Now on bbc news, its time for click. This week, the truth about the truth about coronavirus. Can ai help to treat it . Can it predict its spread . Could Quantum Computers find a cure . Also, self driving wheelchair departing now from terminal seven. Ifeel like the queen. Hello. This week marks three months since the world first heard about a newly identified disease. I am of of course talking about covid 19, which is caused by a new type of coronavirus. To date there have been over 3000 deaths from nearly 100,000 confirmed cases and 81 countries. And this is how i know that. This is thejohn Hopkins University covid 19 dashboard. Since it went live injanuary, it has gone viral and in a good way by demystifying the stats in the numbers behind and the numbers behind the spread of this disease. It is amalgamation data from many of the Worlds Health agencies and so for example right now i can see the total of confirmed cases is just over 93,000, these are the countries where they have confirmed cases and just as importantly i think, this is the total number of people who have already recovered completely from the disease. And this is just one of the pop up projects that have appeared online, aiming to demystify the glut of covid i9 data. Community power site next strain drops the genome data shared by scientists around the world. As covid i9 is transmitted from person to person, it can change its genetic makeup in subtle ways, allowing researchers to build a family tree. To see how the disease has spread is some genuinely fascinating stuff. Because in a crisis, particularly once it is growing rapidly like the coronavirus outbreak, we really need to communicate with people about what they can do individually and collectively to try and help get this under control. But also it is important that individuals understand that if they make minor relatively mundane changes to their behaviour, they can help us to slow the spread of this down. In 2018, the bbc ran its own experiments to simulate the spread of a flu like disease using a network of ritually for me, the show did a brilliantjob of revealing how simple things like washing our hands can make a massive difference to how quickly and how far it is these spreads. And how far a disease spreads. 0n the right is what happens if we all wash our hands really well. 0n the left, is what happens if we do not. Just look at how the spread is slowed if we follow the advice of washing our hands well and often. Post like this are everywhere on social media, recommending good handwashing techniques and other scientifically grounded tips to try and limit the spread of germs. But they are not the only things you might find if you look online for coronavirus information. Over the past few months, social Media Companies have been waging their own war against a different kind of pathogen. Dubbed and infodemic by the world health organisation, social networks have been deluged with information about the coronavirus. Some of this is correct, and helpful, but a lot of it is misleading. 0r half true or completely fake. And that is making the real information or advice much harder to find. Looking through tiktok now, and it looks like a mini search for coronavirus or similar term now brings up this banner in the top and these videos from well known organisations at the top spot. Similarly, dubious recommendations seem to have gone, coronavirus conspiracies used be one of the suggestions search tags. Not any more. On facebook, it is a similar story with posts from well known and trusted organisations taking up the top spots. So some of the kinds of misinformation that does travel around would be first of all not believing that there is a problem at all. And that this is a creation in order to try and control people. That has been seen before. And is being seen now. Also, people come up with ideas of cures whether it is drinking garlic water or whatever that suggest something will happen or that there is a cure out there that it is being withheld. That is the circulating rumour at the moment. And you have to counter that because if you do not, people will not take action in the way that you want them to. So it is really important that we get the true messaging out there and the science underpinning and that is what we are trying to do. And if youre really interested in educating yourself on the Science Behind covid 19, professor ward has a free online course that should really protect you from fake facts. So that is where we are now. But in this emerging age of Artificial Intelligence, we are starting to get glimpses of how that Technology May help us in fighting outbreaks like this. And laura has been investigating. This coronavirus seems to have shaken up life as we know it. Inevitably, it is going to continue to spread. But how far and fast that is going to happen and what we are going to do about it are still in question. So could Artificial Intelligence play a vital part in providing some answers and maybe even improving the outcome . Ai had an Important Role in the initial understanding of this outbreak. Canadian specialists blue dot deals with global epidemic intelligence. And identified very early on that something was amiss through a combination of medical and airline data. We were one of the first groups in the world that identified this outbreak. This was back actually on new years eve day, the morning of december 31, the Machine Learning algorithms that we developed had picked up information and in chinese of a pneumonia, it wasnt known to be a coronavirus, of unknown cause, centred around this market in wuhan. When it was presented to our team, we recognised there were parallels to the sars outbreak 17 years earlier so we knew immediately that there was some historic parallels here and that this outbreak really warranted our attention. And this is where the human scientists were needed. Ai can alert but cannot yet do the investigations to say what is really occurring. Detecting an outbreak is really just the first step. There are multiple other things that need to happen. Ultimately we need to determine what kinds of risk does this pose, is it likely to spread . If it is going to spread, where might it go . What kind of consequences might occur from that spread . And ultimately we have to get that information into the hands of people who can then be empowered with the information to take the appropriate actions. It is notjust about tracking, though. The dream is that one day, ai might be able to conjure up necessary vaccines on the spot. 0r repurpose the drugs to deal with new challenges. The latter being something benevolent london is already benevolent ai in london is already leading the way on. This company uses al to better understand the mechanism of disease. Correlating data on illnesses, drugs and outcomes and providing more information than any human being could ever come up with. And in this case, a potential lead. What are we looking at here . This is a demonstration of our algorithm processing documents in real time, reading the abstract of scientific publications related to coronavirus and extracting relationships between key biological concepts that we really care about to carry out the discovery. And at this point, were just a few months into an outbreak that could really, really grow. How meaningful do you think this data is so far . Theres a huge amount of information being published. We are notjust pulling out the coronavirus information. But we are merging it with other existing publications on underlying biology. 0ur algorithms reads over biology at multiple layers from the nano world of proteins interacting on ourselves through this maze of biological processes up to a human defined definition of a disease. It is very early days for the process but it is suggesting what might be worth further investigation. Now a lot of people are looking at virals, antivirals and how they might potentially treat the disease. We looked at it from a completely different way. We said what are the other types of approved drugs that might inhibit the progression of that disease in the body . So we surfaced a number of drugs and then we did some experimentation based on that. And further research. And we came up with this one drug that we think is best suited. It has both Anti Inflammatory Properties as well as the ability to stop what is called endocytosis, which is what enables the virus to enter the lungs, which is the most potentially dangerous outcome of the coronavirus. The company stresses that this is only conjecture. And although the drug in question is approved for use in rheumatoid arthritis, Clinical Trials and full of Scientific Evidence will be needed before it could even come close to being used for this purpose. What we are trying to do is use this technology in the service of science to further the development of novel treatments for diseases that currently have no treatment. Like right now in the world is over 9000 diseases that have no treatment. Ai will play a greater role than it has already because what is being done is genetic sequences are being taken and that is the understanding of the organism itself and this is putting in the database that can then determine for a virus came from and what it might be going in the future. Of course ai has not solved the covid 19 crisis. But it has hopefully help to some extent and should be learning from it. To be even more helpful in any future disease outbreaks. Hello and welcome to the week of tech. To the week in tech. It was the week Hong Kong AirlineCathay Pacific was fined half £1 million by the uks Information Commissioners Office for failing to protect customers personal data. With Death Stranding and control leading the pack with 11 nominations each, winners will be revealed on the 2nd of april. And tesla admitted that it is put older, slower processors in some of its new cars. Because of supply issues related to the coronavirus operate. The company said it would upgrade the hardware when supplies improve. If the thought of the smart robots fills you with worry, or even fear, you might want to look away now. These bots have learned to walk in scarily just a matter of hours. Google robotics used al to help mechanical monstrosities master the art of walking forward, backwards and even turning. If that doesnt concerns you, boston dynamics, the company that brought us cyborg canines, has unveiled what happens when robots work together. This strange pair have partnered up for a shift to demonstrate the future of warehouse automation. Showing off absolute, unbridled and organised efficiency. But maybe for now, lets just keep them stacking boxes. This extending phone concept can transform from a smartphone into a 7. 8 inch tablet. It is one of several prototypes revealed by chinese phone maker tcl. Instead of a folding display, this concept has a screen that rolls up inside of the phone and that way there supposedly will not be a crease inside the screen. The one i saw was just a dummy model with no Electronics Inside but the company says it is working on the real thing. There will be huge challenges to making this practical. For starters, it will have to work out how to stop theyre getting out how to stop dirt getting into the mechanism and scratching the screen, although the design is eye catching. It is another concept. A tablet that can be folded in half. When it is closes it looks a bit like a tiny laptop which i thought was very cute. And out of all the concepts tcl showed me, i thought this was the most robust and practical. And finally come a trifold tablet. Essentially a ten inch tablet that folds down into a very chunky phone. It has two hinges, one fold forwards and one fold backwards. And you can bend it into a lot of unusual shapes, although im not entirely sure why you would want to. None of these are ready to go on sale and the company doesnt even know how much they would cost but it does give us an idea of what some phones might look like in the future. If computers are in the future going to help us design vaccines to take on threats like covid 19, well, those computers are probably going to need to be very different. And theyre also going to look very different. This is a quantum computer. In this case, one of googles. And while it is still early days, one of the things people expect quantum processors will eventually be very good at is solving usually be very good at is solving hugely complex medical problems. A lot of calculations we run today with chemistry, you have to make approximations very early on in the calculation. Which means you decrease the accuracy of the results. With quantum computing, we are hoping that someday we will be able to get High Accuracy in a short amount of time. Quantum computers have some peculiar properties. They can consider Many Solutions to a problem at the same time. Once we truly understand how to build them at scale and operate them, these machines should massively outperform traditional computers at certain tasks. There is a feeling that we are starting to get close to this quantum dream. At ces earlier this year, ibm, one of googles main quantum competitors, was showing off its 0 system one. It is one of the most beautiful things ive ever seen. Maybe that is because i am a massive geek, but can you give me a tour of the bits . Yes. What you see on the outside is a refrigerator. So it is put there to keep everything nice and cold. The quantum chip sits at the very bottom of the quantum computer, you can see where all of those, that exposure in the centre. The little square. Yes. On that square, we have about 20 qubits on this particular device. There are all interconnected. And when this is in operation, it is the coldest thing in the universe. It is 100 times colder than outer space at the very bottom of the quantum computer. How do you interact with this . How do the instructions come in and how do those the results come out . Microwave pulses is what you send in, it changes the base and that is how we essentially programme a quantum computer. We run them from a laptop. Is there a usb port somewhere . Laughter. No. We access these over the cloud. The kind of Computer Programme you might write for a quantum computer is nothing like the kind of code you are right for a normal computer is it . No. It looks totally different. Some of the concepts are similar, like how you have different gates and things like that. But you are not programming in ones and zeros any more. In fact, when you actually lay it out looks much more like a musical composition. So you have lines of qubits in these different gates of interaction and it looks like a piece of music. Wow. The more qubits, the more complex a calculation the computer can theoretically make. And at the end of last year, google said that for the first time, there was one calculation that its quantum computer could do way quicker then a non quantum machine. Which meant that it had reached something called quantum supremacy. But it is something that ibm says is a red herring. They showed something very specific. It was a nice experiment. I think that there is much more work to be done. It was a very specific example. I think that there is a lot of work to be done to be able to roll that out and show a little bit more applicability. So, i actually like to think of it as quantum advantage. Quantum advantage is kind of that point in time where you are doing a calculation in a quantum computer that you cant do on a classical computer. So we were discussing chemistry for example, it would be when we are able to achieve a higher level of accuracy for a molecule that we cannot do today using a classical computer or that is too twime intensive to be able to achieve that. Both ibm and google believe that we are on the cusp of Something Big with quantum computing. Ibm talks about the 2020s being the quantum decade. So maybe for the next pandemic, we will have bigger weapons in our arsenal. The mind bending world of the quantum computer. Now, we often talk about Autonomous Cars on this programme. But have you ever heard of an autonomous wheelchair . The concept has actually been around for a few years now but issues around reliability and has meant the idea has never really made any progress. But one Japanese Company says it has a solution. And paul carters been to new yorksjfk airport to sit in on a very special live trial. It is safe to say that airports and disabled people havent always been the best of friends. If you have mobility needs, most airports and airlines require you to book assitance in advance, which usually means being manually pushed by staff to a predetermined point within the terminal. Resulting in a loss of autonomy and independence. But this mightjust have the potential to change all of that. This is the wheel autonomous wheelchair. At first glance it looks pretty much like a normal power chair. Into the front here, but thanks to some very Clever Technology built into the front here, this has the potential at least the transport passengers from security all the way over there and perhaps via duty free or all the way to one of the gates like the one behind me. It has two wide angle cameras on the front, cameras on the back as well as lidar and infrared sensors. They combine to make sure the chair doesnt collide with anything. Prior to the chair being let loose on passengers, it has to spend several days plotting routes around the terminal building. In this case, jfks terminal seven all the time building up an internal, map which it uses to locate itself. I arrived to see the start of a two day live trial. The process starts from the site survey, so we understand the airport environment, for example, how do customers line up for boarding, how crowded the terminal is going to be and what is the peak hour and non peak. And eventually we have to talk with operationals, how do we actually bring this and integrate this. Now, the concept of self driving wheelchairs isnt necessarily new. But wheel autonomous chair is the first to be trialed in a live airport environments. Of course, it only gets you from security around the terminal. And doesnt solve the problem of getting on and off the planes themselves. This trial is a partnership with british airways, who are looking to see if the technology can be used to improve the experiences of disabled passengers. Of course, i couldnt resist taking it for a spin around jfk myself. Theyre taking this down towards gate three. Now, if im being critical, the ride could have been smoother. The chair has to stop often when it senses obstacles such as people. And in a busy airport likejfk, there are obviously lots of those. I already feel quite safe. I dont feel like im going to run anybody down. Ifeel like the queen. Hello. After i had my few minutes of fun, it was time to let the more important people, actual passengers, try it for the first time. However, it didnt completely go to plan. Call it the click curse, but despite the many dozens of successful tests, with its first passenger, the chair seemed to think it was in a different place. And staff eventually had to take over. Subsequent passengers did try the chair and it did work well. They didnt just want to be filmed, so you have to take my word for it. Despite the unsuccessful ride, hansa will still positive about the potential technology. Wonderful. Would you use it again . I would. Anytime. Being independent, theres nothing that you have to wait for somebody. You just go on when you would like to go. Maybe because im getting to that age so i need it. The next stage for the wheelchair is a full scale trial at Londons Heathrow planned for march which will pose its own set of challenges. If it is a success, we could see these rolled out across airports where ba operates. Air travellers needing assistance will be watching with interest. That is it for this week. Dont forget we live on social media so if you need us, you know where to find us. Facebook, youtube, instagram, and twitter at bbc click. Thank you for watching. We will see you soon. Hello. 0n the plus side, the weather is not going to be as bad as it has been on recent weekends but then again, it will still be windy and it will be wet at times. This area of low pressure will feed in these weather fronts over the weekend, especially during saturday and saturday night and then behind this cold front on sunday, it will feel a bit colder and some sunshine again but also heavy showers. For the weekend, it will be wet at times, certainly not all the time, it will be blustery throughout but we also get to see a bit of sunshine by sunday. Temperatures are on the up after an early frost by the time we get to saturday morning and when we have cloud towards the north and west of the uk and sunny breaks of rain in this weather fronts i showed you and the early sunshine will be short lived. Eastern parts of the uk could see a been patchy rain at times with the afternoon stays largely dry. There will be outbreaks of rain towards wales and england but it will turn heavier and more persistent to Northern Ireland and across some southern and western of scotland. It is going to be windy, gales to the irish sea and coast could be around 50 mph gusts. Here are wind gusts. We will see rather misty and murky conditions developing with Poor Visibility for some on the coast and hills in the west and what we will be a mild day. Then again, its cloudy and windier for some of us and what there. 0vernight, saturday night sunday the rain does move south. Before a clearance from southern and western scotland there could be problems here from high rainfall totals and some of the Higher Ground up to 70 mm snow belts and that can bring flooding in places. A much milder start to sunday, but with cloud and rain around and they clearing the southeast quite early on sunday morning come and a lot of showers behind that but not a wash out every day because they will be some sunshine. A chance of a shower and they come heavy, hail and some snow over the higher hills scotland and still very gusty winds as well. It will feel a bit cold on sunday because there has been a cold front moving on through. Just to give you a flavour of things into the start of next week. The detail not yet set in stone. It looks like an area of low pressure and another one coming into the uk. It does mean more wind and rain. A few locations then into next weekend to give you a flavour of things. It starts with interns shall reimburse places will turn a bit cooler as well as the week will go on. That is your forecast. Welcome to bbc news. Im james reynolds. Our top stories stranded at sea, the Cruise Ship Passengers infected with coronavirus. The Us Government reveals its plan of action. Of of passengers and crew will be tested for the coronavirus. Those that need to be quarantined will be quarantine, those that require additional medical attention will receive it. Italy announces 50 more deaths from covid 19, the countrys biggest daily increase. A special report from china, the country where the outbreak began, and the fight to continue with life and business as usual. And in other news why a publisher in new york is abandoning a memoir by filmmaker woody allen after its staff protest