windy across many of these western parts with temperatures still struggling, though the east. —— further east. hello. this is bbc news with ben brown. the headlines at 12.30pm — a setback for donald trump as judges refuse to immediately reverse a suspension to his controversial travel ban on people from seven countries. ministers pledge more affordable homes will be built in england — aimed at tackling the high cost of renting. a scathing report into the way britain's train system is organised — mps says it lets down passengers and isn't "fit for purpose". the race to become france's new president heats up as a former economy minister launches his campaign. national front leader marine le pen, will begin her bid later. now on bbc news — click — the latest tech news — and can a human give artificial intelligence a real live voice? plus a trip to tokyo with games designer hideo kojima and the latest

tech gadgets at the london toy fair. this week, meet our youngest reporter ever. when were you born? couple of years ago. just a couple of years ago. we give a games legend something to play with. thank you. and drop and give me 20. 0k, just drop. for decades, scientists all around the world have been trying to create a machine that can match our intelligence. and nowadays artificially intelligent algorithms can perform many tasks much better than us. for a long time scientists have been

the use in games like chess, drafts and go as a benchmark for testing ai. and that's because all these games have a certain amount of unpredictability built into them. namely, their human opponents. but this week the ai community has been celebrating a big win after a poker playing algorithm called liberatus defeated four top human players in a 20—day match of heads up no limit texas hold ‘em poker. i've been using poker as a benchmark for 12 years. now the best ai has surpassed the level of the best humans in the strategic reasoning under imperfect information. but even this big win is only a little step towards creating a general artificial intelligence. one capable

of sophisticated thought across a wide spectrum of areas, and solving problems just as well as a human can. it's an incredible time. and it's very hard to forecast. you know, what can these things do? it's a hard thing to think through, and has really incredible possibilities. but it's, i think it's impossible to forecast accurately. speech has been another big challenge for al researchers. personal assistants and chat bots are becoming more sophisticated, but they so far can't fool us into thinking that they're human. but what if you thought you were talking to another person? konichiwa. do you speak english? speaks japanese. would that make you more likely to trust it? and develop a relationship? well, two researchers at the london school of economics came up with an experiment to see if we would communicate better with al if its messages were delivered to us by a human. they call this computer human hybrid the echoborg. and to explore the concept,

jane copestick found herself becoming an echoborg herself. the echoborg was inspired by research from stanley milgram. he is the professor behind the controversial experiments on obedience in the 1960s, to see if people would deliver electric shocks to others if instructed to by an authority figure. milgram also studied body perception, to determine if we hold preformed opinions of other people based on their looks. by using hidden earpieces, people could speak someone else‘s thoughts through their own body. the echoborg has updated this research for the 21st century, to see if people will react better to artificial intelligence. such as the messages from an online chat bot. if they are being delivered by a human. i'm in the first stages of testing this out by becoming an echoborg myself. i'm starting my speech shadowing practice. the first step in becoming a fully fledged echoborg. the professors have told me this

process will take at least eight hours for me to get any good at it. i'm starting my first practice withjk rowling's harvard commencement speech. members of the harvard corporation and the board of overseers... by shadowing speech, i should be able to quickly repeat back the messages from a chat bot so people won't realise they aren't my own thoughts. it may seem something paradox, but there's horses in the cow... i did something and scuttled somewhere. now, to put it to the test, i'm meeting creator professor alex gillespie at the london school of economics. hello, how are you doing? great to see you, come in. and kevin corti, who called in on skype. so would that go round your neck? that goes around your neck. first step. kevin is using a chat bot called rose, which is not preprogrammed. the most noticeable problem in becoming a convincing ai are the delays while rose thinks of a response to the question.

where do you come from? i was born in san francisco. really? in the united states. when were you born? couple of years ago. just a couple of years ago? are you a chat bot? i'm a human. i thought for a moment you might be a chat bot. republic of ireland and croatia and france. my mother's from ireland. really? a magical place full of rain and crazy people. she says. well... that was... interesting. weird. what you notice, they tend to be quite disconnected. it takes each sentence as a stand—alone sentence. some of them will speak like they are artificial intelligence, and some of them will pretend not to be. so this one's pretending not to be. but although last time i spoke to which it said

it was artificial intelligence. oh, it's confused. our final test for the echoborg was to bring it on stage in front of an audience of 700 people at the bbc future conference in australia. what a lot of humans find difficult... what is the capital of australia? canberra. 0k, good. and what is 235 multiplied by 676? i think it's 158,860. that's pretty impressive. here and now. how do i know you are human, how do you know i'm human? because i believe. you believe? because i appreciate beauty. because people saw me in the room. go ask them. in fact, some of the audience members were fooled. 0ne thought it was a real conversation with a human, not an artificial intelligence.

based on my appearance. some people thought you didn't want to talk about artificial intelligence. that you were trying to avoid the question, they really thought you were trying to avoid the questions. someone even said, had it been a man would it have been perceived differently? i think so. without becoming fully fledged echoborgs, we are already giving a voice to artificial intelligence everyday. through the algorithms guiding our news consumption, to our shopping habits and online searches. we're bringing al to life more and more. projects like the echoborg let us reflect on what this means for our ai future and perhaps even what it means to be human. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that facebook lost $500 million in a lawsuit. the case centres around the creation of the 0culus rift virtual reality headset.

the us court ordered the payment after a jury found facebook owned vr outfit 0culus used computer code belonging to zenimax, a media company which has a subsidiary which produces the video game doom. facebook is appealing the ruling. they say you shouldn't cry over spilt milk. what about a bruised peach? 0nline supermarket 0cado is testing a robot hand that can pack fruits and vegetables without damaging them. at the moment, human beings pack more fragile items, like bananas and eggs. but it's notjust fragile foodstuffs feeling the pinch from robotic appendages. researchers at mit have created a claw made from hydrogel, that can pick up a live fish without causing it any harm. sunday the team hopes the eel—like robot can be used to help with surgery. next, forget the selfie stick, so 2015, it's all about the selfie

drone these days. currently being crowd funded, the air selfie is a portable flying camera built into a mobile phone cover. and, as it's carried around with your mobile phone, never miss an opportunity for internet narcissism ever again. if you're a fan of metal gear solid, you might also be a fan of its creator, hideo kojima. considered the father of the stealth game genre. the metal gear franchise was a success at least in part thanks to his leadership. but now he's working on a new game called death stranding, which he showed to the world at the e3 video games conference last year. we sent stefan powell, ace radio one news beat reporter, to meet hideo kojima injapan

and get an exclusive tour of tokyo and his studio. we're on our way to the studio now and it's been just over a year since he left konami and set up on his own. and we don't really know what he's been doing in that time. we know a little bit about his new project, death stranding, that's coming to the playstation four at some point. hopefully we get to find out a little bit more and maybe we get a glimpse into the future and what's to come as well. before that, though, there's the traditional gift exchange. a japanese custom. we went with lego and doctor who. i mean, what are you supposed to get a man who stood in front of a cabinet full of lifetime achievement awards? from the bbc.

i don't know if you like doctor who. and i hear you are a bit of a lego fan. 0n the quiet. thank you. kojima isn't your average game designer. and this isn't your average office, either. wow! or your average company mascot, for that matter. ifeel like i'm in a sci—fi film. the man credited with changing the way many people approached game design is not taking his new venture lightly. he wants his next steps to be just as successful as his first. clearing his mind of some of the negativity of recent years. focusing instead on the future, new titles, new projects, and new ideas. translation: i worked at my previous company for 30 years, and gained a lot of experience. so i'm very appreciative of that. but technology improves, the games market and the users change. but what i do best, making games, does not really change, so i'm not worried about embarking

on this new journey. the studio itself is pretty small, but has everything kojima and his team need to crack on with the first challenge on the horizon. the playstation 4 exclusive, death stranding. details about which are still top secret. we tried. but whatever it turns out to be, he's not playing it safe. translation: we want this game to be something people can get into easily, but after they play for an hour or two they start to notice something a little different. it's something they haven't played before. whenever i create something new, some people like it and some people don't. for example, when i first created a stealth game some people really wanted to just fight, so they didn't really like it. i want to create an experience that has the same effect on people. the building up of his own studio is also a source of inspiration. a journey that has been far more

difficult than many would imagine. this tiny room was kojima production‘s first office. here he spent time not only designing death stranding, but refining his next big idea to change gaming as we know it. translation: the way i see the future of gaming, think of it as games, novels and movies. all meshed together to create one type of entertainment. the whistle—stop tour of tokyo continues. seeing the places that came between that first tiny room and the shiny new studio housing kojima productions today. it's a vision that has grown from a long love of technology. his association with sony so important to the future of his new company is not something new, though. here at their big tech exhibition in downtown tokyo, he explains how technology of the past has had such a big impact on him. what's this?

he says the first metal gear was made on this device. looking back over the past raises questions of the future as well. you shoot with the space bar. vr is often said to be the next big thing in gaming. now this isn't vr like we know it now. but for kojima, it's not so clear—cut. do you think the games out there for vr at the moment are good enough to really sort of get the audience excited? translation: it's easy in vr to try and do something scary, something from a high place, something erotic. but i think there's something beyond that. you can give people emotions that they haven't experienced so far. and can you tell us any of your ideas? so it looks like a kojima virtual reality experience is not so far away, even if he won't share the details just yet. more proof that his appetite for making things is not on the wane. even after 30 years.

the most revealing thing i've found during my time with hideo kojima is that he's still really passionate and enthusiastic about tech and gaming. he's got no plans to retire any time soon. in fact, he set himself a big challenge. he's changed gaming once, and now he plans doing it again. where are the gadgets? playtime was never like this in my day. i've been taking a look at some of the latest toys hoping to light up the faces of children and grown—ups. and, inevitably, a few of them could be found at london's toy fair. this looks like a drone in a cage and that's because it is. it's also a proof of concept for a toy that's going to be available later this year.

its inventor here is wearing this glove, which means you can control it via gestures. let's have a look at what it can do. it all looks pretty simple, but i know you've been studying robotics for 15 years, so there's quite a bit more to this than meets the eye, isn't there? yes, absolutely. once the science of gestures has been codified, and that's what we've been able to do, as you can imagine, we can bring all sorts of robotic toys out, and consumer devices. the brain itself is in the glove, in the circuitry and electronics. and the algorithms embedded in the glove. the drone is merely a conduit for the gestures being recorded on the hand. there was also a clear trend towards giving kids a deeper level of control when it comes to toy gadgets. this is a robot that aims

to help kids learn to code. they can operate it manually through the app, or set up sequences of the functions they'd like it to carry out. it looks pretty raw when you've got all these leads and buttons, so it really is giving kids a chance to develop something. i also recently got my hands on a drone that kids can programme, spending time tweaking code at a computer or using drag and drop blocks. i had a play around with some of the drone's functions. so maybe that shows who the real kid is. first of all i press w, which should get the drone up and running. this is a spot of that well—known activity, drone bowling. back a bit. we need to go down. down... other way round. no, no, back. oh yeah! yes, the skittles are down here on the floor. and i've done it!

it's notjust about flying, though, you may want to do a bit of driving. to do that, you swap the wings for wheels. last year we learned quite how much of an appetite there was for augmented reality in gaming. how about adding a robot to the mix? and give the big kids a chance for some play, too. there is the enemy. if i can turn around quickly enough. trying to turn around. i'm going to shoot. that's it. and i've hit. this gaming robot, much like virtual avatars, becomes stronger as you use it. it's also customisable and upgradable, with the ability to add wheels or even take on another robot in the room. or if you want to get

yourself moving, how about a personal training robot? this prototype has limited functionality, but still managed to put me through my paces. not that it fought too hard when i decided i'd had enough. now, if you're a cinephile, you know we have officially entered awards season. yes, the red carpets, the speeches and the campaigning have all begun. well, this year at click, we've decided to give those wonderful magicians behind the camera, namely the visual effects artists, their proper due with a series of exclusive features on some of the most memorable films from the past year. first up, a return to the wizarding world with bafta nominee

fantastic beasts and where to find them. mr scamander, do you know anything about the wizarding community in america? we don't let things loose. the earliest potter film i worked on was the second film. then went on to work on subsequent films for production. the big difference, i would say, now, doing fantastic beasts, for instance, was we were doing creature design in the computer from day one. we were animating creatures, showing david what they looked like. david, the director, obviously. and getting into a developmental study through animation of how they behaved. their characteristics. just something we could never have done before so quickly. when we decided we didn't like it we could modify it and change it very quickly on the computer. we designed hundreds of creatures. we would model something up, in zbrush, then very quickly think, that looks cool, let's stick a rig in it. so, sticking essentially the bones

in to be able to animate it. and get it moving. see whether it works. and we had quite worked up animation studies of a lot of stuff that just didn't make the film. we made simple models of the creatures, then brought in some very talented puppeteers. some of them were actually, the team who did warhorse for instance, then we had a full—size erumpent puppet, very lightweight frame. and they were able to use that on set. and our guide was always what we'd done in the computer in terms of the animated previews. it meant we could put something on set for eddie redmayne to react to or perform against. so the erumpent, 17 foot tall, 20 foot long, was able to be on set, and everybody could see how big it was and where she was on the set, then we could frame the camera for her and eddie could play against something. it was very important.

one of the key things about this film was that you believe the creatures were real. if you believe the actor, and you believe the creature's there, that's what makes it work. when you see an actor and the eyeline isn't right, and the creature doesn't seem to be responding to them, you know there is something wrong. we are always conscious of it. the niffler, ultimately, was a fairly tough character, actually. a lot of animation. and you saw a lot of these things a lot more close—up, i guess, than you would have done, for a lot longer than you would have done a few years ago. you look at the niffler and what makes him so animalistic and real is all that small breathing, all the secondary stuff, it is in the overall performance, it is all that secondary and tertiary stuff that we put loads of work into, that you kind of think, god, really, do you notice? and it's like, no, you don't notice directly, but you do notice because we all look at human beings all the time. you've got a pretty big price on your head, mr scamander. why should i help you?

gnarlack, our goblin, was, you know, a really technically difficult thing. probably the most advanced digital humanoid type character i think we've done so far. i think ron was fantastic to work with, he wore a performance patch, a headset, so he had 17 facial markers on, doing the facial capture meant in our post—stage we were able to deliver very quickly a moving gnarlack that was just the pure capture applied to the model. it was a massive leap in shading and the technology driving all of this. whilst there is the animation, there are also all the systems we've created to help drive muscles, skin, blood flow, all those things. all of that stuff's working up and up. every film, we're pushing evermore, trying to get to that digital humanoid, basically. more oscar hopefuls and special perfect stunners next week. that's it for this week.

follow us on twitter throughout the week. for more backstage photos and fun. we are @bbcclick. thanks for watching and we'll see you soon. hello, ifear i hello, i fear i am in danger of damning the day with faint praise. i have my greatest fear behind me and a lot of cloud in play. some brightness to start off day over northern ireland and a similar prospect around the derbyshire area. generally speaking more cloud than yesterday and we still have the re m na nts of yesterday and we still have the remnants of things pestering both sides of scotland and other low

pressure, not 1 sides of scotland and other low pressure, not1 million miles away to spilling cloud across the south east. sunshine in short supply, especially across the eastern side of scotla nd especially across the eastern side of scotland and we may have some showers getting into the far north east. the western side of scotland also and northern ireland. a lot of dry weather across most of england and wales, temperatures, not too much to write home about, not much breeze. just a chance of the rain will come across the channel and into the far east of kent and sussex perhaps. the bulk of it stays offshore. overnight, temperatures having not up to great heights will dip away sharply and in the countryside they could be well some mrxand fog countryside they could be well some mr x and fog and i suspect a frost as well. watch out for that first thing if you are on the move on monday. monday starts dry for the greater part of the british isles

and as the day progresses, this weather front drags into and as the day progresses, this weatherfront drags into northern ireland and western scotland and it will be a real player across wales and southern england. temperatures turning increasingly mild elsewhere. a chilly and dull day and some brightness here and there. there will be a mild change in the weather prospects as this front makes progress from west. eventually crossing all areas because it is running into high pressure over scandinavia so it is slow progress. the same weather front on tuesday only just about making the same weather front on tuesday onlyjust about making it the same weather front on tuesday only just about making it to the same weather front on tuesday onlyjust about making it to the eastern side of scotland and england, making room for another system to pep up the rain and put some strength in the wind across the south west. i think we will see a covering of snow in the north—west of scotla nd covering of snow in the north—west of scotland and england. good afternoon. the us appeals court has delivered another blow to president trump's travel ban on people from seven mainly—muslim countries. it has refused to reinstate the ban,

which was suspended yesterday by a federal court in washington state. travellers affected by the ban have been arriving in the united states. jane frances kelly reports.