A robot that can detect breast cancer?

A new robot to detect breast cancer

Imagine going to the supermarket to do your weekly shop and also getting a breast examination at the same time. The screening would be performed not by a human but a robot, designed by engineers at the University of Bristol and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK. It's called "IRIS" and it looks like a mechanical claw which can apply very specific forces and detect lumps using sensor technology deeper in the breast tissue than ever before - meaning that it could detect cancer at an earlier stage. Dr. Antonia Tzemenaki and lead researcher George Jenkinson are on the Somewhere on Earth podcast to explain how it all works.

Could AI be reducing internet freedom?

Internet freedom is declining globally because certain governments are using developments in AI to restrict content their citizens can access online. According to a report by Freedom House - an American organisation that describes itself as supporting and defending democracy around the world - some governments are using AI to increase online censorship and also fabricating images, audio and text to distribute misinformation. Journalist Emma Woollacott explains which countries are most impacted.

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell and the studio expert is Ghislaine Boddington.

More on this week's stories:

• New robot could help diagnose breast cancer early
• The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence
• Freedom On The Net Report Highlights Dangers Of AI

Chapters

• 1:36 A robot that can detect breast cancer?
• 18:39 Internet freedom reducing becuase of AI

Transcript

00:00:00 Gareth Mitchell 

Hello, I'm Gareth. Welcome to somewhere on Earth. 

00:00:10 Gareth Mitchell 

And we're here to give. 

00:00:11 Gareth Mitchell 

You your regular. 

00:00:12 Gareth Mitchell 

Dose of technology from around the world. I'm not alone. We have the excellent Ghislaine Boddington here today. Hello, Ghislaine. How are you? 

00:00:19 Ghislaine Boddington 

Hello Gareth. Really, really happy to be here with you, yes. 

00:00:22 Gareth Mitchell 

Marvellous settling into this new groove well. 

00:00:25 Ghislaine Boddington 

Absolutely. And we can keep our chatting going and cross over on all our new ideas and the things that are. 

00:00:26 George Jenkinson 

That's great. 

00:00:31 Ghislaine Boddington 

Shocking us and the things that are positive. 

00:00:33 Gareth Mitchell 

We sure can. And were you rocking with my very casual? Hey, it's Gareth and you know just the first name only. It's very podcast. He just to give your first name, isn't it? Just I'm so used to saying it's Gareth Mitchell but yeah man, I'm happy to do first names. Makes it more friendly. It's a podcast. So it is well. Should we just crack on? 

00:00:41 Ghislaine Boddington 

Oh, is that's true. 

00:00:48 Ghislaine Boddington 

Here we are. 

00:00:51 Ghislaine Boddington 

With it, then yes we should. 

00:00:53 Ghislaine Boddington 

Cause we've got such a lot to get through. 

00:00:55 Gareth Mitchell 

There's quite a bit to get through. Let's do it. 

00:01:06 Gareth Mitchell 

And coming up on this edition, bringing breast examinations to more women and indeed men, it can be a problem for men as well. Breast cancer doing that more conveniently thanks to some novel robotics. We'll tell you about that. And we're checking out a new report on Internet freedoms and how AI is compromising. 

00:01:27 Gareth Mitchell 

Those freedoms, it's all right here on these somewhere on Earth podcast. 

00:01:37 Gareth Mitchell 

First up, then you're off to the pharmacy and you're going to get some headache pills maybe, or pick up that prescription. Ohh, and by the way, don't forget the breast examination. Yes, a new device is promising to revolutionise how women monitor their breast health by bringing automated clinical breast examinations. 

00:01:55 Gareth Mitchell 

To clinics and pharmacies without women always having to snap off to the hospital or the local doctor's clinic. 

00:02:01 Gareth Mitchell 

So Ghislaine just to get a start on this, we're going to hear about the tech in a moment, but just tell us what goes on in one of these breast examinations, IE the non robotic kind. 

00:02:10 Ghislaine Boddington 

There are lots of technologies already used like mammography, ultrasound, MRI and also the the down to Earth clinical breast examination, which is a hands on manipulation. 

00:02:20 Ghislaine Boddington 

By the health practitioner. 

00:02:21 Ghislaine Boddington 

But for me, I actually at the moment my breast examinations in London at least I go to a hospital and into a room which has a big machine with flat steel plates at chest level and you're kind of pushed in to stand there and hold in the right position into this machine and the nurse comes and she squeezes one breast in between. 

00:02:44 Ghislaine Boddington 

And tightens up the plates like a clamp, tighter and tighter and tighter. 

00:02:49 Ghislaine Boddington 

And getting pressure coming from all sides of the breast, flattening the breast in several planes. Yeah. And it is quite painful, to be honest. And it's quite undignified and awkward. Yeah, but of course, then she leaves the room and they do the clicks and the whatever it is that's happening in that machine, because it's different, lots of different machines. 

00:03:09 Ghislaine Boddington 

And that is a first level examination. Yeah. And at that first level, other than the nurse fitting you into this very non ergonomic thing. 

00:03:20 Ghislaine Boddington 

It's a complete opposite of the shape of a. 

00:03:21 Gareth Mitchell 

It sounds like something that's. 

00:03:22 Ghislaine Boddington 

Breast I've always wondered about. 

00:03:23 Gareth Mitchell 

Quite mediaeval, really. 

00:03:24 Ghislaine Boddington 

This. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is like a modern mediaeval clamping thing. But there's no human touch other than the nurse putting you into the right position. Yeah, it's not like you are manipulated or pushed around. And I have wondered why it was not more ergonomic. 

00:03:40 Ghislaine Boddington 

Mick, I shaked the breast, but I think I interview today does clarify some of that actually. 

00:03:46 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, alright, that'll be interesting. In fact, one of the points our guests make on the interview is how this procedure hasn't been particularly really updated for quite some time. It seems like for a very long time. So it might be due for a little bit of a rethink. 

00:03:57 Ghislaine Boddington 

No, no. 

00:04:03 Gareth Mitchell 

And so we'll hear about the the pros and maybe the cons of this automated approach. We're going to get your views as we go along, Ghislaine as well. Let's say what we're talking about here is a robotic manipulator. It's been designed by a team at the University of Bristol in the UK, and the researchers are based at the Bristol robotics, the Boratory. 

0:04:23 Gareth Mitchell 

So the people at Bristol, they're a mix of post grads and undergrads. So we're excited about this story on many levels, not least of which it's great to have early career researchers who are getting into the spotlight here. So supervising them is lecturer Dr Antonia Tzemanaki. 

00:04:39 Gareth Mitchell 

And we're going to hear from her, but we're actually going to start with the lead author. He's one of these early career researchers and he's George Jenkinson. 

00:04:50 George Jenkinson 

So what we've created is kind of a two-part system. One is this soft variable stiffness tactile pressure sensor. So this is the sensor that's designed to interact comfortably and safely, you know physically with people because it's soft and. 

00:05:08 George Jenkinson 

Of well, of course, safe materials and the other part is a platform. So we we usually refer to things like this as a, as a manipulator. But it's basically a robotic platform that's capable of holding the one that we've actually made is capable of holding 5 sensors, and we've shown that it can manipulate or control the centres in such a way that it can cover. 

00:05:29 George Jenkinson 

A realistic breast morphology. So we we. 

00:05:32 George Jenkinson 

We work with. 

00:05:32 George Jenkinson 

What we call phantom breasts, which are basically like a a breast made of silicone rubber that's modelled after a cash taken from a volunteer and that was donated to us from our partners who are working with on this project at Imperial. 

00:05:48 George Jenkinson 

So we basically we have those two bits of the system, we have the sensor and we have the manipulator, and we of course mount the sensors to the manipulator. And yeah, using that system, we can carry out a, you know, this is kind of next on our list using our system, we can we. 

00:06:02 George Jenkinson 

Can carry out a. 

00:06:03 George Jenkinson 

Physical palpation examination and get some results. 

00:06:07 George Jenkinson 

That we hope will. 

00:06:08 George Jenkinson 

One may be medically use. 

00:06:10 Gareth Mitchell 

So the device consists of like A-frame. Almost that's the woman sits at and or stands at and then they kind of insert their breast, don't they into the the into the cavity into you know where the device is. Can you tell me a bit more about what it looks like? 

00:06:28 George Jenkinson 

We're a research lab and university, so of course most of the. 

00:06:30 George Jenkinson 

Things that we put out. 

00:06:32 George Jenkinson 

Immediately ready to be used by the participant or the users, but we've got some concept art of how we imagine the device to eventually look, and that's the idea. Yeah, we want to make something that's kind of approachable and easy to use. And the way that we're imagining it so far is that the woman could, in our illustrations, perhaps, or the user, I should say, could be, you know, leaning forward and doing something else. 

00:06:52 George Jenkinson 

Like reading a book or on their phone or something while the examination is. 

00:06:56 George Jenkinson 

Going on of. 

00:06:57 George Jenkinson 

Course part of that is this is subject to how effective the examination is going to be, because I the way Congress examinations are performed by professional people at the moment is they nearly always have the woman lying or the person lying on. 

00:07:08 George Jenkinson 

The back, because this is just through practise, is shown to be the most effective way to do it. So we it might be that in the end we come up with something and we say OK, actually we have this puzzling in the back at the moment, the thought is that you can sort of lean forward. 

00:07:21 Gareth Mitchell 

You can sit down and need to be comfortable, presumably because it has gravity on your side and that helps in this context. 

00:07:28 George Jenkinson 

Potentially. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. OK. 

00:07:32 Gareth Mitchell 

Of course. So give us a sense of what is actually going on, because we're talking about palpating the breast, aren't we the the breast tissue as a clinician would do in an exam. So just tell me about that, that process what a clinician does and then indeed, how your machine, the robotic version, is doing the equivalent thing. 

00:07:52 George Jenkinson 

Yeah. So we're one of the things that's quite interesting about this as a sort of space or as a service to investigate is that this is, you know, clinical presentations using a hand, a physician or or a doctor of some sort using it. And that's not that's not new. And that hasn't really. 

00:08:08 George Jenkinson 

There's been no real technological or practical change to it for a very long time, so it's there are standardised standard deviations, perhaps within a hospital or within a practise, and the way that people perform these examinations. Generally people say you know, I'm no trained expert, but generally the trained experts tell us that they do the palpation. 

00:08:27 George Jenkinson 

Sort of. The outside of their hand and do a sort of press and drag motion and they follow a certain sort of path if you like, around the breast to. 

00:08:34 George Jenkinson 

Make sure they cover the whole area. 

00:08:36 George Jenkinson 

But the precise guidelines of how to do this aren't that well established, and there's wide reports in medical professionals confidence in doing this and in the kind of quality of results they're getting. So one thing that we are looking to do is standardise this if we have some sort of objective or at least repeatable method of doing. 

00:08:56 George Jenkinson 

Breast examination, IE by robotics, the madness in earnest. How useful these kind of examination. 

00:09:01 George Jenkinson 

Actually are so that there there's a degree of transfer from how the professionals do it to this robot. We're hopeful that we can, you know, discover some new methods of doing it or, you know, the way that's most efficient and effective. 

00:09:14 Gareth Mitchell 

A big part of the challenge here, presumably, is getting the machine to press with the same kind of dexterity and gentleness. I suppose, as a human clinical examiner. 

00:09:24 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki 

That is correct. This is a huge challenge and our conversations with public contributors who gave us a lot of feedback on the current examination methods did stress this. They stressed the fact that current procedures, current ways of examinations, can be very painful. So. 

00:09:44 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki 

We want from one side to limit this to make sure that our platform will be safe and gentle and comfortable, but we also want to make sure that we press enough. We have enough force to make sure that we actually have an accuracy in detecting whatever might. 

00:10:03 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki 

The good news is that the sensors that we have created in this project and there are two of those sensors, they both have what we call a tunable range of sensitivity. So they are able to inflate and deflate and by doing that we are able to change. 

00:10:23 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki  

That it senses it can sense some lump at the surface of the breast, but it can also. 

00:10:29 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki 

Sense something that? 

00:10:30 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki  

Is deeper in the tissue and that is where the innovation of those sensors lies, really, because this is not what you often find in prior research. 

00:10:39 Gareth Mitchell 

Yes, because there are five arms, I suppose, like robot arms for what's the better description? Which makes it sound all very mechanical and horrible, but at the end of each one is a fingertip. Effectively. But that's a little inflatable sack, isn't it? That's the key thing. It's a soft sack that, as you say, inflates and deflates. 

00:10:59 Gareth Mitchell 

As it makes contact with the bread. 

00:11:01 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki 

Yes, that's right. And and the fact that we have five or three or seven fingers, there is what will help optimise this examination method because it can be faster because it's not just one fingertip, it's more and a very good analogy that I often referred to is the fact that when you want. 

00:11:22 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki  

To create a robot that will wash your dishes, you're not going to make a humanoid robot that stands next to your sink and washes the dishes. You're going to make a dishwasher. 

00:11:31 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki  

So we want to learn from the experts. We want to see what forces and what movements they are applying when they examine a patient, when we want to learn from that and apply it in a different way that makes sense for a robotic device. 

00:11:47 Gareth Mitchell 

George, as well as applying the appropriate force to the breast, of course scrutiny, there's a sensing function, isn't there? This thing is able to discern if it's touching a lump or some soft tissue. Whatever. How does it even know what it's pressing against? 

00:12:01 George Jenkinson 

Yeah, so as Antonia said, there were two sensors that we've developed as part of this project, one of the uniting things between the two. 

00:12:07 George Jenkinson 

As she said, we have this changing stiffness that we control using pneumatic, so basically blowing up or deflating curve like you do with the balloon right blooms are quite. 

00:12:14 George Jenkinson 

Soft unless they're part to part, but then they're quite hard. So the way that they the two sensors sense and know what's going on is quite different or they have some commonalities. So they both use a camera. And one of the advantages of using a camera is that. 

00:12:28 George Jenkinson 

We don't really have to push for the innovation right over the last 15 years or so, cameras have been becoming really, really good, really sensitive and really small because of smartphones. So they exist and they're cheap and they're and they're. 

00:12:38 George Jenkinson 

So the way that the first since has been developed about this project works, borrows a lot from another sensor that we that we have at the lab called the tactic and that essentially films the inside of the membrane. So if you imagine you're you have a a camera inside this balloon that that that we're imagining, then when this touches something from the outside, the balloon sort of indents at that particular. 

00:12:59 George Jenkinson 

Place so that you can just by looking at the inside you can see where what's being touched and if you do a few practice runs then you can begin to characterise maybe how deep or how close or how big the indentation is you can get. 

00:13:11 George Jenkinson 

An idea of force on that. 

00:13:13 George Jenkinson 

And the other sensor that I've worked mostly with, we have. If you imagine it's sort of like. 

00:13:18 George Jenkinson 

A series of channels. So there are a number of pits just inside the elastic membrane, and these are these sort of liquid filled cavities. And these are coupled by tubing to another location so that you have when the membrane itself is touched, the liquid moves and along the tubing somewhere you can. 

00:13:37 George Jenkinson 

To see this movement right. So if you're looking at the tube, you're just seeing a liquid bit of liquid. 

00:13:41 George Jenkinson 

And down and you know that that bit of liquid going up and down was tightly coupled or is touching a bit of the membrane at the other end you can say, OK that bit that piece of the membrane is being touched right now and then only with a tiny bit the contact is very soft if it moves a lot then. 

00:13:55 George Jenkinson 

The contact is with a high force. 

00:13:58 Gareth Mitchell 

Do you anticipate this kind of one day replacing the clinician or is this more of a companion for the clinician and of course, bringing this kind of examination to more women in more places more conveniently? 

00:14:10 Dr Antonia Tzemanaki  

So yes, this is definitely not going to replace the clinician. It is very important to keep that clinician as their expertise and input is invaluable. This is more of a complementary approach to clinician and it's far in fact there to make clinicians life easier and patients outcomes better. 

00:14:33 Gareth Mitchell 

That is Antonia , who leads the dexterous manipulation and wearable robotics group over there in Bristol. And of course, you heard there from George Jenkinson, the PhD student who is the lead author on all that research. Let's get some commentary and analysis from Ghislaine Boddington. We heard that graphic description there of the. 

00:14:54 Gareth Mitchell 

What it's like going for these examinations. What about? I mean, would you want to have the the robot manipulation do you? 

00:15:01 Gareth Mitchell 

Like the sound of it. 

00:15:03 Ghislaine Boddington 

I do actually, because it's it's definitely got a slightly more human touch. 

00:15:10 Gareth Mitchell 

Ironically, yeah. 

00:15:11 Ghislaine Boddington 

Sensitivity. Ironically, yes. Yeah. I mean, it's been. It's interesting because I've worked a lot with robots and touch and a project called The Blind Robot that we did about 810 years ago, where which was about the the kind of uncanny valley I've been touched by a robot. Yeah. And there's this a health discussion. It is a health discussion. There's a big discussion in Japan. 

00:15:33 Ghislaine Boddington 

From the early 2000s and then it started to come in across the. 

00:15:36 Ghislaine Boddington 

World. Yeah. And it's very weird thing that people have like, oh, I'm not sure I want to be touched by a robot, let alone treated by a robot. But in fact, I think we're much more used to that today. And this sounds like a much more deeper tissue solution. And it gives you the privacy it takes away from being touched by humans, which unfortunately can be abusive in these scenarios. 

00:15:59 Ghislaine Boddington 

Overdone over frequent these tests. 

00:16:01 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yeah, but let's not underestimate it's a massive issue. Breast cancer worldwide and in 2020, I think it was 2.3 million cases of breast cancer across the world, both sexes, all age groups and that's about 12% of all cancers. Yeah. So of course, what's very important is early detection because then you've got a 90%. 

00:16:22 Ghislaine Boddington 

Survival rate. 

00:16:23 Ghislaine Boddington 

But in so many places we have a very high amount of breast cancer in Europe, Australasia and North America, but mortality is higher in other parts of the world because there's less early detection. So the more that something like this could be out and about get to remote places, maybe be flat packed with a few boxes with it and very. 

00:16:44 Ghislaine Boddington 

Easy to install and put up and gives women the privacy and the chance to just go and get it done. 

00:16:49 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yeah, I think that's a very, very positive output for early detection scenarios. 

00:16:55 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, sure. I I loved George's description of how they actually do the the sensing. So wondering how does this thing gauge the pressure, but you think I I thought it would have some, you know kind of material that changed its conductance or something according to how hard it was pressed. But this is actually an optical sensor, a camera basically within one of these balloon sats. 

00:17:13 Ghislaine Boddington 

No, it's very clever, isn't it? Yeah. Yes, yeah. 

00:17:15 Gareth Mitchell 

Really clever. Yeah, exactly. And it can infer the amount of pressure from the amount of flexing from as filmed or as imaged from the inside of the balloon. 

00:17:23 Gareth Mitchell 

And and didn't you just love it when Antonia said something like, you know, if you, if you're talking about a robot to do dishes, you don't just get, like, a a humanoid robot thing that comes and stands at your sink, you get a dishwasher. It doesn't need to look like a human doctor. In this case, I thought that was a great point. I'm that's. 

00:17:36 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

00:17:41 Gareth Mitchell 

A quote I'm going to steal. Yeah, no, I think. 

00:17:43 Ghislaine Boddington 

I think that's very good point too. And the fact that you could go and go into a room on your own and, you know, deal with it one breast by breast, you know, actually and like like they mentioned maybe you know do some text your friends at the same time or listen to some music or something doesn't take so. 

00:18:00 Ghislaine Boddington 

Long that for me sounds much better than being squashed between steel plates or being, you know, manipulated by human hands, actually. 

00:18:07 Gareth Mitchell 

You could put some VR on, couldn't you? Could like VR goggles or something like that. You would love that. Ohh. Exactly. Yeah. Miss, missus virtual presence in the room here. You'd love that. I don't mean you're a virtual presence. I just mean that's your thing. Oh, goodness me. I can tie myself in knots. 

00:18:10 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yes, yeah, yeah. Well, it would be immersion room. An immersion room with lots of wonderful. 

00:18:20 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yes, yes. 

00:18:23 Gareth Mitchell 

Right before I. 

00:18:24 Gareth Mitchell 

Go. It's even more of a spiral. Whatever. 

00:18:27 Gareth Mitchell 

Let's move on, Ghislaine. Thank you very much. 

00:18:33 Gareth Mitchell 

Alright, now let's talk about Internet freedoms. A bit of a change of subject because a report just out says that AI is hindering more than it's helping in some parts of the world when it comes to Internet freedoms. Now this matters because oppressive governments are getting better and better at using AI to automate censorship. 

00:18:52 Gareth Mitchell 

And then churn out tonnes and tonnes of MIS and disinformation basically to swamp out any dissent online and that regulation isn't exactly doing as much as it could do to keep up. That's all according to a report from Freedom House. They're an Internet freedoms body based in wash. 

00:19:08 Gareth Mitchell 

And journalist Emma Woollacott has just written about it all for Forbes. And she's right here. Hello, Emma. Welcome to Somewhere on Earth. 

00:19:16 Emma Woollacott 

Hi, thanks for having me. 

00:19:18 Gareth Mitchell 

Thanks for being here. Right. So let's get into how AI is killing Internet freedoms, because just that thought alone. Emma, I'll be honest, was a bit counterintuitive to me. I thought, well, we're always hearing this is all about democratising people's voices and so on. Not so says this report. And indeed you. 

00:19:35 Emma Woollacott 

Well, the thing the point is that these tools can work both. 

00:19:38 Emma Woollacott 

Ways and so just as they are very productive for people, you know, students wanting to write essays or whatever, governments can use them to produce disinformation incredibly quickly. And they can also use AI tools to philtre out the sort of content that they don't like. 

00:19:59 Emma Woollacott 

And that's expanding more and more around the world. China is a particularly bad offender, but there's there's plenty of countries trying to do the same thing. 

00:20:10 Gareth Mitchell 

I had a a feeling that China would pop up in this conversation and Iran, presumably, but, but then it's there other countries that abuse their citizens through abusing Internet freedoms are available, aren't there? And there are more, frankly than I thought as well in this report. 

00:20:29 Emma Woollacott 

Yes, absolutely. There's some 22 countries out out of the 70 that Freedom House looked at, have laws that require Internet platforms to to use AI to automatically remove the, you know, content that they don't like for various reasons. 

00:20:45 Emma Woollacott 

And and some of some. Sometimes these are fairly straightforward tools, but sometimes they're developing their own, really quite sophisticated ones. 

00:20:56 Gareth Mitchell 

Right. It's so good and it's not the most cheerful bit of bedtime reading you've ever done. Is it going through this? 

00:21:00 Ghislaine Boddington 

Report no. 

00:21:03 Ghislaine Boddington 

It's a it's a very difficult conundrum at the moment because we've got, like Emma said, this this thing that could be absolutely, amazingly supportive and assistive, but at the same time, it's like the other side of the coin is. 

00:21:16 Ghislaine Boddington 

That it's it could do lot what it is doing harm. Lots of harm in. 

00:21:20 Ghislaine Boddington 

Places and it's the same issue as we're talking about about the release of, you know, open source with such a topic wonderful thing. And yet now of course, because it's all been open source is how it's starting to get misused. Yeah. So double coin things what I think is really interesting is how on Earth we get to any kind of global regulation. 

00:21:40 Ghislaine Boddington 

And I'd like to hear from Emma more about that because. 

00:21:44 Ghislaine Boddington 

We haven't even managed that for nuclear issues or for climate change. We know that these constant, fragmented, global regulation debates that, you know the UN is always trying to pull together, but is constantly seen as failing on it. And yet is it the UN we know we don't know. You know, it's everybody really. But Emma, do you ever think there's any possibility of global regulation? 

00:22:06 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yeah, that's like a big question and a bit naive, but. 

00:22:10 Emma Woollacott 

Well, as a global regulation is fairly unlikely the the. 

00:22:13 Emma Woollacott 

Countries where it's most needed are the ones least likely to summon up for for any sort of regulation, but there is a fair bit of progress being made in Europe. Particularly, they're looking at an EU AI act which. 

00:22:30 Emma Woollacott 

Has sort of certain parallels with GDPR in a way in that it looks at different areas of technology, different uses of the technology, and then obliges companies to behave in certain ways based on the perceived level of risk. So there's AI in political campaigning chat bots. 

00:22:50 Emma Woollacott 

Deep fake all that sort of thing. 

00:22:53 Emma Woollacott 

They're looking at similar measures in the US, but rather further behind. There's an executive order from from President Biden sort of going through at the moment. I suppose that has very similar provisions, really, but a lot of it is provisions against. 

00:23:13 Emma Woollacott 

Sort of day-to-day problems, like discrimination via our algorithms, that sort of thing and and notifying people of how their data is being used, whatever. And to an extent, yeah, governments are rather scrambling around to work out how on Earth to deal with this. 

00:23:30 Emma Woollacott 

It's all happened terribly quickly. 

00:23:32 Gareth Mitchell 

Well, I mean this is a thing. It's it's just that age-old story, isn't it? That it's just where the technology is moving quicker than the regulation and the governance can keep it. 

00:23:40 Ghislaine Boddington 

Always. Yeah. Then governments can keep. 

00:23:42 Ghislaine Boddington 

Up and and if they want to some like I was saying some of them don't want to keep up anyway and and and police systems too of course you know but just seem to go ahead and use them possibly with without even necessarily having discussed it with their governments. Yeah so we know what what about Regulation API's I mean I know that. 

00:23:44 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, they say do not want to keep up on that. 

00:24:02 Ghislaine Boddington 

For example, AI based tools and platforms. 

00:24:07 Ghislaine Boddington 

You know can be fact checked and journalists can use that kind of fact checking AI and source checking AIS and source verification. And I was just been in a few debates really about recently about the possibility of AI being self regulating, having its own built built in mechanisms to setting its own rules and benchmarks. 

00:24:27 Ghislaine Boddington 

Limiting behaviour of itself, but also possibly other AI. 

00:24:32 Ghislaine Boddington 

I'm wondering, Gareth, if you've. 

00:24:34 Ghislaine Boddington 

Got any advice on that? 

00:24:34 Gareth Mitchell 

Well, yeah. 

00:24:35 Ghislaine Boddington 

You know, Emma, I'm really fascinated by this. Yeah. 

00:24:39 Gareth Mitchell 

Well, as you were saying, all that I was thinking like probably not amazingly seriously. But has anybody actually tried asking ChatGPT to draught some global regulation and then indeed like an implementation and enforcement strategy or even ChatGPT say this just won't work at the global level. Back off. This is rubbish. 

00:25:01 Emma Woollacott 

Well, in the same way as that you can use ChatGPT to detect AI written content. You can use AI tools to detect other AI produced content. So we've got there's there's there's a project called Believer produced by the Internet Freedom Fund. 

00:25:20 Emma Woollacott 

That trains trains algorithms to detect censorship system. 

00:25:27 Emma Woollacott 

Obviously it can't then do anything to stop them, but what it can at least do is is alert journalists, researchers, whoever, to the fact that this is actually going on and there are, there are other tools as well that that do much the same thing as one called tunnel bear and another one called syphon. So detecting it isn't isn't necessarily that difficult. 

00:25:47 Emma Woollacott 

But obviously there's a limit to to what you can do to restrict what's happening in other countries. 

00:25:53 Gareth Mitchell 

So, are there other ways, potential ways that AI could be part of the solution? We've talked all about AI causing all these problems and wreaking havoc, but I mean, can it help with tools to help people? I suppose regain their voice have an opportunity to circumvent censorship? Any of those kinds of things, ever. 

00:26:12 Emma Woollacott 

And to be honest, avoiding censorship is is some more about finding ways to communicate that where, where your government can't spy on you. So things like virtual private networks, you know, maybe you lot must start to think that sort of thing, actual private channels of communication. 

00:26:29 Gareth Mitchell 

So out of this report, we read the usual suspects, Iran and China don't come out particularly well from yet. So what about on the good side, though, Emma, are there any countries that are exemplars of sorting all this out? 

00:26:44 Emma Woollacott 

Iceland ranked as the best country for Internet. 

00:26:47 Gareth Mitchell 

Oh, Iceland's good at everything. 

00:26:47 Emma Woollacott 

In the world. 

00:26:48 Emma Woollacott 

Yeah. And that's five years running. They they've, they've held that. 

00:26:53 

OK. 

00:26:53 Emma Woollacott 

Estonia does very well, too. They're they're credited. Yeah. They're an incredibly digital society. So it's it's a huge thing for them to try and try and get this. 

00:26:55 Gareth Mitchell 

Ohh good at everything too. 

00:27:03 Emma Woollacott 

Stuff, right? 

00:27:05 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. No, no surprise with those two. Were there any that might have surprised you? Possibly, Emma. I mean, maybe not. And there's quite a few countries listed in the report anyway. But, you know, any any surprises of any kind from the report? 

00:27:15 Emma Woollacott 

I don't. 

00:27:18 Emma Woollacott 

The thing I tend to notice is that just how many very reasonable country? 

00:27:22 Emma Woollacott 

Interests are also using AI and Internet censorship in in one form or another, and obviously not to the same degree. But basically, if you think about it, most most governments do this. You know there's a French bill going through at the moment requiring browsers to block particular websites. 

00:27:43 Emma Woollacott 

We have it in in most European countries and in the US in terms of sort of blocking terrorist content or child sexual abuse material, for instance. 

00:27:54 Emma Woollacott 

And again, you know, even in the UK we've got things like the online safety bill going through the investigative powers Bill, and if they they require various platforms to monitor, try and monitor and use AI tools to to filter out what the government has has 

00:28:13 Emma Woollacott 

deemed inappropriate. 

00:28:15 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, alright, Emma. So. So what about you? Good, then back here in London around the table with me as well. Parting thoughts from you. 

00:28:23 Ghislaine Boddington 

If any, I do think we have to find a way to be able to use AI to detect the the problems coming even like as Emma says, we can't, then necessarily they can't stop it. But I think this pattern recognition of the misuse of AI needs to be. 

00:28:43 Ghislaine Boddington 

Grown and it will grow. Of course it will grow because actually the feedback that's coming through across time will provide those API's with indications of where areas concern happen or where to look more et cetera you. 

00:28:56 Ghislaine Boddington 

And I still think and I it's very interesting I think in the computer science scene, this debate about, you know, could there be AI policeman who police say eyes? I'm I'd. I'd like to see that debate going deeper and further. Yeah. And I also think that, you know, mentioning Iceland and Estonia, it would be really great to have a lot of detail put in front of us. 

00:29:16 Ghislaine Boddington 

As as those two countries and others, maybe as models, yeah. But actually then, you know, not just our politicians, et cetera, but the our US as individuals and here we can actually go well, that would be a good idea if we did do that, that would work here and we could try that. And I would do that. And I am prepared to make that effort. 

00:29:33 Ghislaine Boddington 

But yeah, the debate needs to be put much more out in public and on the table for us all to come up with solutions. 

00:29:39 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, learning from the people who do it well and indeed those who do it badly and so that all of us can, I suppose, ultimately make the world a better place, he said mildly. Naively, there at the end. And I think we'll leave it there. Emma Willcott, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for being here. 

00:29:55 Emma Woollacott 

Thank you. 

00:29:57 Gareth Mitchell 

And Ghislaine Boddington, I've enjoyed very much finding my feet and our feet on this brand new podcast with you here. I think having we're having fun and we want to involve our dear lovely listeners mainly because hey folks, I'll be honest, we've launched a podcast here. We've put so much effort into even. 

00:30:04 Ghislaine Boddington 

Great. Yeah. 

00:30:17 Gareth Mitchell 

You hearing this? It's there are lots of moving cogs and wheels to to even make this something that pops up on your listening device, whatever listening device gramophone or something. So yeah, please tell your friends, listen to us support us. 

00:30:33 Gareth Mitchell 

And we will love you very much. You can get in touch via hello at Somewhere on Earth.co. That's Hello at somewhere on earth.co and on WhatsApp as well. It's UK code 44 then 748-632-9484. Should we have a bet on how long it takes me to learn? 

00:30:57 George Jenkinson 

Keep reading. 

00:30:57 Gareth Mitchell 

Now let's see. I'll. I'll get it off by heart at some point. So, Sir, do you know any tattoo parlours around here? 

00:31:03 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yes, we'll, we'll we can do that straight after this show if you like. 

00:31:03 Gareth Mitchell 

I'll get that etched in. 

00:31:04 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. And then the following day, they'll change the number and I feel stupid. So anyway, let's do that one again. It's code 447486329484 and yeah, we just. 

00:31:17 Gareth Mitchell 

Get in touch. Tell us what you think. Suggest some stories. Ohh, and I'll tell you what a voice memo would be nice. We like the even listeners voices. 

00:31:23 Ghislaine Boddington 

Yes. Yeah. 

00:31:25 Gareth Mitchell 

More of you, less of us. That would be nice. So there we are. That'll do for now. Our sound editor today is the excellent Keziah Wenham Kenyan and audio is by Stevie Arnoldi, who's a senior producer at Lanson's Team Farner. And our editor still staying after spending so much time putting all this together. 

00:31:45 Gareth Mitchell 

Ania Lichtarowicz.  Thanks, folks. That was lovely. See you next time. Lots of. 

00:31:48 Gareth Mitchell 

Love bye bye. 

ENDS 

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