logo
episode-header-image
Aug 2023
27m 18s

Charting the true cost of AI

Bbc World Service
About this episode

This week, the academic Kate Crawford tells us how she travelled the world to find the true cost of AI. Reporter Chris Vallance updates us on a watermark system - developed by Deepmind, Google's AI arm - which aims to show whether an image was generated by a machine or designed by a human. Mansoor Hamayun, Co-Founder and CEO of Bboxx tells us about the company's smart cooking valve, designed to protect lives - and trees - in Rwanda. We speak to Fu’ad Lawal, the founder of Archivi.ng,and archivist Grace Abraham, about why the key to Nigeria's tech future may lie in digitsing newspapers from its past.

(Picture credit: an imagined digital landscape, by Andriy Onufriyenko, for Getty images)

Up next
Jan 20
What's new in health tech?
We all want to stay fit and healthy. But how can technology help ? Shiona McCallum discusses new health tech on display at the world's biggest consumer electronics trade show. And if you own cryptocurrency - beware. Thieves could be targeting you. The BBC's Cyber Correspondent, J ... Show More
26m 28s
Jan 13
When will a robot do my laundry?
How close are we to humanoid robots in the home? A flurry of new robots, designed to look like us, have been revealed recently, with many in Silicon Valley excited that this is the next big leap in AI. But many humanoid robots still struggle with the basics, such as picking up a ... Show More
26m 32s
Jan 6
What to expect from tech in 2026
For our first episode of 2026, Tech Life looks forward to the rest of the year, and beyond. What are the latest consumer gadgets on display at a huge electronics trade show in Las Vegas? How will assistive technology, designed to help people with disabilities, change this year? W ... Show More
26m 28s
Recommended Episodes
Dec 2022
Ethical AI
In this episode of High Theory, Alex Hanna talks with Nathan Kim about Ethical AI. Their conversation is part of our High Theory in STEM series, which tackles topics in science, technology, engineering, and medicine from a highly theoretical perspective. In this episode, Alex hel ... Show More
22m 39s
Jun 2024
What is an AI anyway? | Mustafa Suleyman
<p>When it comes to artificial intelligence, what are we actually creating? Even those closest to its development are struggling to describe exactly where things are headed, says Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, one of the primary architects of the AI models many of us use toda ... Show More
23m 16s
Sep 2023
The incredible creativity of deepfakes -- and the worrying future of AI | Tom Graham
<p>AI-generated media that looks and sounds exactly like the real world will soon permeate our lives. How should we prepare for it? AI developer Tom Graham discusses the extraordinary power of this rapidly advancing technology, demoing cutting-edge examples -- including real-time ... Show More
12m 22s
Nov 2023
Superintelligent AI: The Utopians
<p>If even AI companies are fretting about the existential threat that human-level AI poses, why are they building these machines in the first place? And as they press ahead, a debate is raging about how we regulate this emergent sector to keep it under control. In the second epi ... Show More
24m 48s
Dec 2023
Joanna Zylinska, "The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the Eye and AI" (MIT Press, 2023)
A provocative investigation of the future of photography and human perception in the age of AI. We are constantly photographing and being photographed while feeding machine learning databases with our data, which in turn is used to generate new images. Analyzing the transformatio ... Show More
1h 2m
Mar 2024
Figure’s AI Robot, AI News, Cognition’s Devin, and the biggest AI bet yet! | E1915
<p>This Week in Startups is brought to you by…</p><p>LinkedIn Ads. To redeem a $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartu ... Show More
53m 57s
Aug 2023
The disappearing computer -- and a world where you can take AI everywhere | Imran Chaudhri
<p>In this exclusive preview of groundbreaking, unreleased technology, former Apple designer and Humane cofounder Imran Chaudhri envisions a future where AI enables our devices to "disappear" -- seriously, like one day making a phone call on the palm of your hand. He gives a sne ... Show More
16m 39s
Nov 2021
The Ode to Decoy
<p>Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news and research, including: NATO releases its first AI strategy, which included the announcement of a one billion euro "NATO innovation fund." [0:52] Military research labs in the US and UK collaborate on autonomy and AI in a combined d ... Show More
37m 33s
Mar 2023
The AI Dilemma
You may have heard about the arrival of GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest large language model (LLM) release. GPT-4 surpasses its predecessor in terms of reliability, creativity, and ability to process intricate instructions. It can handle more nuanced prompts compared to previous releases, ... Show More
42m 25s
Apr 2023
Can we control Artificial Intelligence?
Last month a company in San Francisco called OpenAi released an artificial intelligence system called GPT-4 - a successor to its hugely popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. The latest version can respond to images, write captions and descriptions - processing up to 25,000 words at a time. ... Show More
49m 15s