Lords Communications Committee to hear from tech industry, Digital Catapult and academics on large language models

The sessions will examine the adequacy of Government policy in striking the right balance between maximising the opportunities from LLMs while managing risks.

The evidence sessions will start from 2:30pm on Tuesday 17 October in Committee Room 1 of the House of Lords. Giving evidence to the Committee will be:

2:30pm

• Dame Wendy Hall, Regius Professor of Computer Science at University of Southampton
• Dr Jeremy Silver, Chief Executive Officer at Digital Catapult
• Dame Muffy Calder, Vice-Principal and Head of College of Science and Engineering, and Professor of Formal Methods at Glasgow University

3:30pm

• Michael Birtwistle, Associate Director (Law & Policy) at Ada Lovelace Institute
• Dr Florian Ostmann, Head of AI Governance and Regulatory Innovation at Alan Turing Institute
• Katherine Holden, Head of Data Analytics, AI and Digital ID at techUK

In the first session questions will focus on progress against the Government’s ambition to make the UK an AI superpower; the balance in the AI White Paper between encouraging innovation and managing risks; what level of ambition the UK should aim for with large language models (such as developing sovereign capabilities); and how the UK can achieve competitive advantage in the international race to develop frontier AI capabilities.

The second session will cover in more detail the regulation of large language models; the adequacy of the Government’s regulatory proposals; the case for statutory regulation; emerging challenges facing sector regulators and the adequacy of their powers and remits.