People are being warned to stay vigilant about scams in which criminals offer covid vaccines for a fee. In one case, a pensioner was injected with a fake covid i9 vaccine and charged 160 pounds by a man pretending to be a health worker. People have also been sent Text Messages taking them to a fake nhs website with a booking link. The Bbcs Jayne Mccubbin reports. Moments before this image was captured, this man injected a 92 year old with a fake covid vaccine. He claimed to be from the nhs. And then administered a jab in the arm in what has been described as a dart like instrument, charged £160, took the money from the lady and then disappeared. And just to add insult to that injury, then re attended several days later to try to solicit an extra £100. So this has been a horrendous experience for the victim. Its not known what was injected into the pensioner but a hospital check found her unharmed. This was an absolutely disgusting crime, utterly unacceptable assault and fraud, and it will not be tolerated. We will do everything we can to try to track down and catch this person before they carry out this offence on anybody else. Its thought over £22 million has been lost to covid related scams. These images show a makeshift Laboratory Set up in a kitchen in west sussex. Fake covid cures had been made and sold to people in america and france. But frank ludlow was caught in his local post office as he tried to send more. He was convicted injuly. How significant a problem is this . I mean, how many fraudsters are there trying to cash in on the crisis . Its extensive. So, just since the first lockdown in march, weve had about half a Million People come to us online. Weve doubled, since october, the number of people coming direct to us for advice on the phone, ang its notjust a small group. One in three people, from our research, have been targeted by some form of covid related scam since the pandemic began. Today, police advised that no one from official Vaccination Programmes will ever turn up unannounced. They will never ask for bank details and no one will ever be charged for the vaccine. But with a Vaccination Programme rolling out across the country, today there is a warning beware the criminals trying to exploit those who desperately want protection from the deadly virus. Jayne mccubbin, bbc news. Now on bbc news, click. This week, we are tearing into 2021 at full pelt, but what technology wonders may it hold . Well ask the experts. And no, you are not having a bad dream, but an Artificial Intelligence is. Hey, welcome to click. Happy new year . I hope you got some respite and a bit of a break recently. Lara lewington hello, how are you . I am good, thank, all things considered. Any new years resolutions your end . Absolutely not. Dont do resolutions, that means i cant break. I decided to stay at home more and watch more tv. Whats your plans for the next few weeks . I think ill have a quiet start to the year and then, well, i guess we can only hope but, in the meantime, if youre having that january wa nting to get fit feeling, then of course it is going to be a bit harder than usual this year, but you could take advantage of some of the tech platorms that did really well last year. They certainly benefited from the at home exercise boom. One of those companies is zwift, a virtual cycling plaform whose subscribers are now in the millions. And this is no potle in the park, either. In app races have taken tghe competition to extreme levels and Jonathan Coates threw himself into this to find out more. For many, cycling during lockdown offers escapism, and more people than ever are hitting the roads. But, for a growing number, the roads they ride on arent tarmacked. Cycling is a sport that has always embraced technology and now its taken the ultimate leap into the virtual world. Zwift is an Online Platform that allows amateur and professional cyclists to train and compete against one another. Its popularity has soared during the pandemic and now it has more than 3 million subscribers. By putting a normal everyday bike on a smart trainer, basically a treadmill for a bike with a bluetooth connection, a riders real life physical output is converted into a moving avatar. In zwift, the resistance levels automatically change depending on gradients and conditions, and there is a whole host of other tech that can help add to the realism. The more advanced trainers simulate going over cobbles or through dirt tracks and there are even fans that can match the wind speed to how fast youre cycling. But, once youre plugged in, all you need to is start pedalling. You canjoin a group ride, do a workout or simply cruise around some of the best routes in the world with maps, stats and data. So to see what all the fuss was about, i thought id get stuck in. The plan, to get fit enough so that five weeks, i could take part in a race on zwift and, in order to do that, i recruited matt rowe, a professional cycling coach who trains people through zwift. It is the future, for sure, for training, and thats for amateur cyclists, who have four or five hours a week, right through to professional ranks. Indoor training, the benefits it brings to performance gains, speaks volumes. Now, theres one key metric that seems to be the lifeblood of zwift, and thats watts. Put it like this your tv needs about 250 watts to work, and olympic gold medallist Bradley Wiggins broke the hour cycling record by generating an hour average of 440 watts just with his legs. Zwift bills itself as a training platform and, unlike many sports, this set up can actually replicate many aspects of cycling with genuine road speed conditions, meaning that all the data you gather is comparable to what you get in real life. So matt has set me a test tonight to see how fit i am. Basically, its to see how hard i can push myself and how many watts i can generate. So ive got my screen down here where i can see the training plan. What ive got to do, what hes going to put me on. Its 45 minutes, and it looks pretty brutal. At the moment, im doing 167 watts, or thereabouts. My legs are really, really starting to hurt now. That was one of the hardest things i have done for a long time. I mean, look at me. Its just horrendous. Certainly i had some work to do, and the training carried on five days a week for five weeks. But while you can train hard and make real gains, it feels like competition is the pinnacle of zwifting. Its where zwift goes to the next level, both for the users and for the company itself. Suddenly, the platform switches from being training focused to something more akin to an esports platform. You can select a race, turn up at the right time and you are suddenly on the starting line with a huge group of other riders. And, if youre good, theres serious money to be made from winning. Ive heard from several zwifters who say, i made more money on this one zwift race than ive ever made in an outdoor race that ive ever done. Theres been some big cash prizes. At decembers uci cycling esports World Championships, the prize money was almost 10,000 for the winners. Incredibly, female cyclists can make more money racing from zwift than in real life. So after five weeks of training, for five days a week, the time had come iit was race day. At 12 30pm, on a tuesday afternoon, the race began. And i had matt there on zoom to coach me through. Thats the most painful thing ive ever done. That was. I mean, it was genuinely really fun. Theres a real kind of thrill of racing. It must be unique to zwift. If parents are worried about kids doing too much gaming at home, then get them on this, because theyll get fit, and honestly, you cant do it for more than 45 minutes or you will fall over. But it was time to heart the results. Five weeks ago, i had a functional Threshold Power of 230 watts. So had the training worked . Today you were 38 minutes, you did 288 watts. Wow. An extra 30, 30 odd watts, 3a watts, theyre saying in nearly twice the amount of time. For nearly twice the amount of time. Gosh, thats a massive increase. Thats a massive increase. Out of 32 riders, you ran 14th. Hey good result, youve got to be happy with that. There was what we call kind of sandbaggers in the group. There were two riders who were minutes ahead of third place in the cs. There were two guys in the race in my category, category c, who were considerably faster than everyone else. In fact, they came first and second with a minute between the third place, and its these guys who are essentially are category a riders, they re really fast, really light, really powerful, competing in lower categories. You know, i came 1ath, but it sounds like i could have come 12th. And ifeel a little bit like. I dont know, ifeel a little bit cheated. Perhaps where theres competition, theres always going to be cheating, and professional cycling has had its fair share of scandals, and now zwift is having to deal with Digital Performance enhancement and other methods of manipulation. But as i began to find out more about cheating on zwift, one name kept coming up. Well, i can say this guys name, cam jeffers, because he. It was all over the news anyway. I dont like to be compared to lance armstrong. And i dont think its unfairto compare me to lance armstrong. In 2019, cyclist and youtuber cam jeffers took part in, and won, the inaugural british eracing championships in london on zwift. But shortly after the race, he was given a 6 month suspension from all racing after british cycling ruled he had breached its disciplinary code during championships. I got a call one day from british cycling saying that theyve had an anonymous complaint that my bike wasnt legit. I was like, you know what . And i was like, you what . Come and check my bike if you want. I dont know what youre on about. Zwift said the charge related tojeffers using a bot to ride for him to unlock a special bike in game, thus giving him an unfair advantage over his competitors. Jeffers claims he obtained the bike for a series of youtube videos he was making earlier in the year, rather for the race. Qualifiers, i remember saying to a couple of people, do you not think, you know, should i not be using a bike that ive legitimately unlocked . And they said, theres no rulebook, there are no rules been written for this event, so there is no way you can get disqualified for using a bike that you havent legitimately obtained. Butjust like in any sport, theres a battle between those regulating and those trying to gain an advantage. Cheers. Let me say this, it was fair they took it away from him, but i think he could have one without the tron bike, so thats the sad thing. Zwift are cracking down on any attempts to cheat in their races, with the support of global cycling governing bodies. If the platform wants to be taken seriously, it has to maintain its sporting integrity. I think cheating is probably something well have to combat. It will never go away. Someone will figure out how to game the system, but having said that, there are things we know we can do, including hardware. So, for example, the World Championships this year, everyone will be on the same bit of equipment. In addition to real world anti doping controls that bar the use of performance enhancing drugs, there will also be a group of analysts monitoring riders race data for any red flags when compared to their previous performance stats. After just five weeks of using the platform, i got so much fitter but really i was hooked, and it was the social element and the gamification that kept me coming back. People were showing up not for training, they were showing up because they crave that social connection. If i think about what zwift could be, it is certainly much larger than bike racing, as a community. If its a gamified training tool or an esports platform, zwift has hit upon something which has resonated with cyclists. And key to this is the fervent community that is building with youtubers, live streamers, online trainers, and social groups. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that a request to extradite wikileaks founder Julian Assange from the uk to face espionage charges in america was denied by a court in london. Employees from google and its Parent Company alphabet started a new labour union called the alphabet workers union. And volkswagen showed off its prototype fully autonomous electric car charging robot which it says will work in places like underground car parks. There were also reports this week that billionaire founder of chinese tech giant alibaba, jack ma, had gone missing after he hasnt been seen in public since october. Mr ma had been critical of chinese financial regulators as not being innovative enough for technology development. Mr ma had been preparing to list his group in what would be the Worlds Largest initial public offering, but regulators shelved the listing after his criticism. Data from Singapores CovidContact Tracing app, trace together, can be accessed by Police Despite previous reassurances of privacy. Initially, officials they said Data Collected by the app would only be used for virus tracking. Researchers from the university of pennsylvania have showed a robot with a body made from ice. The concept, icebot, could be used in remote locations like antarctica and even mars. The robot was able to claim icy inclines of up to 2. 5 degrees and clear light weight obstacles from its path during testing. 2021, what on earth does it have in store for us . Hopefully some Better Things than 2020. Weve asked some leading tech experts to give us their predictions of things that might be just around the corner. Boston dynamics kicked off 2021 in style with a robot routine fit for dirty dancing. But twisting isnt all droids are getting up to this year. I think were going to see in 2021 is the increased prevalence of robots coexisting in spaces with people. Most robot helpers working today zip around controlled areas in factories or warehouses where bystanders cant get in their way. But many more robots are coming to public spaces like shops and hospitals. You may have people who are completely unaware that there might be a robot driving down a corridor. Firms like starship technologies have even run on street pilots before but 2021 brings unprecedented momentum. The market wasnt necessarily crying for more kinds of delivery but now because of covid and in agriculture because of brexit, were seeing the market looking for solutions. But, berry picking prototypes like this wont be the first to scale. Running from the field to the pack house and back and collecting new trays, loading punnets on trays, kind of tasks where you could have a robot doing that. So what needs to happen first . You have very large test groups and you build up an assurance that the likelihood of something going wrong is minuscule. An area with other growing risks is cyber security. On your smartphone, App Developers can build in tools taking advantage of the devices operating system to make the app safer. But thats not the case across the board. There are other systems that we rely on, whether thats automotive or medical or your smart city functions, that end up building every component themselves. We all cant be experts at everything so this is the year that they recognise that its hard to do everything yourself. A shift is needed but to what . Well, what makes more sense is leveraging security functionality from platforms so we are not always reinventing the wheel with every Different Development team. There should be some places where its appropriate to find, like libraries, find support from the framework on the platform. If youre wondering whats the worst that can happen if somebody hacks your Smart Speaker . Well, its not just about turning the volume up. Even if those devices are not managing anything sensitive, right, or you may not consider sensitive, theyre still a launching point to attack your laptop oryour ipad. But although some data is best kept private, in some cases, its better shared, even all around the world. 2021 will be the year when for the first time, a truly global collaborative Artificial Intelligence community will start working together. Some global data initiatives do exist but are generally limited to specialisms like Cancer Research in health orfraud analysis in finance. What is actually to combine all of this data together into a single corpus of information. It is a technical feat, sure, but there is a bigger impact here. If you want to know how to improve the healthcare and this investment will improve healthca re, what about schools, what about traffic, housing . All these items are correlated and Artificial Intelligence will help us understand that ecosystem as a whole much better. Fascinating. Lets see what comes to pass, shall we . Ok, lets talk about something completely different now. Lara, you know when you look at the clouds, sometimes you can see things in them, yeah . Oh yes look at this photo, i took this over christmas. It looks like two angels having a chat. Im always seeing things that arent there, a bit like when youre in a dark room and theres a bit of a shadow and you convince yourself its a person and completely terrify yourself. Right, 0k, exactly. This is your brain making connections in your mind and spotting patterns that arent really there. It turns out that Artificial Intelligence can also have an overactive imagination. So, you know how Image Recognition software works, yeah . Yes, you feed it say, pictures of dogs so it can identify dogs for itself and then it will be able to see dogs in pictures. Right. But if you ask it to look too hard, it will start seeing dogs everywhere. Now, there is this google researcher whos name is alex mordvintsev, and he decided to turn this concept into art. He is the man who created google deepdream. It actually happened in the middle of the night and i woke up with some weird dream of somebody entering the apartment, and i woke up and it was 2am. And i had this idea that i wanted to try and i was like, why dont i spend half an hour coding. And there was this cat and dog picture i was