MPs and Lords call for new law to address AI threat to human rights

A cross-party group of MPs and peers has identified human rights risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI), arguing existing laws are ill-equipped to address the technology's rapid growth.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) published a report calling for a new bill on AI to "address the scale and seriousness" of such threats.

"Nowhere in the world, including the UK, has a current legislative and regulatory approach to AI that is fit for purpose," said Labour MP and committee chair Alex Sobel.

Labour education minister Georgia Gould said AI was creating opportunities but that it was critical the government was "responding to those risks" posed by the technology.

In a summary of its 100-page report, the JCHR argued AI has been responsible for numerous abuses of human rights, citing examples including the use of AI to create sexualised images of women and girls, and scanning people's faces without their consent.

The JCHR has advocated for the creation of a "single, independent AI oversight body... on a statutory basis", saying the current legal framework is "fragmented and difficult to navigate", "leaving gaps in protection".

The report goes on to call for "more demanding obligations for higher risk AI systems and models" at all stages of the "AI lifecycle".

It continues: "Some uses of AI should be prohibited outright because they are incompatible with human rights. Potential areas for action include subliminal techniques, and inappropriate use of profiling or biometric data."

The committee's chair said: "AI is heralded as an unprecedented era of technological development with the potential to transform our lives for better or for worse."

"It is moving with such speed and complexity that its impact is hard to accurately predict. What is clear is that at present we are unprepared to deal with its consequences however potentially dire they may be."

The JCHR's 12 members are drawn from both Houses of Parliament and they currently include MPs and peers from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.

Monday's report comes amid growing anxiety over the challenges posed by AI.

Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who quit Anthropic, told the BBC this weekend that staff developing the systems were "genuinely frightened" for the future of humanity.

An Anthropic spokesperson told BBC News that it was building "models with some of the strongest safeguards in the industry".

Labour's 2024 general election manifesto said it would "ensure the safe development and use of AI models by introducing binding regulation on the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models".

The government used the King's Speech in July 2024 to commit to bringing forward "appropriate legislation", but no dedicated AI bill appeared in this year's King's Speech.

Asked what had happened to the law promised by Labour, Gould told BBC Breakfast that the government "has been regulating" - including action to tackle non-consensual sexualised deepfakes and a bill linked to cyber security.

She said: "There is action happening and we're continuing to really carefully monitor the rise of AI, the way the technology is evolving and making sure we're staying alongside it, and we have some of the best people in the world doing that work."

Gould said the AI Security Institute was "working through challenges coming in the future, testing models when they're coming into the UK", and that there was a need to work with other countries on the issue.

Following his arrival in No 10 in July, Prime Minister Andy Burnham ensured AI Minister Kanishka Narayan would attend cabinet meetings after scrapping the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and splitting its responsibilities among other government departments.

On Saturday, the head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, proposed a plan calling for the regulation of AI.

Amodei's plan included global regulation, industry-wide regulation and independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed.

He also urged the pace of development to be slowed down and the bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk, said they agreed with him.

One human rights concern raised in recent years is that AI can display biases against particular groups if trained on large datasets scraped from the internet which can include racist, sexist and other undesirable material.

AI could also be used to create and spread misinformation.

Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow down