Tag Archives: science and technology

Caron Lindsay

LDV and AI – a new venture

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 1st April 2025 - 6:55 am

Last week, Conference in Harrogate passed a wide ranging science and technology paper, Victoria Collins MP contrasted our approach with that of Labour and Conservatives.

Liberal Democrats take a different approach, one grounded in our values of internationalism, respect for individual rights, and challenging concentrations of power.

One issue the policy paper looked at was how we should deal with AI.

In accordance with those values, our new policy calls for us to develop a legally binding code of ethics and a “Lovelace Oath” which would be similar to the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors.

Recently an author friend of mine posted on social media that the Meta AI had uploaded four of her novels to train its AI. I observed at the time that this seemed more like stealing than training. Our new policy says that we need to

Strengthen rules around copyright so that creators are treated fairly, with record keeping duties and robust, independent auditing of data and content use for AI developers.

In the run-up to the debate in Harrogate, the LDV team mused amongst ourselves about how we could best utilise AI. Running this site takes a phenomenal amount of effort and we decided to harness the potential of this new technology.

To that end, with help of the boffins at the Lib Dem Coders Group, we developed our own AI tool, Packed, which we trained by feeding it:

  • our entire archive
  • all the comments left on the site
  • all the emails LDV has ever received and the replies from the team
  • all the speeches ever made by parliamentarians
  • all policy papers passed since 1988
  • the constitutions of the Federal, Scottish, English and Welsh parties with all amendments since 1988

Someone observed that this was very close to the knowledge of the Party President, hence how our tool got its name.

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Posted in Op-eds and Site news | Also tagged | 10 Comments
The Voice

Lib Link: Christine Jardine MP on the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

By The Voice | Wed 17th July 2019 - 9:39 am

Lib Dem MP Christine Jardine has written in the Scotsman of her memories on the first moon landing fifty years ago. She writes,

For many of my parents’ generation, it was the ultimate fulfilment of John F Kennedy’s promise to explore the stars and send a man safely to the moon and back by the end of the decade. That generation had lived through World War II as children, endured the fear and tension of the Cuban missile crisis as young parents and the grief of lost opportunities with the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King.

And she recognises that the science developed in the course of space exploration benefits us all:

Those missions ultimately brought CAT scans, water purification, memory foam, equipment used to cut victims out of vehicles, and so many other things.

But even more importantly, Christine argues that the lunar missions gave people

confirmation that humans have an almost infinite capacity for invention and achievement.

She concludes that

Our planet currently faces a challenge that will demand all the passion, experimental science and technological advance we can find to save it from the damage we have done. Fifty years on, Neil Armstrong’s small step onto the moon should give us the belief that if we have the will, we can.

You can read the full article here.

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 20 Comments
The Voice

Horizon Europe – a potential blow for British science and technology?

By The Voice | Mon 23rd July 2018 - 10:22 am

One of the more obscure (at least as far as the general public is concerned) areas of worry resulting from Brexit was British participation in Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Programme for Innovation and Research, which invested significant sums into European research and development programmes, linking researchers across the Union for that purpose. The transitional period appeared to allow British participation until its end, even if Conservative politicians seem determined to put that in doubt.

Now, the European Commission are proposing a new version, Horizon Europe, intended to take the programme forward in …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Matt Dolman

The new standard bearer for science and innovation is… Norman Lamb

By Matt Dolman | Wed 12th July 2017 - 7:42 pm

Congratulations to Norman Lamb, the newly-elected Chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, who overcame competition from fellow Lib Dem Jo Swinson.

In seeking the role, Norman pledged to offer “sound guidance, leadership and authority” to the Committee and ensure that science and technology are “fully considered in Brexit negotiations”, all while emphasising the importance of science for the UK’s future prosperity.

The new role gives Norman a great opportunity to hold this Government to account on a whole range of issues covering science, technology, research and innovation.

This is especially important in today’s political landscape, because Parliament’s Select Committees have become increasingly powerful in the last couple of years – and they can only get stronger with a weakened Government in place.

(To see what I’m talking about, it’s worth reading a recent paper by the Institute for Government that talks about how Select Committees can exert their influence during a hung-parliament). 

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 11 Comments
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