Woman's Hour - Scarlett Moffatt, Patricia Devlin, Gender and AI

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

There's to be an inquiry into the Covid pandemic. It will start in Spring next year. We speak to one of the women who's been pushing for it, but still thinking it's starting too late. Her name is Jean Adamson from the Covid-19 Bereaved families For Justice. Scarlett Moffatt, famous for Gogglebox and winning I'm A Celebrity ... has just become an ambassador for The Samaritans. She talks to Woman's Hour about how reality television has affected her mental health, and exchanges experiences with Montana Brown who appeared on Love Island. One of the things they talk about is whether reality TV does enough to support young women who choose to go on these shows.Patricia Devlin is a crime journalist in Northern Ireland. She specialises in investigating paramilitary criminal activity. Because of her work, Patricia has suffered continuous threats to her life but now her baby son has been targeted for the second time. She tells us how she's coping and how she wants the PSNI to take these threats more seriously. Artificial intelligence is everywhere. AI is playing a part in how we all work, live and play. But there are worries that because AI algorithms are created from the data we give it, biases in society will be replicated and even amplified by it in the future. Both the The European Union and the UK government are working on strategies to address this. Emma talks to the tech entrepreneur Tabitha Goldstaub who Chairs the UK's AI Council and to Carly Kind the Director of the Ada Lovelace Institute.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning. In a week where the government has laid out plans to protect people online in the online safety bill announced in the Queen's speech, today we're going to hear from some of the women at the coalface of some of the abuse this bill seeks to address. Two years in the making under the draft bill, social media firms will have to remove harmful content quickly or potentially face multi-billion pound fines. It has its critics on both sides. But my first two guests this morning, reality TV stars Scarlett Moffat and Montana Brown, both have plenty of

first-hand experiences of this and more to share, as does the award-winning journalist Patricia Devlin, who's returning to the programme today with a worrying update. But what I want to get to the heart of with you is your response to abuse online, because it isn't just high-profile people with followings that are now in receipt of abuse, cruel remarks, threats. The poison has spread, and it affects women in very specific ways. A report from UNESCO on threats against female journalists last week,

I thought put it very well when it said, online violence against women, journalists in this case, is designed to belittle, humiliate and shame, induce fear, silence and retreat. And it warned, and this is the bigger loss potentially, that women are being frozen out of public debate or certainly one of the large squares of public debate. This is your square. This is your microphone. How have you responded when you have received threats, abuse, horrible remarks? It is people from all backgrounds now that is doling it out, it seems, and also receiving it.

Has it made you retreat? Have you fought on? Have you changed tack? Have you stood back? It can really shake people's confidence. I was only having a conversation about this the other day with a friend who this happened to, who wasn't expecting it. And it has made her retreat. It really has. But what about you? 84844. Text will be charged your standard message rate. Do check for those costs. Social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email us through our website. Also on today's programme, keeping with the theme of how our online selves are influencing our offline lives, we hear about the fight to stop the machines from being sexist. All will be explained. But first, yesterday, the Prime Minister formally announced an inquiry into the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It will be one of the most far-reaching

public inquiries in UK history and will take place in spring 2022. With more than 150,000 deaths in the UK from COVID-19, there will be a lot for the government to answer, namely whether the government made mistakes in how it handled the pandemic in different levels and at different points. The independent inquiry is seen as a major step in bringing closure to the tens of thousands of people who've lost loved ones over the past year and counting. The search for these answers has been led by women. The COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group is a pressure group that has been calling on the government to hold a rapid inquiry since last year, made up by a group of bereaved families who have all lost loved ones to coronavirus. The group was founded by Joe Goodman, who's been challenging the government to learn lessons from the pandemic sooner, and now joined by Jean Adamson from the group. Good morning.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. I thought I'd start by asking what was your reaction yesterday to the Prime Minister's announcement? My reaction was we were quite relieved, relieved to hear the announcement that a public inquiry will be forthcoming. However, there are still further steps that need to happen. And, you know, we need to have the inquiry sooner rather than later. So, you know, we want the inquiry to take place as soon as possible so that we can save lives this winter. And learn lessons as we're going through this. And learn lessons as we go.

That has been one of the major criticisms. I wondered if we could just take a step back to understand your connection to this and why you joined this group. I lost my father in April last year during the first wave. He contracted the virus in a care home and subsequently died. I joined the group soon after that. So I've been a member of the group for just over a year now. And it's a place where I found, you know, there's a lot of support forthcoming. And, you know, we're all bereaved families and it's a great place to to to communicate and, as I say, get the support that we need, but also to to get justice.

We want to get justice for our loved ones. And, you know, we want to make sure that, you know, that this national tragedy of which it is, that we can learn lessons from this and prevent further loss of life. So, you know, it's, you know, we are a pressure group and we've been campaigning for some time now for a public inquiry, as you know. And so we're pleased to hear the announcement yesterday. And I wanted to extend my condolences to you and to your family, because, of course, taking on this fight after that must have been quite something but it seems to be something that has also galvanised, energised and brought people together in a year that they weren't

expecting to have. I know you've also in your working life though got experience of the care sector and the health sector as well. I have indeed, yes. I come from a nursing background and I have worked, I've been a manager in a care home myself and I now am self-employed, I have a consultancy. So I support health and social care providers to meet regulatory standards that are set down by the Care Quality Commission. So yes, it is an area that I've become very experienced in. Where you say you're looking for justice, there's a plea here for that and there's the

desire for that. What would that mean? What would that look like to you? That would look like the truth coming out, you know, us having the answers to our questions. There are so many answers that, there's so many questions that have been left unanswered. And getting justice means having the truth come out. And we see that, you know, public inquiry is the place for that to happen. And so we can understand why, how our loved ones died in a place where they were expected, where we would have expected them to be safe from harm. Well, that's a very key question, isn't it? You expect your loved ones to be safe. And for somebody in your circumstance and your family, you've been put in a very, very different position

with tragic consequences. I suppose I wonder now, because you will have been speaking to people affected by this across the country and perhaps around the world. What would you say to those who say no one could have prepared fully for this, properly for this? This was something that has taken and continues to take countries by storm. We're looking at countries now, whether it's India, whether it's parts of Africa now, very concerned about what they're going to do next, that there aren't going to be some of those answers that you're looking for? There aren't. And all the more reason for a public inquiry as soon as a rapid review of the situation. Look, no one could have foreseen what was going to happen. You know, this global pandemic has just really caught us all by surprise,

you know, all around the world. And so, you know, there is that acceptance of that. That is what it is. However, we've now lost, you know, over one hundred and twenty five thousand people in the UK to covid. OK, so we've got you know, we've had two waves that have taken with massive loss of life. And and so we need to learn the lessons. We need to start, you know, a public inquiry straight away, even if it is a rapid review. We could have done a rapid review last summer. We've been calling for this for over a year now. We could have had that last summer and we would have been able to save more lives

in the second wave. It's just delay after delay. Jean, are you comforted by this? We have asked for a particular statement in reference to this from the government, no statement from them yet. If I get one, I'll of course share it. But are you comforted in any way by what the Prime Minister said in his speech yesterday? We will continue to learn lessons as we have done throughout the pandemic. Not at all.

Not at all. Because those are empty words, as far as I'm concerned. We haven't seen any tangible evidence that lessons have been learned. I'm afraid we haven't. And the number of people that have died during the second wave is actually greater than those that died during the first wave. So, you know, for Boris Johnson to make a statement like that, it's really, you know, they are just empty words. Because, of course, rhetoric. Well, he would also say perhaps it would divert resources to do it now. And so I suppose the debate on that will keep coming. And a message we just got in to summarise was asking, what's

wrong with me with the way I've explained this and saying that the inquiry will take place in spring 2022, asking me to clarify that will then take years afterwards, as other inquiries have. Very happy to make that clarification. But the point is, that's when it's starting. Perhaps that will change. We will wait and see. Thank you very much for talking to us today, Jean Adamson. Thanks for having me. From the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group. There's a question here. Are you going to consider the suggestion Boris Johnson doesn't want

an inquiry but wants to shut down debate that might be generated when Dominic Cummings is interviewed by the UK Parliament Committee, which is coming up? Well, thank you for raising that, Jonathan. Certainly some suggestions coming in around that. Yes, we'll raise it because you've brought it into us and you've texted us and anyone else can do the same or get in touch on 84844 to bring us back to our initial area of discussion around people coping

online and also how they cope in the public eye under pressure as summer approaches so does a new season of the hit show Love Island does reality TV do enough to support women thrown into the limelight, especially younger women with a lot of these shows targeting them? Former Gogglebox star and I'm a celebrity winner, Scarlett Moffat has recently become an ambassador for the Samaritans. Montana Brown was a contestant on season three of Love Island and they both join me now in what is Mental Health Awareness Week. Welcome to you both at

Scarlet. I thought I'd start with you. Good morning. Hi, thank you for having me on here. Tell us why you've become a Samaritan's Ambassador. What led you to call them? It was about four and a half years ago. So I went on a show called I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and I'd had a little bit of sort of a dabble in the waters of showbiz from Bit Do and Gogglebox but nothing could prepare me for what was about to happen when I came out of I'm a Celebrity and I just found it really overwhelming I didn't quite know how to handle it. I was sort of subject to a lot of projection of hate on social media. Then also, you know, in the tabloids, lots of sort of stories that weren't true and then picking apart what I looked like.

And, you know, I started I started looking at myself in the mirror seeing things that I didn't even notice before um and with that came a lot of anxiety I remember walking to my front door and just freezing when I got to the door handle um and I told my friends and family that I was at work for the week and I wasn't I actually just stayed in bed I didn't dare go outside and um and then luckily I somehow found the courage after about 20 times of dialing um to finally call Samaritans and it was just like a little voice of hope and from there you know it gave us a lot of strength to speak to family and friends and my GP so I was lucky that I was able to get help and I've got a good support network around me.

So then I just contacted Samaritans and said, look, you've helped me in so many ways. Please, can I help you? And so we started doing lots of campaigns together. And yeah, now I'm an ambassador. So it's come full circle. Well, it sounds like it has. But what was actually going on with you, do you think it was?

Now you can look back at it was it yeah what was it anxiety depression yeah now I look back and reflect I think it was a mixture of anxiety panic attacks and just sort of an overwhelming feeling of of wanting to disappear for a while you know just wanting to sort of go somewhere for a couple of months until it blew over because, like I say, I just didn't know how to handle it at all. Do you think that there should be better preparation from the companies that put you out there

because of the world that we now live in? And, you know, I know I'm going to talk to Montana in a moment, specifically Love Island has had its own issues but what what is your view of that now? I mean we are offered a lot of help and I think nothing can sort of mentally prepare you for what's about to happen because I think everybody's journey is so different but one thing that I would urge is rather than you know being offered help I think it sort of needs to be a bit more forceful, as in maybe have a phone call once a week, rather than, you know, the person that's

subject to that suffering, having to get a lot of strength and make the first move. I think, you know, with a duty of care, maybe the channel or production company can make sure that you know you get the phone call first rather than you having to make the first move I think that would definitely help. Montana what do you make of that do you feel you were given the necessary preparation? I think what's really difficult is that some people go on a show like Love Island and they are super successful and they do really really well and everything is kind of just goes up and up and up um the difficulty is is that a lot of people go on Love Island and it doesn't go so well for them um and so I think it's really hard to manage because it's that

overnight success which I feel like people really struggle with and especially for my series it wasn't that big people weren't aware of going on the show and it becoming such a huge deal. So nobody went in with an agent, for example, when I was on Love Island. Whereas now people go in there, they're organising kind of brand deals before they even get on the show. So I think it has changed a lot now. And I think the aftercare is a lot more kind of rigorous than what it was. And also we have to bring up at this point you you were in the same year as as one of your co-stars who who did end up taking their own life

um and I just wondered if you could talk about that and talk about him yeah definitely I think the main thing about the situation was that there is a massive pressure on these young individuals that go on Love Island and they are they feel so much intense pressure from social media from the press to be a certain way to have certain things to upkeep a certain lifestyle and then they're also subject to all this horrible comments trolling about your appearance like Scarlett was saying and it's so overwhelming because you go from one day being able to walk the streets, no one really looking at you, you can walk to the shops and no one's going to bother you, to people shouting at you in the

street, people constantly messaging you saying, oh, you've got a lazy eye or, you know, you've got this and that. And I think specifically with Mike, it was so difficult because he kind of shot to fame and he didn't really have the guidance um to you know manage his funds for example you know no that no one was there saying oh you should probably make a business account so you only have to pay corporation tax and you know nobody was there to say you know if you do need to speak to anyone and you are depressed and anxious you can speak to this person because he was going through all of these things um and I think he felt like he had nobody to speak to about it because as well him being a male as well you know girls I could kind of gush to my friends about you know I'm feeling really anxious today or I'm feeling really paranoid or I've had an anxiety attack whereas you know there is such

a stigma with men that we still need to really kind of, we need to challenge because they just, they feel like so alone and they don't feel like anybody is there to help them. our listeners and we're getting some messages around this how have you responded to come back to you scarlet when people have said things to you do you respond have you changed the way you respond yeah definitely with a lot more like years in this industry i see trolls as a very different thing now so i don't even like the word troll because i think it makes it sound like this mythical creature that lives under a bridge when in actual fact it's someone we walk past in the street it could be our neighbor but for me I actually take a step back and I think how sad is this person feeling or how bad is their life going that they're projecting this much hate onto other people so I actually now message the trolls and give them the number for Samaritans

or I ask if they're okay. And I would say 98% of the time, you know, they're very apologetic and they're not well in themselves. And I think they also need help. And I know a lot of people will disagree with me there because obviously they are making people's lives not great, but it's because their life isn't great.

It's that whole sort of ethos of where it's as if they're bullies in the playground. And, you know, when you look back on when you were bullied at school, a lot of the time it's because that, you know, their home life wasn't great or they also were suffering. That's going to take a lot of time and energy from you if you're going to be doing that each time to them. I mean, a lot of people would just ignore.

I think, yeah, I did used to. I think if it's just, I mean, I can't even believe I'm saying this, but if it's just like, oh, you know, you're really fat or ugly, I just ignore those ones. But if it's, you know, like death threats and things that are very, like, severe, that's when I reach out. Have you had death threats? Oh, I mean, weekly. I think it's just it's just an occurrence that happens now.

And it's really sad to say, but I mean, recently I did a post about like dental hygiene and I got death threats for it. And I was like like i don't understand why because i'm telling people to floss you know it gets it's that ridiculous sometimes that people are just really angry and i think you know i do think that social media needs to to make sure that these people aren't anonymous because i do think with anonymity comes a lot of you know they feel like they can get away with it so I think that if you know you had to you put some sort of ID to have social media I do think it would stop I do think a lot of it would stop. Montana do you do you bother replying and and do you think there is something specific towards women? I personally don't reply but that's because I think at the start that I was so

overwhelmed because I just had never I'd never even been bullied at school or any dealt with anything like that so I was getting messages saying that people would throw acid in my face and I remember I was getting loads of messages and I I was so paranoid to go out I remember going to a Beyonce concert and I was just looking around like a rabbit in the headlights thinking, oh my God, someone could literally come up to me and throw something in my face. And I think it's something that I can't put my energy into and I think Scarlett, it takes so much strength

to actually reach out to these people. But I just block people because they are quite often like you say fake accounts um so I just block them um and then I actually reach out to people who message me if they are struggling because obviously I speak so much about mental health if I get messages about people dealing with anxiety or depression or how can they change their lifestyle or how can they change their mindset those are the people who I will kind of respond to because I feel like an affinity with them um but I think it takes great bravery to to message the so-called trolls um because I definitely don't have the patience for it well I think it's very good to talk about what

you have faced um simply by you know trying to entertain people in a lot of senses going on these television shows by choice you know nobody makes you to do it hopefully have some fun hopefully get a bit of work out of it and keep going. Scarlett Moffat, Montana Brown, thank you for that. A message here. Ten years ago, Jacqueline says, I went through lengthy legal action. I'm registered disabled with a mental health condition.

When I won my case, it was in the papers. I received a lot of positive support. But in amongst that, there were comments suggesting that I take my own life as disabled people are a burden. I have never forgotten them. And as someone who is mentally vulnerable, they were devastating. But I tried to focus on the positive remarks and support from my friends and partner that got me through.

Indeed, the people who matter, the ones to listen to. That's the focus. And that's a lot of the advice. Let's talk now. And more messages, please do keep them coming in on 84844 or on social media at BBC Women's Hour. Let's talk now to Patricia Devlin, an award-winning crime journalist in Northern Ireland. She specialises in investigating paramilitary criminal activity.

Because of her work, Patricia has been threatened many times. We spoke to her on Women's Hour six months ago. The threats then had reached another level. Via Facebook, her baby son was targeted and threatened with rape. And on Friday, her baby, just one and a half, was targeted again. Patricia Devlin is with us now. Patricia, tell us about this latest threat to bring us up to date. Thanks, Emma.

Well, on Friday, after having taken two weeks off social media due to the ongoing abuse and harassment that I do get, I was back on and within hours I received a message to my Facebook profile which once again threatened to rape my baby son, which was absolutely horrendous, as you can imagine, and terrifying that once again someone can make these threats anonymously. And so far, has got off with it. And what does that mean so far? Because you have tried to pursue this Well at present I am going to file a complaint with the PSNI There has been a specialist team in Northern Ireland set up to deal directly with the escalating journalist threats So I will meet with them tomorrow and file that complaint

I have had representatives from the UN who have met with Facebook and yesterday my legal team sent correspondence to Facebook warning them that if they did not pass over the details of the individual behind this account we would seek further action against them. At present that profile is still on Facebook. The messages are still visible. And nothing's been done by the social media company involved, which I find absolutely horrendous. We got a very short statement from the PSNI,

the Police Service of Northern Ireland, before coming on air, which said a complaint was made to the Office of the Police Ombudsman. The case was upheld and the matter was dealt with under performance measures. It seems that you're going at it from both ends here, trying to get the authorities on board with helping you and also getting the social media company on board, but you don't seem to be able to reach anywhere. That statement from the PSNI is in relation to another rape threat that was sent to my son in October 2019, sent to me on Facebook. I reported that to the PSNI and the individual was identified. The message was traced and so far he has not been even questioned, let alone arrested. And the police ombudsman did receive a complaint from myself and my legal team last year.

I got told very recently that that complaint has been upheld by the police ombudsman, that they have found that the PS&I did not adequately investigate that complaint, which is terrifying because when you receive those threats your first thought is well I'll go to the police and they can be held to account but in my case and even with all the evidence they had they didn't pursue this individual and that is soul destroying to me because being someone who week in, week out is regularly targeted, not only online, but also having the police come to my door and inform me that I'm going to be shot dead within two days. And this is all coming off the back of social media posts by paramilitaries and criminals. It leaves you feeling very hopeless. off the back of social media posts by paramilitaries and criminals, it leaves you feeling very hopeless. You don't know who you can turn to for help because the people that are supposed to help you

can't help you. And my issue is with the social media companies, it's an absolute free-for-all for women in public life. We are targeted daily and there's nothing being done to stop it. And something has to happen. Scarlett and Montana talk about their mental health. I mean, the very fact that Scarlett received death threats

because she posted about dental hygiene shows just how out of control it is on these platforms and something needs to be done. Let me ask you about, with your case, of course, there's a very different reason that the people who are targeting you, it's because, of course, they're trying to silence you. They're trying to affect your work. And I mentioned right at the beginning of the programme

that report from UNESCO specifically about female journalists, the idea of belittling journalists, discrediting them, undermining them, with potential for women being frozen out of public debate. Does it make you more determined to do your job or less? There are tough times, Emma. I have had to come off social media for periods. I've had to take time off work because it's not sustainable. So there are times when you get very low and you think this isn't worth it,

especially when your children are being targeted. But you remember why you're doing it and you remember why these people are doing it to you. So it makes you more determined eventually. But, you know i can't speak for everybody i know women that have had to come off social media uh you know for a variety of reasons but it's mostly abuse it's um it's just very worrying um the trend that is happening here it doesn't seem to be that um be that we're getting on top of this. It seems to be actually getting worse.

So you're going to continue with your line of work for now, but perhaps just carrying on with this strategy of coming off for a while, not looking. I mean, we've had a couple of messages saying, can people just not look? But of course, the ones in your case are threats. They're to do with your life. And you have to also be very vigilant with the area that you report on.

Absolutely. A lot of people say, why don't you just come off Twitter, come off social media, even people in the industry? But that's part of my job. I have to be on Twitter and I shouldn't be expected just to take this abuse and the threats which have developed into real life physical danger I had to have security put around my house there are areas in Northern Ireland I can't go into. And I'm regularly getting phoned by police crime prevention officers asking me to check around my home

and be vigilant. So this isn't just about bullying online. It's coming into... Yes. You know, online... I think that's a really important message, though. What we do online should be remembered of the offline consequences. And those two parts of our lives shouldn't be distinct, actually, because they are affecting one another.

What do you make of, and I recognise it's still being reviewed, but the proposals around the online safety bill, the idea that the companies will be fined billions, potentially, I mean, at the highest end, if they don't deal with harmful content. And that's obviously in the broadest sense of the word, because there are, of course, concerns that that will be an issue around censorship and you're about freedom of the press. I think it's probably one of the only ways that it's going to make social media companies take action is to hit them in the pocket, which is sad that um

it has to come to that but we can't continue going on uh the way we are uh the un made 20th uh recommendations last week um there was the global response and also the um uh suggestion that the social media companies should have rapid response teams to this abuse. I've lost count of the amount of times that I have seen an absolutely horrendous post about myself, including one which accused me of planting bombs in Northern Ireland, which I reported to Facebook and they said it didn't reach their community standards. That's, I knew you were almost going to say that, because that's the worst thing. And I've had personal experience myself, that you take the trouble to report something,

and you almost get trolled by the company itself if it says it doesn't meet the threshold. Absolutely. And honestly, 95% of the time in which I have reported posts to Twitter and Facebook, they've came back and told me it didn't reach their standards, which is unbelievable. We will get full responses, of course, from the social media companies to the online safety bill and how they will respond in kind and how it will actually go forward. In the meantime, thank you very much for your insights here and for sharing what's happening to you. Because again, by going out there, putting your head above the parapet, I'm sure there'll be further responses. But we wish you well, Patricia Devlin. Thank you for

joining us. Thank you. Messages coming in along the lines I was just hinting at around not looking, but Fiona wanted to get the message across. Listening to Women's Hour at the moment, it's sad to hear that some people feel the need to say horrible, hurtful things to people. We, everybody, need to think before making comments. Of course, we were talking about ITV before with I'm a Celebrity and also what was going on with Love Island. There's a statement from ITV saying welfare and duty of care towards our contributors is always our primary concern. And we have extensive measures in place to support the Islanders talking about Love Island before, during and after their participation on the show we've continued to evolve our process with each series as the level of social media and media attention around the

islanders has increased which includes enhanced psychological support more detailed conversations with potential islanders regarding the impact of participation on the show bespoke training for all islanders on social media and a proactive aftercare package. And I should say, if you need any help or support with anything you've heard so far on the programme, numbers and links that you'll need will be on the BBC Action Line website. Just to come to Mary's message, Emma, please don't perpetuate the notion, talking about the public inquiry that's going to happen into COVID, that the pandemic came out of the blue. I was not doing that. I was putting forward the idea from certain governments

and our own around some of the preparedness here. A global pandemic was top of the government's risk register for nearly 20 years. When I worked in the Department of Health up to 2010, there was a team of dedicated pandemic readiness. I accept that no doubt plans would have to be challenged by reality, but we should not have been felled by the basics as we were at the beginning of 2020. The question now is whether the Prime Minister's Committee reports before the

next pandemic hits. Mary, thank you very much for your messages. Keep them coming in. Well, we have been focusing on our digital lives, as it were, really impacting our real lives. And where better to go to than artificial intelligence or AI, as it's known, which is now everywhere. From tracking your spending habits to creating filters on Instagram, it's playing a part in how we all work, live and play. Artificial intelligence refers to the phenomenon where a machine acts as a blueprint of the human mind by being able to understand, analyse and learn from data through specially designed algorithms. The concern is that because artificial intelligence is made by humans,

the biases in society will be replicated and even amplified by it in the future. algorithms. The concern is that because artificial intelligence is made by humans, the biases in society will be replicated and even amplified by it in the future, a particular concern when it comes to female stereotypes. The European Union has just launched a regulations review to try to address this and other issues, and the UK government is working on its own strategy expected to be released in the autumn. One person having input into that strategy is Tabitha Goldstorbe. She's a tech entrepreneur and the author of How to Talk to Robots, as well as being chair of the UK's Government's AI Council. And we're also joined by Carly Kind, the director of the Ada Lovelace Institute,

which focuses on ethics and privacy of artificial intelligence. Good morning to both of you. Carly, actually, if I just start with you for a bit of clarity, we're not just talking about robots. I gave a couple of examples there. We're talking about all sorts of things, Uber, Google Maps, Siri, Alexa, whatever services people use, those sorts of things. That's right, Emma. Thanks for having me. It's important to remember that AI is not just in what we call embodied form, which is in robots, but also at the back end of a whole bunch of systems. So most people will be most familiar with

the AI that, for example, organizes the news feed on their Facebook or their Instagram algorithm. But there's a lot of AI or algorithmic systems being used in far more banal applications as well. So things like universal credit, for example, the backend to universal credit is an algorithmic system. More advanced AI being used in predictive analytics, for example, in local councils to track where people are at risk of falling into homelessness or where children might need to be visited by social workers. Some local authorities are using AI in that respect as well.

And then there are also even more boring applications which come, which relate to, for example, traffic systems, agriculture systems, supply chain logistics, that type of thing. So we're seeing AI across a whole bunch of applications in society. Well, that's, so that's what we're talking about. And people can get a sense of that now, maybe how it interfaces with their life. Tabitha, what is the concern around the biases to do with women and how that might influence the way we're being judged? Well, as you really perfectly described, artificial intelligence learns from humans and the data that we provide it. And so if an AI learns about the existing biases that we already see every day

against women, and we just heard from some incredible women who are experiencing bias online for sure, AI systems are going to think, for example, that the gender pay gap is something that we should keep, you know, keep perpetrating, or that women's jobs is only in the home. Then you have scenarios where when it's being used in things like Carly just described, women will be negatively impacted. So for instance, if there was a judgment situation or predicting something that the woman might want to be doing next. Exactly. Or looking for a new job. Women regularly will not see jobs in their job feed for CEO

positions, for example, because if you type in CEO, female CEO to Google, you'll get pictures of Barbie rather than pictures of female empowered CEOs. Because already we have trained the machines to believe in these stereotypes that are out there. Wow, it's a sobering thought. Carly, do you think the answer then is as simple as making sure women are involved in the design and are part of the teams that put this together? Or is there something else we should be thinking about? That's an important part of the equation, but it's not the answer, I'm afraid.

The answer is a lot more complex, as Tabitha was just alluding to. The major problem, or at the moment, one of the major problems is that AI relies on massive data sets. And there's two problems with the data sets that AI are using. On the one hand, some of the data is bad. It just doesn't capture the whole of experience, including women's experiences. And in part, that's because often it's scraped from the internet, for example. So there are some big natural language processing models that are being developed by big AI companies. They scrape a bunch of data from the internet.

And then the result is they garbage in, garbage out. They churn out a bunch of misogynistic, racist content because it's based on bad data. But the other problem is even when you base AI on good data, that data enshrines structural biases like Tabitha was just saying. So even if you have a perfect data set of every CEO in the world, you're still going to have a list of mostly white men. So an AI system that's trained on a good data set of CEOs who's likely to become a CEO and then predicts who should become a CEO in future is still going to churn out bad results because it's based on structurally biased

discriminatory data. The same can be said, for example, for women's access to credit. Women have historically had less access to financial credit. So if you train an AI system on a bank's previous history of giving access to credit, then it's going to perpetuate that same bias against women. So the problem is bigger than just women being in the design. It's about the data. It's about the data that it's exposed to in the first place. So Tabitha, are you confident that we can do this, that we can do this well? If we've already got enough biases in the real world, and we're just going to potentially be passing them over to systems that then judge us in the digital world, some of us may say, are there any upsides here? And can we control this?

Can we make it better? I am confident. I believe that the rewards and the upsides of artificial intelligence are so huge that we have to make this as something that works for everybody. And when you look at potential examples of upsides, so we heard on the news this morning, the waiting lists in the NHS, there are AI systems out there. Friends of mine run a business called Care on Med that are actually looking at previous mammograms using artificial intelligence and then predict who should be called first for their mammogram. It's smart moves like that, that we can't miss out on. And so we have to, which is why I'm so excited about the EU regulation, look at regulating this in a clever way. I think one of the first people to ever say that sentence to me why I'm so excited about EU

regulation yeah go on. I'm totally excited and I'm thrilled about the wave that we're seeing the change in tides around regulation because I believe that more regulation can equal more innovation in a safe way and we even heard in the Queen's speech yesterday, the government is talking about improving regulation. That's like right up there in one of the things they want to do around life sciences, because it will enable more people to do more things and hopefully mitigate the biases. Are you sharing that optimism, Carly?

Yes, I am. Absolutely. I think regulation has a really important role to play. I'm not as positive that the EU AI regulation gets entirely right, but it has to be credited for trying. And, you know, the EU is the first government entity, international government entity to try to regulate AI. There's some flaws in the proposal, but I think Tabitha's right. Without regulation, without brakes in the car, the car can't drive fast. So without regulation, we can't let the innovation move ahead. What are you most excited about, Carly, that this could improve?

We had an example there from Tabitha around mammograms. I think that the health space has a lot of potential because there's a lot of good data there. And we're seeing lots of the innovations in AI really coming through health. I'm more excited to see a broader conversation about AI that really brings people's attitudes into consideration. I think lots of the conversation around AI has been led by the tech industry, who are either telling us that some types of tech innovation are inevitable, or that they're some type of magic that people should just, you know, get used to and integrate into their life. And I think what we're starting to see is a more nuanced conversation where normal people get to come into that. We get to talk not only about individual impacts,

but about societal impacts. So what is the implications of AI for the future of work and automation? And that's another area which does affect women because women's jobs are more likely to be automated than men's jobs or women work in sectors that are more likely to be automated so really kind of expanding the scope of what's you know what we should be talking about when it comes to AI to make sure everyone benefits I think that's one of the benefits of putting regulation on the table it broadens out the conversation. Well perhaps we will talk more to you both again when we have more detail on those regulations that you're so excited about Tabitha and Carly seems slightly less so, but still on board with. And thank you for bringing to life artificial intelligence for us

and how it may intersect with women's lives in particular. Carly Kine, Tabitha Goldstorpe there. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Hi, this is Jane Garvey. And yes, this is, it's a free, well, they're all free, but this is an extra podcast.

It is, you've already guessed it, a shameless plug for my new series, Life Changing, in which I talk to people who've been through some phenomenally difficult, challenging experiences and come out the other side. Now, each episode is just an intimate one-to-one conversation that I think has taught me, never mind anybody else, such a huge amount about human nature, the best and the worst of it, and resilience perhaps in particular. Now take Grace, she is a trainee doctor, she was minding her own business in the Westfield Shopping Centre in East London, when a man fell from several storeys up and landed on top of her. That incident left her paralysed from the breast down. Now you might imagine that she'd be incredibly angry about that. No, not at all. I don't have any anger, a complete absence of anger and people find that really hard

to understand and it almost makes me sometimes second guess myself, like, is there something wrong that I don't feel this anger that, you know, everyone else does? I'm not out for revenge. I almost feel as if our lives collided, you know, figuratively and literally, and then it separated. And I can go months without even thinking of him. Well, that's Grace, quite a remarkable young woman, I'm sure you'd agree. Tony O'Reilly's story could not really be more different, but it is terrifying, quite honestly. Tony found himself caught up in a gambling addiction of quite epic proportions. He ended up lying to everybody he knew. He stole huge amounts of money from his employer to try and find a way back to pay off his enormous debts.

Now the figures in Tony's story are staggeringly high. Here's a clue as to how he got there. There was one particular weekend I started off at 5,000 euro and I turned it into nearly half a million over a weekend. I got a really good run of events i had stolen take 900 000 euro at this stage and for me i think i had 462 000 euro in my online account and i said if i can double this i can fix this situation and within 12 hours and 31 bets later which of those 30 were losing bets, I'd lost €462,000 in 12 hours.

And then again, you start the whole process again of trying to get that money back. So you can imagine the stress. I could begin to imagine the stress. I can't really imagine it, Tony. I've got to be absolutely honest. I just want to nail these figures down, actually. So in total, you stole in euros how much? 1.75 million.

Yep, 1.75 million euros. Tony ended up on the run holed up in a hotel room contemplating taking his own life. Well that was when the police found him and everything started to change. Then there's Harriet Ware Austin. Her family faced a quite unbearable tragedy when she was just a little girl, she was just eight, when she was waving off her two big sisters, watching as their plane prepared to leave Addis Ababa Airport to take them back home to school in England, but the plane crashed. Both girls were killed and the family and Harriet had to try to find a new way of living and talking about grief, loss and absence. It was just a total turning

inside out of life and I always think that we were two families, we had two lives so in a sense when they went we went as well that old us went and we had to find a new a new way of well who we were and that first 10 years was a journey back to the new normality and yeah just completely different charlie Charlie Wilson has endured a very different kind of absence, quite a lonely one. At the age of 44, he had a stroke and lost his entire memory, everything. When he woke up, he did not recognise his own wife. I was in this wee room and the nurses called the wife through, who pretty much introduced herself to me. I had no idea who she was

to just say hi i'm jackie i'm you know i'm your wife and i said oh very good uh type of scenario i had absolutely no idea well charlie then had to relearn everything and that is everything brushing his teeth tying his shoelaces a slow and often incredibly frustrating process. And then you can also meet Keith. Now, Keith's a Welshman who grew up working in his adoptive father's business, delivering coal to the local area. When he was about to become a grandfather, he decided it was time to track down his birth parents. He met his birth mother and she told him the most extraordinary thing,

that his father had been a Malaysian prince. Obviously, when she said, oh, he's a prince, well, you know, it absolutely knocks you, knocks your head off, doesn't it? I mean, I'm talking to you about this now and it gives me the shivers. Yes, well, it's just funny you say that because I've just had one of those moments. And what was it like driving back down the A1 with your wife, having established that she, in fact, all these years had been married to royalty? Yeah, surreal, isn't it? Keith, just one of the incredibly interesting guests on Life Changing. There's so much of the human experience in this series of interviews.

I really hope you'll enjoy them. Every episode is half an hour, so it's ideal for your government-approved walk, maybe for clearing up after dinner or just for a curl-up in your favourite chair. It's an opportunity to meet some really incredible fellow humans. It's life-changing. All episodes are available on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con,

Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.