Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for Tuesday,
Speaker 1: August eighth, twenty twenty three. And despite my voice catching there,
Speaker 1: I feel a lot better than I did yesterday. Thanks
Speaker 1: for asking.
Speaker 2: Let's get to the tech news.
Speaker 1: And we've got a lot of AI related stories today.
Speaker 1: No big surprise there. It has been the topic of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, at least whenever Elon Musk isn't demanding
Speaker 1: all the headlines. And it's also sadly no surprise that
Speaker 1: one of the AI stories we're covering today has to
Speaker 1: do with faulty facial recognition technology and the mistake of
Speaker 1: relying on that tech for the purposes of law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Porsche Woodruff, a black woman in Detroit, found herself arrested
Speaker 1: and attained for eleven hours when police acted on an
Speaker 1: incorrect facial recognition match while seeking a suspect in a
Speaker 1: carjacking and robbery crime. Not only that Portiae is eight
Speaker 1: months pregnant, and the surveillance footage from the crime in
Speaker 1: question showed a woman who very much was not eight
Speaker 1: months pregnant. So not only was this a case of
Speaker 1: facial recognition software giving a false positive, it's also a
Speaker 1: case of cops apparently working under the assumption that a
Speaker 1: woman can go from not visibly pregnant to eight months
Speaker 1: pregnant in a very short amount of time, which is wild.
Speaker 1: So here's kind of what unfolded. A man reported being
Speaker 1: the victim of a robbery and carjacking. The police were
Speaker 1: able to secure surveillance footage, and they used a tool
Speaker 1: called data works plus to unmatches against mug shots that
Speaker 1: were stored in a police database. Woodroff had been arrested
Speaker 1: back in twenty fifteen, so her mugshot was one of
Speaker 1: the images in that database. This tool pulled a match
Speaker 1: between her mugshot and the surveillance footage, and the guy
Speaker 1: who was robbed also mistook a photo of Woodroff her
Speaker 1: mugshot as that as the same person as the perpetrator.
Speaker 1: So the police go and they arrest Woodroff, and of
Speaker 1: course she was not involved in the crime, could not
Speaker 1: have been, and just the fact that she was, you know,
Speaker 1: eight months pregnant should have been the immediate giveaway that
Speaker 1: this is not the same person. The New York Times
Speaker 1: subsequently reported that Woodroff's case was the third in the
Speaker 1: city of Detroit alone that resulted in a wrongful arrest
Speaker 1: due to incorrect facial recognition matches, and that all three
Speaker 1: of those cases, as well as three other cases that
Speaker 1: were not in Detroit, all involved black people. I think
Speaker 1: it's safe to say that even the faulty facial recognition
Speaker 1: technology is able to see a pattern emerging here, and
Speaker 1: it's one of racial bias in surveillance and identification tools. Now,
Speaker 1: as we have covered on this podcast, several cities and
Speaker 1: jurisdictions have banned the use of facial recognition for law
Speaker 1: enforcement purposes. Personally, I think that is merited. I can't
Speaker 1: help but imagine what being wrongfully arrested must be like.
Speaker 1: It's got to be incredibly traumatic and disruptive and.
Speaker 2: Potentially cause lots of issues.
Speaker 1: In your life, and you at no point were at
Speaker 1: fault for any of it. And if a technology is
Speaker 1: disproportionately leading to that kind of thing, we should not
Speaker 1: be using that technology for those purposes. I don't know
Speaker 1: how there's any argument against that. If the tool is
Speaker 1: leading to innocent people getting arrested and their lives getting
Speaker 1: up ended in the process.
Speaker 2: You got to stop using the tool.
Speaker 1: British researchers showed how a deep learning algorithm, once trained,
Speaker 1: would be able to decode keystrokes just from the sound
Speaker 1: of typing. This isn't totally new. I've heard of these
Speaker 1: kinds of attacks before. But imagine for a moment that
Speaker 1: you are set up in some public space and someone
Speaker 1: else happens to have their phone out and you know,
Speaker 1: you don't know this, but what they're actually doing is
Speaker 1: activating the phone's microphone, and they're picking up on the
Speaker 1: sound of you tippity tappany typing away, and you're oblivious
Speaker 1: to any threats. So like maybe you're you're like being
Speaker 1: careful with your screen or whatever, but you're not thinking
Speaker 1: about the actual keystrokes. And meanwhile, a computer program on
Speaker 1: the other end of that microphone is effectively transcribing everything
Speaker 1: you've typed, potentially including your login information. This is an
Speaker 1: acoustic attack, and I bet that makes all those mechanical
Speaker 1: keyboard clackie clackie types out there a little nervous. So
Speaker 1: is it possible that some hacker out there could get
Speaker 1: your log in credentials just by having a computer listen
Speaker 1: to you type. Technically, yes, it is possible. It is
Speaker 1: not necessarily straightforward or easy to do. It is possible.
Speaker 1: So if you're at a location, then you need to
Speaker 1: know that is a possibility. But like a lot of
Speaker 1: locations have a lot of other noise, it's hard to
Speaker 1: set up a microphone in such a way that you're
Speaker 1: going to get a very clear recording of that sound.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you're at a coffee shop, you should just
Speaker 1: start making CLACKI clacky noises with your mouth at the
Speaker 1: same time as you type, you know, to throw off
Speaker 1: any potential batties who are trying to listen in on you.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a wild world out there. Reuter's reports that the
Speaker 1: Walt Disney Company has created a task force to research
Speaker 1: how artificial intelligence could be used within that company, which
Speaker 1: of course encompasses lots of different divisions. You've got the
Speaker 1: entertainment division, You've got theme parks, You've got merchandising, you've
Speaker 1: got advertising. There's tons of businesses underneath the umbrella of
Speaker 1: Walt Disney. Well, the company currently has nearly a dozen
Speaker 1: job openings that mention artificial intelligence research and development. So
Speaker 1: this does look like it's a big push and could
Speaker 1: include things like imagineering, but it also ranges to other stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, theme parks to advertising to also Disney television.
Speaker 1: And that last one is pretty notable because many of
Speaker 1: the contentious elements that are at the center of the
Speaker 1: ongoing strikes in Hollywood, which if you weren't aware, involves
Speaker 1: both writers and actors. They're both on strike in Hollywood
Speaker 1: right now. Well, one of the things they're striking about
Speaker 1: is all about how studios should or should not use
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence moving forward. Reuter's cites some unnamed folks connected
Speaker 1: to Disney, no people who didn't want to have this
Speaker 1: get back to them, but they said that the company
Speaker 1: really has little choice here, that if it doesn't incorporate
Speaker 1: AI into its strategy, it runs the risk of becoming obsolete.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's true.
Speaker 1: But my knee jerk reaction kind of is triggered because
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and four, Disney famously shut down
Speaker 1: its two D animation studios, and it was unthinkable for
Speaker 1: a company that had built its reputation on traditional two
Speaker 1: D animation to suddenly turn its back on it. It
Speaker 1: has subsequently changed that, But for a while, it looked
Speaker 1: like two D animation and Disney were just things of
Speaker 1: the past, and it just seemed like there was this
Speaker 1: attitude among Disney executive leadership that computer animation was somehow
Speaker 1: not just different from traditional hand drawn two D animation,
Speaker 1: but innately better than two D animated films. Like, audiences
Speaker 1: didn't want to see two D animation, they just wanted
Speaker 1: computer animation, and for proof of that you would look
Speaker 1: at Pixar. Here's the problem. Pixar was investing heavily in
Speaker 1: developing great stories to tell, and yes, the computer animation
Speaker 1: was getting more and more impressive with every single film,
Speaker 1: but they were really putting story first, whereas the animated
Speaker 1: side over at Disney had fallen a long way since
Speaker 1: the early days of the so called Disney Renaissance, which
Speaker 1: included movies like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the
Speaker 1: Beast in Aladdin. You know, if you look at nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, for example, I would say I don't think
Speaker 1: Toy Story, which came out in nineteen ninety five, was
Speaker 1: a better movie than Pocahontas, which also came out in
Speaker 1: ninety five, just because Toy Story was computer animated and
Speaker 1: Pocahontas was hand drawn. I think Toy Story was a
Speaker 1: better movie because the script was better. But you know,
Speaker 1: Pocahontas also had to follow up on the amazing work
Speaker 1: of Ashman and Mancoln and Ashman had passed away in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, so there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: to getting factors there. Anyway, Disney hasn't really commented on
Speaker 1: how it plans to incorporate AI into its processes. It's
Speaker 1: planning on doing it, but it hasn't talked about what
Speaker 1: that might look like. So you know, you could have
Speaker 1: AI incorporated into very mundane stuff, right, like automating things
Speaker 1: like scheduling and finding the most efficient means to do that,
Speaker 1: which isn't necessarily impacting the creative side of the business
Speaker 1: that much. Right, if you're using it to handle stuff
Speaker 1: that is otherwise tedious and takes up a lot of
Speaker 1: time but is easy enough to automate, that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a bad thing. That can end up making a company
Speaker 1: more efficient without also displacing employees in the process, or
Speaker 1: at least freeing those employees up to do more rewarding
Speaker 1: work instead of something that's really tedious. The concern is
Speaker 1: whether or not that use of AI could end up
Speaker 1: replacing very important and creative roles for people, whether it's
Speaker 1: actors or writers or imagineers or whomever. So yeah, big
Speaker 1: concern in AI with Disney. Yesterday, Zoom made a change
Speaker 1: to its terms of service after receiving some pretty harsh
Speaker 1: criticism from customers over the weekend. So around Sunday, people
Speaker 1: who were paying attention to zoom terms of service started
Speaker 1: to post screenshots of those terms, and they included a
Speaker 1: passage saying the company has the right to collect, store,
Speaker 1: and use quote unquote service generated data. Now that alone
Speaker 1: seems a bit concerning. Right. Let's say your company uses
Speaker 1: Zoom for business meetings. You probably don't like the idea
Speaker 1: of Zoom potentially snooping in on your calls. On top
Speaker 1: of that, the term said that Zoom could use that
Speaker 1: data essentially to train AI, and that really got people upset.
Speaker 1: The thought that their video calls could be used as
Speaker 1: material to train another aimodel seemed invasive. Now, a Zoom
Speaker 1: rep explained that the collection features are part of an
Speaker 1: opt in system users can choose to enable generative AI
Speaker 1: features such as transcription services, and the company does not
Speaker 1: use any customer content without first gaining the consent from
Speaker 1: the customer. To that end, now, Zoom has updated its
Speaker 1: terms of use to clearly say it will only collect
Speaker 1: audio and video data with consent from the user first.
Speaker 1: In related news, Zoom leadership has also called on Zoom
Speaker 1: employees who live within fifty miles of a Zoom office
Speaker 1: to actually attend work in person at least two days
Speaker 1: a week.
Speaker 2: So that's right.
Speaker 1: The company that made the tool talented as one of
Speaker 1: the most important during lockdown, the one that enabled remote work,
Speaker 1: is now restricting remote work at the corporate level at Zoom,
Speaker 1: which is you know how the tables have turned. I
Speaker 1: guess okay, we're going to take a quick break. When
Speaker 1: we come back, we've got some more tech news. We're back,
Speaker 1: and actually have a couple of other AI stories to
Speaker 1: finish up with before we move on to other tech news,
Speaker 1: so we're not done with AI just yet. AP News
Speaker 1: reports that the folks over at Dungeons and Dragons, you know,
Speaker 1: Wizards of the Coast, which in turn is part of Hasbro,
Speaker 1: are now telling their artists not to use artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: as part of the generative process to create fantasy arts,
Speaker 1: so they're telling the artists, hey, don't use AI when
Speaker 1: you're making art for us. This comes after several D
Speaker 1: and D fans raised questions about an illustration that included
Speaker 1: a giant that they said looked a little weird, like
Speaker 1: perhaps it had not been made by a human being,
Speaker 1: and they asked, hey, was this made by a robot?
Speaker 2: So D and D reached.
Speaker 1: Out and contacted the artist, talked with them, found out
Speaker 1: that yes, there was some use of AI generative features
Speaker 1: to collaborate and make this art, and the company now
Speaker 1: is clarifying rules on what can and cannot be used
Speaker 1: to make fantasy art for the games. The particular piece
Speaker 1: that triggered you folks to ask, is this AI generated
Speaker 1: is actually going to be appearing soon in an expansion
Speaker 1: book called Big Bie Presents Glory of the Giants. I
Speaker 1: think it comes out next week in fact, so maybe
Speaker 1: collectors will rush out and grab a copy in case
Speaker 1: future editions will remove the AI generated giant person. But
Speaker 1: you might ask why is D and D, Why is
Speaker 1: Wizard of the Coast, And perhaps by extension, Hasbro saying
Speaker 1: don't use AI to generate fantasy art. Why is that
Speaker 1: a big deal? Well, part of it is about copyright
Speaker 1: quest like who owns the copyright to a machine generated
Speaker 1: piece of work. Obviously, Wizards of the Coast want to
Speaker 1: be able to copyright their their stuff and not have
Speaker 1: some other party claim ownership of something that's featured in
Speaker 1: a Wizards of the Coast work. But also there's the
Speaker 1: issue of you know, copying another person's style. Right. If
Speaker 1: artist A produces a ton of fantasy art and then
Speaker 1: artist B uses a generative tool that coincidentally is referencing
Speaker 1: artists a work and it's doing so extensively, and then
Speaker 1: creates a new piece in the style of artist A,
Speaker 1: well then it's almost like artist B is copying Artist A.
Speaker 1: And you could argue, well, then that means artist A
Speaker 1: could have landed this gig and gotten a paying gig
Speaker 1: out of it, but instead their work was then you know,
Speaker 1: sort of repurposed and reimagined without their consent. This is
Speaker 1: an ongoing issue with generative AI in the visual arts realm.
Speaker 1: There's also a very similar effect, the same problem that's
Speaker 1: going on within the written word. Right. There are authors
Speaker 1: and poets who are arguing that AI models being trained
Speaker 1: on published works are effectively copying these folks without their consent. So,
Speaker 1: if you'll excuse me, I need to roll to see
Speaker 1: if my AI generated image of an elf will deceive
Speaker 1: Wizards of the Coast and oh, critical fail. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I guess the fingers are all nudely and there's like
Speaker 1: fifteen of them, so I guess that's a dead giveaway.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of folks have voiced concerns about
Speaker 1: AI and the possible dangers that it could bring, and
Speaker 1: we can now count the Pope as one of those voices.
Speaker 1: Pope Francis has called on a global reflection today that
Speaker 1: is all about how AI could be really dangerous. Pope
Speaker 1: Francis has said in the past he is largely unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with modern technology, including stuff like computers and the Internet,
Speaker 1: but that he also sees that these tools can be
Speaker 1: incredibly helpful when they are put to appropriate use, which
Speaker 1: you know, is a refreshing take from someone who is
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with technology that they recognize tools aren't necessarily good
Speaker 1: or bad in of themselves. It's really all in how
Speaker 1: we make use of those tools, and if we commit
Speaker 1: to using them. In ways that aren't harmful, we can
Speaker 1: see great benefit. But some of these tools like AI,
Speaker 1: for example, have the potential to be very dangerous if
Speaker 1: we are using them improperly or if we don't have
Speaker 1: a full understanding of the consequences before we use them,
Speaker 1: so we have to take extra care when we're working
Speaker 1: with them. It's not that AI is not worthwhile or
Speaker 1: could never do anything positive. That's clearly not the case.
Speaker 1: We just have to be very very methodical in our
Speaker 1: approach to using AI, and right now you could argue
Speaker 1: that is not what we're seeing. Apple has reportedly struck
Speaker 1: a huge deal with chip manufacturer TSMC out of Taiwan
Speaker 1: that will see Apple purchase essentially all of TSMC's chips
Speaker 1: made with their next generation manufacturing process, which is called
Speaker 1: the three nanometer manufacturing process. Just as a reminder, once
Speaker 1: upon a time, when we would use things like nanometer
Speaker 1: to describe the chip manufacturing process that actually referenced the
Speaker 1: size of individual components found on the chips, that you
Speaker 1: would actually see stuff on the chips that measured at
Speaker 1: that unit. But these days it's really just a naming convention.
Speaker 1: It's really just to designate the generation of the chip
Speaker 1: manufacturing process, the individual elements on the chips are not
Speaker 1: three nanometers in size. That would end up being a
Speaker 1: big disaster because of the way quantum physics works. So yeah,
Speaker 1: just a reminder that the whole nanometer thing, it's just
Speaker 1: a naming convention now. It doesn't actually reference anything other
Speaker 1: than this is the newest one and it has to
Speaker 1: keep getting smaller. So it does raise questions of do
Speaker 1: we go down to the atomic scale once we get
Speaker 1: past one nanometer. Anyway, according to the information, Apple has
Speaker 1: essentially ordered every single TSMC three nanometer chip at least
Speaker 1: in the short term, and by short term I mean
Speaker 1: Apple will have exclusive use of chips made by that
Speaker 1: manufacturing process from TSMC for about a year, and that
Speaker 1: definitely gives Apple a leg up on the competition that
Speaker 1: wants to use TSMC's chips. There are other fabricators out there.
Speaker 1: TSMC is not the only game in town. It's just
Speaker 1: the biggest one. Meanwhile, there is a political battle surrounding
Speaker 1: TSMC's planned fabrication facility that would be here in the
Speaker 1: United States, in Arizona. So the Taiwan based company plans
Speaker 1: this fabrication plant in Arizona, but just last month announced
Speaker 1: that there was going to be a construction delay that
Speaker 1: would last until twenty twenty five. The reason being, according
Speaker 1: to the company, is that there are a lack of
Speaker 1: skilled workers here in the US who would be needed
Speaker 1: to prepare and open the facility, not to work once
Speaker 1: it is open, but to actually get everything in place
Speaker 1: as well. They're just the talent isn't here, and instead
Speaker 1: TSMC wants to bring around five hundred employees from Taiwan
Speaker 1: to the United States to do that work instead. That
Speaker 1: has led to US politicians weighing in and they have
Speaker 1: argued that these jobs should go to US workers. Now
Speaker 1: there's a lot going on here, and it gets very
Speaker 1: messy and it gets very political. But from a high level,
Speaker 1: the US decades ago seeded as in got rid of
Speaker 1: pretty much all major chip fabrication because it's expensive. It
Speaker 1: is very expensive to build chip fabrication plants. You have
Speaker 1: to update them constantly because as we were just talking about,
Speaker 1: you're always evolving the technology to make more powerful chips,
Speaker 1: which means you got to retool everything. Sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to build totally new facilities and that's a huge investment
Speaker 1: and a lot of US companies got out of that
Speaker 1: game ages ago, and instead that work went to places
Speaker 1: like Taiwan and TSMC in particular. So because America got
Speaker 1: rid of didn't totally get rid of chip fabrication, but
Speaker 1: largely pushed that out to other places in the world,
Speaker 1: you might say that TSMC could at least have a
Speaker 1: partly legit point to make that the US lacks the
Speaker 1: experts needed to open an advanced fabrication facility simply because
Speaker 1: the US hasn't really been focused on that part of
Speaker 1: chip manufacturing for a while. Yes, in the US you
Speaker 1: have a lot of people developing the next chips, designing
Speaker 1: the next generation of chips, but the actual fabrication is
Speaker 1: taking place elsewhere. So while the expertise is definitely in design,
Speaker 1: the argument is it's not in creating the fabrication facilities,
Speaker 1: and that's where the problem is. On the flip side,
Speaker 1: there's a concern that the reason TSMC really wants to
Speaker 1: bring in Taiwanese workers to the US is not just
Speaker 1: because they have expertise in the area, but also because
Speaker 1: they're less likely to resist a push to work really
Speaker 1: long hours, including working weekends and stuff, whereas US workers
Speaker 1: have this pesky habit of arguing that they need to
Speaker 1: be you know, fairly compensated and have work life balance.
Speaker 1: So in other words, there's a concern that TSMC is
Speaker 1: really looking to exploit a workforce in an effort to
Speaker 1: keep costs down and to speed up building out the facilities.
Speaker 1: As for what happens once the facility opens, TSMC says
Speaker 1: it's committed to providing around twelve thousand jobs and that
Speaker 1: US employees will fill those roles, so that like the
Speaker 1: actual jobs of working at the facility will go to
Speaker 1: US citizens, not you know, it won't be Taiwanese workers
Speaker 1: brought over to do that particular work. So yeah, like
Speaker 1: I said, it is political. There is a technical side
Speaker 1: to it too, but it's messy. And this is why
Speaker 1: you can't just leave politics out of discussions of technology,
Speaker 1: because politics affects us and it affects the tech sector
Speaker 1: a lot. In fact, you know, we can often see
Speaker 1: it most acutely in the tech sector. Not that it's
Speaker 1: not impacting other sectors as well, it's just when it
Speaker 1: hits tech, people take notice because it's high profile stuff.
Speaker 1: So we can't really avoid it here. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the actual story is back here. I mean, it
Speaker 1: may very well be that TSMC could not find the
Speaker 1: talent they needed in order to prepare the fabrication facility
Speaker 1: properly here in the US. Maybe that's true, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's not. I just don't know, but I do know
Speaker 1: that it is an ongoing issue right now. So we'll
Speaker 1: have to see how that plays out in the short term. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got a few more stories to cover, but before
Speaker 1: I can get to that, let's take another quick break.
Speaker 2: We're back.
Speaker 1: Ours Technica has an article about how scientists at the
Speaker 1: Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California have, for the second
Speaker 1: time now, produced a fusion reaction that generated more energy
Speaker 1: than was needed to initiate the reaction. We're gonna put
Speaker 1: an asterisk on that because we're gonna come back to
Speaker 1: it now. I have talked about fusion a lot on
Speaker 1: the show, but just as a quick reminder, fusion occurs
Speaker 1: when you take two lightweight atoms, like hydrogen atoms, for example,
Speaker 1: and then you blast those atoms with enough pressure and
Speaker 1: or energy like heat, in order to.
Speaker 2: Fuse them into a new.
Speaker 1: Atom, helium. In this case, this is what happens in
Speaker 1: the sun. You know, hydrogen is forged into helium at
Speaker 1: a temperature of millions of degrees as how does or
Speaker 1: why does the sunshine would tell us anyway, in this process,
Speaker 1: you also end up with a release of energy, right,
Speaker 1: That's why the sun actually does shine. It's releasing it energy,
Speaker 1: it's not just doing this process. So if you end
Speaker 1: up with more energy than you used to start the reaction,
Speaker 1: you've got a potentially viable alternative to other kinds of
Speaker 1: power facilities, you know, like coal power plants, or even
Speaker 1: things like solar and wind farms, or traditional nuclear power
Speaker 1: plants which rely on nuclear fission. That's the process of
Speaker 1: splitting heavy atoms into lighter atoms, and that also releases
Speaker 1: a huge amount of energy in the process, but that
Speaker 1: also creates things like nuclear waste, which you have to
Speaker 1: figure out how do you process that or deal with
Speaker 1: it or store it. It comes with a lot of
Speaker 1: again political issues that make that technology difficult to pursue.
Speaker 1: Here in Georgia, we actually had a nuclear power plant
Speaker 1: come online for the first time in decades, and it
Speaker 1: was supposed to have been built like fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: I think at this point somewhere around there. But there
Speaker 1: were so many different delays and then the the cost
Speaker 1: of building out the facility exploded as a result of that.
Speaker 1: So even though the technology is proven, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of drawbacks to nuclear fission. So nuclear fusion could
Speaker 1: be a way to have an alternative that doesn't have
Speaker 1: the same issues that nuclear fission has, but it's hard
Speaker 1: to do so. Researchers have managed to create a few
Speaker 1: fusion reactions over the years, including some uncontrolled ones in
Speaker 1: the testing of the fusion bomb, but typically when you
Speaker 1: were trying to make a fusion reactor for the purposes
Speaker 1: of power generation, the result was that you were getting
Speaker 1: an energy output that was less than the amount of
Speaker 1: energy you were using to initiate the reaction, meaning you're
Speaker 1: operating at a net loss. Right, you're using more energy
Speaker 1: to start a reaction, then you're getting out of the reaction.
Speaker 1: That is not a viable way to generate power lose
Speaker 1: energy in the process. This most recent experiment generated three
Speaker 1: point one five megadewels of energy, and the laser that
Speaker 1: was lasers that were used to initiate this reaction. We're
Speaker 1: blasting a two point oh five megadules amount of energy
Speaker 1: at the fuel, So two point oh five energy is
Speaker 1: hitting the fuel, the reaction generates three point one five
Speaker 1: megadels of energy. That means you're getting about one and
Speaker 1: a half times more energy out than you're putting in
Speaker 1: with the laser. Now, let's go back to that asterisk
Speaker 1: I said about, you know, creating more energy, or not creating,
Speaker 1: but releasing more energy than you're pouring into it. Now,
Speaker 1: the lasers did emit two point oh five megadels of energy. However,
Speaker 1: the draw from the power grid to create those lasers
Speaker 1: was much, much, much larger. So when you step back
Speaker 1: and you say, all right, well how much energy did
Speaker 1: it take for me to make a laser that could
Speaker 1: emit two point zero five megadels of energy, that's where
Speaker 1: you start to see that you're having to use a
Speaker 1: lot more power to get that three point one five
Speaker 1: mega jewels out of the reaction. So that means ultimately
Speaker 1: it's a net loss when you look at it from
Speaker 1: a big picture standpoint. According to Ours Technica, scientists think
Speaker 1: we're going to have to hit energy generation that's around
Speaker 1: thirty to one hundred times more than what the lasers
Speaker 1: are blasting out in order for fusion to be a
Speaker 1: viable power source.
Speaker 2: That is a huge leap from.
Speaker 1: One and a half time, so, which is what we
Speaker 1: saw in this most recent experiment. You know, we have
Speaker 1: to get up to thirty to one hundred times in
Speaker 1: order to reach efficiencies where we're able to get more
Speaker 1: energy out than we put in. Plus we have to
Speaker 1: make it something that can be repeatable rapidly. Right now,
Speaker 1: you're talking about months between experiments at this laboratory. A
Speaker 1: power plant is going to need to do this many
Speaker 1: times a second in order to continue lead generate energy
Speaker 1: for the purposes or release energy. I keep saying generate.
Speaker 1: You know, energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It's
Speaker 1: really just released or converted from one form to another.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: You would have to make that sustainable in order to
Speaker 1: do things like create electricity for people. Otherwise you would
Speaker 1: just have these spikes and they wouldn't be useful for anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could say like, wow, we generated a ton of
Speaker 1: energy there. We released a huge amount of energy, But
Speaker 1: unless you can make that something that can consistently provide electricity,
Speaker 1: it's not really that useful. However, if we are able
Speaker 1: to crack that code, we would have an incredible future
Speaker 1: ahead of us. So let's hope for it, and let's
Speaker 1: also hope that it's not a perpetual twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: years situation. You know, that's where scientists say we're twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty years out from a technology maturing, but then
Speaker 1: we never get there, like ten years later, we're still
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty years out. Let's hope it's not one
Speaker 1: of those cases. A while back, I talked about how
Speaker 1: Boeing has had to delay testing its Starliner crew vehicle
Speaker 1: with actual, you know, human astronauts after discovering some issues
Speaker 1: with the capsule's design. So, the purpose of the star
Speaker 1: Liner capsule, it's a spacecraft but looks a lot like,
Speaker 1: you know, like the old Apollo capsules. The purpose of
Speaker 1: the star Liner is to serve as a vehicle that
Speaker 1: will take astronauts to and from stuff like the International
Speaker 1: Space Station. Then you would have like the Orion capsule,
Speaker 1: which is larger. This is the one NASA plans to
Speaker 1: use for future Moon missions. However, last month, Boeing had
Speaker 1: to scrap test plans for the star Liner after review
Speaker 1: showed that the capsule's quote unquote soft links in its
Speaker 1: parachute system failed to measure up to NASA's safety requirements.
Speaker 1: So they had to go back to the design board
Speaker 1: and fix that and to replace those soft links, which
Speaker 1: they now have said they've done. Plus, Boeing had used
Speaker 1: some tape in the star Liner's wirings this ms that
Speaker 1: have been flagged as a potential fire hazard that under
Speaker 1: certain conditions they can become flammable. So Boeing has subsequently,
Speaker 1: you know, started to remove all that tape and replace
Speaker 1: it with other stuff. There are a few areas where
Speaker 1: Boeing says that's not feasible to be able to actually
Speaker 1: remove the tape because doing so would damage the vehicle
Speaker 1: in the process. So instead they're coating the tape with
Speaker 1: material that will be fire resistant so that you know,
Speaker 1: it still won't end up causing a potential disastrous fire
Speaker 1: inside the capsule. Now, all of this means that we're
Speaker 1: looking at twenty twenty four at the earliest for a
Speaker 1: test of the Starliner with a crew aboard. That is
Speaker 1: disappointing news for Boeing as well as for NASA, but
Speaker 1: NASA can continue to depend heavily on SpaceX's Dragon two
Speaker 1: vehicle in the meantime. In more optimistic space related news,
Speaker 1: NASA and the Department of Defense performed a recovery test
Speaker 1: for the Orion crew module. So the Orion, like the
Speaker 1: Apollo spacecraft of decades ago, is meant to splash down
Speaker 1: in the ocean, specifically the Pacific Ocean upon returning to Earth.
Speaker 1: Once it splashes down, a retrieval team will then maneuver
Speaker 1: to a few thousand yards of the spacecraft and then
Speaker 1: send retrieval teams to help the four astronauts exit the
Speaker 1: vehicle safely. So this particular test is part of the
Speaker 1: Artemis two mission. Artomis two will send astronauts around the
Speaker 1: back side of the Moon for the first time in
Speaker 1: many many decades. Artemis three is the one where astronauts
Speaker 1: will actually set boots on the Moon for the first
Speaker 1: time in ages. So the goal is to retrieve the
Speaker 1: crew safely in less than two hours after the capsule
Speaker 1: has splashed down in the ocean. The process involves Navy
Speaker 1: divers who first go and check the capsule to make
Speaker 1: sure that it's safe to deploy the raft that's around
Speaker 1: the capsule and for the crew to emerge from the capsule.
Speaker 1: The raft is called the front porch, and it serves
Speaker 1: as a platform for the crew to step out on
Speaker 1: once they leave the capsule, and from that point a
Speaker 1: different retrieval crew will actually fly out to the splash
Speaker 1: site and airlift the Orion crew and then transport them
Speaker 1: back to a recovery ship. Once the crew is safely
Speaker 1: aboard the recovery ship, then engineering teams will connect the
Speaker 1: Orion capsule to the ship so it can be towed
Speaker 1: back to land. So the test was successful, which is
Speaker 1: a good step toward Artemis two. I got a couple
Speaker 1: of article recommendations for you before I sign off. One
Speaker 1: is in the Verge. The article is titled why thread
Speaker 1: is Matter's biggest problem right now, and Jennifer Patson two
Speaker 1: A wrote the piece. This deals with the technologies that
Speaker 1: serve as the foundation for home automation tech and explains
Speaker 1: how some high level decisions are making things perhaps a
Speaker 1: little more complicated instead of simplifying them, which is what
Speaker 1: Matter was really supposed to do. I'll have to do
Speaker 1: a full episode about this in the future, but meanwhile,
Speaker 1: this is a great start if you're wondering why is
Speaker 1: home automation so darn complicated? Why are there so many
Speaker 1: competing different systems using proprietary approaches where you can't have
Speaker 1: interoperability between everything. This is a good way to kind
Speaker 1: of get a ground understanding for that. The second article
Speaker 1: I want to recommend is by Gregory Barber of Wired,
Speaker 1: and it's titled The Cloud is a Prison? Can the
Speaker 1: Local First Software Movement set us Free? So this piece
Speaker 1: talks about how developers and consumers and corporations are grappling
Speaker 1: with issues related to cloud platforms and a movement that
Speaker 1: could potentially bring about an alternative to cloud computing. And
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, it relies on technology that it has actually
Speaker 1: been around for quite some time. But really interesting because
Speaker 1: you know, seeing this this sort of seesaw movement between
Speaker 1: centralized computing, decentralized computing, local computing versus cloud computing. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of you can start to see patterns in
Speaker 1: the way people are using computers and what they do
Speaker 1: when they encounter challenges in one model versus another. So
Speaker 1: I highly recommend both those articles. As always, I have
Speaker 1: no connection to either of those publications or the authors
Speaker 1: behind those pieces.
Speaker 2: I do not know them.
Speaker 1: I just thought they were interesting and that if you
Speaker 1: are into tech and you really want to learn more,
Speaker 1: those are two good articles to read. Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1: This was a long episode for a news episode. Probably
Speaker 1: means Thursdays will be short. Here's hoping. I hope all
Speaker 1: of you are well and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an eye iHeartRadio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.