For at least two decades now police forces have been using crime data tech to analyse crime patterns and therefore reduce crime rates, but they have not been able to predict who may have carried out a crime. Now the Sheriff’s office in Pasco County, Florida is using what it calls ‘intelligence led policing’ to do just that. Could AI algorithms really identify offenders? Not according to Kathleen McGrory, Deputy Investigations Editor at the Tampa Bay Times who has been researching this mysterious tech that the local law enforcement agency has been using. Similar schemes have been scrapped in LA and Chicago but continue in Pasco County. We asked for an interview with the Pasco County Police Sheriff and one of the engineers behind the tech – but did not receive a response.

The rise of the Honjok lifestyle in South Korea

Could data unions give you some control and gain from your personal data?

The programme was presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.

(Image: Getty Images)

Studio Manager: Tim Heffer

Google maps has a new feature - COVID19 maps. You can now filter onto your chosen area the current Covid-19 case rates. Launched in more than 200 countries the mapping feature could help people decide if they feel it is safe to travel to new areas – but as is often the case with new tech when it is launched it is not as informative as you may have hoped…yet. Charlotte Jee, MIT Technology review reporter, gives us a rundown of what’s good and what’s not so good about the new feature.

The ethics of digital communication

Hack a Sat

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

(Image: Getty images)

Studio Manager: Sarah Hockley

The Internet Society has created a way of checking how new regulations could harm the structure of the internet. As the internet doesn’t respect borders, what happens in one country can impact the internet in another. The internet can sustain one or two attacks but many at the same time could even bring it down. Until now there has been no way of predicting how such changes could affect the internet’s architecture. The new toolkit also identifies the critical properties that must be protected to enable the Internet to reach its full potential.

EEG that works with Black African American hair

Buddy PKGE – tech to monitor animal vital signs

The programme is presenter by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.

(Image: Getty Images)

Studio Manager: Sarah Hockley

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

Lie Machines

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

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

Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald

(Dis)honour amongst thieves

Migrant money

Frictech

The programmes is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary by Angelica Mari.

(Image: Cyber crime. Credit: Getty images)

Studio Manager: Jackie Margerum

The UK government used a statistical algorithm to alter children’s grades for exams missed in lockdown. But critics have argued that this algorithm, which used old data on school performance, unfairly stigmatised pupils from poorer backgrounds. Stian Westlake from Britain’s Royal Statistical Society speaks to Gareth and Bill about the challenges of creating such an algorithm and where the government went wrong.

The Language of Trolls

Saving lives with data in Africa

(Photo: Student protesters hold up banners. Credit: Andrew Milligan/PA)

Jammu and Kashmir have faced an unprecedented communication blockade, with no or slow internet for 12 months. We hear voices from the region on what the impact has been on life there, with insight from technology lawyer and online freedoms activist Mishi Choudhary.

The programme is presenter by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary by Angelica Mari

(Image: Getty Images)

Producer: Jackie Margerum

India came last out of 42 countries in a recent study of remote-working readiness. Bhaskar Chakravorti, Dean of Global Business for The Fletcher School at Tufts University, explains what his research means for the 1.3 billion people living in India, and what the future holds for the second largest internet market in the world.

Mapping earthquakes with localised EDGE computing

(Image: Getty Images)

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

Studio Manager: Tim Heffer

How can we distinguish the online posts written by real people from those coming out of professional bot-farms intent on influencing elections? New research from Princeton University in America uses machine learning to identify malicious online trolls, even before they’ve sent a single tweet. Lead author Meysam Alizadeh explains the power of this work to protect voters in future elections.

Gesture-controlled robots

Augmented surgery

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Angelica Mari.

(Image:Getty Images)

Using machine learning, researchers analysed 30 million English language tweets from across the world to track the changing global sentiment as the Covid-19 pandemic spread. Lead author of the study, professor May Lwin at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore explains how machine learning found that sentiments of fear in the early months of the pandemic are now outnumbered by anger and hope.

Researcher Aretha Mare, from The Next Einstein Forum in Rwanda says the pandemic has put a renewed focus on home grown African initiatives involving Artificial intelligence. Already some novel approaches to testing and tracing have been developed. These could have global impact.

The pandemic has made weather forecasting less accurate. Aircraft help forecasters gather changes in data such as temperature, humidity and pressure during the course of a flight. Environmental researcher, Ying Chen explains how fewer commercial flights during the pandemic have affected the amount of data gathered by forecasters.

(Image: Getty images)

Producer: Julian Siddle