Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:14 am on 9 November 2023.
Kevin Brennan
Shadow Minister (Victims and Sentencing)
11:14,
9 November 2023
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement. On her reference to poetry, may I remind her that AI creates nothing? It generates a facsimile of text, but it does not create poetry. On the 400th anniversary of the first folio, that can only be done by this quintessence of dust that we are.
On that point, why were the creative industries excluded from the AI summit, when the Secretary of State knows how bitterly disappointed they were not to be included and how profoundly existential this whole issue is for the creative industries—one of the most successful and fastest growing sectors of our economy? Instead, they have been offered the sop of a side roundtable in the future, which the platforms are not even attending. Will the Secretary of State think again about the importance of including our excellent creative industries in every discussion that the Government have about the future of artificial intelligence?
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.