Free Thinking 2 – people need training to be as ‘human’ as bots
Release Date: 06/23/2019
Are human beings machines?
At Play In The Garden of Eden
If, as Joe believes, human beings are machines, why are we bothering to build artificial intelligence. If we succeed all we will have done is create new humans. And there is a well know, tried and tested way of making new humans which is more fun and much cheaper. Meanwhile it seems that the best definition of artificial intelligence that we have is anything that computers can't do right now. Whereas the definition of human stupidity is everything that humans can do right now. If this sounds harsh this is the week when Embassy staff of many nations are being withdrawn from Ukraine
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Ai plus human stupidity? Time to worry?
At Play In The Garden of Eden
.… the machines are coming. I have seen the future and it does not look anything like the past or the present. We are as children now, innocents at play in the garden of Eden. Aurelia Pinchbeck - The Character of Thimbles - 2021 A podcast conversation about atrificial intelligence, documentaries, human stupidity, chess and the future of the human race. Joe Tibbetts is an Englishman, a documentary film-maker. He lives on the White Cliffs of Dover with a fine view of the past across the English Channel. For more than a decade he has played a daily game of chess against TChess Pro one of the...
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‘Really tangible benefits’ of digital support for unpaid care are here, now
At Play In The Garden of Eden
Madeleine Starr, Director of Business and Innovation at Carers UK explains how digital can help the UK’s 8.8 million unpaid carers - including the 5 million who juggle care with work
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MapLondon event December 19: speakers discuss data, digital mapping, planning, and citizen engagement
At Play In The Garden of Eden
A wide range of professionals from the world of planning and development convened at December’s MapLondon event to explore how cities might be made better through more data sharing and wider use of digital maps.
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Recovery from election fraud: the Tower Hamlets story
At Play In The Garden of Eden
Asmat Hussain, Corporate Director of Governance tells Rachael Tiffen of CIFAS what happened next after the High Court’s overturn of its 2014 mayoral election
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Could a digital approach solve care managers' and providers’ problems with medicines support?
At Play In The Garden of Eden
Damian Nolan (Halton BC) and Jane Hancer (CC2i) explain the problems of administering meds and describe a new collaboration by councils to find a digital solution.
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Councils collaborate to explore digital potential in administration of new Liberty Protection Safeguards
At Play In The Garden of Eden
Jane Hancer (CC2i) and Damian Nolan (Halton BC) describe how a five-council collaboration supported by the LGA and match-funded NHS Digital will deliver via the Social Care Innovation Accelerator
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WM ADASS: immersive data presentation will change health & care commissioning
At Play In The Garden of Eden
The Bridge - Shropshire Council’s immersive approach to presenting local data - is set to transform council and NHS commissioning
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‘It's never gone this well!’ – council service teams on building their own IT
At Play In The Garden of Eden
Kate Hurr, Digital Manager at Cumbria County Council, describes colleagues’ enthusiasm for creating digital services in-house.
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Transformation done right is ‘with’ and not ‘to’ says LB Havering team
At Play In The Garden of Eden
Chief Operating Officer Jane West and transformation lead Susie Faulkner describe a process designed to bring staff and residents along with change.
info_outlineStaff picking up enquiries handed off from Monty, the Monmouthshire Council website chatbot, have needed training to ensure they put aside council speak and adopt the simple, text-friendly language these machines have learned to use.
This was one of many interesting nuggets of information to emerge from the discussion stimulated by Monmouthshire’s decision to open up a new customer service channel that allows customers to submit queries into the council website as text and receive automated answers rather than having to use navigation or search to get there. Some users clearly don’t realise they are ‘talking’ to a machine.
Many of the issues raised whenever ‘bots’ are discussed arise in this conversation: the threat to jobs, the benefits of freeing staff from answering questions like 'when's my bin day?' to handle more important and complex enquiries, instances when users prefer the anonymity of speaking to a machine, and the return on investment in this technology.
Our panel agree that text and voice-based interaction is moving ahead rapidly for all customer-facing organisations and public services are no exception. Integration with existing systems is the big challenge.
This programme is part of the Free Thinking series produced by CLGdotTV in association with Paul Tonks founding director of Tailor Made Projects Limited