Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a love of all things tech, and as we
Speaker 1: close in on Halloween, I thought it would be fun
Speaker 1: to do some, you know, Halloween themed episodes of tech Stuff. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I'm also in the middle of doing about fifty other things,
Speaker 1: including some interesting changes for tech Stuff that will be
Speaker 1: coming up in the new years. Interesting changes meaning you're
Speaker 1: gonna get more of it. There's going to be not
Speaker 1: just uh, the classic tech stuff episodes that you've come
Speaker 1: to expect where I do the deep dives and technology,
Speaker 1: but some other stuff as well that I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to talk about more as we get closer. And I'm
Speaker 1: also working on the launch of a brand new podcast,
Speaker 1: or rather the revival of a podcast I used to
Speaker 1: host just in my spare time. It's coming up pretty
Speaker 1: soon in the middle of December. I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that as we get closer as well. So the short
Speaker 1: side of it is that all of these things have
Speaker 1: taken a lot of my time and attention in the
Speaker 1: short term, and uh, it turns out. The scariest word
Speaker 1: out of all the scary words around Halloween is deadline.
Speaker 1: I mean, the word dead is right there right spooky.
Speaker 1: And so I decided that rather than give you a
Speaker 1: halfhearted episode, something that was put together in a rush
Speaker 1: and not researched properly, I would rather play an episode
Speaker 1: that I recorded back in two thousand eighteen. This episode
Speaker 1: originally published on October thirty one, Halloween, two thousand eighteen.
Speaker 1: It is called tech Stuffs Spooky Halloween Spectacular. And I'll
Speaker 1: have a little more to say afterward, but I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy this episode from ten. Let's listen in. Hey
Speaker 1: the everybody, and welcome to Text Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strictly, executive vampire here at ull Stuff works Halloween.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this on Halloween. Otherwise, that was
Speaker 1: the worst possible introduction I could have given for this episode,
Speaker 1: and I I should feel badly about it, but I don't. Nope,
Speaker 1: But in celebration of Halloween, we are going to take
Speaker 1: a look at spooky thick or you know, scary tech,
Speaker 1: or at least some technology that could at least be
Speaker 1: kind of creepy. See, here's the problem. Running into y'all,
Speaker 1: I've already done an episode about tech in haunted house attractions,
Speaker 1: so that's finished. I already did one on ghost hunting
Speaker 1: technology years ago where I gave a skeptical view of
Speaker 1: what all that was about. And sooner or later, after
Speaker 1: you do a few years of a technology podcast, you
Speaker 1: start to run out of the fun stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So for this episode, I turned to the house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works website and I pulled up a classic article, which
Speaker 1: is also always a dangerous thing when you're talking technology.
Speaker 1: But this article is titled ten Scary modern Technologies. It
Speaker 1: was co written by David Ruse and my former editor
Speaker 1: and tech Stuff co host Chris Pallette. So get ready
Speaker 1: for some tech that goes bump in the night, I guess.
Speaker 1: And actually, to be more serious, the technology I'm listing
Speaker 1: here does not fall into the supernatural or ghostly categories
Speaker 1: at all. The technology represents stuff that could be unsettling
Speaker 1: or at worst could cause massive enormous problems due to
Speaker 1: overreach or unintended consequences. So there are some serious entries
Speaker 1: in here, even though I'm having a little bit of
Speaker 1: fun with the presentation. So let us get started. Number
Speaker 1: ten on the list, hollow sonics, and the audio spotlight system.
Speaker 1: This is more in the creepy, unsettling vein technology that
Speaker 1: focuses sound. That's what this is all about. It's focusing
Speaker 1: sound into a narrow beam, which provides the opportunity for
Speaker 1: ultra targeted sound for stuff like advertising. It's not necessarily creepy,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily welcome either. But imagine that you're walking
Speaker 1: through a store and just as you're passing in front
Speaker 1: of a certain store item, let's say it's cookie crisp cereal,
Speaker 1: and you start hearing a voice whispering to you, Hey,
Speaker 1: that cookie crisp looks pretty good. It might seem really weird,
Speaker 1: this little disembodied voice, and as soon as you get
Speaker 1: past a certain point, you can't hear it anymore. You
Speaker 1: just have this experience. As you're going through the store,
Speaker 1: you keep hearing these targeted sounds in very narrow spots,
Speaker 1: and as soon as you're out of those spots, you
Speaker 1: can't hear it. That sounds pretty creepy, right, Well, how
Speaker 1: does it work? Well? According to the company, the secret
Speaker 1: is in the size of the sound waves compared to
Speaker 1: the size of the sound source. The company states that
Speaker 1: if you have a sound source that is much larger
Speaker 1: than the comparable size of the sound waves it's producing,
Speaker 1: you get more directionality out of your sound so you
Speaker 1: can focus it more like a beam. So if you
Speaker 1: were to create loudspeakers that are much much, much larger
Speaker 1: than the sound waves they're producing, and sound waves can
Speaker 1: measure from a few inches up to several feet in size,
Speaker 1: you could direct those sound waves in a beam, more
Speaker 1: like a directional beam, rather than having them propagate outward
Speaker 1: in all equal directions. But that would not work very
Speaker 1: well for something like targeted advertising because you would have
Speaker 1: to have these enormous speakers perched behind the cheerios, and
Speaker 1: that would be very distracting. So this company has gone
Speaker 1: with an approach that has these devices producing ultrasonic beams
Speaker 1: of sound. Ultrasonic sound ways are very very tiny. They're
Speaker 1: also normally imperceptible, at least directly. They are imperceptible to us.
Speaker 1: We cannot hear in this frequency. They do have a
Speaker 1: very strong directionality as a result of the way they
Speaker 1: are generated. Uh So, according to the company, as the
Speaker 1: ultrasonic beam travels through the air, the inherent properties of
Speaker 1: the air caused the ultrasound to change shape in a
Speaker 1: predictable way. This gives rise to frequency components in the
Speaker 1: audible band which can be accurately predicted and therefore precisely controlled.
Speaker 1: By generating the correct ultrasonic signal, we can create within
Speaker 1: the air itself any sound desired. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: it's the interaction of these ultrasonic frequencies with the air
Speaker 1: itself that causes the ultrasonic frequencies to change, and then
Speaker 1: you produce these audible frequencies. And because this is all
Speaker 1: very controllable in a predictable environment, you can produce whatever
Speaker 1: sounds you want. This is based off the work of
Speaker 1: an inventor named Woody Norris. He demonstrated this technology at
Speaker 1: a TED talk in the early two thousand's. Rather than
Speaker 1: generating the audible sound on the face of the speaker
Speaker 1: as a traditional speaker would, where the speakers moving a
Speaker 1: diaphragm in and out and pushing air around, the ultrasonic
Speaker 1: emitter creates a column of the air itself to act
Speaker 1: like a speaker, which is pretty nifty. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: meant spooky number nine d N A hacking. So back
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, scientists finished mapping out the human genome.
Speaker 1: But that was obviously just the beginning. That's just uh,
Speaker 1: a long list of base pairs. Um. Next came the
Speaker 1: work to examine the genome closely and determine which bait
Speaker 1: base pairs in the more than three billion pairs that
Speaker 1: make up the human genome are responsible for different stuff
Speaker 1: like our uh possibility of developing a disease, for example,
Speaker 1: because if you could determine that, and if you could
Speaker 1: determine a way of changing that part of the DNA
Speaker 1: so that it's eliminated, maybe you could make someone not
Speaker 1: develop that disease. You could potentially wipe out certain diseases.
Speaker 1: And beyond that, what about hacking the human genomes so
Speaker 1: that we can create designer human beings, human beings who
Speaker 1: have traits that we consider to be superior. Now that's
Speaker 1: the stuff of lots of science fiction and horror cautionary tales,
Speaker 1: stuff like Gatica saying, yeah, but who gets to decide
Speaker 1: what is superior? And what happens to people who aren't
Speaker 1: able to take advantage of that technology, and what happens
Speaker 1: to the people who do take advantage of that technology.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of ethical questions around it. However,
Speaker 1: beyond that, there are other scary things to consider. DNA
Speaker 1: hacking could allow for individually focused biological warfare. So imagine
Speaker 1: that you're living in a world and someone can get
Speaker 1: access to your DNA. Maybe they get a skin sample
Speaker 1: or some hair or something. They're able to get something
Speaker 1: from you that has traces of your DNA in it,
Speaker 1: and they're able to analyze your DNA and see what
Speaker 1: makes you you and look for any vulnerabilities. Maybe they
Speaker 1: find out that you have a predisposed weakness to a
Speaker 1: particular type of virus, and then the engineer a virus
Speaker 1: to attack you specifically. That was actually the premise of
Speaker 1: a two thousand twelve article in The Atlantic, and that
Speaker 1: article hypothesized the future in which the President of the
Speaker 1: United States could be targeted and assassinated through the use
Speaker 1: of a particularly nasty virus that was Taylor made for
Speaker 1: the president. Yikes. Or imagine more than that, maybe a
Speaker 1: widespread plague unless Stephen King's the stand engineered through a
Speaker 1: deep understanding of DNA paired with a really crap containment strategy.
Speaker 1: So how realistic is all of that, Well, in the
Speaker 1: short term, it's probably not terribly realistic. It's certainly possible,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily plausible. But it does require a deep
Speaker 1: understanding of DNA and a means to manipulate it easily
Speaker 1: in order to pay it off. We've seen some advances
Speaker 1: in those areas. There are a lot more ways that
Speaker 1: we can manipulate DNA than there used to be, but
Speaker 1: not exactly easy to do. It's easy, you're but that's
Speaker 1: that's a matter of degrees. However, you can make a
Speaker 1: convincing argument that it would not require too deep and
Speaker 1: understanding to cause real harm unintentionally, and that would be
Speaker 1: a very difficult argument to counter. And while DNA hacking
Speaker 1: could produce all sorts of different futuristic results, we do
Speaker 1: already have a culture of bio hackers, also sometimes known
Speaker 1: as grinders, who have taken body alteration to new places.
Speaker 1: These folks are not working on a DNA level, They're
Speaker 1: not changing themselves fundamentally in that way. Instead, they're doing alterations,
Speaker 1: you know, upgrades. So one example would be there are
Speaker 1: people who have chosen to have small magnets implanted under
Speaker 1: the skin of their fingertips. Say, these little nubby magnets
Speaker 1: sticking out on their fingertips kind of weird, right, Well,
Speaker 1: what's the purpose of that. Well, because of the effects
Speaker 1: of magnetism and electromagnetism, they would actually be able to
Speaker 1: sense when they were near magnetic or electromagnetic fields. So
Speaker 1: it'd be kind of like Spider Man's spiky sense. They'd
Speaker 1: feel tugging on their fingertips as they passed through it.
Speaker 1: So instead of detecting danger like Spider Man would, you'd
Speaker 1: be able to tell like whether or not electricity was
Speaker 1: flowing through a conductor, for example, because you could bring
Speaker 1: your fingers close to that conductor. Maybe it's some wires.
Speaker 1: You bring your fingers close, and if you start feeling
Speaker 1: the pulses from an alternating magnetic field of fluctuating magnetic field,
Speaker 1: I would tell you, oh, electricity, alternating current is flowing
Speaker 1: through here, because I can feel it in my fingertips.
Speaker 1: That would be something you normally would not be able
Speaker 1: to feel. So you kind of have a sixth sense
Speaker 1: due to having these magnets implanted in your fingertips. And
Speaker 1: people have actually done this, However, a word of caution.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, these operations are pretty painful. They
Speaker 1: usually are not done with an esthetic. There's not really
Speaker 1: a place you can go that's medically, you know, licensed
Speaker 1: to do this, because it's not a it's not a
Speaker 1: standard medical procedure. As far as I know, there are
Speaker 1: no accredited medical facilities that do it. I think any
Speaker 1: doctor who did practice this would have uh the danger
Speaker 1: of being barred from practice. So you're usually talking about
Speaker 1: entrepreneuring body modification specialists, you know, like piercers, who will
Speaker 1: do this kind of operation. And anytime you're talking about
Speaker 1: introducing something foreign to the body, you're also raising other
Speaker 1: risks like infection, So you've got to be super duper
Speaker 1: careful about that kind of thing. In other words, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna find me putting magnets under my fingertips anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Number eight on the list cyber war Oh boy, Well,
Speaker 1: the scenario the article specifically lays out is an all
Speaker 1: out cyber warfare attack where one nation targets another nation's infrastructure,
Speaker 1: like it's power grid system or water system. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: the U. S Department of Homeland Security has reported that
Speaker 1: there's lots of evidence to show that various hackers have
Speaker 1: infiltrated critical infrastructure with such tactics like Russian hackers and
Speaker 1: the things like power plants and gas pipelines, and that's terrifying.
Speaker 1: And before that report had even made the news that
Speaker 1: was in security experts have for years been warning that
Speaker 1: Chinese hackers have been infiltrating American infrastructure. CNN reported on
Speaker 1: that in two thousand fourteen. So this is not exactly
Speaker 1: a new story. It's a continuing story that continues to
Speaker 1: be really problematic and concerning. So the infiltration part is
Speaker 1: a reality. We know for a fact hackers from other
Speaker 1: countries have infiltrated various systems. There have been traces found
Speaker 1: of their activities, so we know that there have at
Speaker 1: least been people snooping around our systems. Whether or not
Speaker 1: they've installed anything to help shut stuff down as another matter,
Speaker 1: but they've definitely been there, and they appeared to have
Speaker 1: been there from places like Russia and China. That does
Speaker 1: not automatically mean that the infiltration was state directed, in
Speaker 1: other words, that it was a government backed project, but
Speaker 1: that seems to be the general consensus is that these
Speaker 1: were likely the activities of a state backed group of hackers.
Speaker 1: What about shutting everything down is that realistic? Well, it
Speaker 1: could be more challenging to do, but not necessarily impossible.
Speaker 1: Many utilities have started installing self healing systems. Self healing
Speaker 1: system isn't quite as cool as it sounds like. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's wolverine and infrastructure form, but it does
Speaker 1: involve having a system that when it detects problems automatically
Speaker 1: tries to reroute services to get around those problems. So
Speaker 1: with a power grid, it might be if a smart
Speaker 1: power grid system detects that there's a short that some reason,
Speaker 1: or there's a a break in connectivity at some point,
Speaker 1: it may try to reroute power to work around that
Speaker 1: as much as possible. That could help confound a cyber
Speaker 1: warfare attack a little bit. At least it might mitigate
Speaker 1: the impact of an attack, um though preventing one entirely
Speaker 1: maybe not. But then there are also attacks on other systems,
Speaker 1: not just power grids and water and gas, which are
Speaker 1: all scary enough. But there's the evidence that showed Russian
Speaker 1: hackers were targeting elect systems in the United States leading
Speaker 1: up to the twenty sixteen elections. I talked about this
Speaker 1: in a recent episode of Tech Stuff, so I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna go all the way through it again. But the
Speaker 1: really insidious thing about those attacks is they don't even
Speaker 1: have to be super successful to be effective. If you
Speaker 1: can so doubt in the minds of a nation's citizens
Speaker 1: as to the validity of any given election, you have
Speaker 1: undermined the very foundation of that nation's government. A government
Speaker 1: that doesn't have the confidence of its population is on
Speaker 1: shaky ground and has to move more and more towards
Speaker 1: totalitarianism in order to maintain power. If you don't have
Speaker 1: any confidence that your system works, then you don't have
Speaker 1: any confidence in your government at all. So cyber war
Speaker 1: is something that is continuing right now. It is actually happening.
Speaker 1: It is already in place. And obviously I've given examples
Speaker 1: of how the US has been the target of cyber warfare,
Speaker 1: but don't forget the US has engaged in it too.
Speaker 1: We're not, you know, the United States has not been
Speaker 1: just the poor victim in all these cases. The United
Speaker 1: States has certainly played a hand in cyber warfare activities.
Speaker 1: One example would be stuck s net, the computer virus
Speaker 1: that was designed to sabotage uranium enrichment facilities in Iran.
Speaker 1: So this is not something that everyone else is doing
Speaker 1: and the United States is the victim. This is something
Speaker 1: that everyone is doing as much as they can and
Speaker 1: stepping it up as much as they can. Well, we
Speaker 1: have a lot more scary technology to talk about, but
Speaker 1: I need to have a sip of tea to comfort myself.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Number
Speaker 1: seven is the technological singularity. Now, out of all the
Speaker 1: science fiction ideas I find particularly interesting, this one ranks
Speaker 1: near the top of them. The singularity refers to a
Speaker 1: general concept that could be brought about in several different ways,
Speaker 1: but from a very high level, the idea goes something
Speaker 1: like this. Imagine that technology has advanced to the point
Speaker 1: that the newest stuff coming out is already designing the
Speaker 1: next generation of stuff. And imagine that the gaps between
Speaker 1: these generations are getting smaller and smaller, and eventually you
Speaker 1: reach a point where the present is defined by constant change,
Speaker 1: and that's the only way you can define it. Because
Speaker 1: things change so quickly it is almost impossible to describe
Speaker 1: the present in any coherent way. That's how quickly everything
Speaker 1: is evolving. The thing that would fuel this would be
Speaker 1: the emergence of superhuman intelligence. In most of the scenarios
Speaker 1: that involve the technological singularity However, that would not necessarily
Speaker 1: require just uh, you know, a computer AI. That's one
Speaker 1: possible version is pure artificial intelligence that has superhuman capabilities
Speaker 1: and processing information. This is your basic deep thought from
Speaker 1: Hitchecker's Guide to the Galaxy or sky Net from the
Speaker 1: terminator that scenario. This would be a scenario in which
Speaker 1: we humans have created an AI so powerful we are
Speaker 1: unable to control it, and then it goes on to
Speaker 1: redefine our world in ways that we could not anticipate
Speaker 1: because we cannot operate on the same level as this
Speaker 1: superhuman intelligence. But that is not necessarily the only pathway
Speaker 1: to the technological singularity. Another way might be that humans
Speaker 1: find a way to boost our own intelligence and thus
Speaker 1: we evolve beyond what we traditionally think of as being human.
Speaker 1: We might do this through a deeper understanding of biology.
Speaker 1: We could boost our intelligence that way, going back to
Speaker 1: the concept of d n A hacking and things related
Speaker 1: to that. Or it might involve using technology to create
Speaker 1: cyborg like beings where we merge with technology on some level,
Speaker 1: and with tech and biology working together, we boost our
Speaker 1: intelligence to new levels and achieve superhuman intelligence that way.
Speaker 1: So bottom line is this a possibility, well, it beats me.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of super smart people who
Speaker 1: are on either side of this issue. So some people
Speaker 1: say the singularity is essentially a foregone conclusion. It will happen,
Speaker 1: The only question is when will it happen. But there
Speaker 1: are other people who say there might be some fundamental
Speaker 1: barriers that were not likely to get over, and those
Speaker 1: barriers will block the singularity from ever happening. One of
Speaker 1: the frequent criticisms of various UH singularity scenarios is that
Speaker 1: a lot of it rests on the belief that we're
Speaker 1: going to see progress continue on a pace that's similar
Speaker 1: to what Moore's law has observed with computer processing power.
Speaker 1: And the thing is that pace may not be realistic,
Speaker 1: or sustainable, or even applicable to some technologies. So Moore's
Speaker 1: law applies to UH to the processing power of computers
Speaker 1: generally speaking, but they may not apply to other elements
Speaker 1: that would be necessary to bring about superhuman intelligence, because
Speaker 1: processing power by itself is not intelligence. You also have
Speaker 1: to have the software side. You've got a lot of
Speaker 1: other pieces that have to be in place. However, if
Speaker 1: it is possible, it could very well mean the end
Speaker 1: of the human race as we know it today. Now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean it's the end of humanity entirely.
Speaker 1: It just may mean that humanity will transition into something different,
Speaker 1: so it could be a new beginning. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: the end of everything, but still spooky. Number six Google Glass,
Speaker 1: I mean that was the number on the on the
Speaker 1: article Google. You remember Google glass, the augmented reality glasses.
Speaker 1: Back when Chris and Dave were working on this article,
Speaker 1: Google glass was still a real thing. It was it
Speaker 1: was poised to become an actual consumer product outside of
Speaker 1: the relatively small sample of bleeding edge adopters a k a.
Speaker 1: Glass holes. We were sometimes called that because I was
Speaker 1: one of them. I had a pair of Google Glass.
Speaker 1: The glasses were part augmented reality headset, part user interface
Speaker 1: for the world around you. They included a camera which
Speaker 1: could pull in information, and a Bluetooth chips so the
Speaker 1: glasses could communicate with a paired mobile device, and through
Speaker 1: that mobile device, the glasses could also pair information like
Speaker 1: GPS coordinates. So these glasses, while giving you potentially incredible
Speaker 1: access to information about the world around you, could also
Speaker 1: gather information about the world around you for the benefit
Speaker 1: of Google and suddenly this company could potentially access information
Speaker 1: from cameras mounted on faces all over the world. And
Speaker 1: the glasses also had microphones, because you know, you could
Speaker 1: use voice commands to make your glasses do stuff. But
Speaker 1: that also meant that in very Google could listen in
Speaker 1: as well, not just see everything, but hear everything, which
Speaker 1: raises some big privacy concerns, not just for the people
Speaker 1: wearing the glasses, but for everyone around those people. And
Speaker 1: Google makes money with information, so you would effectively be
Speaker 1: generating product for Google to sell by wearing a pair
Speaker 1: of those glasses and walking around everywhere. Google would be
Speaker 1: the head of a big surveillance state, far more invasive
Speaker 1: than a network of closed circuit cameras if such technology
Speaker 1: was used on ethically. And while Google Glass is now
Speaker 1: far more limited in its rollout, you know you only
Speaker 1: see it in a few industries. At this point, the
Speaker 1: company Google is still very much in the business of
Speaker 1: knowing where it's customers are. In August two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: numerous tech journals reported on a study that was conducted
Speaker 1: by Douglas C. Schmidt of Vanderbilt University. That's so, he
Speaker 1: said that a stationary Android phone running Chrome in the
Speaker 1: background would ping Google servers with location data three forty
Speaker 1: times in a twenty four hour period. Even if you
Speaker 1: turn the location history feature off of the phone, the
Speaker 1: phones were still sending location data back to Google, according
Speaker 1: to the study. Google, by the way, has disputed the
Speaker 1: findings of the study. Then there are the numerous per
Speaker 1: assistant devices that are out there, including Google Home, that
Speaker 1: also are always listening for commands. And of course that's
Speaker 1: just Google. There are other companies out there like Apple
Speaker 1: and Amazon that also have technologies similar to these. All
Speaker 1: of these could be monitoring users and sending data back
Speaker 1: so that the companies might later exploit that information for profit,
Speaker 1: usually to sell you stuff to advertise directly to you.
Speaker 1: But that's still pretty creepy, right. Even if the companies
Speaker 1: are not actively exploiting that information, the fact that the
Speaker 1: data could be transmitted and recorded at all is problematic.
Speaker 1: Though again, I should say, the companies generally say they
Speaker 1: do not record user data in that way, so that's
Speaker 1: a relief right. Number five drones. Drones are legit creepy.
Speaker 1: Many drones have cameras mounted on them that does allow
Speaker 1: potential filmmakers unprecedented access and capabilities now a low budget
Speaker 1: film can have the equivalent of an expensive crane shot.
Speaker 1: It's a fraction of what it would cost to rent
Speaker 1: and operate a film crane with all the associated personnel,
Speaker 1: the safety features, all that kind of stuff. You could
Speaker 1: reduce all that down to an operator and a drone
Speaker 1: and it would be much less expensive. But it also
Speaker 1: means a drone operator who's using one of these devices
Speaker 1: could use it to do stuff like peeping, super darn creepy,
Speaker 1: to be spying on neighbors and stuff. That's just the
Speaker 1: consumer technology version of drones that is already troubling. But
Speaker 1: then you have to remember there's also tons of military
Speaker 1: grade drones, and they're being used to do everything from
Speaker 1: surveillance work to active strikes on military targets. Weaponized drones.
Speaker 1: These drones may be semi autonomous or completely under the
Speaker 1: control of an operator who's potentially hundreds of miles away.
Speaker 1: They greatly extend the surveillance capabilities of various government agencies
Speaker 1: and divisions, from military to law enforcement. In the United States,
Speaker 1: Congress passed a bill in two thousand twelve giving the
Speaker 1: Ural Aviation Administration or f a A, the authority to
Speaker 1: drop rules for commercial and police drones in US airspace.
Speaker 1: The f a A hasn't been super fast to share
Speaker 1: that information. That prompted the Electronic Frontier Foundation or e
Speaker 1: f F, to sue the f a A under the
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act to at least share a list
Speaker 1: of the public entities and private drone manufacturers that applied
Speaker 1: to flight drones in the United States, as well as
Speaker 1: thousands of pages related to license applications. But the f
Speaker 1: a A didn't, you know, explain how those entities were
Speaker 1: planning on using the drones. So that's a problem. Number
Speaker 1: four three D printers. Well, I just recently talked about
Speaker 1: Maker bought and maybe you think the scariest thing about
Speaker 1: three D printers is that they could lead to minor
Speaker 1: burns as you try to deal with melting plastic. But
Speaker 1: in fact there are other things to worry about as well,
Speaker 1: like fake A t M facades. See back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, some thieves used a three D printer to
Speaker 1: create a false front for an A t M terminal,
Speaker 1: and they installed a skimmer on some A t M
Speaker 1: s so unsuspecting customers would come up and it would
Speaker 1: look like a real A t M front. That you
Speaker 1: couldn't necessarily tell immediately that there was a projection on
Speaker 1: there that was a false front. So they would put
Speaker 1: their uh, their a t M card into this. They
Speaker 1: would then type in their pen and meanwhile the skimmer
Speaker 1: was actually scanning the data on the card and recording
Speaker 1: it with the pen and allowing the thieves to steal
Speaker 1: more than four hundred thousand dollars in the process. And
Speaker 1: you know, all it took was a three D printer
Speaker 1: to create that that convincing a t M facade. In
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, a guy named Cody Wilson made headlines
Speaker 1: when he published files for his three D printed Liberator handgun,
Speaker 1: which fired three a D ammunition. That's scared a ton
Speaker 1: of people because it means that anyone who had access
Speaker 1: to a three D printer and the appropriate materials could
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to make an untraceable weapon. There'll be
Speaker 1: no background check required because you just print the thing out.
Speaker 1: And it also raised other possible problems. If the plastic
Speaker 1: were not of a sufficiently good enough quality, it could
Speaker 1: mean that the printed gun would not contain the explosive
Speaker 1: reaction properly when you fire the bullet, so it could
Speaker 1: end up breaking a part in the person's hand, causing
Speaker 1: injury to the person holding the guns. So even if
Speaker 1: the person who had printed the three D gun did
Speaker 1: so as kind of just a proof of concept and
Speaker 1: they're firing at, you know, just a paper target, there's
Speaker 1: the possibility that the gun itself could explode or or
Speaker 1: fracture as part of this if it weren't made out
Speaker 1: of sufficiently strong material, and severe injury could follow. Cody Wilson,
Speaker 1: I should add, has recently been in the news again.
Speaker 1: He resigned his role as director of Defense Distributed, the
Speaker 1: company that he used to promote the design and distribution
Speaker 1: of three D printaple gun files. It's unrelated to the
Speaker 1: gun side of things, so that organization still exists and
Speaker 1: continues to push Wilson's vision even without Wilson at the helm.
Speaker 1: I've got some more spooky things to talk about, but
Speaker 1: I grew tired, so I need the goal and drink
Speaker 1: some blood. And by blood, I mean oh great, t
Speaker 1: I'll be right back after this word from our sponsors
Speaker 1: number three driver less cars. This is as still a
Speaker 1: big worry. Um. Back when Chris and Dave we're writing
Speaker 1: this driverless cars, we're still kind of coming out of
Speaker 1: the very very limited testing situations. Google was the best
Speaker 1: known version. But now we actually have some at least
Speaker 1: some rudiment um automated car systems out there in the
Speaker 1: real world, like Tesla's autopilot, which has contributed to some
Speaker 1: notable accidents, including a fatality. UM. Tesla has said that
Speaker 1: this system was not meant to be used as h
Speaker 1: and at driverless car solution, but people have still done
Speaker 1: it because you hear a word like autopilot and you
Speaker 1: want to test it out, I guess UM, So that
Speaker 1: has been an issue. It has raised concerns that perhaps
Speaker 1: this autonomous car technology is nowhere near ready for full rollout,
Speaker 1: which I think most companies that are working on the
Speaker 1: technology would say is correct. They're still working on the
Speaker 1: tech to make it a reality. UM. There have been
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, a lot of stories published about
Speaker 1: various problems, philosophical problems that you need to resolve all
Speaker 1: in order to make a consistent and predictable autonomous car solution,
Speaker 1: one of them being the infamous trolley problem. The basic
Speaker 1: version of the trolley problem is that you've got our
Speaker 1: out of control trolley. It's going down some tracks and
Speaker 1: there's a switch that will allow you to change the
Speaker 1: pathway of the trolley. And if the trolley continues where
Speaker 1: it's path where it's going now, um, it's going to
Speaker 1: collide with a group of people. If you throw the switch,
Speaker 1: it will change the direction of the trolley and it
Speaker 1: will collide with one person. Do you throw the switch?
Speaker 1: If you do nothing, then maybe you feel like I'm
Speaker 1: not involved. Therefore my decision did not affect anybody. That
Speaker 1: it just played out the way it was gonna play out.
Speaker 1: If I throw the switch, is that I'm actively condemning
Speaker 1: that other person to death? Other people would say no,
Speaker 1: by not choosing, you've actively chosen to condemn the first
Speaker 1: group to death. Uh. There are variations of this problem.
Speaker 1: Maybe you say, all right, well you've got a choice.
Speaker 1: You can uh not throw a switch, which means the
Speaker 1: out of control trolley will eventually come to a stop,
Speaker 1: but everyone in the trolley is going to die as
Speaker 1: a result of this accident. Or you can throw the
Speaker 1: switch and the trolley will hit somebody, but the trolley
Speaker 1: will stop and everyone who's in the trolley will survive.
Speaker 1: So either you actively kill someone, but everyone in the
Speaker 1: trolley lives or you don't do anything and everyone in
Speaker 1: the trolley dies, but the person who is just innocently
Speaker 1: crossing the pathway they live. These sort of ethical problems
Speaker 1: are things that people talk about and debate amongst themselves,
Speaker 1: but it turns out to be an actual practical problem
Speaker 1: when you're designing autonomous car systems, because eventually you have
Speaker 1: to build in some sort of decision making system for
Speaker 1: a car in the event that it it encounters a
Speaker 1: non avoidable car accident, that all the problems have aligned
Speaker 1: in such a way that there is no possible outcome
Speaker 1: in which there isn't a car accident. So what does
Speaker 1: the car do? Does it behave in a way that
Speaker 1: preserves the life of the person writing in the car?
Speaker 1: Does it behave in a way that preserves the life
Speaker 1: of the people in the surrounding area. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of tough questions to answer. So M. I. T
Speaker 1: published a paper from a quiz called the Moral Machine.
Speaker 1: This quiz was designed to find out what people thought
Speaker 1: should be given priority in these situations, and it was
Speaker 1: distributed globally across social media platforms. They recorded forty million
Speaker 1: ethical decisions in total. Global preference had certain consistencies. By
Speaker 1: the way, generally speaking, people prefer to spare human lives
Speaker 1: over animal lives. So if you had an option where
Speaker 1: you can make a choice, but this animal will die
Speaker 1: as a result, or you can make a choice or
Speaker 1: that human will die, people would say, well, it's a shame,
Speaker 1: but I'd rather choose where the animal dies. Also, people
Speaker 1: in gen would choose to spare more lives rather than
Speaker 1: fewer lives. So in my example with the group of
Speaker 1: people versus the one person, more people would feel comfortable
Speaker 1: with the one person losing their life as opposed to
Speaker 1: the group of people. Also, people in general want to
Speaker 1: spare children's lives more than adult lives, So this really
Speaker 1: just showed people's preferences and ethical decisions. However, the study
Speaker 1: authors stated that experts really should be the ones to
Speaker 1: make the final call when designing these algorithms, that just
Speaker 1: going by public preference alone may not be the best decision. However,
Speaker 1: another thing to remember is that in st seven thousand
Speaker 1: people died from car accidents. If driverless cars can reduce
Speaker 1: that number year by year, if we can find a
Speaker 1: way to make driver less cars more reliable so that
Speaker 1: it reduces the overall number of fatal accidents. That would
Speaker 1: be an incredible thing, and it would definitely be a
Speaker 1: good argument in support for autonomous cars. It is, however,
Speaker 1: that there is possible that there's a psychological barrier of
Speaker 1: a machine quote unquote causing deaths, and that that could
Speaker 1: be enough to screw things up, because while you might
Speaker 1: be able to statistically state fewer people died because there
Speaker 1: were autonomous cars, the fact that the cars were autonomous
Speaker 1: and then people died has a psychological effect. You're thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a machine killing a person. Number two geoengineering, so
Speaker 1: this is the use of science and technology to you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote hack the planet. This is one of those
Speaker 1: ideas that's meant to help counteract problems like climate change.
Speaker 1: So the scientific consensus tells us, yes, there is climate change,
Speaker 1: and yes it is largely due to human causes, chiefly
Speaker 1: the increase of C O two in the atmosphere along
Speaker 1: with other greenhouse gasses. So by creating technologies designed to
Speaker 1: capture and sequester carbon dioxide so that it's not in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere anymore, we could help slow or maybe even
Speaker 1: stop the process of climate change. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure that some of these proposals
Speaker 1: would work or what the other consequences of those actions
Speaker 1: might be. One of the uh, well, some of the
Speaker 1: proposed methods would definitely have nasty consequences. We know that. So,
Speaker 1: for example, one possibility would be, let's put some more
Speaker 1: iron in the oceans in order to spur algae blooms
Speaker 1: to soak up carbon dioxide, which that could help you
Speaker 1: could actually soak up c O two from the atmosphere. However,
Speaker 1: that would also have a huge negative impact on the
Speaker 1: ocean itself. You would create dead zones in the ocean
Speaker 1: because of this algae bloom, and that means messing up
Speaker 1: a really complicated ecosystem that lots of life forms depend upon,
Speaker 1: including life forms that aren't you know, directly in the ocean.
Speaker 1: So you would have a ripple effect. Fittingly enough, since
Speaker 1: we're talking about water, you could have die offs happening
Speaker 1: other places in the world that are a result of this,
Speaker 1: and you know, not even places where there are oceans,
Speaker 1: So unintended consequences could be really, really nasty. Another tactic
Speaker 1: besides trying to capture CEO two is to find ways
Speaker 1: to reflect more of the Sun's energy back off into
Speaker 1: space without it getting absorbed by the Earth and then
Speaker 1: admitted back into the art's atmosphere. The message here is
Speaker 1: that the cure could end up being worse, or at
Speaker 1: least just as bad as the disease, though in a
Speaker 1: different way. And ultimately we'll be taking a lot of
Speaker 1: potentially irreversible actions without a full appreciation of what was
Speaker 1: going to happen. However, if we employ these responsibly and carefully,
Speaker 1: it's likely that we could use them as part of
Speaker 1: an overall plan to help reduce climate change. Experts warn
Speaker 1: us that these are not magic bullets. These are not
Speaker 1: going to miraculously reverse the course that we've seen over
Speaker 1: the last few decades. They would at best be a
Speaker 1: good additional strategy along with reducing our carbon dioxide emissions,
Speaker 1: that would be our most important action to take. We
Speaker 1: can't just assume that we're going to come up with
Speaker 1: a technological solution that will allow us to continue to
Speaker 1: behave the way we've been behaving and magically erase the
Speaker 1: consequences of those actions. That's just not a realistic outlook
Speaker 1: at this point. Number one on the list from Chris
Speaker 1: and Dave was Internet surveillance, which kind of ties back
Speaker 1: into that Google problem I mentioned earlier, but it goes
Speaker 1: well beyond that. So Internet surveillance comes in all sorts
Speaker 1: of forms. Right the social media we use, when we
Speaker 1: do our actions on there, all of that's getting tracked.
Speaker 1: All of that is going into very tech boxes based
Speaker 1: on our profiles, so that we are encountering the ads
Speaker 1: that are closest tied to our behavior, so that we
Speaker 1: have the most uh the most incentive to click on
Speaker 1: those ads or to act on them in some way,
Speaker 1: thus benefiting the company that makes the social platform as
Speaker 1: well as the company that's doing the advertising, and whatever
Speaker 1: company is ultimately in charge of the product or service
Speaker 1: that is being advertised. So there's that there are companies
Speaker 1: like Google that are taking this to extremes, tracking all
Speaker 1: sorts of behaviors for all sorts of stuff, so that
Speaker 1: whenever we're doing searches, we're also getting served up search
Speaker 1: results that are catered to us more and more, which
Speaker 1: in some ways is good, you know, you're getting stuff
Speaker 1: that is more relevant to you, and in other ways
Speaker 1: comes across as super creepy because it means that there's
Speaker 1: this enormous corporation out there that might know you better
Speaker 1: than you know yourself, and that's kind of worrisome. But
Speaker 1: then you have other things like the n s A,
Speaker 1: which a couple of years ago famously revealed that the
Speaker 1: n s A was tapping into all sorts of different
Speaker 1: communication tools two spy on on the communications between lots
Speaker 1: of different people in an effort to to promote national security.
Speaker 1: But you could argue it was also a huge violation
Speaker 1: of people's expectation of privacy and that it also took
Speaker 1: almost a presumed guilty approach and applied it to absolutely
Speaker 1: everybody who uses these these forms of communication, from cellular
Speaker 1: phones to website traffic, to all sources of stuff. Then
Speaker 1: you have hackers, either state backed hackers who are are
Speaker 1: working to spy on behalf of a government, or independent
Speaker 1: hackers who are just trying to gather as much information
Speaker 1: as possible to exploit it. Maybe that information is your
Speaker 1: bank account, or maybe it's your social Security number, it
Speaker 1: could be all sorts of stuff, But ultimately they're doing
Speaker 1: it so they can make money and they have no
Speaker 1: real concern about what happens to you and your information.
Speaker 1: Uh information is valuable, whether it's for a government to
Speaker 1: try and protect itself or the citizens that it represents. Ideally,
Speaker 1: we would like to at least see a government try
Speaker 1: to protect the people it represents. Maybe that's being naive, uh,
Speaker 1: Or if it's a you know, a corporation that's doing
Speaker 1: this in order to make a profit, or a hacker
Speaker 1: that's doing this in order to make a profit in
Speaker 1: an even more unethical way than the corporations are. Information
Speaker 1: is valuable. It's also a good reminder of why you
Speaker 1: should do stuff like use VPNs when you can, so
Speaker 1: that you can protect your activities from prying eyes and
Speaker 1: not have to worry quite so much about your every
Speaker 1: move being spied upon. U don't use public WiFi, especially
Speaker 1: to do anything sensitive. You know, be careful, be responsible
Speaker 1: with your browsing activities so that you limit the ways
Speaker 1: that you can be exploited. I'm not saying don't make
Speaker 1: use of these various platforms social media. I'd be a
Speaker 1: hypocrite if I did. I use them all the time.
Speaker 1: Just know what you're getting into and be aware of
Speaker 1: what could potentially happen. If you're comfortable with those consequences,
Speaker 1: I say, you're all good. If you're not, then you
Speaker 1: need to think about ways you can change your behavior,
Speaker 1: whether it's using VPNs or backing off on using the
Speaker 1: Internet as much, or whatever it may be, so that
Speaker 1: you feel you're using technology to benefit you as opposed
Speaker 1: to having other people receive a benefit because of you
Speaker 1: don't be used. In other words, I hope you guys
Speaker 1: enjoyed that episode from I will have a brand new
Speaker 1: episode ready to go on Wednesday. If you are a
Speaker 1: fan of horror games, I think you will enjoy it.
Speaker 1: It's going to be sort of a uh an overview
Speaker 1: of some famous scary games and maybe some that are
Speaker 1: not so famous, but ones that I think people should
Speaker 1: know about, So that is something to look forward to
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. On Friday, we are going to have a
Speaker 1: classic episode of the most classic variety. We're talking about
Speaker 1: an old school tech Stuff episode and it does relate
Speaker 1: back to the spooky theme of Halloween, and it's famous
Speaker 1: for me getting a little head up. I got a
Speaker 1: little I got a little agitated on that episode. Long
Speaker 1: time listeners of tech stuff will recognize it, but it
Speaker 1: is from like a decade ago, So that's something to
Speaker 1: look forward to on Friday. As I mentioned in the
Speaker 1: earlier part of this episode, I will have some pretty
Speaker 1: big announcements about tech stuff leading up closer to the
Speaker 1: new year. I'm really excited about it. And I'll have
Speaker 1: that other podcast that will be launching soon that's also exciting.
Speaker 1: And before I go, if you have not already subscribed
Speaker 1: to it, I highly recommend you check out our podcast
Speaker 1: Thirteen Days of Halloween. It is a phenomenal series that
Speaker 1: was produced largely out of our office in Atlanta. The
Speaker 1: people who have been working on it worked so hard
Speaker 1: to create really immersive, effective horror stories. They are really
Speaker 1: great works of art, I think, and uh, I really
Speaker 1: hope that in the future I can get involved in
Speaker 1: that particular type of work because I was blown away
Speaker 1: and I I just it's the sort of thing that
Speaker 1: when you hear it, you just want to be a
Speaker 1: part of it because that's how interesting and innovative it is.
Speaker 1: So if you have not already checked it out Thirteen
Speaker 1: Days of Halloween, go listen to an episode or two.
Speaker 1: Uh do it like you know, with headphones on, lights off,
Speaker 1: quiet room if you can um and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: make sure the light switch isn't too far away because
Speaker 1: it does get spooky. If you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff. I welcome you to let
Speaker 1: me know. You can reach out on Twitter. That's the
Speaker 1: best way. The handle for the show is text stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.