̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - European Commission

Thatcher papers for 1988 reveal her 'deep enthusiasm' for the single market

sjr81 — Sat, 21 Jul 2018 07:00:58 +0000

Her speechwriting files for Bruges, including drafts and contributions from outsiders, are among more than 40,000 pages of Lady Thatcher’s papers for the year 1988 being opened to the public at Churchill College from Monday.

They show that rather than acting as a call-to-arms for Eurosceptics and attacking the principles behind the single market – of which Thatcher was something of a devotee – her speech was more concerned with the perceived power grab by European Commission chief Jacques Delors, and a possible move to a more ‘federal’ European ‘super-state’.

Historian Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the only person to date to have read all 40,000 pages of material being released, said: “She wanted her speech to be about direction, rather than point scoring – and she edges back from attacking the Commission, approaching it in a more intellectual style.

“I know she was uncomfortable about the venue, but we are very lucky in that few of her speeches remain in such a complete form as this.

“When you read her papers for 1988, you see her sheer level of enthusiasm for the single market. She goes up hill and down dale with deep enthusiasm because this is practical Europe, this is how it works together. ̽��ֱ��role of speechwriter Hugh Thomas – a committed Europhile – is also crucial to consider when looking at this speech from a historical perspective.”

̽��ֱ��1988 papers are the latest of Margaret Thatcher’s reign as Prime Minister from 1979-90 to be made available to scholars, researchers and the general public – alongside the papers of Sir Winston Churchill and hundreds of other leading figures at the Churchill Archives Centre.

As well as Lady Thatcher’s papers surrounding the Bruges speech in September 1988, her personal papers also reveal the emergence of plans for a possible fourth term in office, with no obvious end to Thatcherism in sight at that point.

However, 1988 was not without its problems as the government experienced a large number of backbench rebellions on controversial measures, including many with manifesto authority. When Thatcher met with the Executive of the 1922 Committee in January, she was warned that one of the things they wanted to raise with her was the ‘problem of a large majority in the House of Commons and an inadequate Opposition, leading the government being perceived as dictatorial and insensitive to criticism’.

“Unsurprisingly, when this point was indeed made to her face, Thatcher made an indignant response,” said Collins. “There followed a series of rebellions over benefits and the poll tax which she took very personally as relationships with the Conservative parliamentary party frayed.”

Away from frontline politics, the archives for 1988 also reveal that her husband Denis went through a showbiz reception guest list with a fine tooth-comb, querying whether certain celebrities such as Paul McCartney and David Attenborough should be invited to Number 10 for a gathering of those who would be easily recognised by the public and do Mrs Thatcher much good on TV.

̽��ֱ��original list of 45 personalities was too low on numbers thought Lady Thatcher and a much longer list of more than 200 names was drawn up by former culture secretary, John Whittingdale – then political secretary to the Prime Minister.

“He (Whittingdale) was not the grizzled elder statesman of the present day,” said Collins. “This was the young man whose evening was spent watching Meatloaf at the Hammersmith Odeon and whose idea of a good party was to invite Paul McCartney, Freddie Mercury and the Jaggers.

Whittingdale, perhaps, did not count on the scrutinous eye of Denis Thatcher – who attacked the proposed guest list with no small amount of red ink, marking ticks against those he ‘would personally like to see included’ and question marks beside ‘those who, I believe, do not help'.

He went on to say: “Whilst I accept of course that not everyone who comes to our receptions are necessarily on ‘our’ side I find it both unpleasant and embarrassing to entertain those who publicly insult the PM. This list needs some careful checking in this regard.”

His favourite name of those listed was comedian Eric Sykes who gained an expansive four ticks. Others to receive enthusiastic backing from Denis included Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Dame Judi Dench, Nick Faldo and Rolf Harris.

McCartney and Attenborough were not alone in having question marks placed next to their name. Sebastian Coe, Shirley Bassey and magician Paul Daniels all fell foul of Denis’ red pen.

In the end, the longer guest list was dropped in favour of the original 45 and the British Winter Olympic Squad – minus Eddie ‘ ̽��ֱ��Eagle’ Edwards, who was double booked and unable to attend.

Margaret Thatcher’s infamous Bruges speech – which helped to coin the phrase ‘Euroscepticism’ – was never intended to be an anti-European diatribe, according to newly-released archive material by the Churchill Archives Centre and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.

When you read her papers for 1988, you see her sheer level of enthusiasm for the single market.

Chris Collins

Margaret Thatcher Foundation

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Opinion: Robots and AI could soon have feelings, hopes and rights … we must prepare for the reckoning

ljm67 — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 12:07:33 +0000

Get used to hearing a lot more about artificial intelligence. Even if you discount the utopian and dystopian hyperbole, the 21st century will broadly be defined not just by advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, computing and cognitive neuroscience, but how we manage them. For some, the question of whether or not the human race will live to see a 22nd century turns upon this latter consideration. While forecasting the imminence of an AI-centric future remains a matter of intense debate, we will need to come to terms with it. For now, there are many more questions than answers.

It is clear, however, that the European Parliament is making inroads towards taking an AI-centric future seriously. Last month, in a 17-2 vote, the parliament’s legal affairs committee voted to to begin drafting a set of regulations to govern the development and use of artificial intelligence and robotics. Included in this draft proposal is preliminary guidance on what it calls “electronic personhood” that would ensure corresponding rights and obligations for the most sophisticated AI. This is a start, but nothing more than that.

If you caught any of the debate on the issue of “electronic” or “robot” personhood, you probably understand how murky the issues are, and how visceral reactions to it can be. If you have not caught any of it, now is a good time to start paying attention.

̽��ֱ��idea of robot personhood is similar to the concept of corporate personhood that allows companies to take part in legal cases as both claimant and respondent – that is, to sue and be sued. ̽��ֱ��report identifies a number of areas for potential oversight, such as the formation of a European agency for AI and robotics, a legal definition of “smart autonomous robots”, a registration system for the most advanced ones, and a mandatory insurance scheme for companies to cover damage and harm caused by robots.

̽��ֱ��report also addresses the possibility that both AI and robotics will play a central role in catalysing massive job losses and calls for a “serious” assessment of the feasibility of universal basic income as a strategy to minimise the economic effects of mass automation of entire economic sectors.

We, Robots

As daunting as these challenges are – and they are certainly not made any more palatable given the increasingly woeful state of geopolitics – lawmakers, politicians and courts are only beginning to skim the surface of what sort of problems, and indeed opportunities, artificial intelligence and robotics pose. Yes, driverless cars are problematic, but only in a world where traditional cars exist. Get them off the road, and a city, state, nation, or continent populated exclusively by driverless cars is essentially a really, really elaborate railway signalling network.

Artificial minds will need very real rights. Shutterstock

I cannot here critique the feasibility of things such as general artificial intelligence, or even the Pandora’s Box that is Whole Brain Emulation – whereby an artificial, software-based copy of a human brain is made that functions and behaves identically to the biological one. So let’s just assume their technical feasibility and imagine a world where both bespoke sentient robots and robotic versions of ourselves imbued with perfect digital copies of our brains go to work and “Netflix and chill” with us.

It goes without saying that the very notion of making separate, transferable, editable copies of human beings embodied in robotic form poses both conceptual and practical legal challenges. For instance, basic principles of contract law would need to be updated to accommodate contracts where one of the parties existed as a digital copy of a biological human.

Would a contract in Jane Smith’s name, for example, apply to both the biological Jane Smith and her copy? On what basis should it, or should it not? ̽��ֱ��same question would also need to be asked in regard to marriages, parentage, economic and property rights, and so forth. If a “robot” copy was actually an embodied version of a biological consciousness that had all the same experiences, feelings, hopes, dreams, frailties and fears as their originator, on what basis would we deny that copy rights if we referred to existing human rights regimes? This sounds like absurdity, but it is nonetheless an absurdity that may soon be reality, and that means we cannot afford to laugh it off or overlook it.

There is also the question of what fundamental rights a copy of a biological original should have. For example, how should democratic votes be allocated when copying people’s identities into artificial bodies or machines becomes so cheap that an extreme form of “ballot box stuffing” – by making identical copies of the same voter – becomes a real possibility?

Should each copy be afforded their own vote, or a fractional portion determined by the number of copies that exist of a given person? If a robot is the property of its “owner” should they have any greater moral claim to a vote than say, your cat? Would rights be transferable to back-up copies in the event of the biological original’s death? What about when copying becomes so cheap, quick, and efficient that entire voter bases could be created at the whim of deep-pocketed political candidates, each with their own moral claim to a democratic vote?

How do you feel about a voter base comprised of one million robotic copies of Milo Yiannopolous? Remember all that discussion in the US about phantom voter fraud, well, imagine that on steroids. What sort of democratic interests would non-biological persons have given that they would likely not be susceptible to ageing, infirmity, or death? Good luck sleeping tonight.

Deep thoughts

These are incredibly fascinating things to speculate on and will certainly lead to major social, legal, political, economic and philosophical changes should they become live issues. But it is because they are increasingly likely to be live issues that we should begin thinking more deeply about AI and robotics than just driverless cars and jobs. If you take any liberal human rights regime at face value, you’re almost certainly led to the conclusion that, yes, sophisticated AIs should be granted human rights if we take a strict interpretation of the conceptual and philosophical foundations on which they rest.

Who will win the AI vote? Shutterstock

Why then is it so hard to accept this conclusion? What is it about it that makes so many feel uneasy, uncomfortable or threatened? Humans have enjoyed an exclusive claim to biological intelligence, and we use ourselves as the benchmark against which all other intelligence should be judged. At one level, people feel uneasy about the idea of robotic personhood because granting rights to non-biological persons means that we as humans would become a whole lot less special.

Indeed, our most deeply ingrained religious and philosophical traditions revolve around the very idea that we are in fact beautiful and unique snowflakes imbued with the spark of life and abilities that allow us to transcend other species. That’s understandable, even if you could find any number of ways to take issue with it.

At another level, the idea of robot personhood – particularly as it relates to the example of voting – makes us uneasy because it leads us to question the resilience and applicability of our most sacrosanct values. This is particularly true in a time of “fake news”, “alternative facts”, and the gradual erosion of the once proud edifice of the liberal democratic state. With each new advancement in AI and robotics, we are brought closer to a reckoning not just with ourselves, but over whether our laws, legal concepts, and the historical, cultural, social and economic foundations on which they are premised are truly suited to addressing the world as it will be, not as it once was.

̽��ֱ��choices and actions we take today in relation to AI and robotics have path-dependent implications for what we can choose to do tomorrow. It is incumbent upon all of us to engage with what is going on, to understand its implications and to begin to reflect on whether efforts such as the European Parliament’s are nothing more than pouring new wine into old wine skins. There is no science of futurology, but we can better see the future and understand where we might end up in it by focusing more intently on the present and the decisions we have made as society when it comes to technology.

When you do that, you realise we as a society have made no real democratic decisions about technology, we have more or less been forced to accept that certain things enter our world and that we must learn to harness their benefits or get left behind and, of course, deal with their fallout. Perhaps the first step, then, is not to take laws and policy proposals as the jumping-off point for how to “deal” with AI, but instead start thinking more about correcting the democratic deficit as to whether we as a society, or indeed a planet, really want to inherit the future Silicon Valley and others want for us.

To hear more about the future of AI and whether robots will take our jobs, listen to episode 10 of ̽��ֱ��Conversation’s monthly podcast, ̽��ֱ��Anthill – which is all about the future.

Christopher Markou, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Is artificial intelligence a benign and liberating influence on our lives – or should we fear an impending rise of the machines? And what rights should robots share with humans? Christopher Markou, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, suggests an urgent need to start considering the answers.

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Artificial pancreas trial in young children with diabetes receives €4.6millon grant from European Commission

sjr81 — Mon, 05 Sep 2016 10:55:21 +0000

Type 1 diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases in children; around one in 4,000 children under 14 years of age is diagnosed with the disease each year in the UK. ̽��ֱ��disease causes the pancreas to stop producing sufficient insulin to regulate blood sugar (glucose) levels, and poor glucose control can lead to complications including eye, heart and kidney disease. Episodes of very low glucose levels can cause serious complications and may be life threatening.

People affected by the condition have to manage their condition through long term treatment. This usually involves regular insulin injections – in some cases, several times a day. However, a team at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals hopes to replace these treatments with an artificial pancreas, a small, portable medical device designed to carry out the function of a healthy pancreas in controlling blood glucose levels, using digital technology to automate insulin delivery. ̽��ֱ��system is worn externally on the body, and is made up of three functional components: continuous glucose monitoring, a computer algorithm to calculate the insulin dose, and an insulin pump.

̽��ֱ��artificial pancreas promises to transform management of type 1 diabetes. Several trials have already shown that it is effective for use both school children and adults in the home environment, and last year saw the first natural birth to a mother fitted with an artificial pancreas. However, there has as yet been no research into its use by young children at home.

Now, KidsAP, a collaboration led the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and involving institutes across Europe and in the US, has received a €4.6millon under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme to carry out a trial of the artificial pancreas among children aged one to seven years with type 1 diabetes. Cambridge has received a €1.6m share of the grant to act as coordinator of the project.

“We’ve already seen that the artificial pancreas can have a very positive effect on people’s lives and now, thanks to funding from the European Commission, we can see whether young children will also see these same benefits,” said Dr Roman Hovorka from the Department of Paediatrics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, who is leading the project. “At the moment, children have to have frequent insulin injections that are at best inconvenient, but at worst painful. We hope this new technology will eliminate this need.”

An initial pilot of 24 children, the main study will split 94 children into two groups: one will be treated over a year by the artificial pancreas and the other half by state-of-the-art insulin pump therapy, already used by some adults and teenagers. ̽��ֱ��researchers will measure quality of life and investigate the impact of the two approaches on the children’s daily life, as well as looking at which is the more effective, and cost-effective, approach.

“If the artificial pancreas is shown to be more beneficial than insulin pump therapy, then we expect that it will change how type 1 diabetes is managed both nationally and internationally, with a much improved quality of life for young children,” added Professor David Dunger, collaborator on the project.

An international trial to test whether an artificial pancreas can help young children manage their type 1 diabetes will begin next year, thanks to a major grant awarded by the European Commission.

We’ve already seen that the artificial pancreas can have a very positive effect on people’s lives and now, thanks to funding from the European Commission, we can see whether young children will also see these same benefits.

Roman Hovorka

Diabetes UK

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