PassWord – 14th October 2015

Speaker A: This program is brought to you by Resonance 104.4 FM.

Speaker B: If you like what you hear and want to support our work, please make a donation at fundraiser.resonance.fm. Hello and welcome to Password on Resonance FM with me, Peter Warren, and the technology program that tells you about where we are heading in the future and why we may not even need to look at the road signs and just say what we want. In today’s show, there’s a judgment from Parliament’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal about whether the intelligence agencies should monitor MPs’ communications. We bring you the latest on that. Sir Dermot Turing, the nephew of Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, talks about the book he has written about his uncle and his more than enduring legacy. And following in that vein, Facebook is to introduce a dislike button. It will tell companies what you don’t want from them. But just as Alan Turing postulated with his Turing test, it could be yet another way for the machines to know us better. So well, in fact, that in the hotels of the near future, they want to know about our every wish. We hear more about that and the robots that will staff them and the robots that will drive our cars that will chatter to other robot cars to create an information network that could create free transport, all powered by new developments in solar technology that can use the grumpy British climate to make electricity. First, earlier today, the House of Commons Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled on claims made by the whistleblower Edward Snowden that a programme called Tempora allowed the intelligence agencies to monitor MPs’ communications, and said it is legal to intercept those communications but not target them. The Green MP Caroline Lucas and Baroness Jones of Moorscombe had challenged whether it was legal, and the IPT has said yes, given that GCHQ’s methods involve the storing of large amounts of communications data and the MPs’ communications will be picked up as a result. We did ask them for an interview, but unfortunately they were not available. The Greens say that this threatens the ability of whistleblowers to contact their MPs, but the official line is that no one is above the law and that the intelligence agencies are only interested in information that involves serious and organized crime, and that reading an MP’s communications always needs a warrant from a minister. There’s a debate coming up in Parliament on the interception of communications, so we have not heard the last on this issue. Now, sitting in his chair next to me is Sir Dermot Turing, a lawyer and the nephew of Alan Turing, a man inextricably linked to all we have been talking about before and the world that we now live in. Alan Turing was not only the father of modern computing, over 70 years ago he predicted the problems that we are now facing and was one of the greatest exponents of the interception of communications in the history of the world. And Sir Dermot has just published a book about his illustrious uncle. Sir Dermot, welcome.

Speaker C: Hello.

Speaker B: Hi. Now, your uncle, um, what have you written in your book?

Speaker C: Well, what I was rather trying to find out about was whether the picture that we all carry around of Alan Turing, which has been painted through various movies and documentaries and things we read, whether that image is actually a true one. And I really wondered whether he was such a solitary, asocial genius that you might if you’re like me, have come away with that impression. And so I sort of set out to find out what the truth was by looking at the various interviews of people that had known him and worked with him throughout the year, and some of them are still around to talk to. And that’s been a very interesting journey of discovery.

Speaker B: So what did you find out? Because it is one of the things that the media always do, isn’t it?

Speaker C: We tend to create these lonely figures and Well, I think we perhaps have a sort of fascination with that sort of uncomfortable with the notion of genius and therefore people who have very insightful ideas and make great contributions have to be different from ordinary people, don’t they? I mean, otherwise we’d be ashamed of ourselves. But actually, Alan Turing turns out to have been somebody who wasn’t asocial. He had a great many friends. He had a great sense of humor. He could be found down the pub playing chess with his mates from Bletchley Park and discussing stuff that might bewilder some of us. But just to take an example, the idea that before people had ever built any computing machinery, there he was talking with his friends about, over a game of chess of course and a pint, about whether you could actually write a computer program to get a computer, an imaginary computer, to play a decent game of chess. I mean, you know, so that might have been a bit off-putting for the people at the next table, but they were enjoying it.

Speaker B: But I mean, that was the point, wasn’t it? That theoretically, you know, he came up with what a computer was ages before he’d actually made it. He just thought it out in his head, hadn’t he?

Speaker C: Yeah, it was a sort of tool for solving problem right at the sort of fundamental question of mathematics, you know, whether mathematics itself is subject to a set of rules. And his conception of a machine to answer this very abstract question, it’s a very interesting approach because people would assume that you need a very abstract way of thinking to solve abstract problems. And no, his approach was much more, if you like, hands-on. By the way, he was hopeless at things like soldering, so, you know, you shouldn’t really have ever let him near a near a workbench, but not that he would take no for an answer, he’d always have a go, but that’s typical of his sort of approach to problem solving right the way through his career, is to be very hands-on and actually sort of, you know, think about machines as devices for helping him solve problems.

Speaker B: But did he— one of the things that we always see in the films, one of the things that we always read about in the books is that he seemed to absolutely totally know what machine he needed to build. Was that accurate or?

Speaker C: [Speaker:DR_HAYHOE] Well, I think some of the stuff is very surprising how quickly he came up with the ideas. I mean, the famous Bombe machine, the one that was used to find the settings on— of the Enigma machine that was used to encode German military communications. You know, again, one of the sort of mythical pictures we have of Alan Turing is that he slaved away on his own for the whole of the war trying to come up with a sort solution for Enigma. Actually, I’m sure the historians knew this already, but I discovered in the course of my research that he’d actually done basically the work on designing the bomb by Christmas 1939. I mean, really, really early in the war. So, you know, he got to essentially the solution really fast, and that’s astonishing.

Speaker B: But then that’s the point about all of this, though, isn’t it? Because one of the enduring points that people do actually bring out about Alan Turing that he could actually think through the problem extremely fast, and it’s the speed that was the necessary point because of the pressure that the war was generating.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, I think he was very good at this kind of lateral thinking or insight, finding a new way of tackling a problem. And once he got there, then, you know, it was really a matter of sort of filling in the blanks to sort of get, get to, you know, that point. He got to the end point and then had to sort of go back and fill in the stepping stones for for everybody else to follow him.

Speaker B: Did you actually know your uncle?

Speaker C: No, I’m afraid I’m too young, so he died several years before I was born.

Speaker B: But he’s obviously somebody that you spoke about in the family, your mother presumably and your father would have been saying things to you about him?

Speaker C: Not much, because I mean, of course we can’t get away from the tragic aspect of Alan Turing’s, the end of his life, and I think that sort of left a bit of a scar in the family which meant that one typically didn’t talk much about him. And also, I think the other thing is that it’s only very recently that his reputation has grown. And until the story about what happened at Bletchley Park became more publicly known, which only began really— I mean, the drip feed started in the mid-’70s, but the detail didn’t start coming out until the mid-’80s. So, you know, actually, really the stuff for which Alan Turing is most well known really, you know, wasn’t— he wasn’t famous for. Nobody’d heard of him. Nobody could spell our name.

Speaker B: But it’s interesting though, isn’t it? Because yes, you’re right, that information’s only just come out. Some people have said that that’s only just come out because the veil of secrecy over GCHQ has been lifted. But also now there is a tremendous interest in computing. I mean, it’s noticeable that there are programs about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage on at the moment on the BBC.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I mean, again, I think, but the story of people and their own personal interaction with computers, that’s a relatively modern one. If you just go back to the beginning of the 1990s, computers were still great big things that large corporations had somewhere and they had very specialist people operating them. Ordinary people had a telephone on their desk and they sent each other memos. You know, they didn’t use email or, you know, word processing software. They used typewriters. You know, it’s a very modern idea. Association of computers with people’s everyday lives.

Speaker B: I know, sir. I mean, as you quite rightly point out, there was a tragic part to his life, and that is also part of his legacy. And I’m sure if people read your book that you’ve brought that out very well.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you very much, Sir Dermot Turing. Now, it’d be good if you could stay around to listen to a few of the other things that we’re talking about and perhaps make some comment. One of the things that we all know from our first moments in the real world is that there are things that we like and things that we dislike. But it’s taken a little time for the slightly unreal world of social media, where everybody likes everything, to catch up. So it’s rather big news: Facebook has revealed that it will introduce a dislike button. They weren’t the first. A startup called BugScore tried to do this 3 years ago. But for Facebook to do it is not only a move to embrace reality, it’s also part of the ongoing attempt by the data giant to know more and more about us. Here is Dr. Felicity Hardley of Westminster University’s Business School to tell us why Facebook wants to know everything, warts and all.

Speaker D: At the moment they haven’t actually gone with the dislike button, they’re going with the emoticons. There was a lot of discussion about whether they would use dislike or not, and I think in a social context, so from a consumer-to-consumer point of view, the emoticons are probably better because you’ll probably dissuade people from being automatically negative. Whereas if you had the opportunity to dislike something, if it was a business posting, then I actually think that that would be a good thing because it would filter out consumers. Oh, it would do two things. One, it could filter out consumers who really are very anti-business messages, so you’re not going to be irritating them. Secondly, for those consumers who do want to have a relationship with a brand, they— it’s an opportunity for them to comment on the kind of content that they want to receive. So they might like some content that they might get from a brand, but then if they’ve got an opportunity to say, no, I actually don’t like this, then the marketing manager could actually tailor or change how they actually reach out to that particular customer or customer group.

Speaker B: Don’t you think though, if there is something in it for them Some people don’t mind being contacted. Don’t you think that the thing that should be in it for people is they should be encouraged into this social contract by encouraged to own their own data and to sell the use of that data back to these companies? They, you know, because that’s part and parcel of all of this, is that as far as people are concerned, it’s their information.

Speaker D: Well, it is their information, and I think in an ideal world it would be great if we could all do that, but I don’t think the system is set up for all consumers to have more ownership of that data. But again, it boils down to some consumers do opt in and they do get involved and they do it willingly. I mean, you look at the release of any sort of major blockbuster film or film franchise that, you know, that is appealing to teenagers, you’ve got a million teenagers who are prepared to advertise that film through liking pages, through tweeting, retweeting, posting things on Facebook, everything. They’re willing to do it because they love that particular film franchise.

Speaker B: I mean, you say, you say one thing that’s really interesting, which is you don’t think the system is set up yet to allow people to do that. That strikes me that that is one of the weaknesses of the system because Really, that just shows that the system’s not operating in the interest of the people that it should be, because the next iteration of the information age that we have to move towards is, according to all of the pundits that I speak to, is this age where companies are actually going out of their way to be genuinely useful to the people that they see as their markets. And as because of that, they build loyalty and they build a following among the people because the people like what they’re doing.

Speaker D: Well, I mean, that’s the ultimate goal for any, any good business should be aiming to fulfill customer needs and not trying to sell them something that they don’t actually want. And this sort of also comes back to this idea of having groups of consumers that, that particular, that, that, that form that niche. That like that particular brand or that particular product or that particular company. So if the company can, you know, meet their particular needs, then that’s great. You know, there’s something in it for everybody. So that’s where some consumers are quite happy to share their personal data with that particular brand because they’ve developed a relationship with that brand.

Speaker B: Westminster University’s Dr. Felicity Hardley. Now, Alan Turing suggested that the ultimate test for computing success would be when you could not tell the difference between a robot or a computer and a human being while having a remote conversation with them. It’s been called the Turing Test, but some people are saying, well, what difference does it make if you know they are robots? Hotels have been smarting from the loss of revenue from mobile phones and responded by putting in video on demand and discovered that over 50% of their video revenue was from business guests requesting porn in the privacy of their rooms. Now hotels want to go out all out and introduce as much technology as possible, including robots that, like Facebook, want to know everything about you so they can give you the ultimate pampering and share the information between themselves. They are taking over our hotels and will even, according to some, move into the adult entertainment market. Naveen Bharadwaj works for the Italian company Naseeba, which puts on the world’s largest hotel technology summit, and he tells Password why robots are marching into our hotels and even asking for tips.

Speaker E: This hotel is completely robot-staffed. You walk into the hotel, you don’t meet a person, but there is a robot. It’s a dinosaur, that’s because it’s part of their theme park, so they’re trying to be a little animated. So this dinosaur is your concierge service. You collect your digital keys, you go to your room, there is a robot butler which carries all your luggage along with you. You enter your room, you’re able to access pretty much everything using your mobile application. Application. You can control your AC and lighting and TV within the room using your mobile application. You place order to have food. Let’s say you want to have lunch or dinner. You place an order and then it gets served to you by a robot. Now this, although may not be the best approach, we still want to talk to humans and interact with people more and more. This is very futuristic. This is what you and I and many of us have watched in movies. But this has become a reality, right?

Speaker B: I mean, so what, what is the logic that underlies that? Because, you know, probably people would feel quite uncomfortable about being in a hotel controlled by robots. Not only that, but how can the robots offer them security? You can’t have robot security guards because currently if you did, there would be some very, very significant legal issues about a robot manhandling, say, the local drunk out of the hotel.

Speaker E: Absolutely. That’s where I said there are critics who don’t necessarily agree with this approach, who don’t necessarily agree with this particular project where everything is controlled by robots. If you ask me whether I’m a fan of this robot, I’m a big fan of this concept for the way it has been implemented. But again, as you rightly said, this is very unregulated. You don’t know if the robot is going to react the way you expect it to all the time. Machines can malfunction. And this is what we saw in movies, robots replacing humans. And it’s partly becoming true now. And we’ve also seen in movies that robots can be quite devastating. So let’s hope and keep our fingers crossed that we don’t get there.

Speaker B: I mean, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because, you know, one of the points about being in a hotel room is you do sometimes feel that your privacy is being invaded by the people who are looking after you. So in a sense, is a robot an answer to that? Does that mean that you feel a bit better about something putting your clothes away or making your bed because it’s being done by a robot?

Speaker E: I believe to a certain extent, yes. I can neither agree or disagree. There are always two sides of the coin, so there are pros and cons. Yes, in terms of privacy, I believe yes. If it’s a butler or if it’s somebody else, if it’s a real human being, probably we see them as a bigger threat. But in case of a robot, well, can be seen as a smaller threat. But I don’t think that the threat can completely be eliminated, at least not as of now. So a lot needs to be achieved, a lot of R&D is being done, and I believe the next few years will be the decision-making phase that will decide whether evolution is good and ideal, or if things have to take a back step for now, rethink, and then re—

Speaker B: you know, I mean, there are some sort of interesting throughputs on all of this. We’ve all seen the film Blade Runner. One of the androids in Blade Runner was described as a pleasure model. Lots of people have talked about things like having sexual relationships with robots. Now, extending this pampered idea that you’re talking about, there’s almost some sort of possibility of some sort of other services being offered. You know, I mean, a robot masseur is not beyond the realm of possibility, but somebody might feel a little uncomfortable comfortable with that idea?

Speaker E: I believe so. In fact, in terms of the robot masseur, you might know that there are a lot of recliner sofas— it’s not exactly robots, but recliner chairs which come with inbuilt massage service. So there are certain sensors, sort of sensing points, which give you close to the same feeling as massage. So I don’t deny the possibility, but that definitely worries me. Making use of these robots for sexual purposes, I believe that’s something that worries me, and that’s to be seen. And yeah, as far as there are no regulations, as far as there are no restrictions by the industry, by the policymakers, I believe things will continue to work on that angle.

Speaker B: Naveen Bharadwaj on why robots are better at being hospitable than us. So So, Dermot, what would Alan have thought of this? Would he have envisaged this world?

Speaker C: I kind of doubt it, but his concept of whether computers could think sort of seemed to stop at whether a computer could write a sonnet. But I think this is quite an interesting question you’ve touched on here, because if you think about it, what Alan Turing is most famous for is actually being one of the world’s first generation of hackers. You know, it’s actually what they were doing at Bletchley Park is intercepting another state’s communications and actually finding out what they were all about and then putting that to hostile use. I just wondered what would happen if somebody hacked into the robots that were operating this hotel. I mean, it might make a great movie, but I don’t think it would make a great place to stay. I’m sorry about that.

Speaker B: No, security lies at the core of everything. And it’s not just in the hotels that the robots are on on the march. Last week, the government announced the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council and Jaguar Land Rover were investing £11 million in an autonomous vehicle program. The aim is that our cars will collect information on everything around them—weather conditions, how they are coping with the road and traffic holdups—and use a communication system known as a mesh network to exchange the information. The system will also mean that the cars can be joined together so that their combined processing power can be used to make one huge mobile computer that will be connected even when the cars are parked. Surrey University’s Dr. Mehrdad Dianetti, who is leading the largest project in the research to link our cars, tells us why this could mean free transport in the future.

Speaker F: It is all about creating a perception by collecting information not only from the cars, from the environment, if you wish, in general, to really multiply power of autonomous functions. So it is all about collecting fresh and timely information from the environment, from the infrastructure, which will result in sort of intelligence by processing, which is provided by the internet as well as the onboard processing processing, which is essential for autonomous functions. I see.

Speaker B: So it’s absolutely fascinating. So even cars, when they’re still, will be supplying information about the weather conditions where they are, and then that information will be sent to some other cars, and those other cars might be driving at the moment, and they may be saying, oh well, it’s icy and I’m doing quite well, and this is how I’m driving, and, and this what my engine is doing. And at the same time, that, that presumably the processing of all of that information will be done by the cumulative processing power of all of the cars. Because as you say, not a lot of processing power on the cars, but if you use a mesh network, for example, or interlink all of those other, that processing power in a car, you can achieve something bigger. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker F: It’s called a sort of cooperative system that you increase your intelligence by sort of cooperative processing of information, if you wish. For example, you pointed out about learning about the weather condition from other cars or about accidents or about the texture of the road. And all sorts of information that cannot be feasible to obtain on board of an individual car. And such information fundamentally needs to be collected and processed in a cooperative manner.

Speaker B: And that’s one of the, the really useful things about using a mesh technology, isn’t it? Because as you are actually going into a particular area where there might be different weather conditions or different conditions generally, you’re picking all of that information up from the vehicles that nearest to you. So the actual processing of all of that is happening in that small area, and it’s been disseminated to those vehicles that need to know it.

Speaker F: Yes, part of the information that you, you collect and you, you process cooperatively could be disseminated in the, the vicinity of the event or point of interest, but part of that could be transferred to cloud to sort of enhance information that could be made available for the entire transport system, if you wish. So in that sense, it’s not only local cooperative function but also sort of accumulating global knowledge about the environment.

Speaker B: Well, it’s also really interesting, isn’t it, because it does begin to throw up a few questions about cars themselves and how we actually use cars. Because in a sense, what you could do is you could use this sort of information to link a number of cars together where they’re actually sharing a journey and they’re sharing the costs of that journey and they’re making things cheaper for themselves.

Speaker F: Yes, that is what you’re mentioning is basically what will be the economic impact of this new technology and how it will transform mobility as such and also business around the mobility. Sharing that you mentioned is one aspect And the profound impact that this technology will have on the way that automotive industry functions and generates revenue, and also in the way that we use mobility services, that there is a potential for the technology of autonomous connected car to fundamentally revolutionize those aspects of our life.

Speaker B: That was Dr. Mehrdad Dianati of Surrey University on why robots make better drivers than us. It’s something of a possibly frightening future, but there are some very strong rays of optimism coming from some parts of the technology world that are reassuring. UK scientists have come up with solar panels that can harness the indirect sunlight of grey old England and deliver some amazing results. Here’s Christopher Jackson of SolarFlex to tell us more.

Speaker A: What we’re doing is we’re trying to develop new products, new solutions, which are looking beyond a solar panel stuck on a roof and to be something that’s integrated into the fabric of a building. So to give you an example, every year the UK steel manufacturers produce about 100 million square meters of commercial roofing a year, which gets stuck on large retail parks, large warehouses, and they’re springing up throughout the country. At the moment, that’s not covered in any productive material, it’s just paint. But if you were to bond flexible photovoltaics to that commercial roofing as it’s coming out of the factory, you’d ensure that 100 million square meters of new solar is being installed per year. That’s getting onto the gigawatt gigawatt scale. That’s bigger than anything that’s being installed per year in the UK at the moment. And it’s all down to new product development and thinking cleverly, where can we get the biggest bang for our buck in terms of all the effort that we’re putting into the renewable sector?

Speaker B: Now you talk about bang for your buck, but yeah, I mean, a lot of people think that this is just hippie technology. They think that renewables is just some palliative to the greens. And can you actually get the same amount of energy from solar as you can from a power station?

Speaker A: Absolutely, but it’s, it’s having a different mindset. Do you want to build a massive power station in the middle of the countryside and ship coal to it and then transport the electricity back to where you need it? Or do you want to install photovoltaics which are part of the building which you barely see which generate electricity at the point of use. Now to me, the second sounds a lot more sensible.

Speaker B: Right, you’re listening to Password on Resonance FM with me, Peter Warren, and I’m afraid if you’ve just joined us, you’ve missed it. That’s all for this week. Password’s brought to you by Future Intelligence. You can find out more about the world of technology on our website, futureintelligence.co.uk. Password is produced by Angel Media Productions. Professor Alan Turing Decoded is produced by Sir Dermot Turing. Goodbye. This program has been brought to you by Resonance 104.4 FM.

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