Victoria Collins

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) on securing this incredible debate. That so many issues have been packed into 90 minutes shows clearly that we need more time to debate this subject, and I think it comes down to the Government to say that an AI Bill, or further discussions, are clearly needed. The issue now pervades our lives, for the better but in many aspects for the worse. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on science, innovation and technology, I am very excited about the positive implications of AI. It can clearly help grow our economy, solve the big problems and help us improve our productivity. However, it is clear from the debate that it comes with many risks that have nothing to do with growing our economy—certainly not the kind of economy we want to grow—including the use of generative AI for child sexual abuse material, children’s growing emotional dependency on chatbots, and the provision of suicide advice. I have said for a long time the trust element is so important. It is two sides of the same coin: if we cannot trust this technology then we cannot develop as a society, but it is also really important for business and our economy. I find it fascinating that so many more businesses are now talking about this and saying, “If we can’t trust this technology, we can’t use it, we can’t spend money on it and we can’t adopt it.” Trust is essential. If the UK acts fast and gets this right, we have a unique opportunity to be the leader on this. From talking to industry, I know that we have incredible talent and are great at innovating, but we also have a fantastic system for building trust. We need to take that opportunity. It is the right thing to do, and I believe we are the only country in the world that can really do it, but we have to act now.