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Digital Planet: AI captain to sail the Atlantic

Factual: Science & Nature

AI captain to sail the Atlantic

15/09/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, AI captain to sail the Atlantic

A crewless ship is due to set sail across the Atlantic with an AI captain on board

AI captain to sail a ship across the Atlantic. How a farmbot is helping Australian farmers keep their cattle watered and how to unravel online lie machines.

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) is due to set sail this week (scheduled for Wednesday) from Plymouth, England to Plymouth, Massachusetts with no crew on board.  The AI captain will steer the trimaran across the Atlantic with the help of servers and cloud and edge computing, gathering data on global warming, micro-plastic pollution and marine mammal conservation.  If successful, it will be one of the first self-navigating, full-sized vessels to cross the Atlantic Ocean and could herald a new era of autonomous research ships.  Andy Stanford-Clark, Chief Technology Officer at IBM, tells Gareth about the tech on board.


Farmbot - tech to ensure cattle have water
Crop and livestock farming uses around 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water supply, and access to water is something every farmer in the world thinks about, every single day. Is there enough of it, is there too much or too little, and are there any problems that need fixing. Those problems get even bigger for farmers who don’t live on-site, or – as is the case in Australia – an issue with a water pipe or dam might be several hours’ drive away. Robotic devices are increasingly taking the strain, even now linking to satellites to help farmers keep their livestock healthy. Corinne Podger reports. 

Lie Machines
Have you ever been lured to false political messaging online or been attracted to clickbait that has directed you to a conspiracy theories or false news?  How and why this happens is the subject of a book “Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives”.  Its author, Philip Howard, Director of the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK  explains how to take these lie machines apart.


The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson.

(Image: The Mayflower Autonomous Ship. Credit: IBM)                                         

Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

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