Select Committee Calls for Bill 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) which existing laws are ill-equipped to cover. The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) published a report advocating for a new bill to "address the scale and seriousness" of these threats.
"Nowhere in the world, including the UK, has a current legislative and regulatory approach to AI that is fit for purpose," said Alex Sobel MP, the committee’s chair.
On Saturday, Dario Amodei, head of the US AI company Anthropic, proposed a plan encompassing global regulation, industry-wide regulation, and independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed. Amodei called for a slowdown in AI development, a position supported by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
Human Rights Concerns
One human rights concern raised is that AI can display biases against specific 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.
JCHR Recommendations
In its 100-page report, the JCHR highlights that AI has been responsible for numerous abuses of human rights, including the creation of sexualised images of women and girls and the scanning of people’s faces without their consent.
The JCHR advocates the establishment of a "single, independent AI oversight body" on a statutory basis. It argues that the current legal framework for AI is "fragmented and difficult to navigate," leaving gaps in protection.
"The AI Bill should establish a regulatory regime that classifies different risk levels and mandate more demanding obligations for higher risk AI systems and models," the report states.
The JCHR suggests that obligations should be placed on all stages of the AI lifecycle and that some uses of AI should be prohibited outright due to their incompatibility with human rights.
Conclusion
"AI is heralded as an unprecedented era of technological development with the potential to transform our lives for better or for worse," said Sobel.
"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, drawn from both Houses of Parliament, include MPs and peers from the Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat parties.
BBC News is seeking comment from the government on the call for the AI bill.
