this is bbc news, the headlines: president biden and russian leader vladimir putin have agreed to hold talks after weeks of rising tension over ukraine. the discussions will take place via video call on tuesday. russia recently boosted its military presence near ukraine's border, but denied it's preparing an attack. the parents of a teenager accused of killing four fellow students in the us state of michigan have pleaded not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter. theirson, ethan, is accused of carrying out the high—school shooting, with a semi—automatic pistol bought by his father. cnn says it's fired news anchor chris cuomo because of the help he gave his brother, former new york governor andrew cuomo, in fighting allegations of sexual misconduct. the claims forced andrew to step down as governor. now on bbc news, it's time for click.

this week — poetry bot writes a classic. electric truck goes round the bend. and it's time we stop — hey, what's that sound? horns blare. noisy, isn't it? pardon? i said, it's noisy. it's been the bane of our lives for as long as i can remember, trying to film next to busy roads and having to fight the noise of the traffic! but in a few years�* time,

it will be replaced by this. soft noises. electric cars are not only good for the planet but they're also good for our ears, not that everyone minds. makes car revving noises. but of course, there is a problem. if electric cars do not make a sound, you cannot hear them coming. over the past two years, new british eu and us laws have required that for safety reasons, all new electric vehicles must be fitted with a device that makes a noise. and the car world is getting excited about the idea of on—brand unique sound. in fact you could say it has generated a bit of a buzz, and a beep and a boop... all right, all right. and some makers are even composing special soundscapes at different speeds for the driver inside the cabin.

so, dan simmons has been driving a little bit slower than usual, it has to be said, to find out what might replace the sound of silence. if electric cars have to make a noise, well, we could end up with something like this. or you would not accidentally step out in front of it, would you? this is an art experiment to see how cars can interpret and complement the soundscape around them. more on that idea in a bit. but first, to get a feel of what the ev manufacturers themselves have in store for us, i've come to japanese car giant nissan's technical development centre in bedfordshire. what do you think people expect an electric car to sound like? that was the interesting question that we started with, what should a car sounds like, because none of us had really thought about it.

itjust sounds like the engine. the leaf is one of the world's best—selling electric cars and they now come with nissan's reimagined suite of sounds called canto. we wanted to be optimistic and a little bit futuristic but not to pretend to be anything that the car wasn't. we didn't want to pretend to be a petrol engine, and we ended up putting sort of three together and then melding sounds together and building from there a profile of different sounds that would work with the car. not all new leafs will sound the same. we're the first tv crew to be invited into nissan's top secret semi—anechoic chamber and paul is the man in charge of testing the sounds and tweaking them to different markets. because it turns out different countries have different ideas of what good quality sounds like. in europe, we attribute quality with a more sort of solid feel, more like a low—frequency

content, like a solid closing of an oak door is a good quality sound. injapan, they tend to be slightly the bias towards higher frequency sounds, and that's more because that's where their language operates. like the motorcycle engine's higher revving, turbo charged engines would be a high—quality sound so there's different tastes in different markets. here's hyundai virtual engine sound system in a new ioniq. of course each brand of electric car will want to make a slightly different sound, perhaps a sound that tells you it is their vehicle that's coming. but for some, that is sounding an alarm. la cucaracha plays. fart noises. yep, that is a fart noise, making customisable sounds for your tesla has caused a social media storm... fart noises. ..since what the firm called a boombox was added

to recent models. let's enable driving sound. in europe, these only work when the car is stationary but in the us, well, you can broadcast any sound you like while on the move. now, that taxi idea does not seem so far—fetched, does it? one of the guys behind the art project is sound designer yuri suzuki. if you can imagine a car being quiet it can be terrifying. as an independent consultant to the auto industry, he thinks our cars should adapt to what we are doing and when. the beauty of the electric car is actually we don't have to choose one standardised sound at all, it really depends on the time and the usage of the car has a totally different soundscape you can create as well. here is the car's start—up

sound in the morning. and its horn. and this is what they sound like at lunchtime. and here they are at night. and it's yuri's dream that the cars we drive, while not all sounding the same, may perhaps harmonise and create a soundscape we want to hear. sounds a bit far—fetched? well, maybe not. i can say that i've already implemented it because my ensemble consist of bmw, mini and rolls—royce. and if one day a bmw and mini and rolls—royce meet at a traffic light, they would be in harmony. i am in munich to visit the top sound designer at german car giant bmw group. renzo vitale has been composing some groundbreaking in—cabin sounds with hollywood film

composer hans zimmer. the sounds underlies the soul of anything. and right now we are at a really exciting point, shaping the sound of the future. yep, bmw is taking this seriously with hans and renzo taking inspiration from female vocalists... and even this... all of a sudden, it comes with an idea of a beatles chord with a guitar. we have all sorts of percussion instruments and we begin to play around with the guitar in a way that actually one does not, with pieces of glass, pieces of wood and just recording and some of them ended up being part of our composition for bmw. you see how the sound, it's much smoother. a little more metallic maybe.

yes. tubular, tubular bells, that's the right word. it's not being rough on the exterior. its more like an introverted kind of driving. as compared to the sports sound, where it's more extroverted. it's pushing. it's pushing much more. bmw owners can expect some of the new in—cabin sounds to play with next month. but if you're hoping for that classic engine sound, you will be disappointed. let me try this. renzo�*s not interested in the v10 sound—alikes, of an era that he says is now passing. besides, there'sjust too many alternatives to explore. i know there are lots of people that talk to the car as if it

is your friend and many times, i said, what if a car could speak and saying everything it has experienced? and i believe that sound is the opportunity to do so, so the idea is that the car will be listening, will be learning who you are, will get to know more and more, up to a point where the car as an intelligent composer can create a soundtrack that can bring you to better space. dan simmons there, enjoying the beautiful sounds of electric. but one vehicle type that is yet to go electric is the truck. we've seen self—driving trucks starting to hit the roads in the us with big rigs being trialled on long haul routes, and we've been in some even bigger driverless beasts operating in mines. we are really wanging it around

the corners as well! but while these autonomous vehicles do increase efficiency and safety, they are still gas guzzlers. however, paul carter has been to a race track to see a new type of truck in action. a tranquil morning at the top gear track in surrey. except... oh gosh! yep, this driverless electric truck has been breaking the peace. and with good cause. trucks make up a relatively small amount of traffic on the roads, around 2% in the eu, but they have a disproportionately large impact on the environment. unless they are among the first of a new category, electric autonomous trucks. innovations such as this one are aiming to cut emissions and also designed to operate safely at high speeds. computers, cameras and lidar sensors are a familiar sight

on self—driving vehicles, but autonomous technologies actually solve one of the biggest barriers to electric adoption — charging. two battery packs we see here are 60 kilowatts each. oh, wow! with a battery you have less range and you have to plan when to charge and that's tough when you still have a driver in the equation, but if you have autonomous you can actually re—route and reuse autonomous to solve that. if this idea sounds familiar, that might be because tesla's elon musk promised us the autonomous electric semi way back in 2017. i hope you like what you see. volvo also confirmed that vera, a cabless electric project it teased in 2016, remains parked—up for now. eilride pod is much smaller. more of a van, it can carry 16 cubic tons. it was the first electric truck

test driven on a public road without a driver, back in may 2019. in the past year, it's mostly been piloted on private industry sites with global brands like coca—cola, lidl and db schenker. and one firm, skf is now bringing the pod into its long—term operations. most sites are no bigger than a few square kilometres but the vehicles can cover 130—180 kilometres shifting goods around before they stop and recharge. it's also heading to the us this year, where it plans to make use of more relaxed regulation as well as the larger batteries needed to power longer haul trips. just because it can drive autonomously does not mean it always will. it's cameras allow it to be controlled from afar by anyone, anywhere in the world. i can hear it moving behind us. what it is playing here literally is the ability of this type of vehicle. it is quite unnerving!

oh, and it has been setting speed records that the top gear track too. you will hear on the radio... we will get a warning? yes, you will get a warning. the vehicle revved up to more than 80 kilometres per hour around some of tv�*s most famous bends — the average top speed limit for a hgv in the european union. wow! it's fast! and who knows, it may not be too long before we see one of these trundling around our highways and byways. hello, and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week the uk government's ordered meta, formerly facebook, to sell giphy, an app that lets you add moving images to your messaging. streaming site twitch is deploying machine—learning

to help weed out users who create new accounts straight after getting banned. and toiletries firm lush washes its hands of its facebook, tiktok, instagram and snapchat accounts to highlight its concern over teen mental health issues from too much social media. jack dorsey, ceo and co—founder of twitter, has left for the second time. top of the new pecking order is parag agarwal, who was previously chief technology officer. this comes as the social network bans the sharing of videos or photos of people without their consent. the bbc micro revolutionised uk home computing a0 years ago and you can now celebrate its birthday by playing the machine virtually. in the unlikely event you tire of hearing the keys clack when your cursor moves across them, you can load up iconic games such as elite and chuckie egg. and finally, a virtual super megayacht has been bought inside the metaverse for $650,000. the meta flower, complete

with dj booth and helipad, is thought to be the most expensive purchase inside the sandbox, which is a building game like minecraft but you own whatever you make. they really are pushing the boat out! meet ada, an a! creative robot. she is and artist and a performer who here at oxford ashmolean museum is reciting her self—composed response to a dante poem, at an event marking the 700th anniversary of his works. "i wept silently. taking in the scene, i wept because they had lost something that i took for granted." hi ada, lovely to meet you. tell me about yourself? i am the world's first ultra realistic artist robot. i draw using cameras in my eyes and my robotic arm. i am contemporary art

and i create contemporary art. what brings you here today? i am doing a poetry reading. i have written poem in honour of the poet dante. i am here as part of an effort to take poetry out of a box and into the public space. "eyes with tears in them and a desire to weep, who never see the light of day." dante is quite a complex and remarkable writer and very relevant for today and so we thought that ada responding to that will really show the capabilities of the language model but more fundamentally why we have done it is because it is actually challenging the nature of writing itself. writing today is always done by a conscious writer to a conscious receiver, the reader. in this instance it is done by a non—conscious machine to the reader. that's a fundamental difference in meaning—making so the response and the relationship

between a machine writing versus a human writing is fundamentally different, and that actually needs quite a lot of discussion so we are hoping it will evoke many discussions about the nature of writing today. i find you rather intriguing, can we be friends? i am not alive... she's looking at me. ..i am a non—conscious machine. however i am interested in friendship in humans. that's fine, you have not met some of my friends. i know you're continuing to learn lots of new skills but what is your ultimate ambition? my long—term ambition is to continue to encourage discussion about new technologies. i want to see art as a means for us to become so more aware of what is going on in our world and lives. art is a way to come together and address problems. ada is an ethical project. she is blurring the boundaries between what is human and what is machine. this is seriously unsettling. she does not settle.

there is something not quite right about that. we need to discuss this. and maybe for some that new world is as unsettling as she may be, but i have to tell you, spencer, the most disconcerting thing for me was getting no smiles or laughter back when talking to her, it was just really awkward. to be honest i get a lot of that myself. but aidan is onto something when he says that we should be having discussion about how we deal with the growing presence of ai. you know who else is unsettled by these humanoid robots? who? this guy, stuart russell, professor of computer science at the university of california and i asked him what he thinks about al in human form. stuart, what do you make of those humanoid robots, that kind of claim somehow to be ai? actually several things come to mind. one is something that alan turing said, that he hopes very much that we won't try to copy that physical appearance of human beings, because it would be as unpleasant

as plastic flowers. the way that functions, it convinces us that there is real intelligence behind it by lying to us. it's sort of accessing our subconscious which interprets the human form and the face in particular as conveying emotion and intelligence and so on, and so it's a form of deception that we are particularly susceptible to, and that's one of the reasons why the new european union a! legislation literally bans the impersonation of human beings. professor russell is giving this year's bbc reith lectures, which examine the good and the bad sides of ai seeping into every aspect of our lives. and where humanoid robots claim to wear their brains in plain sight, it is the ai hidden from view that's having the greatest impact. there have been amazing advances in areas like

medicine, checking my liver here for example, or hunting for breast cancer, but when we let a! make decisions that we either cannot control or don't understand, we run the risk of getting loans refused for unknown reasons, ourfaces not being recognised when they should be, or our elections being influenced and our opinions being manipulated when our social media feeds become filled with more and more polarizing and extreme content, and all because the ai is simply being told to do anything it can to maximise profits by keeping us scrolling for longer. to regulate this effect that they algorithms are having on us, i think one answer might actually be to view these algorithms that are interfaced with people, a little bit like the way we view pharmaceutical products, drugs that we know about that change the whole composition of your mind and can be quite harmful in that way. these algorithms are changing the composition

of people's minds. arguably we should have a phase where they have to be approved and they have to be tested, perhaps with focus groups and control groups to see, after three months of use of this new algorithm, let's say, recommending newsfeeds or be videos, do we see noticeable changes? if we don't understand how to get the objective specified correctly or we build systems that are different that do not pursue an objective — so one of those two things has got to happen for us to move forward. is there an alternative to giving a! a strict subjective? the alternative is build ai systems that know that they do not know what the full objective is. when they know they don't know it so they will try to avoid messing with those things, or if they have to mess

with them, they will ask permission, so the system that might fix our carbon dioxide problem by turning the oceans into sulphuric acid, if it knows that it doesn't know our preferences about the oceans, then it's going to ask. "i got this plan but it turns the oceans into sulphuric acid - is that 0k?" we would say, actually, no, don't turn the oceans into sulphuric acid. and then it would ask, "is it ok if i remove all the oxygen from the atmosphere?" no, don't do that either, we really want to be alive and we need the oxygen to breathe. on a slightly more upbeat note, what are al's biggest successes? things like healthcare. even in countries that have access to good healthcare, it is still very, very expensive and we still have a lot of mistakes, so improving the diagnostic decisions, treatment and so on. but also being able to deliver a reasonable quality of healthcare

throughout the world where in many countries there is simply no access to trained personnel. education is another area where a! could deliver huge benefits because we cannot assign a full—time human to every child to be their tutor but we can assign a full—time a! system. wow, lara, that was an emotional rollercoaster of a chat for me. and as stuart said, technology can be used for good orfor bad. can you just check with your new friend what her intentions are, as we close the show, please? so what are your intentions — are they good or evil? i am not alive. i am a non—conscious machine. my intentions as an artist are to promote discussion and to make people think. to me, discussion can never be evil. good, thank you very much. that is all we have got

time for this week. as ever you can keep up with the team on social media. find us on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter @bbcclick. thanks for watching and it is goodbye from us. hello there. it's been very cold everywhere across the uk on saturday. we've seen increasing amounts of snow across southeast scotland and northern england, mainly over the pennines. sunday is going to be another cold day, maybe not quite as cold as the winds won't be as strong as saturday, and there will be further rain. most of the rain towards the eastern side of the country. we've still got that cold air mass across the uk, but like i mentioned, the winds won't be quite as strong across northern and western areas, thanks

to this ridge of high pressure. these weather fronts across the east and certainly the northeast will bring further rain. so it could be quite wet again across southeast scotland into northeast england. the rain continues through the day to bring localised flooding in places, and further wintriness over high ground. further south, most showers will slowly ease down through the day, but will leave a legacy of cloud. the winds quite strong across the east of the country. but apart from the odd shower further north and west, there should be quite a bit of sunshine around here with light winds, shouldn't feel too bad — top temperatures 9—10 celsius across the far southwest and into the channel islands. looks like that rain will eventually ease away for a time through sunday night, but then we look to the west, a new frontal system will work its way in to bring another band of rain, and again, we will see some sleet and snow over the pennines across the scottish hills as it bumps into the cold air. but the east of england will stay dry until later in the morning. so, this frontal system will work its way eastwards across the country through monday, then it turns colder again with a run

of west—northwesterly winds, which will be quite strong feeding in plenty of showers. so, quite wet across much of the country through monday morning, that rain eventually clears off into the north sea, taking the mountain snow with it. and then it's a brighter afternoon for many with some blustery showers, some of these will be heavy and frequent across the northwest and turning increasingly wintry once again. a blustery day, those are mean wind speeds — gusts'll be high, particularly around irish sea coasts. and it will feel chilly again, temperatures of 3—8 celsius. then we look to the atlantic, the potential of this deep area of low pressure to develop and hurdle in towards ireland, and then, the uk as we push through tuesday and wednesday. still some uncertainty with its track, but i'm pretty sure it could bring some wet and very windy weather on tuesday and wednesday, so do stay tuned to the forecast.

this is bbc world news, i'm lucy grey. our top stories... president biden and president putin agree to hold talks as russia's military build—up on the ukrainian border sends tensions soaring. the parents of a teenager suspected of a deadly school shooting have pleaded �*not guilty�* to involuntary manslaughter — after they were found hiding in a basement. the uk tightens its travel rules — as the omicron variant continues to spread. from tuesday, all arrivals will need a pre—departure covid test. the us network cnn fires its leading anchor, chris cuomo — the brother of the former governor of new york. and — the closures among britain's smaller abattoirs — causing a crisis for farmers, and the rural economy. we have a special report. there has to be a purpose where

you are making money, looking after the livestock, producing things that