Viscount Camrose (Con)

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I must confess that, of all the groups we are looking at today, I have been particularly looking forward to this one. I find this area absolutely fascinating. Let me begin in that spirit by addressing an amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Markham and I ask the Government and all noble Lords to give it considerable attention. Amendment 111 seeks to insert the five principles set out in the AI White Paper published by the previous Government and to require all those participating in ADM—indeed, all forms of AI—to have due regard for them. They are: “safety, security and robustness, appropriate transparency and explainability, fairness, accountability and governance, and contestability and redress”. These principles for safe AI are based on those originally developed with the OECD and have been the subject of extensive consultation. They have been refined and very positively received by developers, public sector organisations, private sector organisations and civil society. They offer real safeguards against the risks of AI while continuing to foster innovation. I will briefly make three brief points to commend their inclusion in the Bill, as I have described. First, the Bill team has argued throughout that these principles are already addressed by the principles of data protection and so are covered in the Bill. There is overlap, of course, but I do not agree that they are equivalent. Data protection is a significant concern in AI but the risks and, indeed, the possibilities of AI go far further than data protection. We simply cannot entrust all our AI risks to data protection principles. Secondly, I think the Government will point to their coming AI Bill and suggest that we should wait for that before we move significantly on AI. However, in practice all we have to go on about the Bill—I recognise that Ministers cannot describe much of it now—is that it will focus on the largest AI labs and the largest models. I assume it will place existing voluntary agreements on a statutory footing. In other words, we do not know when the Bill is coming, but this approach will allow a great many smaller AI fish to slip through the net. If we want to enshrine principles into law that cover all use of AI here, this may not quite be the only game in town, but it is certainly the only all-encompassing, holistic game in town likely to be positively impactful. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on this point.