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tv   Newswatch  BBC News  July 13, 2024 3:45pm-4:00pm BST

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and not more scanners mri scanners and not more scanners but ai _ mri scanners and not more scanners but ai enabled scanners, there is a massive _ but ai enabled scanners, there is a massive productivity games. google deep mind, said dennis his service has been _ deep mind, said dennis his service has been developing ai for health care, _ has been developing ai for health care, scientific research and consumer— care, scientific research and consumer use long before it was fashionable. what does he think the labour government should do to make the best of— government should do to make the best of artificial intelligence? | best of artificial intelligence? [ think best of artificial intelligence? think it's best of artificial intelligence? i think it's an opportunity to embrace the economic epic opportunities that are going to come with aland scientific possibilities. helping with health care, drug design, but also climate. the with health care, drug design, but also climate-— also climate. the new labour government _ also climate. the new labour government has _ also climate. the new labour government has said - also climate. the new labour government has said that - also climate. the new labour government has said that it l also climate. the new labour - government has said that it wants to be a green superpower. we know at the moment that this technology, at
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a potential intelligence is very power hungry. how's that going to work out in the future. most of the large companies in losing google the types of training in these large dad to things like getting more efficiency out of existing infrastructure, like power grids, also we are applying ai itself to save power in the data centres. in the end, what these ai systems do will save energy and power far outweigh what they currently using. people worry about their jobs and job security. how will ai affect employment? i think, like previous big, uh... ..sort of technological revolutions, like the internet or mobile, i think it's going to also create
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many newjobs, new types ofjobs that we can barely imagine today. there's a lot of american investment, there's a lot of investment going on in china. where does the uk sit? yeah, i think if you look at it, of course, there's the us and there's china, the kind of two superpowers — they have the most investment, the most research. but i think, if you look at the next tier, the uk is right in there in the mix. so, partly to get the economic gains and the prosperity from that, but also to influence how it goes on the world stage. 0k, crystal—ball moment — how far away do you think we are from artificial general intelligence? so, agi is a term that we sometimes use in the field to describe roughly human—level ai systems that are capable of general solutions to problems, a bit like the human mind can do. and i think we're, you know, maybe... i wouldn't be surprised if it was sort of in the next decade, so perhaps a 50% chance in the next decade. sir demis hassabis, thank you very much indeed. thank you. life is brilliant!
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it sprung up in almost every part of the planet, in every shape imaginable — and many that aren't. there's a lot of life out there still left to be discovered and described. and that's a fact — most of the world's flora and fauna are as yet undocumented. but that also means that we don't know what effects we humans and our ever—expanding civilisation are having on most of the world's species. if we start to lose this diversity, you know, and things can't be moved around and they can't adapt, then we sort of have a house of cards that's falling apart. and if we lose the key species in that, then we know we won't be able to restore our ecosystems. cue xprize rainforest — a five—year competition challenging teams from around the world to develop tech to find out what lives where.
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first prize? $5 million. the mission — to design robots that can autonomously collect environmental dna, edna, from an area of rainforest and also to develop new techniques to analyse the biodiversity contained within that data. environmental dna, simply dna that's being shed off of every species. and our technologies are advanced enough now that we can just take a water sample or an air sample ora surface sample, and from that we can describe what species are living in a place. biodivx from eth university in zurich is one of the teams that made it through the semifinals in singapore and have been practising for the finals in the amazon rainforest in brazil. and today i've come to zurich to meet their autonomous drone. actually, what's important
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here is what's hanging underneath the drone. that is a probe on about 50m of wire that can be lowered all the way through the vegetation down to the ground, swabbing dna samples as it goes. the swab is a simple piece of lint—free cloth that drags against the vegetation. and in case you're wondering why staying above the rainforest and swabbing down through it is the best idea, well, you've obviously never been to a rainforest before. they are pretty tough conditions, so rainforests have very extreme weather conditions, so it can be very hot, it can be very humid, so that's quite of a challenge for the sensor on board of the drone, for the camera. it can be challenging to detect obstacles, and then what is very problematic is to fly eventually inside the rainforest. so this is where it's, you know, extremely cluttered environment with many obstacles and so on. and so the way we solve this problem
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is to stay above the canopy, but just having the probe that goes inside the canopy. so in this way we are safely up, but we can still collect data from inside the vegetation where things are interesting and important to be monitored. the drone uses sd scans of the canopy to work out how close is too close to the tree tops, and if the probe gets stuck, the drone is programmed to first wiggle it up and down, then to give it a sharp tug, and if all else fails, to cut the cord and return to base. but what's special about this probe is that it allows us to access the canopy, which is very hard. that's 20, 30, even 40m off the ground, and that's a place where we don't know very much about biodiversity. and so the ability to go in and non—invasively sort of swab this space and collect that dna is amazing, because now our other methods are to put up a poisonous gas and fog the tree and all the insects fall out dead.
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this is, you know, maybe not what we want to do when we just want to know something's there. yeah, you're decreasing the biodiversity right there and then, aren't you, right? yeah. i'm being swabbed! a lot of chemicals in this hair! that's going to skew the sample! each team has 2a hours to collect as much edna as possible from one square kilometre of rainforest and then 48 hours to analyse the samples — and given that most of the millions of these samples collected will still be unidentifiable, teams are also scored on how well they can communicate the diversity of life that they find. and for biodivx, that includes turning dna into music. and so i got fascinated by this process of being able to communicate what it is that we're finding, because, as i said, most of the things, we don't even
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know what species it is, we can't even put it in our tree of life. and so how do you communicate to people about things that they can't see and they don't know are there and we have no name for it? well, if you give it a soundtrack, then it's a wonderful way to allow people to connect with biodiversity when we don't have, you know, other means of communicating about what it is. is it a case, then, that in ten years�* time, you might revisit the same forest and the soundtrack might have changed... yeah. ..and there's a danger it might have got more reduced in its variety? mm—hm, yeah. i have this sort of dream that, you know, if species are there in a place, and they've all been evolving and interacting and they're in harmony, that the music from all of them together should sound good, like a symphony, right? and if it's a system that's... you know, maybe the habitat�*s been degraded or an invasive species has come in, you would be able to hear that distortion because it would no longer be in harmony. the dna sequences determine the order of the notes, but then a human composer arranges
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the track into something that sounds good and brings the variety of life to life. and in fact, this music you're hearing right now? well, it's composed from the dna of a honeybee, a bioluminescent snail and the silver timon tree. calm electronic music plays. the xprize rainforest finals happen this summer in the amazon. and that's it for our dive into nature. hope you've enjoyed it, thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.
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hello there. if you do see some sunshine this afternoon you can count yourself quite lucky because, for most of the uk, we've got extensive cloud in the skies and that's going nowhere very far, very fast. closest to an area of low pressure out in the north sea, the cloud thick enough for occasional patches of rain across parts of eastern england and eastern scotland. the best of the breaks in the cloud has been further west, for example in parts of cornwall. not looking bad at all in bude earlier today, with plenty of sunshine. through this afternoon across southern coastal counties from devon towards sussex, there will be some showers and one or two thunderstorms are possible here. temperatures up to 20 or so towards parts of cornwall, but otherwise it's a cool day, particularly so around some of these eastern areas of england, eastern scotland. 14 in aberdeen. the average at this time of the year is 18, so you can feel yourself short—changed once again in terms of the weather. during this evening and overnight, that area of low pressure remains very slow moving in the north sea. it will be bringing further pulses
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of rain to eastern scotland, eastern areas of england, maybe a few patches getting across the pennines at times, as well. temperatures, for the most part staying into double figures on account of all the cloud that will continue to be in the skies. sunday's forecast, then. the same area of low pressure continues to bring wet weather to parts of eastern england. the rain probably turning a bit patchier into aberdeenshire. we'll probably see some breaks in the cloud through the central belt of scotland, so a brighter day here, probably, with some sunshine. sunshine develops across parts of southern england, southern wales and probably some breaks in the cloud for northern ireland too. where we see thejuly sunshine, that will lift temperatures into the high teens to low 20s. it will feel quite pleasant. 0n into monday's forecast and the next area of low pressure moves into the south—west. this will be bringing some heavier rain, maybe with a bit of thunder mixed in and perhaps some surface water flooding to watch out for. otherwise, actually, with a bit more sunshine breaking through the cloud across much of the uk, those temperatures will be lifting a little bit higher, so 2! degrees or so for glasgow, 22 for norwich and london.
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that should feel quite pleasant. but i'm not convinced this is the start of any prolonged drier spell of weather. it does look like it will be quite unsettled into the week. probably a drier end to the week with some sunshine, but i don't think that's going to last into the following week. bye for now.
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live from london, this is bbc news. the hamas health ministry says at least 71 palestinians were killed in an israeli air strike in southern gaza. a man is arrested on suspicion of murder in connection with human remains found in two suitcases on a bristol bridge. the israeli army says it was targeting the hamas military chief, mohammed deif. a judge throws out alec baldwin's manslaughter charge over the rust film set shooting of cinematographer halyna hutchins. and football fever mounts with fans already arriving in berlin for sunday's euros final
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between england and spain. spain is getting ready with watching parties ahead of the final. they are hopeful they will be the first tournament to win the tournament for a fourth time. an israeli air strike in gaza has killed at least 71 people, according to the hamas—run health ministry. the attack happened near the southern city of khan younis — in the masawi area of the city. almost 300 people were injured. these pictures show the moment of the blast. an israeli official said the strike targeted the head of hamas�*s military wing, mohammed deif, in an area where, the official said, there were "only hamas terrorists and no civilians." the israeli military had designated this area a safe zone, urging
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palestinians to seek shelter there.

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