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BBC Inside Science

Killer robots; Myths and superstitions and conservation; Science book prize nominee - Cordelia Fine; Taxidermy

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Once again, the ethical side of fully autonomous weapons has been raised, this time by over 100 leading robotics experts, including Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla, and Mustafa Suleyman of DeepMind. They have sent an open letter to the United Nations urging them to take action in order to prevent the development of "killer robots". The letter says "lethal autonomous" technology is a "Pandora's box", once opened it will be very difficult to close - they have called for a ban on the use of AI in managing weaponry. Gareth asks AI expert, Professor Peter Bentley from University College London, if this is the right approach or is this just an attempt to delay the inevitable?

When a paper titled "Fantastic Beasts and Why to Conserve Them" is printed in the journal Oryx, we had to take a closer look. Far more than a publicity stunt, this work by George Holmes, an expert in conservation and society at the University of Leeds, covers an important point. It explores the dangers of neglecting local beliefs, myths and superstitions about the natural world, and animals in particular, when trying to come up with conservation strategies.

Cordelia Fine is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Melbourne. She is the third shortlisted author of the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize. Her book "Testosterone Rex" explores the science behind gender. She argues that testosterone isn't necessarily the basis for masculinity and that there is so much more to gender than merely our biological sex.

200 years ago, taxidermy was a crucial part of zoological teaching and research, and in the days before BBC wildlife films, often the only way that many people could see strange and exotic wildlife from other lands. Lots of those early specimens are incredibly valuable, and can still be found in museums around the world, although being so old they are often in need of urgent repair. Usually this happens out of sight behind the scenes, but not so at the Grant Museum of Zoology in London, which has been doing its conservation live in the gallery for all to see, to draw attention to the art and science of taxidermy. Some of the more serious repairs get sent to taxidermy conservator Lucie Mascord in Lancashire.

Produced by Fiona Roberts Presented by Gareth Mitchell.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello I'm Gareth Mitchell standing in for Adam Rutherford for the entire month of August and

0:05.2

this is the podcast edition of BBC Inside Science as it sounded on the radio on Thursday

0:11.0

the 24th of August 2017 and I'll tell you what everyone is telling it as

0:16.4

it is today technology bosses tell the global community to wise up over the dangers

0:21.2

of automated warfare.

0:23.2

Conservationists are told to pause for thought

0:25.8

if they're tempted to put biodiversity

0:28.0

before beliefs and custom.

0:30.1

A book tells us all to banish the whole boys will be boys girls

0:34.8

thing. Oh and don't tell a taxidermist that theirs is simply the business of

0:39.7

stuffing dead animals. They won't be amused. Well first over a hundred of the world's technology

0:45.8

CEOs including SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk are concerned about the state of automated

0:52.3

weapons. So much so that they wrote an open letter to the

0:55.1

United Nations earlier this week urging the global community to protect us all from the dangers of future

1:01.5

warfare. The letter says lethal autonomous weapons threatened to become

1:05.8

the third revolution in warfare. Once developed they'll permit armed conflict

1:11.3

to be fought at a scale greater than ever.

1:14.6

And the letter goes on to say, once this Pandora's box is opened,

1:18.6

it'll be hard to close.

1:20.9

The signatories acted after the UN called off a meeting on the issue.

1:24.8

So a timely call for a critical discussion about the security of all of us?

1:29.5

Well, for a view from the AI research community, I caught up with Peter Bentley a computer scientist at University College London

...

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