the get wired podcast, we highlight some of wired s most impactful stories, and we kind of explore the intersection of technology and humanity. that s the best way i would describe it. we will hear a bit more from you and nicola slightly later on in the show. also with us today is madhumita murgia. european tech correspondent at the financial times. maddie, you have been spending a lot of your time following silicon valley at the moment. yes, that s right. we have been part of quite a big i project looking at several hundred documents that were leaked - from facebook, and so we have kind of, it s been a team effort. people have been looking . at them and analysing them together as a group. and last but definitely not least, is emily birnbaum, tech lobbying reporter at politico. so, emily, let s start with you because as maddie just said facebook has been doing a lot of lobbying and pr this past week. we have heard whistle blower former facebook employee frances haugen has bee
now on bbc news.it s time for the media show. hello, it s been another bad week for facebook. on monday, the world s biggest news brands published a coordinated series of stories all based on whistle blower frances haugen and her trove of leaked documents. so, how did haugen, a product manager come to have such a strong media pr and support? and has anything new been revealed this week? and whilst facebook might be facing difficulties in the real world, that has not stopped them investing heavily in an alternative reality future. so what exactly is the metaverse? and how soon before we are all living in it? well, joining me to discuss all of that is my panel of guests. nicola millard is a presenter, writer and principal innovation partner at bt. nicola, what is a principal innovation partner and why does bt need one? good question, well, i used to be bt s futurologist and i got very tired of the crystal ball jokes. i do have one, it doesn t work. but my role is i am part of b
entirely written by a human, so what s going on? today, we re dedicating the whole programme to these questions. with me are madhumita murgia, artificial intelligence editor at the financial times, sky news science and technology editor, tom clarke, eliz mizon, from independent media cooperative the bristol cable, as well as jackson ryan, science editor at cnet. welcome to you all. and i think we should start with the basics. madhu, if i could bring you in, from the financial times, explain what we mean by aland why, particularly in terms of the role ofjournalism it has, why it s getting so much coverage now. well, so, ai is artificial intelligence and, i mean, supposedly it s a mechanical computer version of human intelligence, or at least that s the hope, right? but today, what we have is, it s basically a powerful statistical system, a computer software, which finds patterns in large amounts of data. but what this means is that it can, you know, find diagnoses from pictur
and what we re talking about today is generative ai, which is software that can actually create and generate things that include words, images, code, even video. and how widely is it being used in newsrooms, do you think? i mean, what s the financial times doing, for example? so, i think, over the last six months, it would be impossible to ignore it if you were a newsroom with a digital operation that was trying to reach people online. i think you d have to be aware and, you know, and have to be experimenting with it. most big, large news publishers are doing it the ft is. we would. we ve put out, our editor put out a letter saying we re not going to be publishing any stories that are written by ai, but we will be looking at how it might help journalists do theirjobs better, things like summarising complex documents, like, you know, tax documents or, you know, readouts from court cases, things like that, that are difficult for humans to read lots of, very quickly. it could
with governor desantis since the storm made landfall. and at my direction, fema administrator chris welch, she travelled to florida wednesday night after having been here earlier, and i approved the request within six hours at the time, governor desantis asked for a mass, a major disaster declaration. at the same time, a request from governor mcmasters of south carolina for an emergency declaration. that s a fancy way of saying just getting help immediately and all we can do under the law. and, folks, we re making federal assistance available for florida survivors whose homes or businesses damaged and destroyed. in the uk, the opposition labour party is calling for an urgent audit of the concrete in public buildings, with some hospitals and courts known to contain the potential dangerous type known as raac. more than 150 schools in england and 35 in scotland were found to contain the material and so have had to completely or partially close. investigations in wales and northe