00:00A new report from the Innovation Foundation, Nesta, looks at the ideas and experiments
00:09most likely to move into everyday life. It brings together global case studies and real
00:15world trials to highlight where technology and society may collide next. Nesta's Future
00:22Signals report points to infrastructure like graphene-enhanced roads using embedded sensors
00:28to predict potholes before they form. It also highlights political change, noting the appointment
00:34of an artificial intelligence minister in Albania as a signal of how governments may formally
00:40integrate AI, according to Nesta.
00:44A very interesting one to start with is our pothole technology, which is a really interesting
00:50combination of very high technology dealing with something that's quite day-to-day and
00:55mundane, but relevant to people's lives. So in Teesside and in Essex, what people have
01:00done is combine graphene, the wonder material graphene, which was discovered about 10 or
01:0515 years ago at Manchester University. I think they won the Nobel Prize for that. And graphene
01:11is very, very strong. It's 200 times stronger than steel and particularly resistant to moisture
01:17and things. And that's been combined with asphalt and put on the surface of roads to stop, to
01:22prevent potholes, which is quite a big problem for Britain at the moment.
01:26As these ideas edge closer to daily life, Nesta's Laurie Smith says the challenge is not just
01:32whether the technology works, but who controls it and how it's governed.
01:37Should this innovation necessarily be scary or concerning? Or do you think it's more people
01:44who might be scaremongered by it and that they shouldn't be necessarily looking at the negatives
01:50and rather the positives? I think it comes down to how we manage it. So say if you have an AI
01:55minister, my personal view is that for big decisions, you'd always have a human in the
02:00loop. So an AI can say, here's some advice, but ultimately human goes, no, do I do that?
02:04Particularly around sort of important decisions. And often AI can be used as a tool to help people
02:11out as well. So say at Nesta, what we're doing is developing AI to help inform ministers about
02:18policy choices because they get presented, well, how do I tackle a problem? Let's say
02:21tackling obesity, for example. They've all sorts of different options and it can take a very long
02:26time and quite a bit of money to put together all the research. And what we're doing is trying to
02:30develop, one of the things we're doing is developing some tools that help them do that much more
02:34quickly and much more cheaply. So then ultimately the minister can make the decision, but they can do
02:38so more quickly at less cost to the public purse. That's the idea anyway.
02:42The report suggests efficiency and resilience could improve across public services, but warns
02:49questions about privacy, ethics and accountability must be addressed early. With more of these
02:55systems expected to move out of trials, the coming year could test how ready society really
03:02is for the rapid technological change.
03:04Nesta says its Future Signals report is designed to help policy makers and the public anticipate
03:11change, drawing on international research, pilot schemes and early adoption already underway.
03:18There's a paper that came out, I think a year or two ago called Falling Asleep at the Wheel,
03:23where some of, I think this is where, I think it's with management consultants, where some of the
03:27highest performing management consultants, so they measure them before they use AI and they measure
03:32them afterwards. And it turns out they're actually, for the highest performing management
03:36consultants, it dropped down a little bit. And one of the hypotheses was, was it because
03:40they sort of got a little bit lazy and weren't sort of using their brains enough? But I don't
03:43think that's fully comprehensive research, that's some sort of indication. So there's always
03:47that risk and there's always risk of any technology. You know, let's take cars, for example.
03:52They can drive us from A to B, they're very convenient, but also you can have road traffic accidents
03:56and cause air pollution and things. So there's always trade-offs with any technology. And my view
04:01is with most technologies, what you do is think about, well, how do we manage and regulate this
04:05so you maximise the benefits and you minimise the risks. So you've also got the same technology
04:09that can be used in lots of different ways. And a lot of it's about the choices that we as a society
04:14decide to make.
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