Committee warns new AI Bill is needed to address human rights threats

A new artificial intelligence (AI) Bill is needed “to address the scale and seriousness of threats posed to human rights” by the technology, a cross-party group of MPs and peers has warned.

In a report published on Monday, the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) listed a range of human rights risks which existing regulatory and legal frameworks “are ill-equipped to prevent or respond to”.

The committee said current UK laws which could apply to AI focus on users rather than designers, adding that regulators lack the power to test and evaluate AI systems before they are released.

It also said the technology threatens the right to privacy, as well as the right of an individual to “seek effective remedy against decisions made against them”.

Chairman of the JCHR, Labour MP Alex Sobel, said AI “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,” he said.

“Nowhere in the world, including the UK, has a current legislative and regulatory approach to AI that is fit for purpose.

“New legislation is needed to establish a comprehensive set of protections that deal with the entire AI supply chain and its lifecycle.

“A single AI regulator should be established to set policy, monitor performance and with the teeth to ensure enforcement.”

Mr Sobel said the potential benefits of AI are what makes it “important to ensure that regulation is proportionate and targets the areas of AI development and usage that pose the greatest risks”.

According to the committee, a new AI Bill should take a risk-based approach to addressing AI harms, establish a regulatory regime that mandates more demanding obligations for higher risk AI systems and models, and outright prohibit some uses of AI which are incompatible with human rights.

The JCHR also called for mandatory transparency requirements across all levels of the technology’s lifecycle and the establishment of an independent AI oversight body to monitor AI harms and risks, with strong powers to hold AI providers to account.

“Fundamentally, this is about making sure that you, as an individual, know when AI is being used in the decisions that affect you,” Mr Sobel said.

“We also want to make sure that if something does go wrong then avenues of redress will be available.

“We need these protections in now, it cannot wait until (these) human rights risks become reality.”

The publishing of the report comes days after industry bosses called to slow down the technology’s development.

Anthropic boss Dario Amodei said on Saturday he was concerned that since this summer, AI has been “advancing drastically faster”.

Given the rate of development, Mr Amodei said he was worried that within six to 12 months, AI could be capable of leading a swarm that could take over the entire internet.

The entrepreneur, whose company is behind the AI assistant Claude, shared a three-part plan for building the technology at a “balanced rate”.

His essay, titled We Must Pace the Frontier, was supported by other industry leaders, including Grok boss Elon Musk and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman.

Communities Secretary Angela Rayner said she was pleased AI companies were “talking about the threats as well as the opportunities”, after Mr Musk and Mr Altman backed the call for the industry to slow down development.