The Digital Human Folgen

Aleks Krotoski asks where did all those groups and individuals deplatformed after the Jan 6th riots go and what have they been doing in the year since?With Donald Trumps 'Truth Social' platform about to launch it's hoped all his supporters will flock to this new gathering place. But who have they become in a year without his tweets and facebook posts to galvanise them? Many flocked to encypted messaging services like Telegram or self proclaimed 'pro free speech' platforms like Gettr and Gab. The fear is that moderate Trump supporters will have been radicalised in such spaces and the more extreme elements made even more extreme. Neo-nazis, white supremacists and other far right activists have taken the opportunity to go a recruiting drives in these largely unmoderated spaces cosying up to those they think can be turned to their cause and gradually exposing them to ever more extreme content.Aleks will join those who've been trying to monitor what's been happening behind these digitally closed doors and what might be done about what's been going on there.Producer: Peter McManus

Aleks Krotoski asks if how we use technology has affected our attitudes to ephemerality and the transience of things.Producer: Peter McManus

There are many ways in which the taint of prejudice, outdated ways of thinking and plain old human error can enter our artificial intelligence systems. The weakest link is always where the sticky handprints of humans are most visible. To train AIs, systems need two things: computer vision, to precisely identify images, and machine learning algorithms. But they also need a person to label images over and over and over again, so when the AI perceives that image, they learn what it is. In this episode, Aleks Krotoski takes a look at affect recognition and explores how it became part of a multi-billion dollar AI industry. It all comes back to a system called FACS or Facial Action Coding System, which was devised by a psychologist called Dr Paul Ekman. FACS is a framework which categorises facial expressions and was widely adopted by artificial labs in the nineties for use in computer vision. But, the science behind FACS has been widely disputed in the science community for two centuries. From a Parisian asylum, via the tropical rainforests of Papua New Guinea, Aleks Krotoski traces the history of this controversial science and tells the story of how it ended up in our AIs.Producer: Caitlin Smith