Meet your new Chair, Lord Clement-Jones

You’ve had a fascinating and varied career, can you try to summarise your background?

I’ve had somewhat of a dual career. I started off as a lawyer. At the same time, I became very active within the Liberals, so I was heavily involved in legal issues within politics as well as in the various businesses I worked at, such as London Weekend Television, Grand Met and Kingfisher, the big retailer. In politics, I was Chair of the Liberal Party, then Treasurer of the Liberal Democrats.

I came into the House of Lords in 1999 because I was very close to Paddy Ashdown. I was Chair of his campaign and got him elected as party leader. I joined DLA Piper, who, strangely enough, are our lawyers at ALCS. They do a lot of work around copyright, IP and technology. I’m still a consultant there on AI regulation and policy. I’ve been very lucky because I’ve been able to indulge the things I want to do in politics, but I’ve also had a fulfilling series of jobs.

What would you say was your proudest achievement in politics?

I think it’s persuading people to do things that I passionately believe are important. I’ve had two Private Members’ Bills pass through the House. The first was an advertising bill that banned tobacco advertising in Formula One and various other sports. The second was the Live Music Act, which came in 2012. This made it far easier for venues like pubs to host live music, which has had a considerable impact on young musicians who are just starting out.

What drew you to ALCS and why now?

I think it’s a real watershed moment for ALCS. Not that there’s an existential issue, the income from the Copyright Licensing Agency remains strong, but we do need to make sure that our authors benefit in the age of AI and don’t see their labour further devalued or even replaced by machines.

The most pressing issue at the moment is the training of models using creators’ works without recognition, consent or compensation. A lot of scraping has already taken place, and the train is already halfway out of the station. But we also need to consider the outputs. If your work is imitated by AI, you’re not going to see the full benefits of your work and original creation.

The wonderful thing is that ALCS has very strong relationships, not just in the UK but also internationally. We’ve got an active and passionate membership, as well as great allies across the creative sector, including visual artists, journalists, and screenwriters. Working together across these industries will be hugely important to securing a positive outcome for creators.

It seems like a real fork in the road moment for AI. What do you think is at stake if we, as a society, get this wrong?

Without the right approach, we could see a gradual erosion of copyright. Some Large Language Model developers, like OpenAI, don’t appear to believe in copyright. They’ve been aided and abetted by groups like the Tony Blair Institute who argue there shouldn’t be any copyright protection for training material. They take the extreme position of no protections at all, not even a text and data mining exception with an opt-out.

The Government is doing impact assessments and so on, but most people are pretty clear there’s only one real solution, which is a licensing solution. Therefore, it’s up to us and our partners to propose a simple collective licensing system that makes it easy for model developers to comply.

One idea is to resurrect the Copyright Hub, an idea proposed by Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property in 2012 but never properly utilised. It would ensure all rights metadata are under one roof, making it simple and easy for those seeking this data to obtain it legally. I’d also personally like to see the Government go further and offer tax breaks for using copyright-licensed material, which would provide further incentive to obtain a licence and help ensure that creators are paid for their work.

This issue seems to have struck a chord with creatives, from the Make It Fair campaign to protests outside Meta. Why do you think that is?

I think many are understandably afraid. Authors are in touch with the world, and ever since ChatGPT burst on the scene in November 2022, AI has been everywhere, you can’t open a newspaper without seeing something about it. I speak on these issues and keeping up with developments is incredibly tricky. There’s so much happening all the time, at an incredible pace. This fast-moving world is disorienting. And if it could affect your livelihood, of course you’re going to sit up and take notice.

Authors aren’t alone, many professionals like lawyers, accountants and architects are also deeply worried about AI. But for authors it’s worse. If copyright is eroded, their livelihoods are completely vulnerable. And yet there has been virtually no reassurance from Government.

And are you optimistic that this response we’ve seen from creators will persuade the Government to rethink their approach?

Yes, I am, because of the sheer weight of the push back we have seen. I always thought backbench MPs getting flak from their constituents would be crucial, and that’s what we have seen. Backbench Labour MPs are getting a lot of letters on this, and ministers are too. The government has already rowed back to a large extent and it’s not clear now where they stand.

They initially said their preferred solution was an exception with an opt-out. After more than 13,000 consultation responses, which is absolutely unheard of, they no longer sound like they’re committed to it. They haven’t yet said so publicly in a clear way, and there’s still a long way to go, but they’re definitely on far shakier ground than when the consultation was launched.

Last year, you co-authored a book on this subject, Living with the Algorithm. Can you tell us a bit about some of the ideas you explore in it?

For me, it’s all about mitigating risk. There are more immediate risks like bias and all the other issues we’ve talked about, but we urgently need to regulate AI before artificial general intelligence arrives, because by the time it does, it may be too late to control. We need to make sure model developers have adequate frameworks and guardrails in place. You don’t want to let something loose that may not have humanity’s best interests at heart.

If you give me a vote, I’m on the side of the humans. AI is useful, I use it every week, as many of us now do. But I don’t think we should simply lie back and say, “OK, AI is here and there’s nothing we can do.” We have to keep pushing the Government to come up with better and more robust solutions than those they are currently proposing.

Beyond AI, what should ALCS focus on over the next few years?

We need to get out and about, whether that’s me or Board members or the Executive. Being visible to members is vitally important. I know we have a number of events with members across the country planned for this year, and I’d like to see that continue.

We also need to maintain strong financial controls. Keeping our overheads limited so the vast majority of income goes to members is vital. The irony is that AI and other technologies will be important here too, in helping to streamline some of the increasingly complex processes of collecting and distributing royalties at this scale. We’re already running projects within the organisation that I think will significantly improve our efficiency.

What message would you give to members who are feeling concerned about their rights and livelihoods?

If anyone can sort this out, we can. We represent more than 125,000 writer members, so they are not alone. There are thousands of like-minded people beside them – scriptwriters, novelists, non-fiction writers. Having a dedicated organisation working on their behalf can be a huge advantage. It’s about using our contacts, our knowledge, our influence to secure the best possible terms on their behalf. These coming years will be vitally important, and we will always put the interests of our members first.

What’s a book you’ve read recently that stuck with you?

I’m a dull creature, I try to read a book a week. Recently, I read a book about Meta called Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. It’s essentially a whistle-blowing book about the unethical way that Meta is being run, it’s revealing and horrifying. She had worked there and exposes the very cynical management style from Zuckerberg and Sandberg, and how Meta has dealt with Governments. It really makes you worry about big tech and reinforces my belief that we need to introduce far more robust regulation.

How do you typically unwind away from your busy work schedule?

I always try see the bluebells each Spring. Last weekend, my wife and I went just beyond Greater London to a bluebell wood which was fantastic. We like to travel when we can. When Parliament is in recess, we try to get away for a few days, I just got back from Amsterdam. Before that, we went to Córdoba in the February recess. I try to only focus on whatever books I’ve brought, even though I often fail and still end up dealing with emails! But by and large, that’s how we keep sane.

You can learn more about Lord Clement-Jones and his work here.