International Relations and Defence Committee

16 September 2026

Committee House of Lords

00:01 - 02:37
Speaker 3
Good morning and welcome to the International Relations and Defence Committee of the House of Lords.  Today we have been looking at the multilateral system and specifically now we are looking at how it relates to artificial intelligence.  I've received apologies from Lord Houghton and Lord Darroch.  Our special advisor Andrew Erhardt is in Boston today and is in the middle of the night clearly joining us by Zoom.  Thank you very much for making yourselves available today for our interrogation and addressing this subject of how the multilateral institutions might deal with the problems and difficulties of AI. 

So I remind you and others that this session is being streamed live on Parliament TV.  A transcript will be taken and you will be able to correct any minor changes in that as well.  You'll get a copy of the transcript.  And I remind members that if they have relevant interests they should declare them and I declare that I am a senior counselor with the Washington-based Cohen Group right at the very beginning.  So if I could ask the first question. 

As you know the committee is looking at the whole multilateral system as it applies to the United Kingdom and hopefully will make recommendations in relation to the UK's policy in relation to the various multilateral institutions that exist in the world today.  So that is why we are looking at the whole question of artificial intelligence in the context of the global picture and the way in which multilateral institutions have already or may in the future look at these things.  So what are the key governance issues related to AI that multilateral engagement really needs to address?  So if I could ask Mr. Daws if he would like to answer the question first. 
02:37 - 03:11
Speaker 1
Certainly and it's a real pleasure and privilege to be here.  There's such a broad list of governance challenges.  I'll pick out just a few of them.  I think the first would be safety, agreeing common methods for evaluating advanced AI, sharing risk information and responding to serious incidents.  And we've seen in the news just the last few days the importance of agentic AI and frontier capabilities in the cyber domain. 

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