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Sir Keir Starmer is expected to introduce a long-awaited Artificial Intelligence Bill this week as he seeks to deliver on a Labour manifesto pledge to create binding rules to govern the development of the most advanced machine learning models.
The AI bill, one of 35 bills currently scheduled to be included in the king’s speech on Wednesday, will seek to strengthen legal safeguards around the most advanced AI technologies, according to people briefed on the plans.
The legislation is expected to focus on producing large language models, the general-purpose technology that underpins AI products such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Other laws to be set out in the speech will allow Starmer’s new government to abolish hereditary peers from the House of Lords, allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to publish independent forecasts of major budget events and implement worker protection reforms, including a crackdown on zero-hours contracts and “fire and rehire” practices.
The Labour administration will also revive the previous Conservative government’s ambition to create a register of missing school children, as well as a cybersecurity bill to protect critical infrastructure from malicious foreign actors.
Starmer’s legislative proposals will be closely watched for signs of the scale of his ambition in the first months of his premiership – a period that many believe will represent the height of his power.
His AI bill marks a break from the strategy employed by former prime minister Rishi Sunak, who was reluctant to push for legal interventions in the development and deployment of AI models for fear that strict regulation would stifle the industry’s growth.
Sunak has instead proposed voluntary agreements between the government and businesses, ruling out any short-term legislation.
The EU has taken a tougher approach. In March, the European Parliament approved some of the first toughest rules to regulate the technology through its 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 highlighted the importance of Sunak’s AI Security Summit, held at Bletchley Park last year, but said “we need to build on that quickly”, adding that the government needs to learn a “whole new language” to fully exploit the technology’s potential.
The Labour Party’s manifesto sets out plans to “ensure the safe development and use of AI models by introducing binding regulation for the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models”.
Peter Kyle, the new Secretary of State for Technology and Science, said earlier this year that he hoped to introduce a “statutory code” that would require companies to publish “all their testing data” and “tell us what they are testing”.
Regulators, including the UK’s competition authority, are increasingly concerned about the potential dangers of AI technologies. These dangers range from the possibility that algorithms could embed biases that affect marginalised demographics, to the potential use of general-purpose models to create harmful content.
Speaking about the King’s Speech on Sunday, Commons Leader Lucy Powell told the BBC that the 35 bills were “not just a list of things we’d like to do, they’re fully researched and developed bills that we know we can get through this session of Parliament”.
This week, Labour will also introduce legislation to establish the centrepiece of its green energy plans: GB Energy, a new public energy investor that will be based in Scotland and take stakes in renewable and nuclear energy projects.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband pledged on Sunday to take “immediate action” to boost the role of solar power, as part of a series of measures aimed at meeting the government’s target of cutting carbon emissions from electricity generation to net zero by 2030.
“We will encourage builders and homeowners, in every way possible, to deliver this win-win technology to millions of addresses across the UK so that people can generate their own electricity, reduce their bills and at the same time help tackle climate change,” Miliband said.
On Friday, it approved three major solar projects in England that had been blocked by Sunak’s government, saying they would power the equivalent of 400,000 homes a year. One of those projects, Sunnica, would create 1,500 construction jobs, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said.
