I am grateful to the noble Lord. In many ways, I am reminded of the article I read in the New York Times this weekend and the interview with Geoffrey Hinton, the now former chief scientist at Google. He said that as companies improve their AI systems, they become increasingly dangerous. He said of AI technology:
“Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now. Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary”.
Yes, the huge success of the iPhone, of mobile phones and all of us, as parents, handing our more redundant iPhones on to our children, has meant that children have huge access. We have heard the stats in Committee around the numbers who are still in primary school and on social media, despite the terms and conditions of those platforms. That is precisely why we are here, trying to get things designed to be safe as far as is possible from the off, but recognising that it is dynamic and that we therefore need a regulator to keep an eye on the dynamic nature of these algorithms as they evolve, ensuring that they are safe by design as they are being engineered.
My noble friend Lord Stevenson has tabled Amendment 27, which looks at targeted advertising, especially that which requires data collection and profiling of children. In that, he has been grateful to Global Action Plan for its advice. While advertising is broadly out of scope of the Bill, apart from in respect of fraud, it is significant for the Minister to reflect on the user experience for children. Whether it is paid or organic content, it is pertinent in terms of their safety as children and something we should all be mindful of. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, that as I understand it, the age-appropriate design code does a fair amount in respect of the data privacy of children, but this is
much more about preventing children encountering the advertising in the first place, aside from the data protections that apply in the age-appropriate design code. But the authority is about to correct me.