AI regulation: Resistance movement | Law Gazette

MPs and peers on the joint committee on human rights have done the most Westminster thing available to them: they convened, considered, and produced a report. It is called 'Human Rights and the Regulation of AI', and its central demand is that somebody please write a new AI bill. That is the legislative equivalent of responding to a kitchen fire by commissioning a beautifully typeset pamphlet about fire. The committee notes, with the gravity of people who have just noticed, that technology is developing at a pace that means governments and human rights protections risk being left behind.

Then there is chair Alex Sobel MP, who has said the quiet part loud enough for the whole planet to hear: no country in the world has a legislative and regulatory approach to AI that is fit for purpose. In Whitehall, 'fit for purpose' is the highest compliment the language contains, so the finding here is that nowhere on Earth clears the bar. You may read that as refreshing honesty — the first accurate sentence in the entire genre. You may also read it as the most convenient alibi ever printed: if nobody has managed it, nobody can be blamed for not managing it, and the safest career move is another report.

The threats themselves are granted 'scale' and 'seriousness', which is committee-speak for harm that is not hypothetical while the remedy very much is. As we noted when Washington and Beijing made their heartwarming show of cooperating on global AI governance, international consensus is largely choreography; a joint human rights committee in London now confirms the set is empty. The word doing the heavy lifting is 'risk' — protections risk being left behind, as though there were a live possibility they might not be. Meanwhile the technology is not waiting for the bill, the consultation or the second reading, and the committee has identified the only growth industry in the sector: announcing, punctually, every year, that time is running out.