when you tell me that the new zealanders are on board and the scandinavians are on board and the french and maybe the uk government to, it doesn't really surprise me. it seems to match the rhetoric we hear from politicians in those countries. i would be much more interested and frankly impressed if you told me about the russians, the chinese, the north koreans and indeed donald trump and the americans were signing up to what you have at some points called the geneva convention that's needed to control technology across the world. these countries are the problem. and they're not interested in your solution. i actually think one should consider it from a different perspective. we need to build coalitions of the willing, especially among the world's democracies. there are roughly 75 democratic nations in the world, roughly half the world's population live in them. so, for example, under the leadership of a number of western countries,

including the uk, france, germany, people came together in paris last year to sign a new cyber security agreement. all 28 members of the european union, 25 of 27 nato members, the us was missing, but progress is advancing. but address my wider point about other people missing. frankly, in 2017, if i had been in a british hospital and had computer systems wiped out by a malware attack that came from north korea, it would be no great consolation to know that the scandinavians have signed up to a geneva convention for internet safety. what you're not telling me is, why we can continue to have any confidence in the security of our data, of our information flows, when we know there are people in north korea, russia, china, and a host of other countries committed to developing ever more sophisticated cyber warfare. but that is exactly the point. if you're going to defend the world's democracies from the world's authoritarian

regimes, you start by building an alliance of the world's democracies. it's the basic principle that led to the creation of nato. it's the basic principle that won world war ii and it's the basic principle we need in the 21st century to defend the world's democracies from these authoritarian attacks. well, interesting point, but maybe you are being a little naive, because i'm also remembering that in 2013, you and many others from big tech were called into crisis meetings at the white house under the obama administration because you discovered, thanks to the leaks of edward snowden, that the us state, the government of america, your government, its national security agency, were illicitly tapping into electronic communications for their own national security purposes, unknown to the millions of people whose data was accessed. why should we trust america? i think that one should have some

facing democracy and be to protect it. i actually think, as we describe in our book, that the snowden disclosures in 2013 were one of the great inflection points for technology of the past decade and it did awaken us all to things we did not know. it led us, as a company, to file not one, but four lawsuits against the obama administration. we went to the united states supreme court, we took steps that led to greater legal protections and that's the other side of the coin. if we protect our rights and democracies and protect ourselves from authoritarian cyber attacks, that's not going to solve the problems of the world, but it's fundamental to the progress we need to make. i am really sensing your passion for this, but i'm also wondering whether you are not being deeply naive and perhaps some people watching this will say a bit misleading. because we've established that state actors across the world, frankly, on their record, can't be trusted to follow your principles,

but also on the private sector has repeatedly failed to follow your principles. we only have to think about facebook and the data released at cambridge analytica and the fact that millions of facebook users weren't to know their data was being accessed for political purposes and we can, frankly, look at microsoft and even the recent past, you've been reprimanded in ireland, there was a published report showing that linkedin, one of your companies, was applying algorithms to personal data to suggest network connections, addressing email addresses, accessing email addresses of millions of people who had no idea that they had been accessed, and that was a linkedin responsibility. dutch officials pointing to microsoft collecting personal data without informing users. why should we trust any of the actors in this sector? i don't think that this is about sitting back and just hoping that people do the right thing. i think it is about engaging people,

perhaps most especially the public at large, so that we all take the steps to ensure that the right thing is done. i think that the fundamental point that you are making actually is a valid one. one of the stories we share in the book was that meeting with president obama in the white house in 2013. i was there and as we in the tech sector were pushing the white house to put in place more checks and balances on the nsa, there came a moment in that meeting when president obama looked at us and said, "i have a suspicion the guns will turn. "you all in the tech sector have as much or more data "in the government, there will be a day when the demands "that you are trying to place on the government will be "placed on you." he was right. it was a prescient observation.

so, if you're accepting the premise that, frankly, we should be sceptical about the state actors in the big tech companies, let me bring it back to the individual and all the people watching and listening to this interview. we all generate enormous — most of us how — enormous amounts of data. why can't we have ownership of that data and at least have a transparency as to what our data is being used for and by whom? well, i actually think that is something that is an important goal and it needs to be a reality around the world. so when? well, interestingly, for any country that is today in the european union, that is the law of the land. it became the law of the land in may of 2018. people in the eu have the right to go to a digital service and find out what information a company has about them. they have the right to correct and if it's wrong, to delete it, to move it to another provider and i will say, we need to bring those rights to the rest of the world and i will also say, microsoft today is the only company in the tech sector that said last may that we would take the rights

that european law gave to european customers and we would extend that to all of our customers everywhere in the world. and we've found that customers, people everywhere actually value these rights. in the future, artificial intelligence appears to be the next great step in the sort of tech story. in the west, and particularly the united states, it seems ai and innovation within it is being driven by the big tech companies. in china, for example, it seems the state is committing itself and vast resources to investment in al. which approach do you think is going to win out? i think at the end of the day, you are going to see ongoing competition between both approaches. i don't think this is the kind of thing where one approach is going to win and one approach is going to lose. i actually think the real question shouldn't be who will do better, the us or china?

the real question is, how do we ensure that artificial intelligence becomes a little bit more like electricity in the sense that it needs to be a tool that any company, any government, any nonprofit can use anywhere. we shouldn't want it to be an invention that drives wealth or income or power to just a couple of places on the planet. in the course of your long career and having seen what has happened to the tech sector, what's happened with privacy business, how states abused and misused information technology, are you confident that we human beings, as a species, are going to develop autonomous "thinking machines" in a responsible way? i think you've just asked what may well be one of the single most important questions for our generation of people because think about it in the terms you put it. where the first generation the history of humanity that is giving machines the power to make decisions that historically

could only be made by people. if we get it wrong, every generation that follows will likely pay a price for our mistakes. does that mean that we should be optimistic or pessimistic? i actually think it means we need to be determined. it is of fundamental importance that we get these issues out on the table, we enable people to understand them, we start to bring together notjust technical people from the tech sector, but people from broad communities to really come to terms and enable us, especially among democratic societies, to put laws in place that at least increase the probability that we will get this right. so, optimist or pessimist? i am both, but mostly i say it doesn't matter. it only matters that you're determined. we are determined to do what we can, to not just think about this from a technology perspective. it's why, as we share in the book, if you go to the vatican, we meet with the world's religious leaders, with philosophers.

if we are going to ensure that computers reflect the best of humanity, we need to ensure that all of humanity is reflected in this conversation and we just have to stay on this every day. brad smith, it's a great way to end this interview. thank very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. thank you very much. hello once again. while some spots, particularly northern and eastern britain, started monday decently enough, eventually weather fronts piled in from the atlantic.

here we are on tuesday, you get the sense we may well be in for something of a repeat performance. in fact, tuesday could be one of the wettest and windiest days that many areas will have seen for quite some time. in the first part of the day, it's the southern half of britain that's likely to see the very worst of the conditions on offer. as i take you on through the morning and on into the afternoon, you'll notice some of those really dark blues and greens gradually work their way ever further towards the north and it will be a fairly slow process as well. that's why we think some spots widely could see 30—110 millimetres of rain, others could get up to 70 millimetres of rain. some of the gusts, 40, possibly even 50 miles an hour in exposed locations. just to give you a sense of the spread of those gusts, even into the north of scotland, where you don't see the very worst of the rain, it will be a windy day. and then later on we may welljust ramp up some rain and some stronger winds yet again. initially into the south—west, but then widely across the southern counties of both england and wales.

and on what is not going to be a particularly cold night given the amount of cloud around on the strength of the wind as well. here we are on wednesday, and once that side of the feature has worked its way off to the near continent, actually wednesday is going to be one of the quieter days of the week. once that wind and rain has cleared away from east anglia and the south—east, then there is a fair amount of dry weather, yes, there will be a spotting of showers in north scotland, not so much wind. you may feel like standing around in it, but probably not on tuesday. here we are on thursday. if you've seen the forecast in recent days, these forecasts have sped up, it looks like they would hang around for the first part of friday. bar the far north—eastern quarter of scotland, it looks like they clear the eastern shores of the british isles, leaving behind a drier prospect, albiet fairly late in the day for some.

and then we may gang up some of those showers to western areas to give the odd longer spell of rain. and all the while, the wind is quite a significant factor on the day on friday. so essentially, it's a day of sunny spells with some showers. but some of those showers ganging together on many fronts to give some longer spells of rain. and again we are darkening out some of these blues so i would be not at all surprised if you heard the odd rumble of thunder in the heaviest of those downpours.

welcome to bbc news, i'm mike embley. our top stories: as world leaders meet for a special un summit on climate change, the teenage activist greta thunberg greets them with a furious attack. how dare you?! you have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. the massive operation to bring thousands of tourists back to britain after the collapse of thomas cook. human rights groups in egypt say more than 500 people have been detained after demonstrations in several cities on friday and saturday. prince harry, meghan and their baby son archie are in south africa for their first overseas tour as a family.