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Practice meets perfect
May/June 2023 issue

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AI and nanotech risk outpacing our safeguards

Open-access content Friday 25th August 2017
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

Two "chatbots" -- programmes designed to simulate conversation between humans -- had been set up to practise and develop trading skills.

Soon after the programmes started negotiating with each other, they developed their own simplified version of English which quickly became incomprehensible to the researchers supervising them.

This sobering development is a long way along the technological scale from the innovations in personal protective equipment and health monitoring described in our feature on wearable technology in our September 2017 issue of IOSH Magazine. But the advances in cheap computing power and connectivity that make possible mass production of those sensor-based protective systems are also propelling the development of machines that learn and act on their learning.

AI too could offer great potential for making humankind safer, but it could also threaten unexpected consequences whose risks outweigh the benefits.

The physicist Professor Stephen Hawking warned in 2014 that AI would be likely to "take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate". It's very hard to predict where such intelligence, linked to manufacturing capability or control systems, might end up.

To stop systems we set up to protect us deciding we are expendable for the greater good, we will need robust precautions. Ensuring they don't start conversing in languages we can't understand is not enough -- though it's not a bad place to start.

The problem is that scientists and industry are often more focused on pushing the boundaries of what is technologically possible than on defending the rest of us against the potential unintended consequences. That task is left to governments, which may not always have sufficient grasp of the implications of the scientific developments they are supposed to regulate.

In the US, there were celebrations among safety campaigners a few years ago when the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health was awarded $5m (£3.1m) by the Obama administration for research into the workplace risks associated with nanomaterials. But that sum seemed small beer compared with the $1.5bn (£900m) a year the government was pumping into non safety-related nanotechnology research.

Nanoparticles are small enough to pass through the body's defences such as the skin, the lungs and the blood-brain barrier. Some are a fraction of the size of welding fume particles; their widespread use in manufacturing would necessitate new levels of workplace control.

The author Ray Kurzweil has argued that our brains grasp the future in a linear fashion and struggle to anticipate exponential change. So the next decades may bring technological changes we find almost unimaginable. It would be comforting to know that somewhere smart people are imagining the attendant hazards and ways to control them.

You may also be interested in...

 How OSH practitioners could close the gender pay gap

Friday 25th August 2017
Women in OSH are in the minority, but more are choosing to enter the profession. The OSH skills shortage may explain why the differential is half the national average but, as a woman, I believe any pay gap suggests employers value the work we do less.
Open-access content

 How the gig economy brings responsibility to both sides

Wednesday 26th July 2017
As the Gig Guide feature (IOSH Magazine August 2017 issue) shows, in disrupting the markets in which they operate, companies such as Uber and Deliveroo are asking questions of the safety and health profession.Their workers are choosing flexibility and short-term contracts and this creates a fluidity in workforces that tests traditional methods of risk management.
Open-access content

 The first global OSH campaign that aspires to zero harm

Monday 25th September 2017
New figures which begin to quantify this stark truth were revealed at the World Congress on Safety and Health at Work in Singapore (September 2017), a triennial gathering where leading organisations for safety and health connect with ministers, policymakers and some of the world’s largest corporations.
Open-access content

 Contractor management is one way to raise SMEs' OSH standards

Wednesday 18th October 2017
In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and trade bodies have tried everything from mobile phone apps to literature distributed at trade counters to channel messages about regulatory requirements and good practice to small contractors, especially those in construction.
Open-access content

 Challenging the misuse of safety for political ends

Wednesday 28th June 2017
As a result of the lack of a working majority for any party, we have entered a period of political uncertainty.Without wishing to sound parochial at a time when the future of the National Health Service, provision of decent housing for young people and many other crucial issues are on the agenda, the impact of big politics on how we pursue safer and healthier workplaces is worthy of consideration.
Open-access content

 After Grenfell Tower we must short circuit the cycle of deregulation and disaster

Tuesday 27th June 2017
In preparation for the change, the head of safety at a university took his freshly drawn-up set of fire risk assessments to his local fire authority, which previously had the task of certifying the premises, and asked if an officer familiar with the campus would give an informal opinion on whether they were sufficient or needed more work.When reminded that it was no longer the fire service’s job, the OSH head persisted until the officer told him: “If you have a fire and we prosecute you afterwards, then you’ll know your assessment wasn’t good enough.”
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