Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)

My Lords, AI crossed the threshold of my understanding and experience much earlier than for any other speaker in this debate thus far. When I left for an underdeveloped country and was given some responsibility for a rural rehabilitation project, I found that it was all centred on AI— but then, of course, it meant artificial insemination. The letters have remained firmly in my mind, and the improvements to animal husbandry and all the rest of it that I was to learn about were a direct consequence of that particular branch of scientific development. I add my voice to all the others who thanked my dear friend the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for bringing this debate to the Floor of the House today. She had such an adroit sense of timing that it follows not only the Vatican’s encyclical, but also Anne Keast-Butler, head of GCHQ, speaking a day later at Bletchley Park about the place of modern technology in our defence and security sectors. A day after that, Alan Milburn’s Young People and Work was published, to the consternation of the entire population as to the likely consequences of artificial intelligence in the world of work. While it is true, as an earlier speaker said, that over time what happens in the next few years will have been assimilated and we will have grown skills and experience that will enable us, at that stage, to make progress, it remains a fact that people coming out of university now, with enormous debts, will find work very difficult to find. The capacity to bring a debate to this House and to stimulate, as it seemed, all these other responses in other fields is a great skill that only an Archbishop of Canterbury can pull off. For three years I was a member of the Communications and Digital Select Committee with others in this Chamber. There is an aspect of the work that we covered there that has not been mentioned in the debate thus far. Underlying any remarks I make is a total and ready understanding of the need to accept and honour the work of scientists in bringing all these developments and improvements to our knowledge and for our use. I do not want any of that to enter my speech, but I want it to be understood that I cannot think of the world without those developments happening. Even in our report on large language models and generative AI, which was very extensive and saw many witnesses interrogated and in which we set ourselves the task of concentrating on the positive things that AI will contribute to the well-being—economic and otherwise—of the country, we still had a pretty loaded chapter on risk because we recognised that too. It would be very foolish for us to fall into the position where we are so keen to see and acknowledge the developments, and there has been ample evidence of that today, that we fail to see and take measures against the encroaching risks that come with the package. While I was on that committee, we did another report on a category that has not been mentioned, digital exclusion. So many people in this country have no access, or no real access, to digital life. The report said there were 1.7 million such people. I cannot believe the figure is any better now, a year or two after that report was published. We went to hubs to see how people with no skills, no money and no stake in the economic development of our country are sharing information, facilitated by people who give their time to help to develop these things so that people have access to all the things they need access for: their rent, their welfare, their bank and all the rest of it. We should not be unaware of the fact that the other side of the progress that we expect is the creation of an underclass. Also, in the period following the most reverend Primate the Archbishop—Oh! I am past my time. A verbose Welshman cannot possibly contribute to continuing this debate any longer, but let us remember the poor and the excluded. That is enough.