Slovakia Today, English Language Current Affairs Programme from Slovak Radio

As in many other countries, the government in Slovakia has imposed various state-wide measures, including lockdowns, in order to try to contain the coronavirus epidemic and avoid the country's hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid patients. Some experts, however, believe that the harm being done by the imposition of such measures may in some cases outweigh the good they are intended to bring about. I speak with Richard Kollar, a specialist in mathematical modelling at Comenius University in Bratislava who has been critical of the government's approach, about a new advisory group he has organised composed of experts from a range of academic disciplines, which he hopes will be able to propose a more holistic approach to dealing with the pandemic - one that will weigh the benefits of any such measures against their costs. ... Although Michal Valko is a machine learning expert working at Google's Deep Mind laboratory and promotes the benefits of AI, he is not unaware of the potential dangers inherent in these new technologies - dangers that could conceivably pose serious threats to the future well-being of human society. He speaks as an insider about how some scientists within the industry are dealing with the ethical concerns that inevitably arise with the success of Artificial Intelligence technologies.