Expert panel calls for global action to control AI

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1:01Boo-yah!

1:31to address the annual UN General Assembly in just over an hour in a speech which may provide us with some indication of how keen he is to tie up loose foreign ends ahead of midterm elections in six weeks. But beyond that, what are the themes, the preoccupations that unite or divide those world leaders? And have they anything interesting, useful or reassuring to say about global cooperation over artificial intelligence? That's something we'll look at in a bit more detail in a moment. First, though, let's join our UN correspondent, Neda Torfik, who's just outside UN headquarters. Neda, what do you think?

2:08Well, let's start with President Trump. What do you think we can look forward to there?

2:14Well, look, I think, of course, for President Trump, he is not just speaking to international leaders here. He is also addressing his domestic audience, which, as you mentioned there, is, you know, just ahead of the midterm elections in November, where his party is set, if polls are to be believed, to lose many seats in the House and potentially just hold on to the Senate or perhaps lose it by a slim margin. And so given that he has seen his ratings tank because of the war in Iran that he launched with Israel, we are going to expect to see him at this podium say that he has stopped Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, that it is Iran that is hurting, not the U.S., that the U.S.

2:55still has leverage here. But what we won't expect to hear is a timeline on when this war will end, because that is what diplomats here are really focused on. You know, I've spoken to a number of diplomats, and all of them say they want to know when they can get back to a sense of predictability for the straits in the Red Sea, the Arabian Peninsula, when it can get back to business as usual. And so that is a key preoccupation as we look at fuel prices rising and the impact it will have on food, medicine, everything else. Donald Trump will also continue taking a hit at the United Nations in his speech.

3:32He sees his efforts to not only delay payments for the U.N.'s regular budget, which he eventually did, but also cutting funding from several agencies and peacekeeping as a way to hold the U.N. to account. His critics would argue he's left the organization weaker. And so Donald Trump will be taking a victory lap, I think, in this. And it will be interesting to see how diplomats react to that. Yeah. And obviously, there'll be a whole host of other world leaders. The Palestinian president won't be there in person. He's been denied a visa. But the Iranian president will be, which could provide a bit of an interesting, well, obviously, a contrast, but also perhaps an interesting sense of direction in terms of how the Iranians view their conflict with the US.

4:21Yeah, that's right. I mean, again, in the speech, expect, you know, Iran's president to maintain that Iran is sticking by its demands, demands so far that President Trump has denied. President Trump has increased kind of financial pressure on Iran. Iran is seeking to have its funds unfrozen, you know, upwards of$20 billion. That could certainly help the regime, the country there. But, you know, Donald Trump has floated the potential of meeting Iran's president. Now, I think diplomats see that as unlikely at this stage. But it is interesting that he floated that because, you know, nobody is expecting a breakthrough.

5:03There's not one diplomat I've spoken to here who believes there will be a breakthrough on Iran. Even Gulf countries through Amman, you know, on the street that shares the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, they are trying to work on some kind of agreement on how the strait will work. Gulf countries are open to talks, but they know ultimately the United States has the power for any eventual deal. So it's more about incremental progress here, I think. We'll leave it there. But thank you very much for joining us live from the UN. Well, as to the issue of artificial intelligence, that large black box that many of us may slightly nervously be peering into.

5:35It was the big issue under discussion as this 81st General Assembly of the UN opened on Monday. That was what was billed as a conference about global cooperation on AI. Professor Sonia Livingston is Director of the Digital Futures for Children Centre at the London School of Economics. She sits on the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. What did her panel have to say? The panel's message is really that AI is not inevitable, but it is clearly present, embedded, being rapidly developed and seen as an enormous source of transformation and profit. So, you know, the drivers that are leading to its development are in full flow and very unlikely to be stopped.

6:24But that's human drivers developing technology. That's major corporations, powerful governments who are promoting and assuring that it moves forward, that it moves in a particular direction and that it moves at as rapid a pace as possible. And, you know, the panel doesn't make recommendations, it offers the evidence. It's that the evidence is such that the developments are now outpacing safety and that it is vital that we pause, slow down, identify and put in place far better protections, warnings, transparency about what does go wrong and ways of remediating those so that AI doesn't develop helter-skelter, but develops in a way that is really under human control and management.

7:11I'm not disputing the principle of what you're saying, but I wonder about the feasibility of it. I mean, you talk about cooperation. We've heard here on the BBC from the UN Undersecretary General, who's Special Envoy for Emerging Technology, Amandeep Singh Gill, saying, you know, the importance of this meeting is that every country has a seat at the table on AI governance. But there is a big political problem here that, you know, two of the major countries that are driving this, the US and China, well, the US is led by an administration and President Trump, who seems to think that there isn't much need for regulation.

7:47And obviously, it doesn't feel as if the US and China are particularly in a place to cooperate on global governance, that your intentions may be good, but it could seem a little bit unlikely. I think what I can say is that there is clearly lots of evidence that just moving headlong into a state of kind of geopolitical competition is not proving successful. And there is going to be enormous anxiety and pushback, which will affect the bottom line, which will matter for the way in which countries take up and adopt AI. But one of the panel's other messages is very much that the situation is extraordinarily unequal and becoming much more so.

8:33So vast swathes of the world are being cut out of both the kind of benefits of AI and also are kind of increasingly at risk from systems that they don't have control over. So, you know, this is extremely difficult situation. It's not a straightforward one of taking the money and running. And in terms of the disproportionate harms, I mean, you are director of the Digital Future for Children Centre at the London School of Economics. Do you think that the children are particularly exposed to the potential disadvantages that come with an increasingly powerful artificial intelligence models? I do. And I draw attention to children because they didn't choose and have no control over the way in which AI is being embedded in their homes, in their schools, in the apps that they use every day.

9:22And they often approach it with curiosity and fascination and some pleasure. It is also bringing considerable harms. And I would highlight harms of forms of persuasion and manipulation in terms of the information they receive, inequalities in terms of bias and discrimination, and some very direct risks, especially with chatbots, in the ways in which children can be persuaded to do very dangerous and harmful things. So yes, everyone needs to be alert to this. But this is, if you like, not so much safety with the systems, but safety with the effects of poorly designed systems as they are beginning to reach the population and how have these disproportionate effects on those who are more vulnerable or less prepared.

10:09Professor Sonia Livingstone speaking to me from New York. Russian attacks on Ukraine are, it seems, only wreaking more and more damage. The reason? Russia's new jet-powered drones, which are much harder to shoot down. Kiev is now in a race to develop weapons that can counter them. The BBC's Abdul-Jalil Abdur-Raslov has joined Ukrainian air defence units fighting against this new threat.

10:35A missile shoots into the sky, leaving a long white tail behind. Seconds pass very slowly.

10:46Destroyed, reports a Ukrainian soldier having spotted in a distance a black plume of smoke from the explosion. His unit has successfully shot down a Russian jet-powered drone.

11:03These new drones are much harder to intercept. So for now, Ukrainian forces primarily use fighter jets or Western-provided air defense systems to stop them. They might be very effective, but far too costly to use against a much cheaper threat. Antenna video-periodavacar. Accumulator. Soldiers from the 96th Air Defense Brigade show me their drone interceptors regarded a breakthrough technology just a year ago. A bullet-shaped device helped the Ukrainian military to shoot down up to 95 % of Russian drones. But it's simply too slow against the new type of threat, says the crew commander Madzy. The speed of jet-powered drones is 300 to 500 kilometers per hour, which is twice as fast as our interceptors.

12:03This is like a cat-and-mouse game. We are inventing something. Russia is trying to invent counteraction and vice versa. Andrei Gritsenyuk, the head of BraveOne, Ukraine's main defense technology alliance. And right now, more than 20 companies are building very fast drone interceptors on different levels of readiness. And out of them, six companies, members of Brevan, already deployed to the combat. And how effective are they? We have already a number of successfully destroyed Shahid and Bandarals. So we see that the trend is positive. To deal with new threats, Ukraine is also trying to convert all the weapons they no longer make.

12:53Soldiers from the Bilatserkva Air Defense Regiment are driving their anti-aircraft missile system called Osa into cover. This giant Soviet armored vehicle on wheels is a lucrative target for Russian drones. It helps to defend Ukrainian cities from airstrikes. The problem is that there are massive shortages of ammunition for OSA. However, Ukraine has developed a new type of missile that can be used by this old system. And they are fast enough to shoot down Russian jet-powered drones. Vladimir, a crew member, explains. The new missiles performed well. The first launches were not very successful, but then they were improved.

13:37and now they work even better than Soviet missiles. Ukrainian engineers believe that it's only a matter of time before they effectively shoot down jet-powered drones on a regular basis. But the challenge of this war is to predict and prepare for future threats that do not exist yet. And that was the BBC's Abdul-Jalil Abderasolov reporting for us from Ukraine. You're listening to NewsHour, live from the BBC. Coming up on the programme we'll speak to Tony Walker One of the subjects of 7 Up It's one of TV's, well in fact it probably is TV's Longest running documentary series At 7 you see me as a kid, excitable, shoot from the hip At 14 when I was under the auspices of being an apprentice jockey Where it was regimental I was a bit monosyllabic there, I was a yes no answer then after I left the racing at 21 I become sort of immature saying what I thought at that particular time it seemed like everyone had that sort of age sort of going through that process the picture of the life told in real time you can hear more from Tony and the series producer Claire Lewis in 30 minutes

15:05This is NewsHour, live from the BBC. I'm Tim Franks. We began the programme wondering what world leaders might have to declare and possibly even decide at the UN General Assembly. Well, now the leaders of the G7 group of leading industrialised countries have made their own joint declaration, calling on the Iran-backed Houthi militants to end their offensive in Yemen and their attacks on Saudi Arabia, and an end to strikes on civilian shipping in the Red Sea. Their call came as Britain said it would provide what was described as defensive military support to Saudi Arabia in its escalating battle against the Houthis.

15:42I'm joined now by Sir William Patey. He was among many other prime diplomatic postings. He was the UK's ambassador to Saudi Arabia between 2007 and 2010. Sir William, welcome to News Air. Let's begin with that just briefly, if we can, with that British announcement. How significant do you think it is? Well, it's more significant politically than militarily. I mean, it's a limited refuelling capacity for Saudi jets. Well, they're now Saudi jets to stay in the air for longer and thereby have the opportunity to shoot down any missiles or other projectiles coming from Yemen into Saudi Arabia. It's significant politically because the Saudis have asked for help from an ally, which they had already done with the United States, and the United States had refused.

16:35So it's important for Britain to support Saudi Arabia in this. We have our own national interests at stake. We have a national interest in freedom of navigation through the Bab al-Mandab Straits and the Red Sea. as the Prime Minister said is contributing to cost of living increases so it's a sensible decision but also presumably just on Britain there's also the national interest in terms of Saudi being the largest buyer of UK weapons I mean it's presumably there's some self interest there biggest export market by far I mean we're already supporting Saudi Arabia we sell them the Typhoon fighter jet which they're using and we have support systems in place and anti-missile systems.

17:22So, yeah, they're a big market. Do you get a sense, I mean, this is a very sort of airy question to ask you, but do you get a sense of what it is the Saudis are after in terms of support from their allies? Because I just wonder whether it's clear if the Saudis know what their strategy is against the Houthis, how to beat them back. Well, the strategy has been to de-escalate and they reached an agreement with the Houthis in 2022. And the previous attacks on the Houthis in which the UK and the US took an active part when we were supporting the UN-recognized government in the south, they've been trying to de-escalate.

18:04They would like the Houthis to stop firing missiles at Riyadh and their oil installations. I think they're probably prepared to accept Houthis governing part of Yemen. I suspect Yemen's on the way to being divided into two countries. It is de facto at the moment. So they're trying to de-escalate. They want the Bab al-Mandab Straits open. They want freedom of navigation through the Red Sea. They'd like the Houthis to stop attacking them. And I mean, that's their interest. Now, if the only way they can achieve that is by responding to Houthi attacks, then that's what they'll do. Although, I mean, up to now, the considerable firepower that Saudi Arabia has had doesn't seem to have been able to stop the Houthis, certainly most recently in their tracks.

18:55Well, the trouble is the Houthis are almost similar to the Iranians and the IRGC in Iran, as they have a capacity to absorb punishment and are quite resilient, and they're not subject to any democratic control. So the fact that thousands of Yemenis are having to flee doesn't impinge on their ability to rule the country. So they're very resilient. It's a very mountainous territory. There aren't that many military targets easily accessible to hit. So it's quite a difficult, they're quite a difficult group to defeat. Absolutely. That's why in the end, it will be negotiations. Sir William Patey, former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

19:39Thank you very much for joining us.

19:44Now to one of the other questions of the day. Did the Dutch invent golf? The question, along with some overheated headlines, has been sparked by the joint purchase by two Dutch museums of a 17th century painting. The artist was Hendrik Averkamp, and his painting is called Kolf Players on the Ice. That is Kolf with a C. Judith Niesen is the head of collections and research at one of the museums, the Mauritshaus in The Hague. She described the painting to my colleague Julian Warwicker before moving on to the thorny subject of who invented golf. It's a wonderful piece of art. It's a wonderful painting.

20:27So what you see is a frozen river landscape with a cityscape in the background and all kinds of activity is going on. So people are skating in the background, slaying on horse-led sledges and everything. So it's very active. But there's also a kind of a silence because in the front of the painting, there are five people standing near actually the viewer. And two of them are colf players. And to the other side, there are two fishermen who stopped with their activity. They were ice fishing and also they're all watching the golf players starting his game, so to say. You give us some lovely detail.

21:08People will be struck by the word golf rather than golf. What's the significance of golf in this context? So, but it's golf with a C and that's very different from what later it becomes known as golf with a K. So golf with a C is very close to the golf game as we know it nowadays. So it's actually often played with two to four people and described by long drives that you were able to make long drives, which you can make on the ice, as you can imagine. And if you look at the Kov stick, it really looks like what it is now. You know, it's only the stick itself is wooden, but the hat was then already from iron.

21:49And the interesting thing is the whole discussion is here. It's one of the earliest depictions in a painting of this game. And the painting is really, the subject is Kov. Yeah. And that's very special. And that takes us to the key question, which has been speculated upon in the British press today. The simple headline, did the Dutch invent golf? What's the answer to that? Being Dutch, I would like to say yes. We do have quite a lot of Scottish listeners, I should point out. I know, I know, I know. So we can never, never be sure. But there is already mentioning of this game in the 1300s, which is quite early.

22:27And what you can say is that given the amount of images we know already from the 16th, 17th century of this game, at least it was really popular in the Netherlands and maybe even more popular than it was in Scotland. However, so we tend to say it was invented here and there is a whole lot of variety in the way it was played already back then. Right. You're treating this very carefully. And I see why you said we tend to say we invented it here. So you don't want to make a firm pledge on that. Well, you know, I'm talking to the BBC, of course. I need to tread carefully. No, but what I can imagine is it was really popular.

23:11And given the amount of images we know on tiles, on drawings, on prints, in this painting, it is the subject of the painting. You can imagine that it was really, it started out, the game of golf as we know it nowadays. It started out in the Netherlands. However, and I need to say this, we can never be sure. And you can also think of there could have been a sort of crossover because we now think we are far away from one another. But actually, even in that time, in the 17th century, it was quite easy to get to England and Scotland and back to the Netherlands again as it is now. And that was Judith, she's probably called Judith Niesen, Head of Collections and Research at the Maurits House in the Hague.

23:56And she was speaking to Julian Warwicker. You're listening to NewsHour.

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25:37Welcome back to News Anne. National football competition resumes in Europe this week, but it's not the game itself that's so much in the news, but rather the international politics around the game, at least when it comes to one of the fixtures, that Sunday's game between Israel and Ireland, because the Irish national broadcaster RTE has decided to scale back coverage of the fixture massively because of the opposition to Israel participating in sporting and cultural competitions. Colleen Duffy is a sports journalist working for the Irish language publication on poor pair. Colleen, welcome to NewsHour.

26:14What is the RTE coverage going to look like, do we think? Thanks very much, Tim. Well, I suppose, firstly, we have to say neither of the games are going to be played in the jurisdictions themselves. The home match for Israel is going to be in Hungary this weekend. Ireland's home game, of course, in Serbia, not in Dublin. Ireland's association says it's not going to provide tickets to supporters' seat or game either, so it'll be behind closed doors. RTE will show the games live, but it's going to be unusually bare in terms of coverage. There's not going to be a studio presenter or pundits. There's not going to be an RTE match commentator.