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The King’s speech at the state opening of parliament is now less than a day away, with the new Labour government due to set out an artificial intelligence bill as part of its legislative agenda.
Tech & Science Daily has insight ahead of the event with Eleanor Shearer, senior research fellow at the Common Wealth think-tank.
We also discuss the direction of travel of Sir Keir Starmer’s administration for tech and the economy after his landslide victory.
Plus, it’s Amazon Prime Day- when the online behemoth attempts to whip us into a frenzy with apparent cheap deals.
But, what’s the reason behind this consumer bonanza? It’s all to beat that summer sales lull.
While an investigation found prolific thieves are stealing smartphones and even ‘making up to £15,000 a month’ as police struggle to identify suspects across London.
Channel 4’s Dispatches discovered criminals sell devices to dodgy businesses who strip them for parts or unlock them for resale.
Scotland Yard told the programme they are boosting patrols and encourage theft and robbery victims to report crimes.
Also in this episode: ADHD online test, rise in NHS cancer care delays, malaria jab breakthrough hailed and moon cave find.
Listen on the above player, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you stream.
Here’s a fully automated transcript of today’s episode:
Hello, I'm Mark Blunden and this is The Standard's Tech and Science Daily.
Coming up, London's iPhone Theft Epidemic.
But first, the King's Speech at the state opening of parliament is now less than a day away as the new Labour government sets out its legislative agenda with plenty of technology aspects within.
What we're expecting is the AI Bill to be focused on regulating the most powerful generative AI model.
So, things like GPT-4, which is behind ChatGPT that people may well have played around with.
The last government also had this focus on kind of safety of these AI models, but we're expecting this legislation to be a bit more binding on the technology companies.
That's Eleanor Shearer, Senior Research Fellow at the Commonwealth Think Tank.
The focus is very much on the models themselves, you know, what are they capable of?
How might they be compromised by bad actors?
There is a little bit of thinking about humanity, thinking about the bad social impacts they might facilitate, like the spread of misinformation.
But what really might be missing is the more structural stuff, like how can employers use these technologies to exploit their workers?
And the Trades Union Congress has done some really interesting work on a kind of AI Bill of Rights for workers, and it would be great to see the government take that on board, but I don't think we're going to see that this time round.
And we asked about the legislative teeth for reining in multinational big tech.
I think we really should be looking at the lessons from social media.
I mean, these are both technologies that have their benefits, for sure, but can also cause immense harm.
And what we saw with social media, you know, 10, 20 years ago, is that we let a few companies say, don't worry, we can regulate ourselves, we can provide this service as basically a monopoly, and it won't cause any problems.
I think everyone can sort of say where that really ended up.
So what I would really want to see is a different kind of economic landscape.
I think we really need to be thinking about how much power big tech has to kind of force the integration of AI on us to set the vision of the future, when in fact, if we had a fairer, more equal landscape, we might all be able to kind of co-create that future and say, well, these are the areas where AI could really help and benefit us, but these are the areas where we don't want to see it kind of automating us out of a job or causing massive social harm.
Also about the direction of travel for Sir Kier Starmer's government after taking over from Rishi Sunak's conservative administration.
Yeah, I think it remains to be seen.
The last government also focused on this kind of frame of AI safety, and it's one that the tech companies themselves are pushing a lot.
It's sort of to their benefit to almost scaremonger and say, these are such powerful systems, they're going to cause such untold devastation, encourage people to think of apocalyptic future scenarios, rather than thinking about the here and now, the fact that there are already people being discriminated against, there are already people losing their jobs.
And so, what I really want to see is that, not to say that AI safety isn't important, it absolutely is, but where Labour could go further, the Conservatives, is starting to think about inequality, starting to think about employment protections.
They've got their new deal for working people, how could you actually use that frame to think more about technology as well?
Also likely to be included in the King's Speech will be a revived cyber security bill to protect British infrastructure from foreign attacks.
Next,
It's Amazon Prime Day, when the online behemoth attempts, once again, to whip us into a frenzy with apparent cheap deals.
But at a time when prices are sky high anyway, are we really getting such a good price on products?
And what's the reason behind this consumer bonanza?
Well, it's all to beat that summer sales lull.
Corsite Research finds that these kinds of promotional summertime days help retailers tempt customers to buy their goods when they might be thinking instead of splashing out on a holiday or an ice meal out.
Now, an investigation finds prolific thieves are stealing smartphones and even making up to £15,000 a month as police struggle to identify suspects across London.
An investigation by Channel 4's Dispatches reveals criminals are selling devices to businesses who strip them for parts or unlock them for resale.
The data was compiled by Crest Advisory, a consultancy specialising in analysing police data.
One London crime victim told Dispatches that despite being told by police there were no leads, his phone ended up pinging in Shenzhen in China a fortnight after the robbery, where it was suspected of being stripped for parts.
Scotland Yard told the programme; they are boosting patrols and encourage theft and robbery victims to report crimes.
Now, Research by Cancer Research UK and the National Disease Registration Service finds there's been a substantial rise in the number of patients waiting for NHS oncology treatment.
According to NHS Target, some 85% of patients should start their first treatment within 62 days of an urgent GP referral for suspected cancer.
However, experts found the proportion of cancer patients waiting at least 104 days to begin their treatments, following an urgent suspected referral in England has almost tripled in just five years.
Research found a significant proportion of delays occurred because of healthcare provider-initiated delays, such as equipment breakdown, capacity issues and administrative delays.
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Plus, could a moon cave become an astronaut's lunar base?
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Welcome back.
There's hope that hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved this decade thanks to a new malaria vaccine.
The head of the jab development team, Sir Adrian Hill, who's professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he hoped the vaccine would pave the way for a really serious attempt at eradicating the disease.
The R21 Matrix M vaccine hailed as a scientific breakthrough is the first malaria jab to meet the World Health Organization's targets of 75% efficacy at preventing the disease.
The first doses were rolled out in Ivory Coast on Monday and were developed under Sir Adrian at the University's Jenner Institute.
Now, Research by Cancer Research UK and the National Disease Registration Service finds there's been a substantial rise in the number of patients waiting for NHS oncology treatment.
According to NHS targets, some 85% of patients should start their first treatment within 62 days of an urgent GP referral for suspected cancer.
However, experts found the proportion of cancer patients waiting at least 104 days to begin their treatments following an urgent suspected referral in England has almost tripled in just five years.
Research found a significant proportion of delays occurred because of healthcare provider-initiated delays such as equipment breakdown, capacity issues and administrative delays.
And finally, scientists at the University of Trento in Italy have discovered an underground moon cave that stretches tens of metres beneath an open pit that could become a potential lunar base for future astronauts.
Researchers examined radar data to make the find and say it's the first lunar tunnel to be discovered that could be accessible to humans.
The hollowed passage lies beneath the pit about 100 metres wide in the Sea of Tranquility, a dark region on the near side of the moon that can be seen with the naked eye.
Scientists have long suspected that the Sea of Tranquility chasm, along with 200 other pits on the moon, may have tunnels lurking beneath.
Now the milestone discovery, as it's been described, comes as NASA prepares to send its first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years.
You're up to date to come back at 4pm for the latest news, interviews and analysis from The Standard podcast here in London, and we'll be back tomorrow at 1pm.
