Unlock Editor's Digest free of charge
FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favourite stories on this weekly newsletter.
Sir Keir Starmer is anticipated to introduce a long-awaited Artificial Intelligence Bill this week, fulfilling Labour's election promise to create binding rules for the event of probably the most advanced machine learning models.
The AI Bill, one in every of 35 bills currently slated for inclusion in Wednesday's King's Speech, is designed to enhance legal protections for cutting-edge AI technologies, people acquainted with the plans say.
The focus of the laws is more likely to be on the creation of enormous language models, the general-purpose technology that underlies AI products comparable to OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Other laws to be unveiled within the speech will allow Starmer's recent government to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords, give the Office for Budget Responsibility powers to independently publish forecasts of major budget events and implement employee protection reforms, including a tougher crackdown on zero-hours contracts and “fire-and-rehire” practices.
The Labour government may even revive the previous Conservative government's plans to create a register of missing children from school and pass a cybersecurity bill to guard critical infrastructure from nefarious foreign actors.
Starmer's legislative agenda will likely be closely watched for clues to the dimensions of his ambitions in his first few months in office – a period many imagine will mark the height of his power.
His AI bill represents a departure from the strategy of former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who didn’t support legislative intervention in the event and deployment of AI models because he feared that strict regulations could hinder the industry's growth.
Instead, Sunak set out voluntary agreements between the federal government and corporations and ruled out short-term laws.
The EU has taken a tougher approach. In March, the European Parliament passed a number of the first and strictest rules to manage this technology with the Artificial Intelligence Act.
Last week, the Tony Blair Institute hosted a conference on the potential of AI to revolutionise government and public services, with guest speakers from the Labour Cabinet.
The former Labour prime minister stressed the importance of Sunak's AI Safety Summit, held at Bletchley Park last yr, but said “we’d like to construct on it quickly”, adding that the federal government would want to learn a complete “recent language” to completely exploit the technology's potential.
The Labour Party manifesto outlined plans to “make sure the protected development and use of AI models by introducing mandatory regulations for the few corporations that develop probably the most powerful AI models”.
Peter Kyle, the brand new Minister for Technology and Science, said earlier this yr he hoped to introduce a “legal code” that may require corporations to release “all their testing data” and “tell us what they’re testing for”.
Regulators, including the UK Competition Authority, are increasingly concerned in regards to the potential dangers of AI technologies, starting from the likelihood that algorithms could construct in biases that affect marginalised populations to the potential use of general models to create harmful materials.
Speaking on Sunday on the King's Speech, Speaker of the House of Commons Lucy Powell told the BBC that the 35 bills were “not only a shopping list of things we would love to do. These are well-considered, well-crafted bills that we all know we are able to get through this session of Parliament.”
This week, Labour may even introduce laws to ascertain the centrepiece of its green energy plans: GB Energy, a brand new state-owned energy investor based in Scotland that can put money into renewable energy and nuclear power projects.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband vowed on Sunday to take “immediate motion” to spice up the role of solar energy, a part of a series of steps aimed toward meeting the federal government's goal of cutting carbon emissions from electricity generation to net-zero by 2030.
“We will encourage builders and homeowners in every way we are able to to deliver this win-win technology to hundreds of thousands of addresses across the UK, so people can generate their very own electricity, reduce their bills and tackle climate change at the identical time,” Miliband said.
On Friday, he approved three major solar projects in England that had been blocked by Sunak's government, saying they’d power as much as 400,000 homes a yr. One of the projects, Sunnica, would create 1,500 construction jobs, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said.
