00:00:21
Hello and welcome to TechTV. We’re here doing another heads up. I’m joined by my colleague Pete Warren. Um Pete, um there are a number of news stories that we’re going to be covering today. Uh we’re kicking off with one around the government’s demands on Mr. Musk to try and cut down on the level at which his Grock AI is producing deep fakes. What’s the background to this one? Well, essentially uh the technology Grock allows you to disrobe people. Um and the the the targets quite naturally
00:01:00
because of uh the our warped society they’re women and uh women and young girls are being disroed and then they’re being the the technology has asked to put them into bikinis and a lot of people have taken exception to this. There are quite rightly a lot of women who feel terribly terribly offended. they they um feel victimized and they feel stalked. Um and uh Musk has been asked to stop this. Initially he told people in a very Musklike way to uh uh just suck it up. I suppose is probably
00:01:37
the expression. Um some people have said ah but all of the technology uh system the AI systems allow you to do this. You can do this in GP chat GPT and you can do it in in a number of others. and in fact a commentator on LinkedIn actually demonstrated this. However, now it would appear that the uh the the focus on Musk has meant that he has actually complied and tried to prevent people from being able to do this. Indeed, we’ve heard recently and the Telegraph broke a story today that Musk has agreed to prevent
00:02:16
his um AI from undressing women. And obviously this was causing um as much distress with all the women whose uh uh uh images were being faked in this way as the distress that would be caused if if you were distressed in this way. Um so uh we want to put an end to that and hopefully uh this spat will prevent the sort of regulatory combat that we are potentially facing with the UK government on one side threatening to ban X and X being supported by the current US administration in a very combative form accusing uh Europe and
00:03:01
the UK of being unreasonably restrict rictive on the large tech giants. Um but hopefully now that um uh Musk has backed down on this uh this is going to take the fire out of this particular argument. But I think we’re going to see a repeat of this sort of confrontation and the discussion between uh the two trading blocks and the the US administration versus the largely the Europeans, but there are many other um areas of the world that are concerned and I know the Australians have had um social media bans and things. And that
00:03:35
brings us on to the next story that we’re focusing on. Um, I I’m very aware that there’s an Australian ban that they’re introducing and people have been calling for that in the UK in order to prevent uh children who are underage from being on social media. Uh, Pete, what are the implications here? >> Well, I the Australians seem to be uh cutting a ludatory example in all of this in terms of the legislation that they’re doing. However, there is another issue now which has emerged which is
00:04:10
that one uh media tech big tech company in particular Google has been sending emails around to people to children when they’re 13 telling them that they are no longer liable to parental supervision and that they can go off and look at the things that they want to look at. So I think that the I mean you say that there’s this regulatory battle going on, Bill. I don’t think it’s a regulatory battle. I think this is a battle of of essential morality. If I walked up to a child on the in the street and said,
00:04:45
“Take all of your clothes down to your underwear,” I would beounded out of the village that I was in and people would say that there was something significantly wrong with me. One of the the things that that big tech or tech allows you to do is to engage in behavior that you wouldn’t normally do. And some people are actually saying, “Oh, hang on. There’s nothing wrong with this.” Well, oddly, we interviewed a woman called Noel Martin. Somebody, she’s Australian. Somebody
00:05:16
took her picture. They uh they got a a picture of her that she thinks came from social media. they uh disroed her and the they then printed these pictures of her or put other pictures of her up naked um and some appalling things had been done to those images too. She has become a campaigner on that issue and quite rightly she’s she found the entire thing terribly terribly upsetting. She was wondering who on earth was doing this. She was walking around the streets looking at looking around corners to see
00:05:52
if there were people secretly filming her. And obviously there are a lot of people who would argue that the last person to be lecturing us on morality is the current um leader of the US administration who not only has uh been to Epstein Island on a number of occasions um but has actually been uh found guilty of um uh various different uh uh uh really quite disgraceful interactions with women. Um and therefore the we’re not in a position where we feel that we should be lectured to in this respect. Um on top of that
00:06:31
there are there are a whole load of other um stories that are currently in the media. Uh and one of the the things about this whole social media thing is you can get around the social media ban by using a VPN. And there are various different ways of doing this. And the the way that the Australians are trying to impose this is by actually have sorting sort of identification. Um and uh obviously bypassing in identification with VV VPNs has been the the most immediate response, but identity is something that goes far wider than this.
00:07:08
Uh we’ve had a story in the UK where the uh government was wanting to introduce digital ID cards. Now Pete, we’ve got some news on this front as well because we’ve had a a backdown by the UK government, one of a number of U-turns that they’ve done. Um, and they’re now saying that they don’t want to do well, they may want to do digital ID cards, but they’re not going to make it compulsory. >> Yeah. But there’s an interesting point about this. I mean, I I do have to crow
00:07:38
a little here. Uh, we did a piece on uh ID cards which proved to be remarkably precient. It went out on the radio in um November and we said that the essential thing about ID cards is you have to have trust in the population. There was a petition which came very very very close to 3 million people objecting to the ID card scheme. That shows that you’ve actually lost trust. One of the pro the things about digital ID is it can do some very very good things. As we pointed out in our program, the
00:08:12
Estonians have made it work in the in the interest of their population. They’ve got a buy in of well over 75% of the population, the Estonian population into the use of ID cards. And they do that by being very transparent with what data they hold and how it is used. And the problem that the UK government has is it doesn’t have a similar level of trust. In poll after poll after poll, survey after survey, the people say that the organization institution that they trust least is the government. And so
00:08:47
that’s something that the government has to solve if it wants to deal with this issue. And and trust is a massive thing worldwide. And one area where trust has not only broken down, but uh law and order has as well um has been out in um uh Iran. And we’re seeing um a a massive change out there with um what we’re seeing is a a a number of protests that are going nationwide. Um and it’s these aren’t the first protests that we’ve ever seen in Iran, but on this particular occasion, uh they have been
00:09:22
quite persistent. There have been a number of uh really unfortunate fatalities u with the amount of repression that’s going on and the government has gone uh to a real lengths to try and uh uh quash the protests and one thing that it’s done is to try and knock out the Starlink system to prevent people from accessing information on the internet. Um but this has had massive implications not just on the protesters but on business as a whole in Iran. Um, it’s interesting how they’ve been able
00:09:53
to do this. Pete, tell us a little bit about how this could possibly happen. Well, to actually own a Starlink receiver in Iran is uh extremely dangerous. Um, it’s also quite expensive, too. Uh, so what they’re doing is they’re targeting the uplinks to actually cut the systems off. This is something that we’re seeing across the world now. There is a persistent uh attempt by different or administrations to target satellite and satellite uplinks. The Russians are doing it, the North Koreans are doing
00:10:35
it, the Chinese are doing it. Uh I do think it’s only fair to say that presumably uh some Western governments are also doing it. And uh we have a war that is beginning in space. Oddly coincidentally, and I hate to do this, but it’s something that we’re just releasing a program about today. Um space is essential now to uh internet communications. I want to make another point too though, Bill. You mentioned that these are technology stories. They’re not. These are stories that are
00:11:09
mainstream stories. Technology is now mainstream. Communications in Iran are essential for the administration to stay in power. They want to cut down that flow of information. That’s what communications are about. Everything that we’re talking about at the moment is just indicative of the fact that technology is making its way into our lives and that there is this movement backwards and forwards between the online and the offline. And not only is there a currently a re very real war on the ground in Ukraine
00:11:46
where Starlink is actually an essential tool, but we’re talking about in the program you mentioned an emerging war in space. Uh but there’s always been a sort of information war out there. And this has been demonstrated recently by the very impact that the Iranians have had on Starink because the web blackout in Iran has impacted some areas we wouldn’t expect. Indeed, there are number of Scottish independence accounts on social media that have been impacted. Explain how this has happened.
00:12:21
Well, I there is one school of thought that this is penetration by Iranian intelligence perhaps. uh Russian intelligence too where they’re using similar techniques to try to influence people using social media or using different technologies and there’s been a certain amount of confusion. One of the problems with information warfare is sometimes it’s very difficult to control exactly what happens in the not Peter attack for example which was intended to take out uran Ukrainian power stations
00:12:58
um electricity generation uh windmills were were turned off and the MK shipping line was nearly taken out. So there are always these collateral flows when when you start engaging in information technology. Essentially it just means that people will need to fine-tune things. Um the more fine-tuned they get the more worried I think we should get. And all of this, the fact that as you say technology is mainstream and that there are conflicts between different governments, different um trading blocks
00:13:34
um not only um directly in the uh media war but in the cyber war and also trading uh attacks and others uh has brought the the actual legal side of things to the front and many of the stories we’ve talked about here have really major legal implications. Um, and therefore I’m exceedingly pleased to welcome to the show our special guest today, Mark Dee, uh, legal expert and good friend of the the program. Um, Mark, you you’ve listened to some of what we say about some of the big news stories. Obviously, there’s going to be
00:14:11
a different legal interpretation depending on what your political perspective is or which trading block and and and uh country you’re coming from. How are we going to har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har har harmonize this and how can people be sure and have confidence not only in their governments
00:14:27
and in the technology but in the law as well? >> Well, thanks Bill and great to be joining you both. Um the one thing I was struck by listening to your discussions over the last few minutes on all of these is actually there is quite a lot of legal aspect to what a lot of what we’re hearing here and the responses that we’re seeing from big tech and I think Pete was talking about fine-tuning that’s going on and I think that’s actually very important that when we look at the responses that are being
00:14:53
made to these tech stories that we really have a look at the way in which the responses are taking place. We as lawyers love the gray area. we we feed on that gray area and look at these very small points. And so I think when we’re looking at what Mr. Musk is doing in relation to Grock, is it that we’re taking a very small area of what uh perceived egregious behavior of the AI and we’re prohibiting that or we’re agreeing that that should not take place or are we taking a step back and taking
00:15:22
the holistic view and saying there is something that has fundamentally gone wrong with the way this technology is acting and we now need to have some legal safeguards in place. My fear is that we’re doing the first which is fine-tuning and it’s just going to be encouraging legal debate as to well was this perhap was this undressing somebody or was this allowed in this instance rather than taking a step back and saying what has fundamentally gone wrong here. >> Yeah. And I think that’s the issue isn’t
00:15:51
it because there’s an issue of responsibility here. You’ve got government saying hey this is our area. Um, and you’ve also got u the responsibility on the individual too, but you’ve also got big tech saying, “Hang on a minute. We’re not going to do anything about this.” And this does beg the question that really it’s big tech’s responsibility and you can’t duck behind this argument they’ve kept on making that they’re just the town square. they just provide the
00:16:27
architecture behind all of this. Um I mean in a sense what they’re saying is we’re the architecture and there’s a speaker’s corner going on and you can’t expect us to moderate that. But then if the government step in and say hang on a moment within our jurisdiction we’re going to expect certain standards of behavior. Then there’s a a push back from that from big tech who are also playing to the gallery and saying, “Oh no, we’re going to uphold your right to the freedom of speech.” I mean, it’s
00:17:04
freedom of speech. Where does this come, Mark? >> Well, ju just on that, you’re absolutely right. I mean, there is a real fear that we’re going to end up playing a game of whack-a-ole between regulators and jurisdictions and legislators and the big tech as they try to do this finetuning. But it’s interesting you should mention this question of freedom of speech because what we see in that second story and this idea that Google might be inviting people as soon as they hit a certain age be majority or 13 or
00:17:29
whatever it is to sign up to those terms they’re going to be using that freedom of speech style argument leaning into that this is the way that your voice is going to be heard by signing up to those terms again on a fine point are you old enough to sign up to it as soon as you are do sign up and it’s freedom of speech but what we seem to have lost with freedom of speech is relative concept. It’s a relative um it’s a relative ideal. It’s a relative thing that was established. We see it in this
00:17:57
country through the European Convention on Human Rights as it’s been brought into domestic legislation. And it’s not an absolute right. We have the right to privacy on the one hand and the freedom of expression on the other hand. And these are competing rights which have to be judged. But something has happened more recently where freedom of expression or freedom of speech is now being upheld some way as being an absolute right and it’s being put forward as a way of getting people to
00:18:24
engage in technology to use the technology and we we see some um disastrous consequences as a result if it’s taken as an absolute right. Don’t you think there’s a bit of a muddle here though? Because when freedom of of speech started up, it had exponents like Voltater, like John Stewart Mill. These were people who were saying that freedom of speech was the right to speak truth to power. Truth being the really really important word in all of this. Um and it suddenly the term has been muddied. It
00:18:57
it has been and it it has actually been muddied by people who want to uh encourage what they call critical thinking from the right of politics. And freedom of speech they’re saying seems to be the right of expression to say anything that you want to do. And what they’re saying is you have the right to say things that are spiteful, insightful, um things that may not even be true. So this isn’t speaking truth to power. Freedom of speech now has been muddied into the right to say anything
00:19:32
that you want to do. >> And the technology indeed is allowing that expression to be amplified in a way that gives it disproportionate weight perhaps. This isn’t one person speaking truth and two power in a very limited area of the world in a a playground somewhere in the town hall elsewhere. This is something that has an ability to be amplified across the world and and dialed up to the maximum in the way it’s actually um expressed and put out there. And and surely that amplification is all
00:20:03
part of the problem because it’s the algorithms within these platforms that choose what to amplify and that it’s sort of really started to focus on a real rage uh incident where it actually amplifies the sort of really antagonistic ragefilled comment um that is going to elicit a response which is in the interest of the platforms but possibly not in the interest of society. And that’s right. And we’re not really at this stage talking about the amplification of these messages. We’re
00:20:36
talking about what the message actually is. And if we focus on just what that message is, there’s a risk that the legal response or the response from tech actually creates a situation where we’re going to end up being play, you know, playing whack-a-ole and we’re going to have to deal with every outcome that we don’t like rather than perhaps taking a step back and saying, well, there is something more fundamental going on here. And actually maybe we have a duty as legislators, as uh lawyers, as um
00:21:03
members of society to address the fundamental problems that are existing. Perhaps the amplification rather than just one outcome of the message because if we do so, the legal response could actually point in a very different direction which isn’t necessarily going to help with the development of the technology for societal benefit. But then because of this debate about freedom of speech uh and the muddiness that occurs, you get this situation as we’re seeing in Iran at the moment where you the Iranians could claim that this
00:21:34
message of dissent is being fanned by the internet which is why they felt that they need to cut it off. Um and that these forces are sedicious. Uh so we’re getting this terrible confusion, aren’t we, about what is actually happening. And big tech now in and in that situation will be saying, “No, this is why we’re really good because we can help bring down these uh the these regimes that are bad.” But then of course that’s subjective. >> It’s the flip side of the same coin,
00:22:07
isn’t it? what what is sometimes can be used as a source for good can often be used in the wrong hands as a source for for ill or or or for for for bad. Um, and we are really going to see, I think, in the coming years that the real tension that we’re going to have where you’re trying to regulate and deal with technology which respects no legal boundaries, no jurisdictional boundaries, how we seek to try to impact or to curb its excesses or or or provide safeguards as to how it um how it can be
00:22:36
used. If our legal response is not actually uh panjurisdiction, if it’s not going across trading blocks, if it’s not going across large sways of the world um and is respected as such, we’ll have difficulty and and obviously it’s not just down to the legal jurisdiction here. At some point, we’re going to need enforcement. And this come backs to trust. Uh do we trust the government? Do we trust the police? Do we trust whoever is trying to enforce these things? do we entrust the
00:23:06
social media platforms themselves? Um, and in terms of trust, this brings us on to our our final news story, um, which I think is a somewhat, uh, embarrassment and, uh, might be seen to undermine trust in certainly in the police here in the UK. We we’ve seen a story where uh the police chiefs um have had to admit that they misled parliamentarians when they claimed uh in their um argument that uh fans from uh Makabe Tel Aviv should be banned. Um and their report that they submitted to MPs was based on
00:23:45
some falsehoods that had been introduced by II. Pete, tell us a little bit about this and potentially the pitfalls of using AI. >> Again, this is so interesting, isn’t it? This whole day has been quite interesting because there’s a certain circularity about it because you have a situ the the first time that this came to public notice and this isn’t this incident to do with the police. It was to do with a report that was submitted by a large accountancy company in Australia to the government which
00:24:18
discovered that they had used AI to write a report and that had actually got some sources that were completely facious in it to greatly to the embarrassment of the accountancy company. I’m not mentioning names at the moment because I’m a little confused between which two it was. Um but uh the and and that’s the issue here that a police chief submitted this report and in it it mentioned a match between the this infamous Israeli football team and an equally infamous British football team called West Ham. Um and the the
00:24:58
incident didn’t actually occur. Um, but I mean I’m going to bow to a greater authority here because Mark is a West Ham fan and he knows more about it than me. >> Well, the one thing that’s interesting is is this an instance where the AI has elucinated and making up a match that never was. Of course, the match that had caused the controversy uh towards the end of last year was one involving Aston Villa, who like West Ham actually play in Claritton Blue. And some some viewers may recall that back in 2015, a similar
00:25:30
mistake actually was made in confusing these two particular teams by our then premier, Mr. David Cameron, who encouraged um people to support West Ham rather than his beloved Aston Villa, for whom I think his uncle had actually served as chair beforehand. Um, so maybe it’s not just uh sort of prime ministers that are infallible. It’s a reminder that the the technology is equally vulnerable to to errors happening. >> Well, maybe we’re allucinating. >> Particular incident though have been
00:26:00
that maybe um West Ham won. >> Oh, that would be a complete hallucination. >> Anyway, Mark, thank you so much for joining us. I think we’re going to have to invite you back again um because this is a a a topic that of law and technology that is just going to roll and roll and roll and your your expertise is very much appreciated. Thank you for joining us Pete. Thank you for your contribution. And >> there’s just one note that I want to make on this, which is that the uh very
00:26:39
uh well-known science fiction writer David Brin did say that the thing that would hold AI to account were super predators called lawyers. And no matter whether uh big tech says that it is not going to be uh ruled reigned in by regulation. It is inevitable that it will be reigned in by regulation. >> Well, it may be the lawyers that hold them to account. >> Sorry, >> I was going to say we we lawyers may be super, but I take offense to saying we’re predators. Well, obviously there’s also the fact
00:27:19
that there have been some lawyers that have fallen foul of this particular vulnerability and have submitted legal briefs that have used AI and made up various different case law. So, it’s a fairly circular argument here. So, I think this is something that this is not the last we’ve seen of it. >> Absolutely not. >> Thank you very much, Mark. Thanks again, Pete. and we look forward to continuing the conversation soon.
