House of Lords begins large language model inquiry

The committee’s investigation, which begins with an evidence session on the afternoon Tuesday 12^th September, will examine what will need to happen in the next one to three years to help the UK respond to the opportunities and risks the technology presents.

The investigation follows recent advances in the capability of large language models in the past year, notably the development of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 and GPT-4 models.

The first session will examine how large language models differ from other forms of artificial intelligence and the likely evolution of the technology over the next three years, as well as the role and structure of the government’s Foundation Model Taskforce.

Other issues to cover include the differences between open and closed source language models and the implications of their development.

The first four speakers at the committee hearings are: Ian Hogarth, chair at the Foundation Model Taskforce; Jean Innes, incoming chief executive officer at The Alan Turing Institute; Professor Neil Lawrence, DeepMind professor of machine learning at the University of Cambridge; and Ben Brooks, head of public policy at Stability AI.