This is bbc news. The headlines the World Health Organization has welcomed the announcement that a Second Company has developed a coronavirus vaccine, reported to be 95 effective, but has warned against complacency. The head of the agency said he was concerned by a surge in cases in europe and the americas. The latest vaccine is made by the us firm, moderna. The us president elect, joe biden, has warned that Donald Trumps refusal to begin the transition following his election defeat earlier this month could cost lives. Mr biden said more people may die from covid 19 unless the president worked with the incoming team to coordinate vaccination programmes. Thousands of people have been evacuated from the coasts of honduras and nicaragua as hurricane iota bears down on the region damaged two weeks ago by another storm. Forecasters say the hurricane threatens to destroy many
homes, wreck Power Supplies and make the area affected pretty much uninhabitable for months. It is about 1 30am in the morning. Now on bbc news click. This week protecting children from online harm. Is ai the answer . How does the p55 compare to the xbox series x . And what does doing this do to my brain . Hey, welcome to click. Hope youre doing 0k. At the moment, we are all online much more than we used to be im talking about us, the adults, but also
our children, too. And for many parents, there have been huge challenges trying to work from home at the same time as supervising children. And that has meant, in some cases, handing over devices before the proper Parental Controls are in place. And thats compounded by the fact that they may not have had enough time to supervise in the way that they wouldve done in an ideal world. So with my youngest, its simple im there, i operate the computer for her, i know that shes not gonna see anything that she shouldnt. But my son is starting to get to the age where i want to give him a bit more independence but i also want to keep him absolutely safe. So so what do i do . Can i rely on Parental Control Software to block all harmful content . I feel that i also should be teaching him how to spot and possibly even become resilient to the stuff that he will still encounter online. Yep, thats a dilemma that all of us parents have to face, so weve been taking a look
at some of the tech that aims to help, but also how companies and legislation could perhaps do more. This is sophie. She was just 13 when she took her own life. Like many parents, wed given sophie a phone, and we gave her that at the age of 12, and we discovered a few months later that sophie had been accessing really difficult material, really completely inappropriate for, well, in my view, anyone, but certainly a child of her age. Sophie had been suffering from depression and had had suicidal thoughts. Really hard bit for us was after sophie had died and we interrogated her ipad, we found some really difficult imagery and some guides to how sophie could take her own life and what would be a suitable method for doing that, and that was really, really hard to see afterwards. Its very easy to blame the parents and say, well, what on earth were you doing, giving your phone to a 12 year old . Giving a mobile phone . But actually, we had Parental Controls at home and we had pa rental controls through the school. But these days, as you start to give a little bit more freedom to your teenagers, and as sophie had reached the age of 13, she started to get the bus with her older brother, the internet is ubiquitous, and i would question how much how many parents know exactly what is going on on their 13, 14, is year olds mobile phone and what theyve actually seen and what they havent. Recently, a video of a young man taking his own life was posted on facebook and subsequently spread to other platforms, including tiktok, where it took days to be removed. Just this week, instagram announced that it will extend the use of Artificial Intelligence to spot this type of content to its eu users. It can then make it less visible and, in extreme cases, remove it. But this is a problem that exists across the industry. So ive been looking at safetowatch, a new ai video tracking platform that aims to help, which ive tested on an episode of the bbcs harlots. So the software is set to detect sensitive imagery and if it detects it, then it will grey the image out, thus prevent it from being seen. Now, its currently in alpha so it hasnt got its full functionality, but the general idea is that it can track video in real time. Now, that could be something thats being streamed directly from a phones camera, or some video thats being streamed from the internet, but it can block any nudity or any violence that a child shouldnt be seeing before it ever
reaches their device. So this is all about semantic understanding, so the Artificial Intelligence isnt just looking at the image, its basically contextualising everything around it, including audio, so safetowatch also can analyse, detect and prevent threats in cartoons and anime. Its picked it up, its saying its picked it up, but its not hashing it. Its very early days for the tech, it is glitchy and full functionality is still being built, but its aims are big. It hopes to work across all content providers, including home made video. We never let mum or dad see what the child is doing thats crucial because we have to buy, if you like, and earn the trust of the child. Utterly, utterly important to the whole side of safety process. Whilst the video tool is still being worked on, the compa nys ai powered monitoring keyboard has been available since last year. Once youve downloaded safetonets keyboard app, you can select it as you default. Now, if i start to type something unpleasant, like i hate you, for example, it comes up with the warning, saying watch out high risk content. And you can tap on that warning for more information. Of course, its pretty clear what ive written its just simply nasty. So let me try a few other things and show you how it would respond. So i feel depressed. And from there, it offers some advice. Oh, no would you like some advice . You are not alone others do feel like you. We can all do simple things to try and protect children from harmful content. Most isps offer the facility to switch parental blocks on, that will stop some sites being visited, and most devices come with parental control settings that are easy to enable. But perhaps throwing tech
solutions at tech problems isnt the answer, and we should be going back to basics. Youre 11 years old, which is the time, again, when they get theirfirst device. How do we, you know, use this in a way that keeps you safe in the same way that getting on the bus keeps you safe and the same way that doing anything the first time you rode a bike and we took off those training wheels, we thought about when to take those off, so get them to think critically. Doctor linda pa padopoulos is a psychologist working with internet matters, a Non Profit Organisation set up to help parents keep children safe online. She believes that giving kids the confidence to freely speak to their parents if they do experience a problem online is crucial. First thing is, what does it mean . You know, what does inappropriate mean . Secondly, even if you do not, you know, know if its inappropriate, if it makes you feel uncomfortable, come to me. And thirdly, take a pause before you react. If you actually go on to a browser now and type in certain words into the bar at the top the public browser at the top of your facebook account, your Instagram Account youll find the same imagery and the same live videos coming up today as you did back then and sophie died six years ago and i think that says a lot about the control that these companies actually have on removing the material. Its obviously not being removed quick enough to be able to to stop harming our children. Ruth moss there. With us now is andy burrows who is the head of child safety online for the nspcc. Andy, hi. Hello there. Ruth says that the Tech Companies havent taken this material down anywhere near quickly enough. What do you think . Do you think Tech Companies are doing enough to stop this material from making its way onto childrens computers and phones . We know that for many years, tech firms really havent done
enough to make sure that their services are fundamentally safe for children to use. We know that, you know, Tech Companies make Design Choices when they build products about how to create really great, immersive products, about how to keep us on services for as long as possible. What we really want to see the big tech firms do is also then consider safety at the design stage, because its those choices about whether you introduce a particular feature, whether you introduce it in a certain way, whether you use algorithms in a responsible way that isnt pushing out damaging self harm and suicide content, for example. In your experience, what are the Biggest Online dangers for teens . Well, we are particularly concerned about the risk of online grooming that lots of children and young people face. So our Research Shows that one in 25 teenagers on some of the largest social networks have had a request to send sexual content of themselves to an adult, or they have received that content from an adult. We know that the design features in how a lot
of the social networks are run really help to accentuate that risk. So think about, for example, the algorithmically suggested friend suggestions that all of us get on our accounts. We know that groomers can exploit those design features. Quite literally every time they refresh a page, there will be a fresh list of children who they can contact, and thats really analogous to the phishing e mails that all of us get. The principle is contact large numbers of children in the expectation that a relatively small number may click that friend request, and then the process of grooming can begin. And it is difficult for the parents. Do you think that parents are getting enough of an education about how to deal with this . It is really hard for parents and when you think about how quickly new apps and sites and games come from nowhere, and then become ubiquitous, it can be really hard for parents to keep up. Children, you know, unfortunately, will be exposed to harmful and inappropriate content and potentially to harmful behaviour from others online. And if that happens,
the most important thing to do is to sit and work through that with your child. To take away devices would not only be an overreaction, but it doesnt then help to make sure that your child is safer in future. Andy burrows, thanks so much for your time. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that the eu charged amazon with abusing its dominant position in the marketplace. Apple, at theirfourth event of the year, showed off its new range of Mac Computers the first to be powered by apples own mi chip. Us retailer walmart has decided to do away with its robot staff and replace them with. Actual people hooray the roving robots had been keeping track of its stock in over 500 shops for the past three years. Virgin hyperloop tested its first ever journey with passengers. The concept involves pods fitted within vacuum tubes which, its hoped,
will transport people at very high speeds. The journey took 15 seconds, reaching over 100 miles an hour. Best not to get too excited, though the trial involved two Company Employees who travelled only 500 metres. And to end with, engineers at Disney Research have designed this robot which can mimic human eye contact. The bot can turn to face people as they approach and rather than staring into the depths of your soul, its eyes flit about in a more human way. Much less creepy all it needs now is some skin and some hair. Welcome to goodwood speedweek, where hundreds of racing cars got to stretch their legs last month. Although not open to the public this year,
millions of motorheads could join online to leer at some of the worlds most valuable and historic motors. And then theres this the Porsche Taycan turbo s. £138,000, top speed 161 miles an hour, 761 horsepower. And, as an electric car, this should leave the field way behind. Now of course, they are not going to let me drive this around the track on my own. 0h apparently they are going to let me drive this around the track on my own but only if i wear a couple of things while im doing it. My brainwaves were be recorded using this headset, and my stress levels recorded using this smartwatch. The idea behind both of these studies is to look at how our bodies behave during stressful tasks and then understand how best to mentally prepare for them. So, lets give me some stress
all ive got to do now is work out how to drive this thing. Here we go then 0oh, my life thats fast. Oh, my gosh, im taking off again thats way too fast you cant corner this fast, can you . Ican ok, so what is all this excitement doing to my brainwaves . Well, after the race i hooked up with dr Tony Steffert to look at my brains beta waves the main indicator of how my brain is coping with learning a new task. What might you expect the brainwaves of an amateur racing driver or, lets say, a complete novice like me to look like . I would expect the novice driver to have more beta, more going on, and less able to focus on the narrow task of doing doing the driving. And then if you put someone like Lewis Hamilton in that car. . I would imagine he would look
like a meditator, you know . His brainwaves are all calm because hes kind of seen it all before and done it all before. I, however, hadnt, which is why on the complicated parts of the track, my beta waves went through the roof. This is a chicane. This is a chicane, i will slow down well. Really slow for this oh, my life that seems to fit that that spike where the increase in beta is going with the chicane. Holy. Mother of pearl 80 seconds in, i put my foot down and go well, exclaimed quite loudly that its going quite fast. What does it say 80 seconds in on your. . Well, thats funny, because actually, youre less beta y there. Well, thats because im on a straight, maybe, and im. Yes, i was just about to say that, yeah. Its youre not having to think quite as i mean, ok, you might be going oh, my god but youre not having to worry about corners and g force and all that. 134 oh, that will do
ok, thats my brain done. Lets see if my stress levels from the smartwatch are telling us anything different. So were in the second lap here and, at least according to the data, you seem to be chilling out a little bit and getting used to the vehicle. Your stress levels have been slowly declining through the first lap. Yep. And then it gets really interesting. We can see a big spike coming and it all seems to be around this moment as you enter the levant corner. And its great because youre pushing the car as fast as you can manage and youre not sure if youre going to lose the back end. Yeah, youre absolutely correct bens software has been trained to spot stress through changes in blood oxygenation, breathing rate and heart rate variability. Now, its not the same combination of changes for everyone, and its not the same in every type of situation. Here, in driving, its the breathing rate which is the main indicator of stress. And both ben and tony agree that if we can see for ourselves what affects our stress levels and our concentration, we can learn
what activities get us in the right zone for a particular task. So if you can reduce the stress before you do a task, then you have more headroom to increase the concentration during the task. If youre just on all the time, youre consuming too much energy, you wont have as many reserves when you really need them. And just when i thought the worst bit was over, something unexpected in the data. And then whats really quite amusing is when your stress levels are actually going to go back pretty much to the sort of high point and its actually as you are coming off the track, its not in the moment when you are kind of throwing the car around, its when you turn so im more at peace when im hammering around the track at 100 odd miles an hour than i am trying to follow instructions about where to park and. . Thats it. Maybe youre more of a professional than you realise. Dont tell me that dont tell me that
ill be insufferable. That was incredible. This thing flies. Phew i wish i hadnt had such a heavy lunch laughs. Oh, i love it that you find parking more stressful than speeding around a racetrack i know but i also thought that it was really interesting that we need stress those ups and downs are actually good for us. Yeah, absolutely and interestingly, dr steffert said that before a task where youre gonna need lots of brainpower, its good to give your brain some downtime, otherwise you wont have the extra capacity you need to get through the task. But whats also interesting is some people can go into a task not stimulated enough, and that means they make mistakes because theyre just not paying enough attention so true. Weve all done that, i think now, a few weeks ago, marc cieslak got his hands on the latest xbox, the series x. This week, hes playing with its rival the ps5. So, how do they compare . Theres no denying the new playstation is weird looking. Forget what a ps5 looks likejust for a moment. Well come back to that in a minute. Take a look at the games. Under the skin, the ps5 has custom amd ryzen gpu, which supports ray tracing a method of creating more realistic lighting effects. This means more visual whiz bang for your buck and it has an 825 gig ssd, which means load times should be drastically reduced. Whoa it comes in two flavours the full fat, full price version, which features an ultra hd blu ray drive, and a cheaper digital only version, which lacks the optical drive. Watch it hes throwing something as well as ray tracing, the gpu is technically capable of 8k graphics, although for now, 4k is all weve seen. It should be able to pump out 120 frames her second visuals as well, although so far, everything that ive been playing has been at 60 frames although very smooth. Ive been testing this machine for a couple of weeks and ive mainly playing spider man miles morales. Whee . And astros playroom, which comes bundled free with the machine. Both titles demonstrate what the next generation is capable of, but in different ways. Spider man is simply gorgeous to look at. And the way in which spidey traverses the big apple, web swinging, wall crawling, running and leapi