Reporting and opinion by Mathew Carr
Labour and Tories are definitely a uniparty. Tweedledumb and tweedledee.
In mid 2024 as it faced voters, the UK Labour opposition promised strong regulation of AI.
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- Focus on Frontier AI: Labour pledged to introduce binding regulation on the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models. [1, 2]
- Statutory Safety Codes: The manifesto committed to transitioning voluntary AI safety codes—which companies previously followed on a good-faith basis—into a formal statutory footing to ensure compliance. [1]
- Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO): The party promised to establish a new Regulatory Innovation Office. This body was designed to streamline government functions, clear bureaucratic backlogs, and accelerate approvals for emerging technologies. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Labour then won in the elections.
But it’s quietly reneging on its promises, blinded by the trillions of dollars being raised right now in America and bamboozled by bullying by tech bros. (The Tories under Sunak did this capitulation in 2023)
“This is a manifesto commitment abandoned without explanation,” said Timothy Clement-Jones, current Liberal-Democrat and member of the UK House of Lords, said last week in parliament.
“Binding regulation was promised in 2024 and reaffirmed in the King’s Speech thereafter, but it has gone by 2026,” he said. “The Government say that the existing frameworks suffice. We have the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)‘s conduct requirement for Google but, in other areas, Amazon’s cloud businesses, say, remain unregulated under the Digital Markets Unit after years of investigation. The existing frameworks are not sufficient, and now the competition reform Bill further threatens the independence of the CMA.”
Britain’s regulators are compromised. Climate and nature and inequality are being ignored while big business increases surveillance while they boost prices and profit. It’s unsustainable.
I contend the Labour response was weak by Elizabeth Lloyd, also a member of the House of Lords. Lloyd is one of those deep-state operators (and Blair mates) who remain largely unknown and unaccountable to real people as development budgets get cut, AI takes over our lives and our privacy …every human gets dehumanized …while bankers thrive to the detriment of everyone else:
She said: “In all regulation, there is obviously a balance between consistency and context-specific, appropriate regulation. It is not always the case that consistency is the most appropriate or first-order principle. It may be that, as we have been discussing, there are many issues: a focus on growth, a focus on consumer protection or, for the energy markets in particular, a motivation towards decarbonisation. That is why the regulator, for whichever market we are talking about, is very well placed to look at how their objectives, as set out in their statutory duties, are best applied in the context of this new technology, which provides different functionalities and the opportunity for new innovation.
“That is one reason we have also given these sandboxing powers (see below). We realise that the current set of statutory frameworks was set up assuming that humans would always, for example, be in vehicles or crew vessels. We may need to adapt that in order to take account of the potential new innovations that AI brings, while doing so in a safe and secure way.”
It’s deeply sinister that the UK is being deployed as a playground for AI testing, a sandbox for dangerous AI-tech-bro kids (did anyone ever ask if we the people wanted this?) … as the US does this:
(More to come)
NOTES
What is sandboxing? I hear you ask
Here I enlisted some help from Google Gemini:
How an AI Sandbox Works
- Regulator Supervision: Developers work directly alongside government regulators while building and testing their AI tools.
- Temporary Legal Flexibility: Regulators may waive certain standard compliance rules or provide legal immunity during the testing phase.
- Real-World Testing: Companies can test their AI on real consumers or live data under strict observation to see how the system behaves.
- Phased Exit: Once the testing period ends, the company must fully comply with standard laws before launching the product to the general public. [10, 11, 12, 13, 14]
Why Regulators Use Them
- Fostering Innovation: Small startups with limited budgets can test complex AI models without hiring massive legal teams first.
- Informing Future Laws: Governments get to see exactly how cutting-edge AI operates in real-time, helping them write better, more realistic laws.
- Risk Mitigation: Flaws, biases, or security vulnerabilities in the AI are caught and fixed in a contained environment before they can harm the public. [15, 16, 17]
Real-World Examples
- The EU AI Act: The European Union’s landmark AI law explicitly mandates that member states must establish at least one operational regulatory sandbox to help companies comply with the strict new rules. [18, 19, 20, 21]
- The UK ICO Sandbox: The Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK runs a sandbox specifically to help companies test AI systems that handle complex personal data while ensuring privacy rights are maintained. [22]
One of Clement-Jones interventions last week, in full:
“Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel laureate and godfather of AI, and Yoshua Bengio, the world’s most cited computer scientist, are not alarmists about AI. They are the people who built it, and now, of course, they are our religious leaders. When they call for binding regulation, the Government should listen.
Moreover, the Ada Lovelace Institute has found that 89% of the public support an independent AI regulator with enforcement powers, and that 48% reject lighter rules to keep pace with other countries.
This is a manifesto commitment abandoned without explanation. Binding regulation was promised in 2024 and reaffirmed in the King’s Speech thereafter, but it has gone by 2026. The Government say that the existing frameworks suffice. We have the CMA’s conduct requirement for Google but, in other areas, Amazon’s cloud businesses, say, remain unregulated under the Digital Markets Unit after years of investigation. The existing frameworks are not sufficient, and now the competition reform Bill further threatens the independence of the CMA.
On the regulating for growth Bill, the King’s Speech briefing notes make clear that successful sandbox pilots could lead to law being permanently disapplied. This risks becoming a Henry VIII power grab. We await the Bill text, but the stated intention alone should alarm us.
On copyright, 274 commercial licensing agreements between content providers and AI developers already exist. The myth that legal licensing is impossible has always been false. The Government know this, yet even requiring web crawlers to identify themselves has been sidelined. I ask a Minister one question: the Government have the legislative moment, the mandate and their own manifesto; why not bring forward the cross-sector framework that the House, the public and the experts have all called for? The window is still open but, in my view, not for long without huge risks to our society.
Labour’s response:
In all regulation, there is obviously a balance between consistency and context-specific, appropriate regulation. It is not always the case that consistency is the most appropriate or first-order principle. It may be that, as we have been discussing, there are many issues: a focus on growth, a focus on consumer protection or, for the energy markets in particular, a motivation towards decarbonisation. That is why the regulator, for whichever market we are talking about, is very well placed to look at how their objectives, as set out in their statutory duties, are best applied in the context of this new technology, which provides different functionalities and the opportunity for new innovation.
That is one reason we have also given these sandboxing powers. We realise that the current set of statutory frameworks was set up assuming that humans would always, for example, be in vehicles or crew vessels. We may need to adapt that in order to take account of the potential new innovations that AI brings, while doing so in a safe and secure way.