The Corridors of Power

Listening to today's Reith lecture on military Artificial Intelligence, I was struck by the thought that a guiding principle on the types of deployment of A.I. in warfare is a moral one. That, just like explosive ordnance or chemical and biological weapons, its use would be limited in scope by mutual agreement based on the perceived morality or immorality of that particular deployment. Thus far, historically, we have managed to comply to a greater or lesser degree with these self-imposed restrictions in these areas of warfare. And therein lies the rub.

The problem with A.I. is not so much that it is inherently wrong or even unreliable in the majority of its uses - particularly in the civilian sphere - rather it is in its deployment and management by Human Intelligence. Humans, and hence human decision-making and morality, are variable by nature, with some of us tending towards a humanitarian and egalitarian outlook and others toward the amoral and psychopathic, with all shades in between. As humans, we rely on consensus across society and the full spectrum of personality to form reliable norms to follow in our actions. Once we step away from mutually-agreed rules and conventions, we're into the realms of a free-for-all: not something you want in the field of war, as ably demonstrated in the two World Wars and countless other conflicts, where either there were no moral boundaries in place, or those present were crossed.

Rules and boundaries have to be applied equitably across society if they are to be fair and meaningful. This applies both at the micro-level of small group interaction - home, family, work and education, for example - and at the macro level of society and its governance. In the former, smaller social groupings tend to be self-managing and self-policed, whilst institutions and companies have their own, arbitrary systems that in themselves, by law, have to comply with the general law of the land as laid down by parliament and enforced by the appointed authorities.

Ultimately, responsibility on the macro level has to reside - by definition - with the Prime Minister and his Government. If the Prime Minister and his Government appear to operate at a level above the laws that apply to the rest of society (Parliamentary Privilege aside), then public confidence in those rules and conventions is undermined and the rule of law and Parliamentary democracy itself threatened. The imposition of arcane laws dating from Henry VIII's time in order to circumvent debate and normal process, would seem to be a good case in point.

But the most worrying matter before us as a society is that we have a Prime Minister and a Government who seek to mislead Parliament and the general public alike. A Prime Minister who stands at the despatch box and lies, as Boris Johnson did this morning at PMQ's can not be trusted with the governance of this country, simple as: no if's and's or but's. The next wave of Covid is setting off apace and if we are to have any success against it, we all need to pull together and follow some simple rules - we've had plenty of practice thus far - and that includes the Prime Minister and his Government. He should do the honourable thing and stand down or call an early election, and if he won't go voluntarily, his own backbenchers should  table a motion of no confidence in their increasingly flaky leader and shove him out.

Addendum: the government has issued an effective non-denial-denial to the question as to whether the man tasked with investigating the party that didn't happen and at which no rules were broken: Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, was actually at the said party-that-didn't-happen. Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?