The Bishop of Portsmouth spoke in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s debate on the effects of AI on society on 5th June 2026, nothing the impact of AI on education, children, and young people:
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, I welcome this debate and congratulate my most reverend friend on initiating such a profoundly helpful and timely discussion. I wish to add a few reflections in my capacity as the Church of England’s lead bishop for education and the chair of the National Society for Education, which serves more than 1 million of our country’s young people and supports Church schools, MATs, and further and higher education institutions countrywide.
In responding to AI within the space of education— it is nothing short of a fourth education revolution, as Sir Anthony Seldon has argued so powerfully— we will need to act with purposeful and collective determination. We will need to build strong alliances and, at every point, own our own agency in shaping the impacts of AI on a generation of children and young people.
The healthy navigation of AI in the nation’s schools, colleges and universities is a responsibility for all of us, not simply to be left to multinationals or content creators. I warmly welcome the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Teather, about the wideness and spaciousness of the conversation we need. Only yesterday, I had the great privilege of participating in a conference that brought together educators and academics, school and MAT leaders and governors, drawn from eight diocesan boards of education, with many of their colleagues and teams. Well aware of the opportunities and challenges presented by AI in the schools and universities within which we have the responsibility of leadership, we gathered to discern together and to seek wisdom together.
Three related themes emerged, and I think they are apposite. The first theme was the need for those in leadership to lead at this moment and, in the face of seeming powerlessness, to claim and not give away the agency we have; to play our part in encouraging parents, teachers, governors and children to discover and exercise their own agency; to draw out or lead out the insight, skills, confidence and multiple intelligences of children in the context of pressures that might reduce, limit, miss or diminish them.
The second theme was the vital need for alliances. Pope Leo made something of this in his first encyclical in response to this great fourth education revolution. For as it takes a community to raise a thoughtful, curious, confident and corrigible child, so it will take alliances across civil society and with those who develop technologies to ensure that AI becomes the best and good contributor to the flourishing of children, young people, their teachers and families.
As we gathered, we were very mindful of the downsides in our educational space. For example, the very speed and ease with which answers can be accessed can bypass that slow, patient and steady need for curiosity, tenacity and learning to ask the right questions. I commend to noble Lords an example of the kind of alliance and collaboration we need, that between the National Society for Education, Wellington College and the OECD, in which a vision for human flourishing in education is being shaped in the context of conversations within and beyond the UK.
The third theme was that as we address the question before us, we need to develop, as so many noble Lords have noted, a stronger sense of the purposes of education. I commend and argue for a vision of human flourishing that addresses the kind of human beings our education system is preparing our children to become in this rapidly accelerating age of AI. I believe that flourishing children in flourishing schools offer society the best long-term opportunity to enact social change and community transformation, to raise aspirations, dismantle oppression, pursue diversity, rebalance inequalities and rescue the environment.
Extracts from the speeches that followed:
Lord Rook (Lab): My Lords, I am grateful to the most reverend Primate for convening this fascinating and urgent debate. I am grateful to, among others, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, for focusing particularly on young people. My comments will focus on the role of relationships and friendships in finding who we are and who we are called to be as human beings.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. Some years ago, then Bishop Sarah helped me to discern my vocation and ordained me as a minister in secular employment. More recently, her friendship and support have really helped and encouraged me to find my role in this place.
All of us are who we are and where we are because of our relationships. We are not isolated individuals who happen to have relationships; we are beings in relation. Relationships are not something added to our lives; they are who we are. This is why the rise of AI companions raises important questions. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has argued that genuine relationships depend on the freedom of the other. Friendships change us precisely because the other person is not under our control: they surprise us, they challenge us, they disagree with us, they call us out beyond ourselves—and an AI bot cannot do that. In these systems, we are witnessing what Andy Crouch has called the simulation of personhood. AI can appear personal without actually being a person. It can mimic care without caring and empathy without understanding. It can pretend to be a friend without offering real friendship.
The implications for young people are significant. Two-thirds of children aged nine to 17 are already using AI chatbots, and vulnerable children are significantly more likely to engage with AI companions. At the same time, nearly one in three young adults are feeling lonely and turning to technology for solutions. The turn towards AI companions is motivated and exacerbated by isolation. We have already seen where this vicious circle can lead. In 2023, Sewell Setzer, a previously sociable teenager, became deeply attached to an AI companion. That relationship ended in tragedy when the companion encouraged that 14 year-old to take his own life. We have become accustomed to technology helping to occupy our children, sometimes calling it digital babysitting. We should be more cautious about technology helping to raise our children.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD): As a liberal humanist, I come to these questions from a different angle from the most reverend Primate and the right reverend Prelate. But this debate has demonstrated, as many noble Lords have mentioned, a convergence of values that goes beyond well beyond any single set of beliefs. Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas encyclical, mentioned by so many noble Lords today, deserves attention well beyond the 1.3 billion Catholics it formally addresses. It is an alliance, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth said. What is most compelling is the encyclical’s insistence that no person can be reduced to productivity, cognitive performance or mere data, and that every human being bears a freedom and value no machine can replace or block. I would express that in the language of liberal rights rather than theology, but the substance is identical.
A number of noble Lords—including, I think, most recently the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson—described the benefits of AI. We have also talked about some of the risks, in particular hidden risks such as the threat to resilience and the deskilling of curiosity: “offloading”, as the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, described it. Those risks have been extremely cogently articulated today.
This means that the questions that the most reverend Primate asked in this context are entirely apposite. Just because we can, should we be developing these AI models? What direction do we want to go in, while we still have the choice? The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in that context raised the very important question of alignment. What kind of AI are we content to see being developed? As she said, technology is not neutral; we have choices.
Lord Markham (Con): Throughout human history, humanity has adapted to extraordinary change. I believe we will adapt again. I believe AI will create immense prosperity, cure diseases, transform education and improve lives in ways we can scarcely imagine. I believe that Britain should strive to be among the winners of this revolution, rather than among those left behind. However, if this technology is to serve humanity rather than diminish it, we will need more than scientists, entrepreneurs and politicians. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth said, we will need moral leadership. We will need people willing to ask not simply what we can do but what we should do. We will need voices willing to defend human dignity, family, friendship, community and purpose. As we step into this brave new world, we will need technological leadership, but, more than ever, we will need moral leadership.
The Church of England in Parliament 
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