04/02/2017 Click - Short Edition

but now on BBC News it's time for Click.

For decades, scientists all around the world have been trying to create

a machine that can match our intelligence.

And nowadays artificially intelligent algorithms can perform

For a long time scientists have been the use in games like chess,

drafts and go as a benchmark for testing AI.

And that's because all these games have a certain amount

But this week the AI community has been celebrating a big win

after a poker playing algorithm called Liberatus defeated four top

human players in a 20 day match of heads up no limit Texas

I've been using poker as a benchmark for 12 years.

Now the best AI has surpassed the level of the best humans

in the strategic reasoning under imperfect information.

But even at this big win is only a little step towards creating

Intelligence one capable of sophisticated thought

across a wide spectrum of areas, and solving problems just

It's an incredible time. And it's very hard to forecast.

and has really incredible possibilities.

But it's, I think it's impossible to forecast accurately.

Speech has been another big challenge for AI researchers.

Personal assistants and chat bots are becoming more sophisticated,

but they so far can't fool us into thinking that they're human.

But what if you thought you were talking to another person?

Konichiwa. Do you speak English?

Would that make you more likely to trust it?

Well, two researchers at the London School of economics

came up with an experiment to see if we would communicate better

with AI if its messages were delivered to us by a human.

They call this computer human hybrid the Echoborg.

And to explore the concept, Jane Copestick found herself

The Echoborg was inspired by research from Stanley Milgram.

He is the Professor behind the controversial experiments

on obedience in the 1960s, to see if people would deliver

electric shocks to others if instructed to buy

Milgram also studied body perception, to determine if we hold

preformed opinions of other people based on their looks.

By using hidden earpieces, people could speak someone else's

The Echoborg has updated this research for the 21st century,

to see if people will react better to artificial intelligence.

Such as the messages from an online chat bot.

If they are being delivered by a human.

I'm in the first stages of testing this out by becoming

I'm starting my speech shadowing practice.

The first step in becoming a fully fledged Echoborg.

The professors have told me this process will take at least eight

I'm starting my first practice with JK Rowling's Harvard

Members of the Harvard Corporation and the board of overseers...

By shadowing speech, I should be able to quickly repeat

back the messages from a chat bot so people won't realise

It may seem something paradox, but there's horses in the cow...

I did something and scuttled somewhere.

Now, to put it to the test, I'm meeting creator

Professor Alex Gillespie at the London School of Economics.

And Kevin Corti, who called in on Skype.

That goes around your neck. First step.

Kevin is using a chat bot called Rose, which is not preprogrammed.

The most noticeable problem in becoming a convincing AI

are the delays while Rose thinks of a response to the question.

Where do you come from? I was born in San Francisco.

Really? In United States.

When were you born? Couple of years ago.

Are you a chat bot? I'm a human.

I thought for a moment you might be a chat bot.

Republic of Ireland and Croatia and France.

My brother's from Ireland. Really?

A magical place full of rain and crazy people.

She says. Well...

That was... Interesting.

What you notices, they tend to be quite disconnected.

It takes each sentence as a stand-alone sentence.

Some of them will speak like they are artificial

intelligence, and some of them will pretend not to be.

But although last time I spoke to which it said

Our final test for the Echoborg was to bring it on stage in front

of an audience of 700 people at the BBC Future

What a lot of humans find difficult...

Canberra. OK, good.

How do I know you are human, how do you know I'm human?

In fact, some of the audience members were fooled.

One thought it was a real conversation with a human,

Some people thought you didn't want to talk

That you were trying to avoid the question,

they really thought you were trying to avoid the questions.

Someone even said, had it been a man would it have

Without becoming fully fledged Echoborgs, we are already giving

a voice to artificial intelligence everyday.

Through the algorithms guiding our news consumption,

to our shopping habits and online searches.

We're bringing AI to life more and more.

Projects like the Echoborg let us reflect on what this means

for our AI future and perhaps even what it means to be human.

Hello and welcome to The Week in Tech.

Playtime was never like this in my day.

I've been taking a look at some of the latest toys hoping to light

up the faces of children and grown-ups.

And, inevitably, a few of them could be found at London's toy fair.

This looks like a drone in a cage and that's because it is.

It's also a proof of concept for a toy that's going to be

Its inventor here is wearing this glove, which means you can control

It all looks pretty simple, but I know you've been studying

robotics for 15 years, so there's quite a bit more to this

Once the science of gestures has been codified, and that's what we've

been able to do, as you can imagine, we can bring all sorts of robotic

The brain itself is in the glove, in the secretary and electronics.

And the algorithms embedded in the glove.

The drone is merely a conduit for the gestures being recorded

There was also a clear trend towards giving kids a deeper level

of control when it comes to toy gadgets.

This is a robot that aims to help kids learn to code.

They can operate it manually through the App, or setup sequences

of the functions they'd like it to carry out.

It's looks pretty raw when you've got all these leads and buttons,

so it really is giving kids a chance to develop something.

I also recently got my hand on a drone that kids can programme,

spending time tweaking code at a computer or using drag

I had a play around with some of the drone's functions.

So maybe that shows who the real kid is.

First of all I press W, which should get the drone

This is a spot of that well-known activity, drone bowling.

Is, the skittles are down here on the floor.

It's not just about flying, though, you may want to do a bit of driving.

To do that, you swap the wings for wheels.

Last year we learned quite how much of an appetite

there was for augmented reality in gaming.

And give the big kids a chance for some play, too.

This gaming robot, much like virtual avatars,

It's also customisable and upgradable, with the ability

to add wheels or even take on another robot in the room.

Or if you want to get yourself moving, how

This prototype has limited functionality, but still managed

Not that it fought too hard when I decided I'd had enough.

The full length of version is ready for you on iPlayer. Thank you for

watching and see you soon..