive initial noises from the Government, nothing has happened. Even making allowance for the impact of the pandemic during this time, this does not engender confidence in their willingness and ability to grasp regulatory nettles in a low-tech industry, let alone in a high-tech one.

It is hard not to suspect that this reflects an ideological suspicion within the Conservative Party that regulation is the enemy of innovation and economic success rather than a necessary condition, which I believe it is. Evidence to the Industry and Regulators Committee from a representative of Merck confirmed that the life sciences industry thrives in countries where there is strong regulation.

I urge the Government to give parliamentary time to this Bill to allow it to go forward. I look forward to addressing its detailed issues then.