Anthropic researcher warns more than 10% chance AI ‘could kill us all’

0:00Hello there, welcome to News Out from the BBC World Service. I'm Sean Lay and I'm coming to you live from the BBC Studios in London. It's good to have your company. And we begin this News Out with the increasingly urgent debate on AI safety. Later on Tuesday night, Jacob Cox and a researcher in artificial intelligence at Anthropic posted news of his resignation on social media naturally. He claimed that neither Anthropic nor his former employer, OpenAI, have been acting responsibly. Mr Cox and said they were focused on developing self-improving superintelligence and in the process were gambling with our lives. His post went on. Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains and progress is not slowing.

1:00And our later Evan Huberger, who remains at Anthropic where his employers of safety researcher posted this in response. Jacob is correct here. We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans. Mr Huberger puts the chance of that happening within the next decade at greater than 10%. So what is it the developers of AI are worried about? Jacob Hilton was a researcher at OpenAI from 2018 to 2023. He now runs the Alignment Research Center, which describes itself as a nonprofit research organisation seeking to align future machine learning systems with human interests. And I asked Jacob Hilton what had happened recently in AI research to trigger this sort of alarm. It's certainly in the last few months capabilities in software engineering and cybersecurity and mathematics have advanced that had incredibly rapid pace. You know, literally yesterday we had an AI solve a million dollar math problem that

2:00had been worked on for decades and many mathematicians poured their careers into it. AI's are already much better than humans at hacking into computer systems and exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities. And the pace of change, it doesn't really look like it's slowing down and there's not really any reason to expect the pace of change to slow down. Is there a danger when we use phases lie? I mean, Jacob Hilton talked about the potential to destroy humanity. That that just sounds histrionic to a lot of people and that in a sense that might make them just kind of ignore because it just seems so extraordinary that they can't really contemplate it. I think what he's saying is a genuine belief. It's important for him to express that. And I think there's a misconception that this is somehow hype to appeal to investors or something like that. I think anyone close to the industry knows that's basically just completely untrue. You know, if there is any cynical interpretation of the way executives talk about these risks,

3:03it's that they're pollicating their employees who are genuinely worried. Former Open AI researcher Jacob Hilton. Jeffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winning scientist, sometimes described as the godfather of AI, resigned from Google just over three years ago in order to be able to freely speak out about the risks of AI as he saw them. And I asked him earlier what he thinks is driving the extraordinary progress being made right now. So what's happened is we've developed a way of training neural networks that is sort of simulations of the human brain, very approximate simulations, so that they can develop intuition. So for a long time, we've had AI systems that do a bit of reasoning, not very well, but they do some. But human intuition was always something of a mystery. And with these neural nets, they have the same kind of intuitions as us. They just understand stuff in pretty much the same way we do. Now that momentum is the challenge, presumably not just for competition between companies, but for us as human beings who are worried about what the implications might be. You resigned from

4:09Google three years ago because you said you wanted to talk about this in that three years since your resignation. How do you think that debate has gone? I think even three years ago, many people said that the idea that AI would become super intelligent and might threaten to take control away from people was just science fiction. There were always AI safety researchers who said, no, no, it's not science fiction. We need to think hard about how to prevent it. But most people three years ago thought it was probably science fiction. Now that's not true anymore. Most AI researchers now believe that's a real possibility. The question is what you do about it. Indeed. And it's not quite like nuclear weapons because AI is good for so many things. AI is going to be amazing in healthcare. It's going to be amazing in education. It's going to help you design new drugs. So there's a lot of pressure not to stop the progress in AI. Already we've seen these chat bots are amazing. Me operating with the chat bot is much smarter than me alone. The chat bot knows everything

5:10and I can get a lot done. I tried pretending I was a professor again with the chat bot as my graduate student. And it was actually much better than most graduate students. I could have a discussion with it about a new idea would understand right away. It would know all the literature on that idea and it would suggest experiments. That's what happens with graduate students. But then you say, okay, do the experiment come back next week and tell me what happened. And with the chat bot, you say do the experiment. It comes back in two minutes and tells you what the result is. And then suggests a better experiment. So already a person with a chat bot is amazingly much better than just a person. That's kind of amazing. So there's all these good things it can do, which makes it very hard to stop the progress. But we know there's all these terrible things it can do too. And so we ought to be putting sort of comparable effort into making it smarter to get all these good things. But also to go out how we can avoid all these bad things. You make an analogy, I think, using the motor car as a way of expressing this. Can you explain that to me? Yes. So the big tech companies would like you to think that progress in AI is like the acceleration of a car. And regulation

6:16is like the brakes. And they keep saying they say this explicitly. They've got a lobby, a lot of lobbyists pushing this view. If we have regulation, it's going to slow down AI and China's going to win the race. I think that's actually a rather bad analogy. I think that progress is indeed like the accelerator, but regulation is like the steering wheel. What the big companies are asking you to do is allow them to make AI smarter and smarter and smarter without regulating the direction it's going in. Now, would you really want to develop an extremely fast car with those steering wheel? Do you think the competition between the United States and China in this field is harmful or potentially helpful? I think it's both. So it makes it much harder to slow things down even if the US wanted to. But I think when it comes to this threat of AI taking control away from people, China doesn't want that. And the US doesn't want that either. So the interests are aligned. And one thing we know is when you have two parties and interests are aligned, they will cooperate. So you saw that in the 1950s at the height of the

7:17Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union cooperated on trying to prevent a global nuclear war. It wasn't in either of their interests. I think we will see that with the existential threat from AI. I think China and the US and other countries were all cooperate on figuring out waste prevent AI from taking over from people. They won't necessarily cooperate on fake videos to corrupt elections because they're all doing that to each other. If AI is progressing so fast, if it was developing human like intuition, are they going to be able to get their act together quick enough to prevent the sort of potentially terminal risks to the United States for some of these researchers in their recent resignations have been talking about? I think that only going to get their act together fast enough is there's a lot of pressure from the public. And to get that, we need the public to understand much better just how serious these risks are. If you look at climate change, not much happened to limit CO2 production until the public understood and then there was more action. It's still kind of pathetic that there hasn't been more action. But at least something happened

8:20once the public understood. Here if the public understands the threats to employment, the threats of biological weapons, the threats of massive cyber attacks, and the threat of AI itself taking over, I think the public will push politicians in the opposite direction to the way the big tech companies are pushing them. That's Jeffrey Hinton. If both innovators and practitioners are worried about the potential risks from artificial intelligence, well can those who make the law and who regulate it do to mitigate those risks? Well one element is to join in. Open AI announced a few hours ago that Paul Cristiano, the head of AI Safety for the US Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, that's part of a federal government agency in the United States, is joining its foundation board. Joining New South now is Maritcha Shaka. She is non-resident fellow at Stanford Cyber Policy Center and Institute for Human-Centered AI, who was herself a member of the United Nations High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence.

9:20Thank you very much for joining us on New South. Thanks for having me. I wonder first of all what your reflections are on the challenge that regulation of this industry, potential regulation of this industry now faces. A big challenge is political will, notably in the United States. But I think it will quickly tip to momentum for regulation because I think the companies very well understand that if there is no trusted democratic set of checks and balances, guardrails accountability, trust in their products, public support for AI will really diminish very, very quickly. We see majorities of Americans worried about AI. We see protests at data center sites. We see Democrats and Republicans now speaking out about the need for limits to the kinds of gambles that these leading AI labs can make. These gambles go in multiple directions, impacting the environment,

10:21impacting civil liberties, impacting national security. And I think it will be unsustainable not to regulate. So I think the US will come around, but it's late. Do you think the companies themselves are starting to get nervous about this? Maybe feel they're on a bit of a delta-skelter that they can't on their own control because of the commercial pressures. You know, if we pull back a rival might jump in and that therefore they might actually desire some kind of regulatory framework. However much they argue that it's as Jeffrey was suggesting, Jeffrey Hinton was suggesting kind of queering that commercial pitch. Yeah, so Jeffrey Hinton is absolutely right that they have resisted regulation fiercely up until now, but my prediction is it's going to change quickly. And you know, I think indeed the gambles that they're making think about the extraordinary investments that are being asked the valuations have risk in them whether or not all the big promises

11:22of the positive effects of generative AI will materialize. So we hear extraordinary promises that we will see the solving of cancer and end to the climate crisis, abundance, energy, you know, really big promises in the future that are also used as a justification for the sacrifices that are asked of us. Is it possible that the thing that acts the first on all of this is if the financial bubble bursts, if the huge sums of money that be put for example into data centers into supporting these companies, that money suddenly isn't there and it's that rather than attempts to regulate externally that the put on the brakes. I think both are very well possible and they would have different effects. I mean, the ripple effects of a new financial crisis should not be underestimated and they will be global. So that's an effect of the gamble. But similarly, if all the promises that these companies make do come true, we will see high impacts on job displacement, you know, we will

12:26see big impact as we're already beginning to see with the new AI power drones, for example, on the battlefields of war, on national security. So in each scenario, there are risks, gambles, and big consequences for the public while the decisions are made by a handful of commercially driven leaders and investors. And I think that that equation has to be corrected in the public interest and in the interest of protecting democracy. We'll have to leave it there, Marisha. Shaka, thank you very much. This is Sean Laywin, news out alive from the BBC studios in London. Given President Trump's poll ratings right now and the unpopularity of the Iran War among American voters, you might expect the White House to sit out the congressional elections in November, but they're called the midterms for a reason coming halfway through the presidential term of office. Although Donald Trump won't be on the ballot paper, he's putting his stamp on proceedings in a unique way. The president is headlining the first ever Republican convention for the midterms. It's being held in Dallas,

13:28Texas, and the BBC's North America editor, Sarah Smith is there. Well, this is a highly unusual event. Normally, American political parties have conventions in presidential election years, and they use them to select their candidate. Donald Trump is throwing this event as being known in America as Trump a Paloza to try and launch, basically, the Republicans campaign for the midterms elections. And he is going to be absolutely front and center at this event. He is giving the keynote speech tonight, but he's also closing out the event with another speech on Thursday night. There will be a lot of focus on him himself. And that is arguably good and bad idea for Republicans election prospects. There are a fair number of American voters, something around 30% of registered voters, who are pretty committed Donald Trump mega fans, and who may be inspired to turn out in these midterm elections if Donald Trump himself is infusing them to do so. But there's another large section of voters who are very disappointed in Donald Trump currently. He's got

14:31record low poll ratings. And he is being held responsible by a lot of voters for high prices, petrol, gas has reached another record high. The price of groceries and stores is up. Voters are blaming the war in Iran as well as Donald Trump's trarist for this. For a lot of people, he has considered something of a turn off, seeing more of Donald Trump on your television won't necessarily make you more likely to vote Republican. And some candidates are acutely aware of that as well. And are actually skipping this convention and just carrying on campaigning in their own districts rather than coming to Texas to be seen alongside Donald Trump. What's the dilemma for a Republican hopeful in a marginal district running for re-election in the House of Representatives about whether or not to kind of cleave close to Donald Trump? Well, it's very difficult because different voters see things slightly differently. So there are definitely people who would probably skip the midterm elections. Many never even have heard of you as the local representative candidate, but will turn out for Donald Trump because they are big

15:34Trump fans. But then again, as I was saying, there are some who if the associate Donald Trump too closely with the Republican party would be put off. But as funding as well, Donald Trump controls a huge amount of Republican funds. And if he sees candidates who are not being loyal, who are being critical to him, then they're not going to receive millions of dollars in funding, which of course they're always very, very necessary in the American electoral system. So that could be potentially problematic for you. And other candidates would leap on the idea that they're closer to Donald Trump and that they're the one who desire the funds and the attention. So it's rather fraught to know whether to stay closer to or to run away from Donald Trump depending on which voters it is you're trying to appeal to. Why does it matter to his prospects? What happens in these elections? Well, this is absolutely crucial for how the last two years of Donald Trump's term will play out. If he loses control of the House of Representatives, which according to polls at the moment looks quite likely, then a Democrat majority in the House can institute all

16:35kinds of investigations into what Donald Trump has done in the first two years of his term. They can also launch impeachment proceedings. And whilst they may not be able to get Donald Trump out of office, they can certainly take up a lot of time and a lot of his attention if he has to fight off impeachment proceedings in the House. They'll control all sorts of House committees who can then try to initiate legislation as well as investigations. If the Democrats also took control of the Senate, which is less likely, polls suggest that it would be quite difficult for them to do, but not impossible, then that would give them control of both houses of Congress. They could prevent all sorts of pieces of legislation that Donald Trump wants to see go through. They could pass all kinds of measures trying to prevent Donald Trump from doing things on his own, just using executive orders to try and get his policies through. So they could really try to prevent him getting a lot of his agenda passed. Whilst, of course, at the same time, setting a tone that would make it much harder for Donald Trump to choose his successor and try to guarantee that it's a Republican in his own image who follows him in 2028.

17:40Sarah Smith, who's hosting the BBC's America's From Dallas, it's available wherever you get your podcasts. There's been plenty of anxiety among Euros wine growers that the impact of protracted drought this summer would have. For champagne drinkers, the response of those who regulate that most prestigious wines could sound like good news. For the first time, the champagne houses are being allowed to use grapes grown in the champagne region of northern France, the alcohol content of which could reach this year 15%. Ohine Hughes is a master of wine and he's been telling me what's changed with this harvest of grapes. It affects the level of sugar in the grapes, this affects the level of potential alcohol in the wine. The sugar is then converted into alcohol. That's the effect here. There are other effects as well. This year, champagne producers have picked early, they've picked at the beginning of August to try to mitigate the effect of alcohol, but also there's the effect of picking early on acidity, on flavor ripeness, on physiological

18:42ripeness. So it's not really a singular threshold that we're considering here, it's actually a multi-factor consideration. It's about balancing all those things ultimately. So the challenge for champagne producers is to kind of mitigate some of these effects when they blend together the different grapes. It depends on the type of wine because with non-ventage champagne, they can blend a lot of different ventures together to blend out the spikes in alcohol in 2026. With vintage wines, it's a different consideration. By picking early, actually, they retained a lot of the restrained potential alcohol. So we won't see a huge change in the final wines. I mean, champagne is conventionally about 12 to 12.5%. This new delegation is only really exceptional parcels just to make sure that they don't fall foul of regulations. When you use the phrase parcels, you mean grapes coming from particular vineyards? The exact same. So some of those potentially could be the figure that's been quoted in some of

19:44the coverages up to 15% alcohol, but that effectively is going to be reduced, brought down to more typical average. There might be some champagne that will be very high level, but they'll be very exceptional, I think, because you won't see it across the board. It's really for these vineyards that maybe have very high sunlight and warm sights for whatever reason. In the shops, you won't see wines that are very different from what you see now. There might be a few more wines that are maybe 12.5% rather than 12% or 13% instead of 12.5%. You're not suddenly going to see a lot of wines that are 14.5% on the shelves. Is it something that those particular champagne producers might want to promote to actually kind of make something of the fact that it has a slightly higher than average alcohol content? Is that likely to attract drinkers? Conventionally, I think people think of champagne as kind of a restrained alcohol, high acid, restrained flavor ripeness, kind of

20:45style of wine. So it kind of threatens how people think about champagne, you know, or what, and the identity of champagne may be maybe so a certain extent. We know that the grapes are very high quality this year, so the concentration, the flavour concentration and so on will be very good. But yeah, I think in the future, especially with the balance also between the different elements and the wine, it could actually threaten the identity a little bit, at least change it a little bit. And that is presumably an ongoing issue because we are told to expect more of these long hot summers, certainly in Western Europe in the coming years. Exactly. I mean, there are other ways to mitigate the higher alcohols as well. I mean, I know the regional body has been experimenting with the partial de-alcalisation of the base wine, the subwine before, you know, the second fermentation of the adding of the bubbles, if you like. There are different techniques in vindication as well as a vertical chair to mitigate those things, which produces can consider. But yeah, it's definitely something that has the potential to affect the identity of the wine.

21:47That is a master of wine there, give you his assessment of wine hues. Welcome back to news how River Armad has become the first afghan woman to climb Mount Everest as a youngster she dreamed of climbing the mountain with her brother who later killed himself. As the teenager growing up in Afghanistan, rivers survived a Taliban attack. Living now in Australia, she spoke to the BBC's Soda Bar Hadari about what inspired her to reach the summit of the world's tallest mountain above sea level. I just wanted to prove that Afghan women can do different things. Afghan women are not powerless as they live in the darkest part of the history. You come from Ghazni province. It's very mountainous and I've read an interview that you used to go up there with your brother. You had a mutual dream to climb Everest together. When my brother grown up, we both used to go to the mountain and we used

22:50to climb and we used to just laugh and we used to just shout on the mountain. You know you can hear your reflection of your voice and I was like, I want to climb Mount Everest. I was like, okay we will do that. I don't have my brother with me right now and obviously I miss him all the time. How did you mentally prepare? It's a big mountain and obviously different to the mountains of Ghazni where you grew up. First I climbed beat mountain in my head. Finally one day after three months I woke up and I said yes I feel that I can climb. I just want to mention one specific time I question my decision. Why I put my life in danger to prove something probably I will die. I will never go back home. There was so many dead bodies and you see people were coming down, struggling to breathe. I just descend on the rock and I close my eyes. I said to myself, you have a chance to try. Afghan woman and Afghanistan they don't have this chance.

23:54And the moment I said to myself, you can do it. You survive Taliban attack. Try harder because Afghan women cannot do it and give them hope. In 2014 you had your own experience with the Taliban. When the bus you were travelling on was attacked many were killed but you survived because you smudged period blood on your face and pretend it to be dead. When I finished my year 12 I just wanted to go to study in Kabul. They stopped by this along the way and they just start fire and just began. I had my period. You know women when get pressure, good scared, the blood is coming quite instantly and I was like, I'm not going to die. I love life. What should I do? What should I do? They were getting closer and I took the blood and I prayed on my face and I just let pretend that I'm dead. They came to me and they just looked and said, oh this prostitute ladies dead and then lived the bus. What is your message to Afghan women? I want them to

24:59dream big. I want them to believe their selves. I know it's very tough time but they are stronger than they think and they can do different things. That's Mount Sinai River Ahmad talking to the BBC's Sodebar Hadari. You're listening to News Hour from the BBC World Service with me Sean Lay. The Israeli authorities are taking further action against British and European linked organisations and individuals in response to sanctions imposed on goods and settlements in the occupied West Bank. The diaspora minister in the Israeli government has written to Israeli border control recommending that representatives from Oxford and save the children among other groups should be denied entry. Meanwhile Israel says the British Consulate in East Jerusalem must ceased work within 30 days. The British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said his country was putting

26:03action behind its words of support for a two-state solution to the Palestinian Israeli conflict. Mr. Burnham argues that actions by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank are intended to make a future Palestinian state unviable. Well Aaron Katzoff is someone who could be affected by these sanctions and American by birth is living in the illegal Israeli outpost of Eshkadesh not far from the settlement of Shiloh. He runs a small local business called the Settler Seller which makes wine. News Hours James Menendez asked Aaron Katzoff about the potential impact. So we grow grapes. We make wine. We have a nice family business. I would say the first ones and the ones who get hurt the most are the actual Palestinians. The people they work by us. They actually when they work by us they get four times or three times the amount of money that they would get working locally. And the first ones that you're hurting are the actual Palestinian Arab local workers. All my neighbours who have wineries a big portion of their workers are Palestinian and those will be

27:04the first ones losing their job. Now you have to remember just as a democracy country to another democracy country besides the high pay that the Palestinians will get when they work by us. We also get full rights leave days, sick days, vacation days, something that they don't get when they work in the Palestinian authority. You're taking that away from them. But are you suggesting that those Palestinians will be laid off? I mean presumably those business will will continue to trade within Israel. I'm saying that if the business will get hurt the first ones that will be hurt will be the weak link which are the regular workers who are Palestinian. That's what I'm saying. Britain introduced these sanctions and as I mentioned other countries followed soon including Canada, France, Poland and Spain and several others. In order to stop the further expansion of settlements it also said that the occupation of the West Bank was illegal and was preventing the creation of the two state solution. I mean I'm assuming that you just don't believe in that two state solution. So here's that that's a great talk about two states. So you know if you

28:06remember like not so long ago in history when you had many Moroccans cross the border by foot. I'm not talking about the Spain. I'm talking about to the western Sahara. 300,000 Moroccans were marched the green march famous and they occupied the western Sahara. Everybody condemned it but still the UK and Europe most of their fish they buy from Morocco not just from Morocco from occupied territory that's not recognized by the UN occupied territory the Sahara. Why doesn't it not just that also fish minerals and everything now why is that that the UK all of a sudden cares about a two state solution when you have a full nation the western Sahara that are being engilled murdered fleeting Morocco and you continue doing business with Morocco and purchasing the fish from the Sun. But just on my question do you not believe there should be a Palestinian state as the UK government and others believe the day that Jordan becomes a democracy that will be the Palestinian state because there are majority Palestinians in Jordan today. But just very

29:09briefly so you don't believe there should be a Palestinian state or on for example the land where on the land where you live. I think like this I think that Palestinians state on the East Bank. So not so not where you are. The East Bank. I think it's already majority of Palestinians there in the West Bank there's not majority Palestinian. That's Aaron Gatzof talking to New Zealanders and then this. sanctions often fail to have the impact their proponents hope they will have. Already Israel is implementing retaliation which will affect aid organizations that are the UK based and who provide assistance to Palestinians. Dr Mustafa Buguti is Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative Movement. He joins us from the city of Ramallah the administrative center for Palestinians in the West Bank. Dr. Buguti thanks for being with us on New Zour. What do you make of what Aaron Gatzof was saying there that in the end if sanctions damage settlers business the people who will end up suffering are the Palestinians who work in those

30:10businesses. First of all this is a big lie because Israel has dismissed already 250,000 Palestinian workers who are now unemployed. So to claim that they care about Palestinian workers is nothing but a misleading statement. Well I think he wasn't necessarily saying whether he cared or not what he was saying was it will be a consequence of sanctions and that is a problem isn't it we talk about smart sanctions but in the end the policy option itself is a flawed one it's a kind of a sledgehammer that often misses the nut it's aimed at. Can I answer you please? Sure you're talking about farmers who lost their land to this Israeli settler. This Israeli settler is sitting on Palestinians stolen land from Palestinians and now he employs some of these farmers to work in this farm. Imagine your situation you own a land you have a farm somebody comes in

31:10he steals your land and then employs you and then he claims he's caring about us that's not true but if the outside is pretty cold but if the outside reality the reality is that today what we have witnessed from the measures taken by Britain and other towards countries is a beginning of a big change which is showing how isolated Israeli policy is because Britain is following the decision of the international court of justice which says that occupation is illegal settlements are illegal and settlement products are also illegal and this is not enough in my opinion the sanctions should include the Israeli government itself because the Israeli government is the one that is funding and building illegal settlements. I hear everything you're saying but I still don't think you've given me an answer to my question how do you deal with the consequence that sanctions can end

32:13up hurting the Palestinians potentially more than the settlers. That's not true that's a lie because the settlers are the ones who are making the profit these workers and small number of workers will be hurt we will employ them. We'll find ways for them the most important thing here is that you are talking about a crime of stealing people's land and then and then enslaving them and now he claims he's caring about the slaves that's not true. I'm grateful you've answered my point I was trying to get to because I think it's an important one we often talk about sanctions we often reflect on the fact that sanctions don't achieve their objectives and one of the problems with sanctions it is argued is that they are punitive but they don't actually change minds and my question is is that going to be possible with these sanctions? No but we see here is the beginning of what of what has happened before in South Africa the apartheid system in South Africa

33:14would not have vanished if it wasn't for the boycott divestment sanctions that were used by Europe and by other countries against it that was the only way to liberate the people of South Africa whether they were black or white from the system of apartheid and the sanctions on Israel not only on settlements is the way to liberate Palestinians and Israelis from the system of apartheid and the system of oppressing Palestinians which has reached a horrible level where settler terrorists are now attacking Palestinian communities burning houses burning cars already displacing more than 120 communities from their land the only solution besides Palestinians' steadfastness today is that there will be boycott sanctions divestments from not only the settlements but the Israeli government that is funding supporting and protecting these illegal settlers. Dr Mustafa Barguiti Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative movement thank you

34:27The Global Nuclear Watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency the IAEA says it's identified a new two-story building being used by North Korea to enrich uranium it says that the building where Kim Jong Un the country's leader has been photographed inspecting steel tubes could contain up to 28 machines which can produce weapons grade uranium potentially that leads to an additional 4-8 bombs being produced each year North Korea is estimated to have 60 warheads already let's speak now to Professor Hazel Smith a career expert at SOS in the University of London Professor Smith what do you make of the IAEA's announcement? Well it is part of its responsibility to try to monitor even those countries that are not covered by the non-proliferation treaty not just North Korea but Israel India and Pakistan although of course they don't have direct access so it's a part of their regular responsibilities is to do this we know that it's not a hidden program from the

35:28North Korean government they've said often and loudly that they are going to continue to develop the nuclear program as long as that they feel that the country is insecure so it's a very plausible result that we're seeing from an outcome or research report that we're seeing from the atomic energy authority how little do we actually know about North Korea's nuclear program? Not what it says it's doing but what it is doing? Well we know a fair amount and we've had on and off since for the last 25 years access to North Korea by Americans by people employed by the atomic energy authority because at times of reprochement and when there were negotiations going on basically between the United States and North Korea there was access allowed to outsiders to monitor different aspects of the program so we actually know a fair amount that's quite a published it's not a big secret and what about the the discussions that happened in Donald Trump's

36:33first term the suggestion that the Pyongyang might have been interested in a nuclear deal with the United States is that still credible today? Well that's important the nuclear test took place between 2006 and 2017 the last one was in 2017 there was a very very important meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore in 2018 where they came to a written agreement quite a broad agreement but nevertheless a start of an agreement between the United States and North Korea about denuclearization there was a follow-up meeting involving Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump again in Hanoi in 2019 and at that meeting there was wide expectation because it was briefed by all sides that there would be a deal involving some sanctions removal for the North Koreans because they were sanctioned by the United Nations very heavily in 2016 and 2017 and in return North Korea

37:36would and it said this up front that it would dismantle its major nuclear facility which is at Yonggrong which is the area that the international atomic energy authority is reporting on today that didn't come to fruition in Hanoi partly because as John Bolton explained in his autobiography he persuaded Donald Trump not to move further with it so it remains an open question whether or not he might try this in his second term professor Hazel Smith so as at the University of London thank you very much you all listen to news out on the BBC World Service this is sure lay with news out alive from the BBC in London while fires are not just a threat to the land and people where they erupt wind can carry toxic haze thousands of kilometers away

38:36it's happening right now in Southeast Asia hundreds of wildfires across Sumatra and Kalamantan which have scored over scorched over 200,000 hectares of land there have generated smoke affecting Malaysia Singapore and the Philippines for Indonesia it's led to air pollution 15 times more severe than the leveled the world health organisation advises is tolerable from there Lisa Tambunan reports you're not going to be able to do it 20-year-old Endan Susila Wati has just lost her home she's crying for help her family are still inside Boris fires have been burning for weeks across Indonesia fire fighters and water warming helicopters have been unable to control them the skies above parts of Kalamantan in Indonesia's side of Borneo Island have turned an ominous glowing orange for millions living downwind every breath

39:43carries the accretaste of burned earth residents are increasingly concerned over the toll the haze is taking on their health particularly for young children this woman lives in Ponteanak one of the worst affected cities I'm worried that we might all get to say one after another because of this haze my niece is still young and her cough hasn't gone away for two weeks now she has been given antibiotics but she is still coughing between July and August Indonesia's health ministry recorded 50,000 cases of respiratory infections attributed to land and forest fires more than 12,000 of those cases are children under the age of five so the authorities are ramping up fire suppression efforts on the ground and in the air an integrated response is underway through land and air operations including hot spot monitoring and extinguishing aerial water bombing and weather

40:47modification the government continues to strengthen prevention and response efforts with the main goals of protecting the public reducing smoke impact and preventing fires from spreading but the fires continue to burn led both by big companies and individual farmers to clean land for agriculture and this year's super elinear weather pattern bringing drug conditions has made this Indonesia's worst fire season since 2015 the climate impact is staggering data from the European Union's Copernicus climate monitoring service shows the Indonesian fires put out more than 20 million tons of carbon dioxide in just seven days earlier this month accounting for more than one third of the global total and senior scientist Mark Parrington says satellite sensors may not pick up many of the peak fires burning in Indonesia and one of the aspects with peak fires is if they're burning at low temperatures or under ground

41:49they be below the detection limit of the sensors which means we're not actually seeing them we're only really seeing the above ground fires and so we're probably underestimating possibly to quite some degree the actual emissions in the end. The number of hotspots detected in August and early September surpassed 13,000 much higher than the 9,400 recorded over the same period in 2015 according to the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry once again Indonesia finds itself unable to do much else apart from waiting for the monsoon rains which may not come for another two months. That was the BBC's Indonesia correspondent Lisa Tambunan. Pick up on one of our earlier stories this news hour according to the song Everything Stops for Tea one of that beverages virtues is that it's cheaper than champagne but could this most ubiquitous of global thirst quenches have a serious downside does regular consumption of hot

42:54drinks increase our risk of developing cancer. Your research in the University of Oxford in the UK suggests that it might, let's talk now to the lead researcher Dr. Keren Papier who joins us live. Dr. Papier thanks for being with us on news hour tell us about your research. We conducted what's the largest study to date looking at how drinking warm and hot beverages relate to the risk of different types of esophageal cancers. So we looked in one million UK adults from two different cohort studies and our study adds evidence that drinking hot and very hot beverages could increase the risk of a esophageal scue mesocerosina. What do we mean by very hot? We didn't measure what the temperature meant so in research with nearly one million people that's a bit tricky to do but what feels quite the subjective thing I suppose doesn't it for people? It is a subject you can tolerate yeah. That's right but we do see this big jump in risk going from warm to hot to very hot so people's definition of it did appear to show a clear

44:00difference in risk. I'm team made immediately after a kettle is fully fully bored is obviously touching boiling point. Once it's bored into a cup it must lower it a little bit. Would that be regarded as too hot as a risky very hot liquid at that point? So the international research on cancer agency in 2016 actually published that very hot beverages which are more than 65 degrees were considered to be crystallogenic to humans. So that would be significantly above that yeah. Yeah that sounds quite piping hot. What about the risks though? I mean this is we're talking about a very rare for the cancer only. This is true this cancer is not as common it's more common in some parts of the world than in others. For instance in the UK it's the 14th most common cancer. So the lifetime risk is much lower in the UK than say in some countries in Asia where the lifetime risk may be higher. And South America there are places where people actually

45:03choose to drink herbal beverages very hot don't they? That's right so there's a drink called mate which is consumed with a metal straw and the beverage can transfer to your mouth quite quickly remain very hot. And is that a place where some people have identified a potential risk? That's right so we've long had studies coming from South America and from different parts of Asia in the Middle East and Africa that have seen these associations but we knew less about typical Western populations where how beverages are consumed may differ to what we see in where you just described for example. And just briefly also how many cups you drink I guess a day? Yeah we did find that even after taking temperature into consideration that consuming six or more drinks a day compared with fewer than six drinks a day was associated with a 70% higher risk. So the number of drink appears to matter as well. Talk to Karen Papier it's a fascinating piece of research. Thank you very much probably best absorbed over a drink of some kind baby

46:06glass of water is the safest bet in this case. That's news up thanks very much for your company this hour do don't forget though that we are here twice a day every day wherever you are do join us.