Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, the seemingly superhuman achievements of AI are enabled by a greater processing speed and memory storage of computers compared to flesh and blood brains. AI can cope better than humans with data-rich, fast-changing networks—traffic flow, electric grids, image analysis, et cetera. China could have a planned economy of the kind that Mao could have only dreamed of. However, the...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Cambridge University. Along with other speakers, I welcome the introduction of the LLE and hope that what is now proposed is just the first step towards creating an expanded and more flexible support system, spanning further and higher education. My comments will focus first on level 6 courses—traditional bachelor’s degrees. I will then...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, I add my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, for his benign and effective chairmanship of this special inquiry, which illuminated crucial issues that are still underdiscussed. Indeed, we are still in denial about a whole raft of newly emergent mega-threats, which will be the focus of my remarks. We are increasingly reliant on vulnerable globe-spanning networks for food supply...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for instigating this debate and for his fine opening speech, and above all for his lifelong campaign to promote a fairer society. We should welcome some savings—for instance, tightening of terms of procurement contracts and cutting the number of consultants—but most cuts are far too drastic to be absorbed by efficiency savings. Indeed,...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, we should thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for instigating this debate. I was privileged to be one of the Times Commissioners, and the report’s thoroughness and readability are owed especially to two people: Rachel Sylvester and Sir Anthony Seldon. The most moving and disturbing section for me was the evidence of the tragic backwardness of deprived five year-olds entering...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, there is surely general agreement of the worthwhileness of ARIA’s goals. What is less clear is whether the small, stand-alone administrative construct conceived in the Bill is optimal, or indeed necessary, for achieving these goals, especially given the multi-layered and complex structure for science governance that already exists. Not long ago, we had the major reorganisation of...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, very few people consider maximal extension of life, irrespective of its quality, to be a moral imperative. We can choose not to be resuscitated if we have a heart attack; we can decline invasive cancer treatment. Viewed in this context, the Bill is incremental and circumscribed. It allows those of sound mind with a terminal prognosis to end their lives in a time and place of their...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, to the disadvantaged is an inspiration to us all and we should surely welcome the Bill. Urgent and immediate matters understandably preoccupy our leaders; in contrast, some of the most threatening issues are global and long-term. In optimising people’s welfare, we should care about the prospect of a baby whose life will extend into the...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, a key message of the UK FIRES report is that it is tough to meet even our declared 2050 targets without a drastic speed-up in the deployment of novel technologies. I argue that there is a more compelling motivation for prioritising and expanding such efforts: even if we meet our targets, it makes only about 1% difference to global CO2 emissions. Far more crucial for the world is...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, my remarks will focus on the need for greater flexibility in higher education. We should abandon the view that a standard three-year residential degree is the minimum worthwhile goal. Students who realise that the course they embarked on is not right for them or who have personal hardship should be enabled to leave early with dignity, with a certificate to mark what they have...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, the Government’s rhetoric indicates a welcome willingness to contemplate radical initiatives in research and education. That is especially crucial if we are to confront the energy challenge. The Climate Change Act’s 2050 target is indeed daunting. We need not just to decarbonise existing levels of electricity production, but to treble production, to energise electrically powered...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for the chance to address what is surely an ethical imperative: responsible stewardship of the entire natural world. Biodiversity is essential for our health, well-being and prosperity. Energy from the sun flows through intricately structured ecosystems to give us our food, other natural resources, forests and other habitats....
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, the Americans committed 4% of the federal Budget to Apollo. Had that level of spend been sustained, there would have been footprints on Mars by now. But once that race against the Russians was won, there was no imperative to sustain that massive effort, so Apollo remains, half a century later, the high point of manned spaceflight. However, space activity has burgeoned. We depend...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, we should indeed be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for inspiring this debate. Young people in this country face the future with foreboding as well as hope. They confront radical disruption to the nature of work, unequal opportunities and social fragmentation. However, my remarks will focus on concerns that are more global: environmental degradation, unchecked climate change...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, climate science is intricate, but despite the uncertainties it offers two messages that most agree on. First, even within the next decade or two, regional disruptions to weather patterns and more extreme weather will aggravate pressures on food and water and enhance migration pressure. Secondly, under a global “business as usual” scenario we cannot rule out, later in the...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, I add my appreciation of this timely and balanced report and welcome the chance to debate it here today. Machine learning, enabled by the ever-increasing number-crunching power of computers, is a potentially stupendous break- through. It allows machines to gain expertise, not just in game playing but in recognising faces, translating between languages, managing networks, and so...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, I contribute to this debate with diffidence. Others speak with far greater authority and have had direct experience of and responsibility for dealing with terrorist incidents, or, more generally, with infrastructure failures that could cause disruption and social breakdown. I pay tribute to the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, to these issues. He has emphasised...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, the topic of this debate is in the context of Oxbridge, but we should surely see the issue as a broader one. A good degree has become a prerequisite for many jobs for which it was not needed in the past. In consequence, a degree is crucial for social mobility. Eighteen year-olds who have been unlucky or ill advised in their schooling or come from deprived backgrounds do not have a...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, we should welcome these attempts to clarify the wording of the Bill, but I suspect that it is a more or less hopeless task to agree on it. I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, did not want to change, “does not need to be monitored”, because that is a subjective question. For example, if you are in a taxi, are you happy if no driver is there? If you are flying in a...
Lord Rees of Ludlow: My Lords, we should indeed be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for his long-standing commitment to this area. It is a privilege to participate in this debate. I declare an interest as a former trustee of the British Museum and a current member of the Science Museum’s fundraising trust. I am based at Cambridge University, which is fortunate to have several outstanding museums; these...
