Extracts from Parliamentary proceedings: Artificial Intelligence - Nov 28

Extracts from Lords debate on Technology Rules: The Advent of New Technologies in the Justice System (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Hamwee (LD):...The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who had hoped to speak this afternoon but, given the change of time, has a clash and apologises for not being here, asked me to say the following:

“It is critical that the substantial issues addressed in the report are confronted before major problems arise, rather than because of them. The wide-ranging implications for the operation and therefore the credibility of the criminal justice system, and the unanimity supporting the committee’s findings, require something better than kicking the can down the road or believing that the present architecture can handle the growth and significance in the use of Artificial Intelligence ”...

Lord Clement-Jones (LD): My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow three such excellent opening speeches. I draw attention to my interests in the register, particularly my interest in Artificial Intelligence technologies as a former chair of the AI Select Committee of this House..

Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con):...All this does not feel like a solid foundation on which to deploy such highly sensitive tools and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has already alluded to, there are some in the police and in the market who agree with us. At the excellent conference at the Alan Turing Institute last week, one speaker representing the police pointed out that in order to become a detective you have to pass an exam, and that the same should be true for technology. Another from a different force said:  Artificial Intelligence is not on the tip of the tongue of the public yet, but we don’t want it to be another frontier of failure.”

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab):...I was reading in the press just today some comments from the American computer science genius and polymath Jaron Lanier. He was talking about the rise of these technologies in general, not about the criminal justice system in particular, and he told the Guardian:

“People survive by passing information between themselves. We’re putting that fundamental quality of humanness through a process with an inherent incentive for corruption and degradation. The fundamental drama of this period is whether we can figure out how to survive properly with those elements or not.”

That is a comment on the rise of these very exciting new technologies in general but I suggest that, of all the spheres in which Artificial Intelligence and these new technologies are being employed, the criminal justice sphere is special...

Baroness Ludford (LD):...The committee is a remarkably strong one, including as it does a former Home Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett; a former National Security Adviser, the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts; a former director of Liberty, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti; and several very senior lawyers. The report says that the committee was

“taken aback by the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence tools potentially being used without proper oversight, particularly by police forces across the country.”

...The report refers to the EU Artificial Intelligence regulation, or “AI Act”, that is in preparation—I am not sure where it has got to—and notes that it would ban systems that pose an “unacceptable risk’”, such as social scoring and many deployments of facial recognition. I hope the Government are still willing to learn from the EU...

Lord Paddick (LD):...I do not know whether I am correct in thinking that, like direct and indirect racism, there are perhaps first and second-degree dangers in the use of advanced technology. As in the hackneyed phrase, when it comes to computers, of “Rubbish in, rubbish out”, there is a clear potential danger that Artificial Intelligence built on the results of biased policing and biased decision-making by the courts will be hard-wired into AI systems, as the noble Baroness, Lady Primarolo, said. Whether it is about the likelihood that a convicted person will reoffend or when used in connection with vetting inquiries, where racial bias in human decision-making is copied and pasted into AI systems, Artificial Intelligence also has the danger, for example, of being racially biased.I do not know whether I am correct in thinking that, like direct and indirect racism, there are perhaps first and second-degree dangers in the use of advanced technology. As in the hackneyed phrase, when it comes to computers, of “Rubbish in, rubbish out”, there is a clear potential danger that Artificial Intelligence built on the results of biased policing and biased decision-making by the courts will be hard-wired into AI systems, as the noble Baroness, Lady Primarolo, said. Whether it is about the likelihood that a convicted person will reoffend or when used in connection with vetting inquiries, where racial bias in human decision-making is copied and pasted into AI systems, Artificial Intelligence also has the danger, for example, of being racially biased...

To read the whole debate, CLICK HERE

Extract from second reading (Commons) of the Finance Bill

Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con):...Let me give the House a few examples of real companies in my constituency that I have been working with. PhoreMost combines Artificial Intelligence with drug research. I went to the opening of its laboratories in the village of Sawston. Neil Torbett, the chief executive officer, said:

“The current R&D tax system has been instrumental in our growth as a Cambridge-based Biotech, which has grown to over 50 highly skilled staff, raised £45 million in investment and entered into multiple pharmaceutical industry partnerships. Receipts from R&D tax credits form a critical part of our funding equation, and the proposed SME R&D tax relief cut will materially adversely affect our future growth plans within the UK.”