Tuesday, July 25, 2023
Artificial Intelligence in the House of Lords?
The Guardian reports on the view of crossbench peer, Richard Denison, that the House of Lords could be replaced by bots with “deeper knowledge, higher productivity and lower running costs”.
The paper says that Lord Denison hypothesised that AI services may soon be able to deliver his speeches in his own style and voice, “with no hesitation, repetition or deviation”:
He quoted the example to raise the wider issue of AI’s potential effect on the UK jobs market.
In May, IBM put the brakes on nearly 7,800 jobs that could be replaced by AI and automation over time, shortly before BT announced it would cut up to 55,000 jobs by 2030, about 10,000 of which were predicted to be replaced by AI.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the jobs most likely to be affected by the impending “AI revolution” were in “highly skilled” professions such as law, medicine and finance.
“Is it an exciting or alarming prospect that your lordships might one day be replaced by peer bots with deeper knowledge, higher productivity and lower running costs?” the independent crossbencher asked. “Yet this is the prospect for perhaps as many as 5 million workers in the UK over the next 10 years.
“I was briefly tempted to outsource my AI speech to a chatbot and to see if anybody noticed. I did in fact test out two large language models. In seconds, both delivered 500-word speeches which were credible, if somewhat generic.”
The crossbench peer Charles Colville, a freelance television producer, said that he had asked the AI programme ChatGPT to write a speech for him on the threat that AI poses to journalism.
He said one of the paragraphs stated: “AI, in its tireless efficiency, threatens to overshadow human journalism. News articles can be automated and editorials composed without a single thought, a single beating heart behind the words.
“My fear is, we will descend into a landscape where news is stripped of the very human elements that make it relatable, understandable and ultimately impactful.”
He added: “The new AI technology is further exacerbating this financial threat to the whole industry; AI-generating companies able to scrape for free the information from news websites, which are already facing increasing costs of creating original journalistic content.”
Other peers noted additional potential threats, spanning bias and discrimination, privacy and security issues, and advised that humanity move forward with caution.
If a bot really could replace peers then surely we have to ask why we are allowing the Lords to continue in its present form.
The paper says that Lord Denison hypothesised that AI services may soon be able to deliver his speeches in his own style and voice, “with no hesitation, repetition or deviation”:
He quoted the example to raise the wider issue of AI’s potential effect on the UK jobs market.
In May, IBM put the brakes on nearly 7,800 jobs that could be replaced by AI and automation over time, shortly before BT announced it would cut up to 55,000 jobs by 2030, about 10,000 of which were predicted to be replaced by AI.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the jobs most likely to be affected by the impending “AI revolution” were in “highly skilled” professions such as law, medicine and finance.
“Is it an exciting or alarming prospect that your lordships might one day be replaced by peer bots with deeper knowledge, higher productivity and lower running costs?” the independent crossbencher asked. “Yet this is the prospect for perhaps as many as 5 million workers in the UK over the next 10 years.
“I was briefly tempted to outsource my AI speech to a chatbot and to see if anybody noticed. I did in fact test out two large language models. In seconds, both delivered 500-word speeches which were credible, if somewhat generic.”
The crossbench peer Charles Colville, a freelance television producer, said that he had asked the AI programme ChatGPT to write a speech for him on the threat that AI poses to journalism.
He said one of the paragraphs stated: “AI, in its tireless efficiency, threatens to overshadow human journalism. News articles can be automated and editorials composed without a single thought, a single beating heart behind the words.
“My fear is, we will descend into a landscape where news is stripped of the very human elements that make it relatable, understandable and ultimately impactful.”
He added: “The new AI technology is further exacerbating this financial threat to the whole industry; AI-generating companies able to scrape for free the information from news websites, which are already facing increasing costs of creating original journalistic content.”
Other peers noted additional potential threats, spanning bias and discrimination, privacy and security issues, and advised that humanity move forward with caution.
If a bot really could replace peers then surely we have to ask why we are allowing the Lords to continue in its present form.
In reality, AI can produce speeches gleaned from the information inputted into the internet, but it cannot exercise judgement in the same way as a human being, it cannot learn and develop in the same way as we can, nor would it make a stand on moral and ethical grounds as many peers do. In fact, on that basis, I wonder why the government hasn't made the change already.
The real question though is will the bots be elected? If they were then it would be an advance on what we have at present.
The real question though is will the bots be elected? If they were then it would be an advance on what we have at present.
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One thought comes to mind on this.Lord Frost,he of Brexit paradise,states that climate change rise in temperature will be beneficial and that many die of cold than heat.Information states that the naked body begins to deteriorate at -5C and at 50C the same.If climate change is not stopped more people will fry than freeze ACCURATE facts from a bot (or an intune person) will be more relevant than a defunct Brexiter
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