An AI summit held at the House of Lords has called for greater use of agentic AI to “rejuvenate Britain’s sluggish economy”.

The summit, chaired by Centropy PR founder Steven George-Hilley, brought together a range of leaders from across technology, legal, financial and cybersecurity sectors for a discussion on the opportunities and challenges AI presents. Also discussed was the impact of AI technologies on job opportunities and what skills challenges face smaller businesses.

Some of the key themes explored were the role of agentic AI in offering SMEs better access to professional sales and customer management systems, in addition to how critical technology could be in unlocking economic growth.

Agentic AI refers to an autonomous system that is powered by large language models (LLMs) that has the capability to independently plan, make decisions and execute multi-step tasks to achieve specific goals. It moves beyond more passive content generation.

There is plenty of debate over these advanced AI systems and their impact on society and global geopolitics. Debating yesterday, the House of Lords shared views that AI could advance UK society and make it a global business leader – if handled carefully.

“Currently, no method exists to contain or control smarter-than-human AI systems,” Lord Clement-Jones said in Parliament yesterday. “Ministers focus on regulating the use of AI tools rather than their development. But this approach fails fundamentally when facing superintelligence.

“Once a system surpasses human intelligence across all domains, we cannot simply regulate how it is used. We will have lost the ability to control it at all. You cannot regulate the use of something more intelligent than the regulator just sector by sector.”

Some argue for the potential of AI, as the technology continues to work to reshape businesses – improving efficiencies and revealing new opportunities for long-term growth and innovation. The UK’s Autumn 2025 Budget strongly advocated for the upscaling of AI data centres so that the country remains a competitive leader in the technology race.

Likewise, the government’s continued interest in AI Growth Zones is promising for businesses, as demand for AI innovation continues to grow.

Dmitry Tikhomirov, VP, technology solutions at EPAM, argued that seeing tangible value from AI, however, will take more than technology alone.

“It requires business and technology leaders working closely together, with the right platforms and skills in place, so adoption is clearly tied to strategic goals,” he said.

As AI systems rely on large amounts of sensitive data, calls continue for technology businesses and policymakers to collaborate to ensure regulatory compliance and data protection to maintain public trust.

“As network traffic increases, due to the increase in demand for AI ready capacity and the continued growth of high-quality content streaming, the infrastructure powering the internet becomes even more critical,” explained LINX CTO Richard Petrie. “Businesses and end-users expect resilient, low-latency internet connectivity, requiring internet exchange points to facilitate fast data transfer and ensure networks maintain uptime.”

He added: “The demand for high-performance digital services is only going to increase, so it’s important that the UK prioritises investment in infrastructure to support the future of emerging technologies and network growth.”

Summit attendees also warned of the looming “skills cliff edge” in Britian’s workforce, as AI continues to reshape the economy and redefine boardroom priorities. This involved examining the economic impact of AI on job opportunities, as well as sounding alarm over the skills challenges facing smaller businesses.

This comes amid a wave of job cuts impacting the wider technology sector, with AI largely being blamed. Amazon, along with other technology and telecoms giants, have confirmed new job cuts worldwide, as executives re-shift their focus to AI development strategies.

On this, Cisco chairman and chief executive Chuck Robbins suggested to the BBC that some companies could lose their values or fail to recognise the risks of AI technology if they aren’t careful.

“[AI] is going to be bigger than the internet,” he said, arguing that “winners will emerge, the applications and use cases will begin to evolve,” but that some companies “won’t make it” – suggesting that some jobs will be changed or “eliminated” by AI, particularly in areas like customer service where businesses will need fewer people.

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