Switzerland Today

Dear Swiss Abroad,

You’re the boss of a TV station but you can’t find anyone willing to present the weather at the crack of dawn every day. What do you do? One channel in French-speaking Switzerland has got round this problem by employing Jade, a smiley twentysomething who always looks wide awake, never flubs her lines and never pulls a sickie. Jade isn’t real.

Screenshot YouTube/M Le Média

Since the beginning of the month Jade, an avatar brought to life by artificial intelligence (AI), has been giving viewers the good (or, more likely, bad) news about the upcoming weather on the morning show of the Lausanne-based station M Le Média.

M Le Média spokeswoman Sophie Onkelinx said they had not publicised the fact they were using AI. She said that before an article appeared in 20 MinutesExternal link – more than two weeks after Jade’s first appearance – no one had noticed she was AI.

Jade is impressively human. On closer inspection, having been tipped off, you might notice that something’s not quite right: possibly her hand movements or slightly fixed stare? The lip sync? I’m not sure I would though. She’s a big improvement from most previous AI attempts at human faces, which are notoriously difficult for computers. Speaking, for example, requires the interaction of multiple muscles across the entire face, not just the mouth. Real humans are very good at recognising when faces are not real – and when the result is just off, it can come across as rather creepy. Welcome to the so-called Uncanny ValleyExternal link. For example, check out the results of the 2004 Tom Hanks film, Polar ExpressExternal link. Jade, for my money, doesn’t fall into the valley.

Philippe Morax, general manager of the Millennium Média group, told 20 Minutes that the new technology was part of their innovation strategy to provide the public with high-quality content. He admitted, however, that Jade was actually born out of necessity: they wanted to get a human presenter, but the recruitment process drew a blank.

What do you make of Jade? What’s your view on AI in general? We recently looked at the opportunity and challenges – and lack of regulation – around the much-hyped chatbot ChatGPT. I asked it to “write a poem about Switzerland in the style of Philip Larkin”. Read its immediate and, in my opinion, pretty impressive effort. (By the way, you have my word that this briefing was written by a human…)

• Notice what’s different about this weather presenter?External link – 20 Minutes (German)
• This French-speaking Swiss presenter doesn’t even existExternal link – Tages-Anzeiger (German)
• ChatGPT: intelligent, stupid or downright dangerous? – SWI swissinfo.ch
• An interview with an Oscar-winning Swiss professor of computer graphics – SWI swissinfo.ch

Keystone / Georgios Kefalas

More cases of racism, but less racism?

Almost all Swiss media have recently run numbers published by humanrights.ch and the Swiss Commission against Racism. Last year, 708 cases of racism were flagged, an increase of 78 on the previous year; the main forms were anti-black and xenophobia, and the main places it happened were (unsurprisingly) places where people spend a lot of time: the workplace and school.

Cause for concern? Yes and no, the report authors say. Most of all the report highlights the difficulties of measuring something as complicated as perceived discrimination. Because it’s based on voluntary testimonies, from victims or observers of discrimination, the numbers flagged could be just the “tip of the iceberg”, the authors say. How many inacceptable remarks go unnoticed every day?

However, as they also make clear in the report’s opening paragraph, this also means that the steady rise in the number of cases does not mean Switzerland is becoming a more racist place: rather, it’s a sign that reporting centres are becoming more visible, and people are more willing to report – particularly in schools. However, as students become more engaged with the issue, teachers and staff also sometimes struggle to handle cases.

• How schools try to cope with rising awareness of racismExternal link – SRF radio
• Racism report 2022 (in German and French)External link – humanrights.ch
• UN group warns of systemic racism in Switzerland – SWI swissinfo.ch

Keystone

The rescue of Credit Suisse was not the second time a major bank was saved – nor was that of UBS in 2008 the first. Back in the Great Depression, the Swiss government was compelled to save Schweizerische Volksbank (SVB) from collapse.

At 11am on Saturday, November 19, 1933, the finance ministry announced that Schweizerische Volksbank would “undergo a reorganisation” and that the government would contribute CHF100 million. It was an unprecedented event: the state bailed out a major bank with funds equivalent to a quarter of the annual federal budget.

About a month earlier, the management of SVB had asked the government for state support. They had reached the conclusion that a restructuring of the beleaguered bank was not possible from within and “could only be made possible with state aid”. Learn about the causes and consequences of that bailout here.

Returning to the present, here’s the latest news about the Credit Suisse crisis:

• UBS picks up chunk of assets escaping failed Credit Suisse – SWI swissinfo.ch
• Credit Suisse reports CHF60bn of client withdrawals – SWI swissinfo.ch
• In a crisis, the core of Swiss private banking turns into a powder kegExternal link – NZZ editorial (paywall)