Iqbal Mohamed

The enforcement processes that we have for existing regulations where human beings are providing that service are auditable. We do not have enforcement mechanisms for this kind of regulated service or information being provided by the internet or AI tools. There is a need to extend the scope of regulation but also the way in which we enforce that regulation for automated tools. I am a fan of innovation, growth and progress in society. However, we cannot move forward with progress at any cost. AI poses such a significant risk that if we do not regulate at the right time, we will not have a chance to get it back under control—it might be too late. Now is the time to start looking at this seriously and supporting the AI industry so that it is a force for good in society, not a future force of destruction. We are all facing a climate and nature emergency. AI is driving unprecedented growth in energy demand. According to the International Energy Agency, global data-centre electricity consumption will become slightly more than Japan’s total electricity consumption today. A House of Commons Library research briefing found that UK data centres currently consume 2.5% of the country’s electricity, with the sector’s consumption expected to rise fourfold by 2030. The increased demand strains the grid, slows transition to renewables and contributes to emissions that drive climate change. This issue must go hand in hand with our climate change obligations. Members have probably heard and read about AI’s impact on the job market. One of the clearest harms we are already seeing is the loss of jobs. That is not a future worry; it is happening now. Independent analysis shows that up to 8 million UK jobs are at risk from AI automation, with admin, customer service and junior professional roles being the most exposed. Another harm that we are already facing is the explosion of AI-driven scams. Generative AI-enabled scams have risen more than 450% in a single year, alongside a major surge in breached personal data and AI-generated phishing attempts. Deepfake-related fraud has increased by thousands of per cent, and one in every 20 identity-verification failures is now linked to AI manipulation. I move on to the ugly: the threat to the world. The idea that AI developers may lose control of the AI systems they create is not science fiction; it is the stated concern of the scientists who build this technology—the godfathers of AI, as we call them. One of them, Yoshua Bengio, has said: “If we build AIs that are smarter than us and are not aligned with us and compete with us, then we’re basically cooked”. Geoffrey Hinton, another godfather of AI and a winner of the Nobel prize in physics, said: “I actually think the risk is more than 50% of the existential threat”. Stuart Russell, the author of the standard AI textbook, says that if we pursue our current approach “then we will eventually lose control over the machines.” In May 2023, hundreds of AI researchers and industry leaders signed a statement declaring: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”. That is not scaremongering; these are professional experts who are warning us to make sure that this technology does not get out of control.