Extract from PMs
statement on the EU Council
Mrs (Liverpool, Riverside)
(Lab/Co-op): Today the North West British Leadership
Team warned about the consequences of Brexit for jobs in the
region, particularly manufacturing jobs. Is the Prime Minister
withholding information about the risks posed to manufacturing by
a bad Brexit, or, indeed, any Brexit?
The Prime Minister: As I have said, what I see
is optimism about the trade deal that we can secure for the
future with the European Union and optimism about the trade deals
that we can negotiate around the rest of the world, but also
optimism about what we can do here in the UK, through our modern
industrial strategy, to ensure that this is a country that works
for everyone, that we see jobs being created in the north-west
and in other parts of our country, and that we see those
jobs—yes—in manufacturing, but also, crucially, in sectors that
will be of the future, such as Artificial Intelligence and
driverless cars.
Extracts from second
reading debate (Commons) on the Automated and Electric
Vehicles Bill
(Ellesmere Port and Neston)
(Lab):..We need to consider the broader issue of
value judgments. In all the films about Artificial Intelligence—in which, of
course, most of the time things go wrong—machines usually have
some sort of in-built fail-safe that prevents them from doing
harm to humans. One can see how that idea could be transferred to
an autonomous vehicle’s operating system, but it is inevitable
that there will be occasions on which evasive action might
prevent harm from being done to the passenger but could cause
injury or worse to a pedestrian. Earlier in the debate, my hon.
Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) gave an example of
how such circumstances might arise...
...It is estimated that 1 million driving jobs
could be lost within the next 10 to 15 years. With some studies
indicating that up to half of all jobs could be lost to
automation and Artificial Intelligence in the next
20 years, there needs to be a twin strategy for dealing with the
economic impact of the proposals in the Bill. To that end, I
would have liked to have seen an economic impact assessment on
the likely job changes that will occur because of the Bill. Even
in the optimistic scenario that lots of new jobs are created
following this revolution, what do we know about the sort of jobs
that will be created and where they will be based?..
Sir (West Dorset)
(Con):..In case anybody thinks that that is an
academic point, let me point out that it is extraordinarily
likely that, as the technology develops and
as Artificial Intelligence more and
more becomes a part of that technology, we will find that, under
these clauses, the Minister has to distinguish between different
moments when it is appropriate to hand over control, and moments
when it is not. For example, it may be that, for the sake of our
motorways running much more efficiently, much more accident free
and much more intensively, it would be appropriate and, at some
point, even mandatory for a motorist to hand over control of the
vehicle when they are on a motorway in a way that it might not be
appropriate when they are on a single track road in my
constituency on a rainy day. It may take a lot longer for the
machinery to be able to handle the single track road in West
Dorset than for it to be able to handle steady progress along the
M4. As that is a likely situation, the moment of handover is a
crucial element of getting the liability structure sorted out. If
we do not get that sorted out now at this early stage, the
insurance companies, when they come to consider the legislation,
will discover that they do not have the framework that they
thought they had, and we will not get the benefits that my right
hon. Friend rightly seeks from that part of the Bill...
(Bristol North West)
(Lab):..The Government rightly see the adoption of
robotics, continuous connectivity and the cloud as a means to
finally unblocking economic productivity problems. Autonomous
vehicles are part of that solution. I am all for that. I am
pro-business and pro-technological reform, at home, in the
private sector and especially in the public sector, but the
Government are silent on these vital strategic concerns, and we
have no space to debate the negative consequences of these
advancements. The jobs of thousands of my constituents are
potentially at risk, yet we are not debating that today. We must
be on the right side of the fourth industrial revolution. If we
go head first, first towards automation, then
towards Artificial Intelligence, we risk once
again being on the wrong side of an industrial revolution. It is
incumbent on us to debate these issues now, therefore, not after
millions of people lose their jobs...
To read the whole debate, CLICK
HERE
