Zoe Kleinman
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And it's basically an AI program that does weather predictions. And it performed 20 percent better in tests than the current world leader. And what's really interesting about it, not only was it better and more accurate on day to day forecasts, it was also more accurate on extreme event prediction up to 15 days in advance.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And it was better at predicting the paths of hurricanes, which, as we know, can change. change quite dramatically at very short notice. It was trained on 40 years of weather data, which is an awful lot of data and also contained an awful lot of variables. And it used that data to make its own predictions.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
It does the same as traditional predictions, by the way, which is called ensemble forecasting, where you get a range of them. But it was calculating which one was the most probable and it was very good at it. Traditionally, forecast tools involve basically solving enormous amounts of equations and they use supercomputers to do it because they have to. But it still takes a long time.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And Gencast managed to process its forecasts in eight minutes, which is considerably faster, isn't it? But, of course, the data it was using had been gathered and processed in all of our old school ways that we've been doing for the last 40 plus years.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And so what we don't know is whether going forward, if we were to just rely on AI generated data, because that would become, wouldn't it, our data set, whether it would be as reliable.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
I think it's certainly got the potential to do that. And we're going to see more and more companies focusing on that. I guess one of the ironies is that it might end up being matters related to climate change that could hold it back because we know that AI is a very power hungry tech. It's very energy hungry. It needs banks of computers in massive data centres to run it.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
And a lot of those at the moment require large quantities of water to keep them cool. And so although there is hope that perhaps it will come up with solutions to the climate change problem that we haven't yet thought of, there is an environmental price tag attached that is... currently quite high, and some experts question whether we can actually afford it in terms of the Earth's resources.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
I'm good, thank you. This is such a good topic, I think, because as someone who lives in a particularly cold and wet part of the world, weather prediction is very important to me in terms of where I go, what I wear and what I take with me when I go out.
Global News Podcast
Extreme weather special
I think weather prediction is getting more accurate and it's going to increasingly get easier. And the reason for that, it might not surprise you to hear, is artificial intelligence. I want to tell you about a really interesting tool that we've just had some new research on published last month. It's called GenCast and it was made by Google DeepMind in the UK.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
If you've never seen Roblox... Imagine a brightly coloured animated world. But the difference between this and a conventional video game is that you are the designer. Users can create their own games within this virtual world and share them with others.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
Dave Buzuki co-founded the company in 2004 with the late Eric Castle, and it is now played by millions around the world. But the platform hasn't come without controversy. Around 40% of its users are under the age of 13, some as young as eight.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
From concerns about harmful content in the game's user's design to accusations the platform enables grooming, Roblox has sometimes made headlines for the wrong reasons.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
Last year, Roblox announced new safety features, including stopping under-13s accounts from being able to send direct messages. But this doesn't mean older children can't still message with adults. We set up two accounts, one as a 15-year-old and one as a 27-year-old. We were able to get around Roblox's chat moderation systems.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
We won't describe exactly what we sent, but we were able to ask the teenage account for their social media details outside of Roblox. When I offered my phone to Dave Bazzucchi to show him the evidence, he didn't take the phone and did not look at the screenshots we'd taken.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
What would you say, what's your message to parents who don't want their children on Roblox?
Global News Podcast
Israel checking Hamas claims that new body handed to Red Cross is Shiri Bibas
The BBC understands that a few weeks ago, the government said it wanted to be able to access encrypted data stored by Apple users all around the world in the cloud. And Apple is unable to comply with that because if its customers are using this top level tool, it's called advanced data protection, then Apple itself doesn't have the keys, if you like, to that data. It can't see it.
Global News Podcast
Israel checking Hamas claims that new body handed to Red Cross is Shiri Bibas
And it has always said it will never build in a backdoor to its encryption services because it thinks it's only a matter of time before criminals also find the back door and then its encryption is completely bust. And so neither the Home Office nor Apple would confirm that this notice had been received. And actually, it's against the law for them to be made public.
Global News Podcast
Israel checking Hamas claims that new body handed to Red Cross is Shiri Bibas
But what has happened today is that Apple has said it is blocking access to this advanced security tool to new users in the UK. So if you have an Apple device and you try and sign up, you have to opt into it. You can't. And over the coming weeks, probably, access will be disabled for people who had already signed up to it. Now, that's only in the UK. It's not happening in other countries.
Global News Podcast
Israel checking Hamas claims that new body handed to Red Cross is Shiri Bibas
So other Apple customers around the world will have the option of this extra protection for their data, but UK users will not.
Global News Podcast
Israel checking Hamas claims that new body handed to Red Cross is Shiri Bibas
Well, as you can imagine, it's a very controversial move. Privacy campaigners are saying it's a very sad day and that it's a sort of government-owned goal and that UK citizens are now suffering as a result because it's UK citizens' privacy rights that are being compromised here. But it's also worth saying that there are safety campaigners who say that encryption is the front line of child abuse.
Global News Podcast
Israel checking Hamas claims that new body handed to Red Cross is Shiri Bibas
That's what the children's charity, the NSPCC, has called it in the past. It said because It's so easy to hide this illegal content. It's easy to share it and store it and distribute it in this hidden format. And actually, it doesn't think that encryption has a place in protecting children online.
Global News Podcast
Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine
I am a proud child of immigrant parents. With dreams and dignity and hard-working hands, and I am the first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award, and I know I will not be the last.
Global News Podcast
South Korean court upholds impeachment of president
I've seen so many applications for artificial intelligence. What, for you, are the most exciting?
Global News Podcast
South Korean court upholds impeachment of president
But a lot of those jobs, even the ones you've just mentioned, are done by people, aren't they? I mean, Microsoft talks about taking the drudgery out of work. But for lots of people, the drudgery is the work.
Global News Podcast
South Korean court upholds impeachment of president
Is there anything that you think AI either cannot or should not do?