Slovakia Today, English Language Current Affairs Programme from Slovak Radio

As plastic waste continues to be a problem globally – with tiny micro-plastic particles contaminating even our drinking water, with unknown effects on our health – efforts are being made to address the issue, including here in central Europe. Plastic Free Danube was one such recent effort, an international collaboration between scientific institutions and others in Austria and Slovakia. Their goal was to monitor the Danube (or Dunaj) river between Vienna and Bratislava, hoping to get some sense of how much plastic ends up in the river and where it originates. Jonathan spoke with one of the project’s main participants, Mária Omastová of the Slovak Academy of Science’s Polymer Institute. Repeat: 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.