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<p class="drop-cap">Nobody expects touchy-feely niceties from a chatbot. Mediocre writing, sure, along with some made-up facts and a bit of random racism. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/weird-bing-chatbot-google-chatgpt-alive-conscious-sentient-ethics-2023-2">I've written about those AI downsides myself</a>.</p><p>But these <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-and-ozempic-are-not-magic-bullets-2023-5">big, new chatbots</a> can, as we know, also generate <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-chatbot-pi-offers-personal-assistant-advice-how-it-works-2023-5">human-sounding responses</a> to prompts and questions. And in a recent head-to-head test, that capability gave the bots a surprising superiority in what ought to be one of the most intrinsically human of all activities: <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.1838" target="_blank" rel="noopener">serving as a doctor</a>.</p><p>To conduct the test, a team of researchers from the University of California in San Diego lurked on r/AskDocs, a Reddit forum where registered, verified healthcare professionals answer people's medical questions. The researchers selected nearly 200 representative questions on the forum, from the silly-sounding ("Swallowed a toothpick, friend said I'm going to die") to the terrifying ("miscarriage one day after normal ultrasound?"). They then fed the questions into the virtual maw of the bot ChatGPT, and had a separate group of healthcare experts conduct a blind evaluation of answers from both AI and MDs. </p><p>The results were shocking. For one thing, ChatGPT came out well ahead of the human doctors on <em>usefulness</em>. Almost invariably, the chatbot answers were rated as three or four times as reliable as the ones from the poor wee humans. What's more, the bots didn't show any of the distressing tendency to make stuff up that they often have in other circumstances.</p><p>But here's the most striking part: The chatbot answers, on average, were rated seven times as <em>empathetic</em> as the ones from humans. Seven times! They provided just what you want from your doctor: care and an emotional connection. It's as if the unfeeling android Mr. Data figured out how to convincingly emulate Dr. Crusher's comforting bedside manner.</p><p>Now admittedly, the bar is low on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-more-empathetic-than-doctors-study-save-time-bedside-manner-2023-5">beating human doctors</a> for displays of empathy. Still, the apparent facility with which the bot could handle medical concerns, in both style and substance, presages an actual, real-world use for these things. I'm skeptical that AI bots driven by large language models will revolutionize journalism or even <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-chatbots-chatgpt-google-bard-microsoft-bing-break-internet-search-2023-2">make internet search better</a>. I suppose I'm open to the idea that they'll accelerate the coding of software and the analysis of spreadsheets. But I now think that with some tinkering, chatbots could radically improve the way people interact with healthcare providers and our broken medical-industrial complex.</p><p class="drop-cap">The point of the empathy experiment wasn't to show that ChatGPT could replace a physician or a nurse. It was to show that a chatbot could have a role in the provision of care. Our for-profit healthcare system doesn't hire enough doctors and nurses, and it expects the ones it does hire to treat more and more patients, assembly-line style. Nobody likes it, except the people getting rich.</p><p>"People are disconnected from healthcare, and they're desperate," says John Ayers, a computational epidemiologist at UC San Diego who was lead author of the new paper. So they're looking for answers on forums like r/AskDocs. "This is how patients do this now. And doctors didn't sign up for it."</p><p>The pressure to answer those messages has become intense. The COVID pandemic accelerated remote, online contact between doctors and patients — and even in the pandemic's first year, research suggested docs spent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fjamia%2Focaa229" target="_blank" rel="noopener">almost an hour every workday dealing with their email inboxes</a>. Add in dealing with other electronic medical record technocracy and you end up with some doctors dedicating <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2758002" target="_blank" rel="noopener">half their time every day</a> to these back-and-forths. It's enough that insurance often <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/health/emails-billing-doctors-patients.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bills for time spent answering messages</a>, making them a potential source of revenue above and beyond face-to-face interactions..</p><p>Prior studies asked whether patients and doctors <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-022-02512-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">like using these messaging systems</a>; Ayers looked at whether the system actually <em>work.</em> "We used real messages," he says. "Nobody has ever done that before." The result, based on the quality of the interactions, was definitive. "ChatGPT won in a landslide," Ayers says. "This stuff is probably ready for prime time."</p><p>Based on the bot's initial success, Ayers is ready to see what more it can handle. "We want to begin randomized controlled trials, where you evaluate patient messaging against patient outcomes," he says — not just whether the messages are accurate or empathetic, but whether they help keep people healthier or alive longer. What if a chatbot could help someone recovering from a heart attack stay on a low-salt diet, remind them to take their meds, keep their treatment updated? "A message in that case could save that patient's life," Ayers says.</p><p>For all the tech-world promises of robot pets and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/27/opinion/chatbot-therapy-mental-health.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AI psychotherapists</a>, the idea of a caring chatbot still feels destabilizing — maybe even <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjvk97/eating-disorder-helpline-disables-chatbot-for-harmful-responses-after-firing-human-staff" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dangerous</a>. Nobody thinks ChatGPT <em>actually</em> cares, any more than they think it's <em>actually</em> smart. But if our current, broken healthcare system makes it impossible for humans to take care of one another, maybe fake taking-care will save real lives. An artificially intelligent assistant may not be <a href="https://www.brattleblog.brattlefilm.org/2018/08/22/more-human-than-human-the-legacy-of-blade-runner-13845/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more human than human</a>, but maybe it'll be more humane.</p><p class="drop-cap">Specialized AI systems — not dumb chatbots — are already pretty good at diagnostics. They're highly trained to detect one thing, like a tumor or sepsis, using specific test results as input. But they're expensive and hard to build. So the medical establishment is jumping on chatbots as a cheaper, more ubiquitous tool. Dozens of companies are <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr2214184" target="_blank" rel="noopener">working on applications</a>, aiming for uses from diagnosing illnesses to helping with the slog of paperwork that has somehow become the responsibility of both doctors and patients alike. If you're lucky enough to have health insurance, your insurance company probably already has some kind of dumb chatbot for you to talk to before you can get a human on the phone.</p><p>If you ask people whether they're into that idea, they mostly say no. Sixty percent of Americans surveyed recently by the Pew Research Center <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/02/22/60-of-americans-would-be-uncomfortable-with-provider-relying-on-ai-in-their-own-health-care/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said they wouldn't want an AI system diagnosing what's ailing them or proposing treatments</a>. But they're probably going to get it anyway. Don't tell anyone I said this, but a lot of what healthcare workers do is already a bit formulaic — at least at the lowest-level, patient-facing interface. You feel icky and call an advice nurse; they ask preset questions to determine whether you should get to an ER or just go take a Tylenol. That's called <em>triage</em>. Or, if you have electronic access to your medical records, maybe you get results back from a new set of tests, and you email your doc to ask what they mean. Either way, you don't expect to <em>enjoy</em> these encounters. They're perfunctory. Robotic, even.</p><p>Well, you know who's very good at robotic things? Robots! Recently a team of researchers from Harvard showed dozens of descriptions of health problems to three groups: physicians, people with no medical training, and ChatGPT. They asked everyone (and -thing) to diagnose the illness, and then for triage recommendations. </p><p>The non-doctor humans were allowed to do an internet search — what healthcare folks call, with dread, "Dr. Google." But even with the online assist, the untrained humans were terrible at diagnosis. No shock there. But, as the researchers report in a recent preprint — meaning it isn't peer-reviewed yet — the chatbot was almost as good at diagnosis (scoring over 80%) as the human physicians (who scored over 90%). And on triage, ChatGPT got a little better than 70% correct. That sounds crummy compared with the physician's 91%, but still! This is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.30.23285067" target="_blank" rel="noopener">general-purpose chatbot</a>, almost as good as a fully trained doctor.</p><p>Now imagine adding to that skill set the sort of mundane, time-consuming healthcare tasks that chatbots should be able to handle — things like scheduling appointments, requesting prior authorization from insurance, and dealing with electronic medical records. "These are tasks nobody went into medicine to do, and they are massive headaches, massive time sinks, physically and emotionally draining," says Teva Brender, a medical resident at the University of California in San Francisco. Maybe a chatbot could generate at least the beginnings of this kind of bureaucratic traffic, along with all the emails to patients. "The physician could skim it and say, 'Yes, this is right,' and send it off," Brender says.</p><p class="drop-cap">That seems like a likely scenario. Highly trained chatbots will work in tandem with physicians, nurses, and physician assistants to deliver more empathetic and more complete answers to people who need care. As Ayers' team wrote in 2019, people are so desperate for medical help that they <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2753884" target="_blank" rel="noopener">post images of their own genitals</a> to the subreddit r/STD in hopes of getting an accurate diagnosis. That is just sad beyond belief, and a staggering indictment of our truly shitty and inhumane system of healthcare.</p><p>In a system this poor, AI could actually be an improvement. "A human clinician backed by the knowledge base and processing power of AI systems will only be better," says Jonathan Chen, a physician at the Stanford University School of Medicine who has been studying AI systems. "It is entirely likely that patients will reach for imperfect medical advice from automated systems with 24/7 availability, rather than waiting months for an appointment with a human expert."</p><p>To make those AI-driven systems better, lots of folks — including Ayers' team — are now working on smaller language models finely tuned with medical information. ChatGPT's attraction, such as it is, is that it's a generalist drawing input from everything on the internet. But that's how biases and misinformation sneak in. Give those medical chatbots access to people's individual medical records, and they could offer more precisely directed advice. "When this tech gets access to electronic health records, that's the real game changer," Ayers says.</p><p>If a future of AI-driven health advice — complete with access to your medical records — makes you worried, I don't blame you. The bad science-fiction outcomes here are pretty dystopic. After years of work, the Food and Drug Administration still doesn't have a framework that's ready to <a href="https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/software-medical-device-samd/artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-software-medical-device" target="_blank" rel="noopener">regulate AI and machine learning in medical devices</a>. Someone will have to figure out all the liability questions surrounding chatbot advice, especially when it's bad. Healthcare AI startups will want the cheapest versions with the most financial bang, which won't necessarily have the best patient outcomes. And if a healthcare company manages to fine-tune a chatbot with state-of-the-science medicine, then any company can do the same thing with homeopathy or scented candles — or anti-vaccine nonsense. Those chatbots will spew dangerous misinformation, both eloquently and empathetically.</p><p>"That's the worst case," says Greg Corrado, the head of Health AI at Google. "This is not something for Silicon Valley folks to do in isolation." That means developing these systems in conjunction with healthcare experts, not just healthcare executives — to make sure they're private and safe and that they actually help people.</p><p>It won't be easy, but it might be necessary. Our healthcare system, sadly, isn't built to provide everyone with decent human caregivers. And until that changes, it'd be nice to have robots that could help us stay healthy. If they can simulate caring about us at the same time — maybe even better than human doctors do — well, that'd still be a nice message to receive.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/adam-rogers"><em>Adam Rogers</em></a> <em>is a senior correspondent at Insider.</em></p>

ChatGPT might replace your doctor &mdash; and it will actually do a better job of caring for you

<ul><li><keyword id="6356684" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="patanjali">Patanjali</keyword> chairman Archarya Balkrishna’s estimated net worth was cut down by a third in 2020.</li><li>He now ranks 919th on the <keyword id="424923" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Hurun-rich-list">Hurun Rich List</keyword> after having slipped 489 places.</li><li>The dip in his wealth comes at a time when he is desperately trying to launch <keyword id="9448306" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Coronil">Coronil</keyword>, a medicine he claims is a cure for COVID-19 — a claim, which many dispute.<br /></li></ul>Archarya Balkrishna, the chairman and CEO of Patanjali as well as the right-hand man to yoga guru <keyword id="6355107" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Baba-Ramdev">Baba Ramdev</keyword>, took a massive hit to his wealth during the pandemic.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="5746a6c1b0aa6d17dd0b8657c3e31a3c_edited" msid="81294979" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Acharya Balkrishna doing yoga with Baba Ramdev on Yoga Day in 2018 with two lakh people to create a world record for the largest amount of people performing yoga in one place&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> <br />According to Hurun’s Rich List 2021, Balkrishna’s estimated net worth dipped by 32% — more than any other Indian billionaire on the list this year in percentage terms.<br /><br /><table style="border-width: initial; border-style: none; table-layout: fixed; width: 468pt;"></colgroup><tbody><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Balkrishna’s estimated net worth in 2020<br /><br /></td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Balkrishna’s estimated net worth in 2021<br /><br /></td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$5.3 billion<br /><br /></td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$3.6 billion<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="81288884" title="Meet Jay Chaudhry, the man who studied under a tree in Himachal to become one of the world’s top billionaires today" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div><br />Balkrishna has often stated that the underlying vision for Patanjali is to replace all foreign imports with <em>‘swadeshi’ </em>(locally made) products. It is one of the reasons why the massive FMCG company has its fingers dipped in nearly every business from food to clothing to power to private security. It even has projects going in the <a href="https://theprint.in/tech/how-ramdevs-patanjali-ayurved-made-a-secret-tech-entry-with-its-own-it-start-up/369203/">cloud services and IT solutions space.</a><br /><br /><div type="image" title="balkrishna2_edited" msid="81295070" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Acharya Balkrishna announcing the availability of Patanjali products across major online portals on 16 January 2018&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />But luck was not on Patanjali’s side when the company decided to launch Coronil, its self-proclaimed cure for COVID-19. The claim has been disputed by many in the medical community including the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Indian Medical Association (IMA).<br /><br />The state of Maharashtra has banned the sale of Coronil until it receives certification from the Ayush Ministry, which looks after all things ayurved, naturopathy, homeopathy, unani, siddha and yoga.<br /><br />For Balkrishna, this is not the first time that he has been caught on the wrong side of things.<br /><br /><strong>Balkrishna’s multi-billion dollar empire is not without its controversies<br /></strong>Back in 2011, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a case of forgery and cheating against Balkrishna. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/small-business/people/fake-degrees-and-passports-here-is-the-real-story-of-acharya-balakrishna-ramdevs-close-aide-and-patanjali-ceo/slidelist/54365692.cms">According to the CBI</a>, the degree that Balkrishna got from the Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya in Varanasi was fake. And, it was on the basis of this fake degree that Balkrishna had procured his passport.<br /><br />The administration of the university also <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/the-rise-and-fall-of-balkrishna-111073000065_1.html">claimed</a> that they had no record of ever giving Balkrishna a degree.<br /><br />However, the case was closed two years later due to lack of evidence. <br /><br />In 2012, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) also filed a case against Balkrishna over money laundering charges. These were dropped after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) came into power in 2014. <br /><br /><div type="image" title="6738550d3499f71f5dbe014dfcd955bd_edited" msid="81295019" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Acharya Balkrishna (L), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat (C), and Baba Ramdev (R) in conversation during an RSS program in Haridwar in 2014&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />Balkrishna holds 94% stake in Patanjali but he does not take home a salary, according to the <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/how-acharya-balkrishna-built-a-multi-crore-company/built-for-success/slideshow/60853399.cms">Economic Times</a>. He claims to work 15 hours a day, regardless of whether it is a Sunday or any other holiday.<br /><br />According to financial data accessed by business intelligence firm <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/patanjali-ayurved-s-revenue-and-profit-rise-but-still-far-from-glory-days-120111301248_1.html">Tofler</a>, Patanjali reported a net profit of ₹423 crore for FY20. But, even with that positive growth, Patanjali is far from its glory days of yore where its revenue used to double year-on-year.<br /><br />The company has been facing issues since the goods and services tax (GST) was introduced in 2017, disrupting its operations. Patanjali also <a href="https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/patanjali-ayurved-completes-acquisition-of-bankrupt-ruchi-soya-for-rs-4-350-crore-11576684912487.html">acquired Ruchi Soya in 2019</a>, which placed further burden on its financials. <br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/thelife/personalities/news/ritesh-agarwal-kishore-biyani-and-acharya-balkrishna-net-worth-went-down-in-year-2020-as-per-hurun-list/slidelist/81293374.cms">OYO’s Ritesh Agarwal and Future Group’s Kishore Biyani did not make the cut this year to be among India’s richest billionaires</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/thelife/personalities/news/gautam-adani-naveen-jindal-anand-mahindra-and-kumar-mangalam-birla-increased-their-net-worth-in-2020/slidelist/81290572.cms">Gautam Adani, Naveen Jindal, Anand Mahindra and Kumar Mangalam Birla increased their net worth despite COVID-19 wreaking havoc</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/top-10-tech-billionaires-in-india-as-per-hurun-rich-list-2021/slidelist/81287575.cms">Top 10 tech billionaires in India — Shiv Nadar saw his net worth increase by $10 billion</a></strong><br />

Patanjali’s Acharya Balkrishna is the biggest loser on Hurun’s Rich List of Indian billionaires

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>LONDON - I meet Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas inside Portcullis House, a sort of vast Parliamentary greenhouse in which MPs and their aides drink coffee, chat and brief journalists.<p>In the daytime, it is bright and airy but by late afternoon in the winter the lack of artificial lighting means it is shrouded in semi-darkness. I grab Lucas&#xa0;as she searches for me in the gloom.</p><p>Lucas&#xa0;is friendly and immediately engaging. Unusually&#xa0;for a prominent politician, she is not accompanied by any aides or minders. We sit down and begin what turns into a long and expansive conversation covering everything from progressive alliances, to homeopathy, to her disappointment in Jeremy Corbyn.</p><p>We begin by talking about her upbringing in a reserved middle-class family in Worcestershire.</p><p>"My family were small-c conservatives," she tells me.</p><p>"But the miners' strike and the Falklands were things that kind of came crashing into an upbringing that had been pretty conservative and raised a lot of questions about how does the Daily Mail, which was the staple newspaper in the house, how does it really make sense given what I could see was happening in the world."</p><p>When&#xa0;Lucas got her hands on Jonathan Porritt's <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeing-Green-Politics-Ecology-Explained/dp/0631138935">book</a> "Seeing Green" it changed everything.</p><p>"Essentially, what it did was put forward an approach which made the links between the same kinds of world view that means that men have patriarchal rule over women and that the environment is being exploited and that nuclear weapons are seen to be a realistic and reasonable way of sorting out global conflict.</p><p>"So, what I found in that book was a sense of the connections between all the different issues which I had been concerned with but had not recognised the links between them until that point."</p><h2>Direct action</h2><p>Lucas became involved in a number of environmental and women's' groups and even took part in illegal "direct action" during protests. One such action was the <a href="http://www.genny.force9.co.uk/news/20/p6_7_apr07.pdf">"Snowball campaign"</a> in which protestors, including Lucas, cut the wire fencing at military bases in protest against nuclear weapons. It is a practice she has continued to adopt, including in 2013, when she was arrested alongside her son, for their part in a protest against fracking in Balcombe.</p><p>"I accept that as an elected politician I have a number of other tools that I can use to bring about change but I would also say that the Green party remains committed to appropriate non-violent direct action and I think it is a tool in some cases that is legitimate," she insists.</p><p>It is not a view that her Daily Mail-reading parents share, however.</p><p>"I think that they thought it was something I would quickly grow out of and were slightly embarrassed about. But I think that once I was elected that gave it a level of respectability that has since fortunately helped.</p><p>"But when my father got&#xa0;a phone call at the rotary club saying I have just been arrested at Balcombe then that&#xa0;didn't go down very well."</p><p>Lucas quickly rose to become a star of the green movement, before being elected as Green party leader and their&#xa0;first MP, winning the seat of Brighton Pavilion. At the time many&#xa0;commentators suggested that the Greens were a major threat to the then Miliband-led Labour party. However, Lucas was concerned about losing her seat, then held by just over a thousand votes, and stood aside to embed herself in her constituency.</p><p>Lucas has managed to increase her majority, but the rest of her party have failed to do as well. Her replacement as leader, Natalie Bennett, failed to achieve&#xa0;the same level of success as Lucas and the party has gradually slipped both in the polls and the national conversation. The election of Jeremy Corbyn, who shares many of the same views as the Greens, to the Labour leadership, is widely seen to have squeezed their electoral appeal as well as claiming their members.</p><h2>The Corbyn-squeeze</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Lucas admits that Corbyn has had an effect on the Greens.<p>"When he was first elected there were some Greens who joined Labour, that's no secret," she says.</p><p>"But our membership has stabilised and actually they're coming back now because they've been disappointed that Labour as a whole hasn't lived up to the kind of vision and leadership that Jeremy was setting out."</p><p>Disappointment is a word that crops up again and again as we discuss Corbyn.</p><p>Lucas has worked closely with the Labour leader over the years. The two were Chair and Vice-chair of the parliamentary group of&#xa0;Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and she says she still has "a lot of respect for him" - but suggests he has been taken over by his own party machine.</p><p>"Unfortunately the position with Labour right now is we don't know what their position is. Jeremy was pushed really hard on the Marr programme [last week] about Copeland and his position on nuclear. I understand the dilemma that he faces but it is desperately disappointing that you get somebody with those views in a position of influence and he is unable to bring the rest of his party with him."</p><p>She suggests that Corbyn's "heart isn't really in" the party's position on Brexit either.</p><p>"I think on Brexit overall Labour has been deeply disappointing. I think giving the government the green light on triggering Article 50, saying they would not under any circumstance vote against Article 50, handed away far too much to the Conservatives and any sort of leverage they had on that was gone.</p><p>"On freedom of movement it was incredibly disappointing to see Jeremy dealing with the pressure he was undoubtedly under which meant that he made three U-turns in one day because&#xa0;actually, you could tell that his heart just wasn't in talking about controls on freedom of movement.</p><p>"But that was the position he has been forced to take within his party."</p><p>Lucas and the Greens take an unashamedly pro-immigration position. However, it is telling that even Lucas is keen to talk about dealing&#xa0;with voter concerns about the issue.</p><p>"It is more important than ever that there is a Green party out there which is unequivocal about saying that we will stand up for the principle of freedom of movement. We believe not only that it is good for the economy but it is good for the society, it is good for our communities.</p><p>"But that doesn't mean to say there aren't ways that we can try to reduce the impact of sudden movements of people in certain areas."</p><p>I ask what she means by this.</p><p>"If you start off from the position that immigrants actually bring more economic value than they take out then let's make sure that value is concentrated in the areas where they're moving. So all I'm saying is let's put in some of the resources that those migrants - I hate the word migrants - those EU nationals, are bringing in with them."</p><p>Doesn't this sound an awful lot like Labour's migrant impact fund?</p><p>"I think that phrase is an unhelpful one because it immediately frames migration as a problem. But yes that's the basic idea."</p><p>She tells me that, unlike Labour, the Greens do not believe there will be "masses of opportunities from Brexit." Instead, she thinks it will be a "disaster for the environment, for universities, and for business."</p><p><span>For these reasons, she says the chances of her voting to trigger Article 50 in March are "very low."</span></p><p>"We are saying that if the kind of Brexit on offer looks as if it is going to be deeply damaging to the country, to my constituency and to the principles the Green party has always stood on then I don't see how in good conscience we can support that."</p><h2>Are the Greens anti-science?</h2><p>One allegation often levelled at the Greens is that they are anti-science. Their positions on issues like genetically modified crops have led to them being labelled as Luddites, while Lucas herself has been criticised for signing a parliamentary motion supporting homeopathy. I ask if her position has changed since.</p><p>"I think that EDM [a parliamentary motion Lucas signed on the issue] has been widely misconstrued," she insists.</p><p>"That EDM wasn't saying bring about homeopathy tomorrow. It was saying let's apply an evidence base to homoeopathy as we do to other medicines so I think the Green party remains pretty open."</p><p>Widespread evidence that homoeopathy does not work, or at least is only as effective as a placebo, does not seem to have convinced either Lucas or the Greens.</p><p>"We want to see a stronger evidence base," she insists. "Many people in homeopathic professions would say that the way the evidence is being used is not fair. It is not measuring like with like.</p><p>"It is not a major part of our policy," she adds, perhaps in anticipation of the criticism.</p><p>I ask if she's ever used it herself. She pauses.</p><p>"Yes I have."</p><p>Did it work?</p><p>"I can't really tell you whether it worked or not because who knows what would have happened. There wasn't a counter-factual to it."</p><p>We go on to talk about climate change, for which the evidence is overwhelming. She says she is concerned that Donald Trump will reverse much of the progress made by former-President Obama.</p><p>"Trump is surrounding himself with so many climate sceptics and when he himself says he thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax then there are real concerns."</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>She says she fears Theresa May will also sacrifice environmental protections in order to get a trade deal with the new US president.<p>"I don't think there's going to be any appetite in the Trump administration to build in any kind of environmental protections into a trade deal. And if our government are so gung-ho about getting a quick US trade deal to demonstrate their post-Brexit success then the environment will certainly be a loser in that process."</p><p>Lucas is an articulate speaker, fiercely intelligent and clearly highly principled. Yet it's hard to see how she and her party fit into this new world of populist <keyword id="6358883" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Politics">politics</keyword> as typified by Trump and Bernie Sanders in the US. She disagrees.</p><p>"In a way, there are opportunities here for the Greens because what we're seeing is a massive disillusionment with politics as usual and with politicians' who are out of touch with their constituents. I think the Greens do politics differently and so there is an opportunity for us to cut through," she insists.</p><p>"To the extent that Bernie Sanders was about building a movement of people where challenging things that up until then were unchallengeable, then absolutely we want to be seen in that mould."</p><h2>Progressive alliances</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Yet the polls, some of which out&#xa0;her party as low as 2%, are not encouraging. Whether it is the Corbyn-squeeze, or the rise of right-wing populism, the Greens are currently struggling to find a route into the national conversation. For Lucas, the key to both her party's revival and the success of progressive parties in general, must come from forging progressive alliances.<p>The party already trialled this in the recent Richmond by-election where they stood aside and helped the Liberal Democrat candidate Sarah Olney defeat Zac Goldsmith. However, in Copeland, where Labour face a tough battle to hold onto the seat against the Conservatives, the Greens have decided not to step aside. I ask her why not.</p><p>"There was a consideration but that consideration wouldn't have taken as long as it might have done given that the candidate Labour are going to field [Gillian Troughton] is pro-nuclear and that was a big problem. And I imagine if there had been any idea of a candidate being anti-nuclear and pro-electoral reform then there might have been more scope for discussions."</p><p>But surely parties cannot agree on everything in a progressive alliance? Where do you draw the line?</p><p>"Well it will be different in different constituencies and that is appropriate because what a progressive alliance is not and what it should not be is some sort of backroom deal between parties which is then presented. Ideally you get local communities involved."</p><p>Last year Lucas took part in a fringe event at the Labour party conference about electoral reform. She says it was "standing room only" event and suggests she has had a number of conversations with Labour MPs "both on and off the record" about forging an alliance between the two parties on the issue.</p><p>"I think there is an appetite that goes well beyond their public position on this," she insists.</p><p>She picks out Jonathan Reynolds on electoral reform and Clive Lewis on progressive alliances, as two figures she believes the party can do business with.</p><p>"Clive Lewis has been very outspoken and very brave frankly in his support for a progressive alliance," she says.</p><p>However, it is an idea that has met resistance from Corbyn himself. I ask her why she thinks this is.</p><p>"I think unfortunately working with others can sometimes be perceived as a form of weakness and obviously he is under a lot of pressure now to demonstrate that his leadership alone can lead Labour to a victory at the next election. But I think probably even he, in his private moments, would reflect that it is going to be immensely difficult on their own [to win] and I think more and more people around him are coming to that same conclusion."</p><div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/theresa-may-britain-european-union-eu-hard-brexit-europe-2017-1">Theresa May: 'No partial membership of EU'</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="9vdmJ5ODE67uGrvzjH5xfKGB_cPu0KIJ" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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