THE Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech in the House of Lords debate on AI last Friday was widely reported and warmly received. It was the centrepiece of the first debate that Archbishop Mullally has led since taking up office, and gained extra traction thanks to its timing, hard on the heels of Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas (News, 29 May). Like the Pope, the Archbishop warned of the dangers of the new technology, arguing that human beings risked being “eroded, devalued, and replaced” by AI. She asked peers to consider three urgent questions: What does it mean to be human? What gives our lives meaning and purpose? What is truth?

There followed a well-informed debate that lasted almost five hours. Speakers included Lord Clement-Jones, a former chair of the Lords’ AI committee; Lord Holmes of Richmond, the director of the new technology advisory service Calcaneum UK and a campaigner for AI regulation; Baroness Kidron, a member of the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI advisory council; and the Bishop of Oxford, who has long taken a lead on AI on behalf of the Lords Spiritual. Many of the speakers thanked the Archbishop for initiating a timely debate, and supported her call for moral leadership in this sphere.

A debate in the House of Lords the day before attracted less attention. It was on the regulation of fertility treatment. In her contribution, the Bishop of Chelmsford delivered an unusually personal speech, in which she described her own experience of miscarriages and of “difficult and intrusive” IVF treatment before going on to have three children. She drew attention to the misleading and “deeply troubling” advertising on social media — which includes unsupported claims about the guaranteed success of IVF — and called for legislators to apply “compassion and great care” to their approach to the necessary reforms.

Archbishop Mullally, speaking as a former nurse, set out some of the ways in which the new technology could be used to the good in healthcare. She said that AI was making childbirth safer by improving ultrasound scans, predictive tools for pre-eclampsia, and foetal heart-rate monitoring. It seems likely that it also plays a part in treatments for infertility. The debate on fertility regulations was a more technical debat, and examined detailed proposals on changes to the law. But the importance of making sound decisions on those reforms was similarly brought to life by Dr Francis-Dehqani’s willingness to bring her own knowledge and understanding to the chamber. Her experience had been painful and personal, and of a kind that is not easy to speak about in public. Her openness will have brought comfort to oters and is to be welcomed. Both speeches showed how the Lords Spiritual can bring a valuable perspective to debates in the Upper House.