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? So? Originally I had a different plan for today.
Speaker 1: I was getting work done on an episode that I
Speaker 1: will still bring to you. It'll just probably be a
Speaker 1: little while longer before I do it because as I
Speaker 1: was working early on this episode, I developed an ocular migraine,
Speaker 1: which has still affected me right now. For those who
Speaker 1: are not familiar ocular migraines, you end up getting these
Speaker 1: weird effects on your vision. I don't have any pain,
Speaker 1: at least not yet, but I can't see very well.
Speaker 1: So it took me a while to even open up
Speaker 1: the recording software for me to be able to do
Speaker 1: this bit. But yeah, I am not able to do
Speaker 1: my work right now because I can't really see. But
Speaker 1: these have happened before. They don't last that long. Usually
Speaker 1: this one's a longer one, but they clear up pretty
Speaker 1: much on their own, and most of the time I
Speaker 1: don't get on migraine migraine with them, So here's hoping
Speaker 1: that's the case today. But I didn't want to leave
Speaker 1: you without an episode, so I thought it would bring
Speaker 1: you this one that we published a few years back
Speaker 1: in September of twenty twenty. It is called tech Stuff
Speaker 1: Looks Inside the Black Box because I think this topic
Speaker 1: in particular is incredibly relevant today, particularly when we are
Speaker 1: talking about artificial intelligence. A lot of AI systems work
Speaker 1: inside what we would call a black box, and so
Speaker 1: I thought, why not bring that one back and have
Speaker 1: that one rerun today while I get my vision under control.
Speaker 1: I hope you're all well, and I'll chat with you
Speaker 1: again at the of the episode. So this is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff Looks Inside the Black Box from September second, twenty twenty. Today,
Speaker 1: I thought it was a good time to take another
Speaker 1: opportunity to chat about one of the subjects I really
Speaker 1: hammer home in this series. And I don't make any
Speaker 1: apologies for this. It's about critical thinking. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: is another critical Thinking in Technology episode. Now, in these episodes,
Speaker 1: I explain how taking time and really thinking through things
Speaker 1: is important so that we make the most informed decisions
Speaker 1: we can and so that we aren't either fooling ourselves
Speaker 1: or you know, allowing someone else to fool us when
Speaker 1: it comes to technology. Though, I'll tell you a secret.
Speaker 1: Using these skills in all parts of your life is
Speaker 1: a great idea because it can be really easy for
Speaker 1: us to fall into patterns where we let ourselves believe
Speaker 1: things just because it's convenient, or you know, it reaffirms
Speaker 1: our biases, our prejudices, that kind of thing. So if
Speaker 1: you use critical thinking beyond the realm of technology, I
Speaker 1: ain't gonna be mad. Specifically, I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: a general category of issues in tech that some refer
Speaker 1: to as the black box problem. Now, this is not
Speaker 1: the same thing as the black box that's onboard your
Speaker 1: typical airplane. In fact, i'll explain what that is first
Speaker 1: because it's pretty simple, and then we can move on. First,
Speaker 1: the black box inside airplanes is typically orange. So right
Speaker 1: off the bat, we have a problem with nomenclature, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you had one job black box. Actually that's
Speaker 1: not true. The black box has a very important job
Speaker 1: and it requires a couple of things to work. But
Speaker 1: the black box, which is orange, is all about maintaining
Speaker 1: a record of an aircraft's activities in a housing capable
Speaker 1: of withstanding tremendous punishment. Another name, or a more appropriate name,
Speaker 1: really for this device for the black box is the
Speaker 1: flight data recorder. Sensors in various parts of the plane
Speaker 1: detect changes and then send data to the flight data recorder,
Speaker 1: which you know, records them. If a pilot makes any
Speaker 1: adjustments to any controls, whether it's the flight stick or
Speaker 1: a knob, or a button or a switch or whatever,
Speaker 1: the control not only does whatever it was intended to do,
Speaker 1: assuming everything's in working order, but it also sends a
Speaker 1: signal that is recorded on the flight recorder. So the
Speaker 1: job of the flight recorder is to create as accurate
Speaker 1: a representation of what went on with that aircraft as
Speaker 1: is possible. The Federal Aviation Administration or FAA in the
Speaker 1: United States, has a long list of parameters that the
Speaker 1: flight recorder is supposed to keep track of, more than
Speaker 1: eighty in fact, and these include not just the aircraft's systems,
Speaker 1: but what was going on in the environment. So if
Speaker 1: a pilot encounters a problem on a flight, or in
Speaker 1: a worst case scenario, in the event of a crash,
Speaker 1: the flight recorder represents an opportunity to find out what
Speaker 1: actually went wrong. You know, was it a malfunction, was
Speaker 1: it pilot error, was it weather? The crash survivable memory
Speaker 1: units inside the heavy duty casing of the black box
Speaker 1: are really meant to act as a lasting record, So
Speaker 1: if the recorder is recoverable, it gives investigators a chance
Speaker 1: to find out what happened. But, as I said, that's
Speaker 1: not the black box I really wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: for today's episode, so I'm not going to go into
Speaker 1: any more detail about that. Now, you could argue that
Speaker 1: the black box I want to talk about is sort
Speaker 1: of the opposite of what we find in airplanes, because
Speaker 1: in an airplane, the black box contains a record of
Speaker 1: everything that has gone on, and it can help explain
Speaker 1: why a certain outcome has happened. In technology in general,
Speaker 1: we use the term black box to refer to a
Speaker 1: system or technology where we know what goes into it
Speaker 1: and we can see what comes out of it, but
Speaker 1: we have no idea of what went on in the
Speaker 1: middle of that process. We don't have a way to
Speaker 1: understand the process by which the device takes input and
Speaker 1: produces output. Now, in most cases, we're not talking about
Speaker 1: an instance where literally nobody understands what's going on with
Speaker 1: a device or a system. It's more like the creators
Speaker 1: of whatever system we're talking about have purposefully made it
Speaker 1: difficult or impossible for the average person to understand or
Speaker 1: in some cases even see, what a technology is doing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's not. So Maybe purposefully is
Speaker 1: being a little strong there, but that's often how it unfolds.
Speaker 1: Let's take a general example that has created issues with
Speaker 1: a particular subsection of tech heads, and those would be
Speaker 1: the gear heads, you know, the people who love to
Speaker 1: work on vehicles like motorcycles and cars and trucks and
Speaker 1: stuff in what you might think of as the good
Speaker 1: old days, at least from the perspective of DIY technology.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of other things that were wrong back then,
Speaker 1: but in those terms, a car's systems were pretty darn accessible.
Speaker 1: A motorist would need to spend time and effort to
Speaker 1: learn how the car worked and what each component was
Speaker 1: meant to do. But that was actually an achievable goal.
Speaker 1: So with a bit of study and some hands on work,
Speaker 1: you could suss out how an engine works. You know,
Speaker 1: how spark plugs cause a little explosion by igniting a
Speaker 1: mixture of fuel and air inside an engine's cylinders. How
Speaker 1: that explosion would force out a piston which connects to
Speaker 1: a crank shaft, and how that reciprocating motion of the
Speaker 1: piston would translate into rotational motion of the crank shaft
Speaker 1: that could then be transmitted ultimately to wheels through a transmission.
Speaker 1: You could learn what the carburetor does, how the various
Speaker 1: fans and belts work and what they do. You know
Speaker 1: where the oil pan is and how to change out
Speaker 1: oil and all that kind of stuff. What's more, you
Speaker 1: can make repairs yourself. If you had the tools, the
Speaker 1: replacement parts, and the knowledge and the time you could
Speaker 1: swap out parts. You could customize your vehicle. You know,
Speaker 1: I've known a lot of people who have taken on
Speaker 1: cars as projects. They'll purchase an old junker and then
Speaker 1: they will lovingly restore it to its former glory or
Speaker 1: turn it into something truly transformational. And all of that
Speaker 1: is possible because those old cars had really accessible systems.
Speaker 1: They were relatively simple electro mechanical systems. Once you understood
Speaker 1: how they worked, you could see how they worked or
Speaker 1: how they were supposed to work, and you could understand
Speaker 1: what was going on. Through that understanding, you could address
Speaker 1: stuff when things weren't going well. And that's how cars
Speaker 1: were for decades but that began to change in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties, but it really accelerated no pun intended
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. So what happened well in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight leading into nineteen sixty nine, Volkswagen introduced a
Speaker 1: new standard feature for their Type three vehicle, which was
Speaker 1: sometimes called the Volkswagen fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred, there
Speaker 1: were a couple of names for it. These were family cars,
Speaker 1: and Volkswagen's intent was to create a vehicle with a
Speaker 1: bit more luggage and passenger space than their Type one,
Speaker 1: which was also known as the Volkswagen Beetle. The feature
Speaker 1: for these cars that I wanted to talk about was
Speaker 1: an electronic fuel injection system that was controlled by a
Speaker 1: computer chip, and the marketing for this particular feature said
Speaker 1: that this quote electronic brain end quote was quote smarter
Speaker 1: than a carburetor end quote. Now, the purpose of a
Speaker 1: carburetor is to mix fuel with air at a ratio
Speaker 1: that is suitable for combustion inside the engine cylinders. But
Speaker 1: an engine doesn't need exactly the same ratio of fuel
Speaker 1: to air from moment to moment. It actually varies as
Speaker 1: a vehicle runs longer or it travels faster, or it
Speaker 1: starts climbing a steep hill, or you know, lots of stuff.
Speaker 1: The ratio changes somewhat, and the carburetor manages this with
Speaker 1: a couple of valves, one called the choke and another
Speaker 1: called the throttle, among other elements. But it's all mechanical,
Speaker 1: and while it works, it's not as precise as an
Speaker 1: electronic system could be. And that's where the Volkswagen system
Speaker 1: came in. Volkswagen was pushing this as a more efficient
Speaker 1: and useful component than a carburetor. It would prevent the
Speaker 1: engine from being flooded with fuel and not enough air
Speaker 1: for combustion. It would handle the transitions of fuel and
Speaker 1: air mix ratios more quickly and precisely. It was the
Speaker 1: start of something big, but were it not for some
Speaker 1: other external factors, it might not have taken off the
Speaker 1: way it did, or at least not as quickly as
Speaker 1: it did. Those other factors, as I said, were external,
Speaker 1: and there were a pair of doozies. One was a
Speaker 1: growing concern that burning fossil fuels was having a negative
Speaker 1: impact on the environment, which turned out to be absolutely
Speaker 1: the case. Cities like Los Angeles, California, where getting around
Speaker 1: pretty much requires having a car. We're dealing with some
Speaker 1: really serious smog problems, and so organizations like the Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection Agency in the United States began to draft requirements
Speaker 1: to reduce car emissions that would mean that automotive companies
Speaker 1: would have to create more efficient engine systems. The other
Speaker 1: major factor that can atributed to this was the oil
Speaker 1: crisis of the nineteen seventies, which I talked about not
Speaker 1: long ago in a different Tech Stuff podcast. This was
Speaker 1: a geopolitical problem that threw much of the world into
Speaker 1: a scramble to curb fossil fuel consumption because the supply
Speaker 1: was limited. The double whammy of environmental concerns and the
Speaker 1: oil crisis forced a lot of car companies to rethink
Speaker 1: their previous strategy, which was pretty much more power, make bigger,
Speaker 1: much fast, go go go, go guzzle. That kind of
Speaker 1: is how they were thinking back in the day. Turns
Speaker 1: out that was an unsustainable option. And if you look back,
Speaker 1: especially at American cars during the fifties and sixties, you
Speaker 1: see that trend of the engines getting bigger and more powerful,
Speaker 1: and that was just the way things were going until
Speaker 1: we started to see these external changes come in and
Speaker 1: so more car companies began to incorporate computer controlled fuel
Speaker 1: injection systems. But this move also marked a move away
Speaker 1: from the design that made it harder for the DIY
Speaker 1: crowd to work on cars. Working on a damaged carburetor
Speaker 1: was one thing, Dealing with a malfunctioning computer chip was another.
Speaker 1: It didn't fall into the typical skill set of your
Speaker 1: amateur mechanic, and of course we didn't stop computer controlled
Speaker 1: fuel injection systems. Over time, we saw a lot more
Speaker 1: automotive systems make the transition to computer control. Today, your
Speaker 1: average car has computer systems that control the engine, the transmission,
Speaker 1: the doors, entertainment system, the windows. And these systems are
Speaker 1: all individual and they have a name. They're called electronic
Speaker 1: control units or ECUs. Collectively, they form the controller area
Speaker 1: network or can CAN. The connections themselves, the physical connections
Speaker 1: are called the can bus bus, and that's really just
Speaker 1: a way of saying these are the physical connectors that
Speaker 1: allow data to pass from one ECU to another. And
Speaker 1: there wasn't really like a central processing unit or anything.
Speaker 1: There was no like central brain. It was more like
Speaker 1: ECUs that depend upon one another would send relevant information
Speaker 1: to each other and not to anything else, so you know,
Speaker 1: if the door sensor is showing a door as open,
Speaker 1: it can send an alert to other systems so that
Speaker 1: that information is appropriately dealt with. Now, at the same
Speaker 1: time that these individual systems were evolving, so too we
Speaker 1: saw the rise of what would become the onboard diagnostic
Speaker 1: system or OBD. And the OBD keeps an eye on
Speaker 1: what's going on with the various systems in the car,
Speaker 1: and it sends notifications to the driver via dashboard indicators
Speaker 1: when something is outside normal operating parameters. So let's say
Speaker 1: that this diagnosis computer picks up that there's something hinky
Speaker 1: happening with the fuel air mixture and it activates that
Speaker 1: pesky check engine light on the dashboard that gives you
Speaker 1: next to no useful information. The problem is that these
Speaker 1: days it can be challenging or sometimes impossible to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly what caused that check engine light to come
Speaker 1: on without the access to some special equipment and expertise.
Speaker 1: The car systems have become so sophisticated that it could
Speaker 1: be a challenge to figure out what exactly has gone awry.
Speaker 1: Mechanics use devices called OBD scan tools, and these tools
Speaker 1: connect to the computer on board a car, and then
Speaker 1: the car provides an error code to the scanner. This,
Speaker 1: by the way, took a long time to standardize because
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of different car companies out there,
Speaker 1: and obviously there was a need to move towards standardization
Speaker 1: so that you didn't have to have fifty different scan
Speaker 1: tools and fifty different code charts to deal with all
Speaker 1: the different car companies. But the code corresponds to the
Speaker 1: specific issue the OBD has detected. So not only do
Speaker 1: you need a special piece of equipment to diagnose what
Speaker 1: has gone wrong with the car, you also need to
Speaker 1: know the codes, or else you haven't really learned anything.
Speaker 1: If I get a eight digit code and I don't
Speaker 1: know what that code refers to, then I'm not really
Speaker 1: any better off than just looking at a check engine light.
Speaker 1: On top of all of that, even if you know
Speaker 1: what is wrong, you might not be able to easily
Speaker 1: access the problem or fix it due to the level
Speaker 1: of complexity, sophistication and computerization of vehicles. Not all cars
Speaker 1: or motorcycles or whatever are equal. Obviously, some are a
Speaker 1: bit easier to work on than others. Some require a
Speaker 1: lot of specific care. Though. For example, if you're driving
Speaker 1: a Tesla, chances are the amount of personal tinkering you're
Speaker 1: going to do on your car is going to be
Speaker 1: fairly limited. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible, just that
Speaker 1: it's really challenging. So, in general, we've seen cars go
Speaker 1: from a mechanical system or electro mechanical system that the
Speaker 1: average person can understand and work on, to a group
Speaker 1: of interconnected specialized computer systems that are increasingly difficult to access.
Speaker 1: The cars have become a type of black box. This
Speaker 1: can be extra frustrating for gear heads who have actually
Speaker 1: an understanding of underlying mechanical issues that could cause problems.
Speaker 1: They might even know how to solve an issue if
Speaker 1: they can just get to it, but they are finding
Speaker 1: themselves with fewer options in order to address underlying issues. Now,
Speaker 1: cars are just one example of technologies that have moved
Speaker 1: toward a black box like system. Lots of others. But
Speaker 1: apart from making it harder to tinker with your tech,
Speaker 1: what's the problem. But when we come back, I'll talk
Speaker 1: about some of the pitfalls of turning tech into a
Speaker 1: black box. But first let's take a quick break. We're back.
Speaker 1: So the card transformed from a purely electro mechanical technology
Speaker 1: to one that increasingly relies on computer systems. But the
Speaker 1: computer itself can also be something of a black box
Speaker 1: for people now. In the very early days of the
Speaker 1: personal computer, it was hobbyists who were ordering kits through
Speaker 1: the mail and then building computers at home. Typically, these
Speaker 1: hobbyists had a working understanding of how the computer systems operated,
Speaker 1: you know, the actual way in which they would accept
Speaker 1: inputs and process information and then produce outputs. Before high
Speaker 1: level programming line languages, programmers also had to kind of
Speaker 1: think like a computer in order to program them to
Speaker 1: carry out functions. As computer languages became more high level,
Speaker 1: meaning there was a layer of abstraction between the programmer
Speaker 1: and the actual processes that were going on at the
Speaker 1: hardware level of the computer, that connection began to get
Speaker 1: more tenuous. Now, I'm not saying that programmers today don't
Speaker 1: have a real understanding of how computers work, but rather
Speaker 1: that this understanding is less critical because programming languages, computer engines,
Speaker 1: app developer kits you know, software developer kits and so on,
Speaker 1: provide a framework that reduces the amount of low level
Speaker 1: work programmers need to do in order to build stuff
Speaker 1: as software. For the average user, you know, someone who
Speaker 1: isn't learned in the ways of computer science, computers are
Speaker 1: pretty much black boxes. They work until they don't. You
Speaker 1: push buttons on a keyboard, or you click on a mouse,
Speaker 1: or you touch a screen, and you know, the computer
Speaker 1: does the stuff how it does stuff like how it
Speaker 1: detects a screen touch and then translates that into a
Speaker 1: command that is then executed to produce a specific result.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not important to us. We don't care
Speaker 1: or need to know how that works in order to
Speaker 1: enjoy the benefits of it. So for us, it's just
Speaker 1: the way things are. You push that button and this
Speaker 1: thing happens. It just does the black box of the
Speaker 1: computer system, which can be a desktop, a laptop, tablet, smartphone,
Speaker 1: video game console, you know whatever. It just takes care
Speaker 1: of what we need it to do. That's not to
Speaker 1: say a computer is impenetrably a black box. You can
Speaker 1: learn how they work and how programming languages work and
Speaker 1: so on. Computer science and programming classes are all built
Speaker 1: around that. So while a computer system is effectively a
Speaker 1: black box to the average user, it wasn't made that
Speaker 1: way by design, and it can be addressed on a
Speaker 1: case by case basis, depending on the time, the interest
Speaker 1: of the individual computer user, and their dedication to learning.
Speaker 1: But sometimes people will set out to make technologies with
Speaker 1: the intent of them being black boxes from the get go.
Speaker 1: These technologies are dependent in part or in whole on
Speaker 1: obviuse skating how they work, in other words, by obscuring it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's in an effort to protect an invention from copycats,
Speaker 1: the whole idea being that if you come up with
Speaker 1: something really clever, you don't want someone else to come
Speaker 1: along lift that idea and do the same thing you
Speaker 1: are doing, but selling it for less money or something.
Speaker 1: But other times you might be hiding how something works
Speaker 1: specifically with the intent to deceive. And now it's time
Speaker 1: to look much further back than the nineteen sixties. It
Speaker 1: was seventeen seventy in Europe. As the story goes, the
Speaker 1: European world had seen a great deal of advancement in
Speaker 1: mechanical clockwork devices. At that point. Clocks themselves, often powered
Speaker 1: by winding a spring and keeping time using gears with
Speaker 1: a reliable and consistent basis that was much better than
Speaker 1: earlier methods, even allowed people the ability to carry a
Speaker 1: time keeping device with them phenomenal. Based on similar principles,
Speaker 1: various tinkerers had come up with toys and distractions that
Speaker 1: also ran on clockwork, like gears and springs. Some of
Speaker 1: these were quite elaborate, such as figures that appeared to
Speaker 1: play musical instruments, and one of them was particularly impressive.
Speaker 1: It appeared to be an automaton that could play expert
Speaker 1: level chess. The figure, made out of wood, was dressed
Speaker 1: in Turkish costume, leading to it being called the Turk,
Speaker 1: or sometimes the mechanical Turk. If you were to sit
Speaker 1: down to play against the Turk, you, as an opponent,
Speaker 1: would move a piece, and then you would watch as
Speaker 1: this mechanical figure would shift and move a piece of
Speaker 1: its own in response. And the Turk was a pretty
Speaker 1: good chess player. It frequently beat the opponent's at face.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it would lose to particularly strong players, but it
Speaker 1: held its own pretty darn well. The man behind this
Speaker 1: invention was Wulfgan von Kimplin, who was in the service
Speaker 1: of Maria Teresa, Impress of the Holy Roman Empire. He
Speaker 1: had been invited to view a magician's performance in the court.
Speaker 1: So the story goes and The Impress had invited him
Speaker 1: specifically and afterwards asked him what he thought, and allegedly
Speaker 1: he boasted he could create a much more compelling illusion
Speaker 1: than anything this magician did. Now, according to the story,
Speaker 1: the Empress essentially said, oh yeah, well, prove it, buster,
Speaker 1: and he was given six months to do just that.
Speaker 1: The turk was what he had to show for it
Speaker 1: in six months time, and it reportedly went over like Gangbusters.
Speaker 1: The wooden turk stood behind a cabinet, on top of
Speaker 1: which was the chessboard, and Kempland would reportedly open the
Speaker 1: cabinet doors and reveal some gears and mechanics to prove
Speaker 1: that it was purely a mechanical system. In fact, the
Speaker 1: gears were masking a hidden compartment behind them, in which
Speaker 1: a human chess player was sitting inside, hunched over, keeping
Speaker 1: track of a game, using a smaller chessboard in front
Speaker 1: of him, and using various levers to move the turk's
Speaker 1: limbs in response. Now, a lot of folks suspected that
Speaker 1: something was up from the get go, but you know,
Speaker 1: part of the fun of a magic trick is just
Speaker 1: not knowing what's going on. Some folks try very hard
Speaker 1: to figure out the process. I am not one of them.
Speaker 1: Others are just happy to be entertained by a very
Speaker 1: well performed trick. But in a way, the Turk was
Speaker 1: a kind of black box. In fact, you could argue
Speaker 1: that a lot of magic tricks pretty much fall into
Speaker 1: the black box category. The process is purposefully hidden from
Speaker 1: the viewer. If we could see what the magician was
Speaker 1: doing from beginning to end, all the way through and
Speaker 1: without any misdirection, then it wouldn't be magic. We might
Speaker 1: admire the skill of the magician, how quickly they were
Speaker 1: able to do things, but we wouldn't really consider it magical.
Speaker 1: So the output is dependent upon people not knowing the
Speaker 1: process the inputs went through. Now that's not to say
Speaker 1: that you can't appreciate a really good magic trick even
Speaker 1: if you know how it's done. One of the best
Speaker 1: examples I know of is pen and Teller. They did
Speaker 1: a phenomenal version of the cups and balls routine where
Speaker 1: they used clear plastic cups and balls of aluminum foil
Speaker 1: to demonstrate how cups and balls works, and you can
Speaker 1: watch the entire time, and even being able to see
Speaker 1: through the cups and see the moves they're being made.
Speaker 1: Teller does them with such skill that it is truly phenomenal.
Speaker 1: It doesn't hurt that Pen is spouting off a lot
Speaker 1: of nonsense at the same time and misdirecting even as
Speaker 1: you're watching what's going on. I highly recommend you check
Speaker 1: it out on YouTube. Look for Pen and Teller cups
Speaker 1: and balls. You won't be disappointed. Now. The Turk, as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, was always intended to be
Speaker 1: an entertainment, not necessarily something that was specifically meant to
Speaker 1: perpetuate some sort of hoax. You wouldn't call a stagement
Speaker 1: a huckster or a con man or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Their occupation is dependent upon misdirection and making impossible acts
Speaker 1: seem like they really happened, but always or nearly always
Speaker 1: with the implication that it's all an illusion or a
Speaker 1: trick of some sort. But not everyone is quite so
Speaker 1: forthcoming about the fact that the thing they are doing
Speaker 1: is done through trickery. For the scam artist, the black
Speaker 1: box creates an incredible opportunity. As technological complexity outpaces the
Speaker 1: average person's understanding, the scam artists can create fake gadgets
Speaker 1: and devices that they claim can do certain things and
Speaker 1: then count upon the ignorance of the average person to
Speaker 1: get away with it. Typically, the go to scam is
Speaker 1: to convince people with money to pour investments into the
Speaker 1: hoax technology in an effort to fund whatever the next
Speaker 1: phase of development is supposed to be, whether that's to
Speaker 1: bring a prototype into a production model or to refine
Speaker 1: a design or whatever. But the end result is pretty
Speaker 1: much the same across the board. The con artist tries
Speaker 1: to wheedle out as much money from their marks as
Speaker 1: they can before they pull up stakes and skip town,
Speaker 1: or they find some way to shift focus or punt
Speaker 1: any promises on delivering results further into the future, like
Speaker 1: that's a future me problem kind of approach. Once in
Speaker 1: a blue moon, you might find someone who is just
Speaker 1: hoping to make enough time to come up with a
Speaker 1: way to do their hoax for realsies, or at least
Speaker 1: to simulate it close enough so that people are satisfied.
Speaker 1: That typically doesn't work out so well, Fairness, I'll get
Speaker 1: back to that. So let's talk about some examples of
Speaker 1: outright scams that leaned heavily on the black box concept,
Speaker 1: whether by having their supposed and actual operating mechanisms hidden
Speaker 1: or by obscuring how they really worked with a lot
Speaker 1: of nonsensical claims and technobabble. One historical scam artist was
Speaker 1: a guy named Charles Redheffer who claimed to have built
Speaker 1: a perpetual motion machine. If he had managed to do
Speaker 1: such a thing, it would have been a true feat,
Speaker 1: as it would break the laws of physics as we
Speaker 1: understand them. So let's go over why that is just
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. For perpetual motion to work, and thus for
Speaker 1: free energy in general to work, a machine would need
Speaker 1: to be able to operate with absolutely no energy loss,
Speaker 1: and for free energy, it would have to generate that
Speaker 1: energy in some way. A perpetual motion machine, once set
Speaker 1: into motion, would never stop moving unless someone or something
Speaker 1: specifically intervened, But if it were left to its own devices,
Speaker 1: it would continue to do whatever it was doing until
Speaker 1: the last syllable of recorded time. To borrow a phrase
Speaker 1: from the Bard. Now, if we look at our understanding
Speaker 1: of thermodynamics, we'll see that doing this in the real
Speaker 1: world is impossible, or at least it would go against
Speaker 1: fundamental ways that we understand regarding how our universe works.
Speaker 1: The first law of thermodynamics says that energy is neither
Speaker 1: created nor destroyed. Energy can, however, be converted from one
Speaker 1: form into another. So if you hold a water balloon
Speaker 1: over the head of a close personal friend, let's say
Speaker 1: it's ben boleen of stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: The water balloon has a certain amount of potential energy.
Speaker 1: If you let go of the balloon, that potential energy
Speaker 1: converts into kinetic energy, the energy of movement. You didn't
Speaker 1: create or destroy energy here, it just changed forms. So
Speaker 1: if you have what you claim to be a perpetual
Speaker 1: motion machine and you set it in motion, the energy
Speaker 1: you gave that machine at that initial point should sustain
Speaker 1: it forever, and it would never have that initial energy
Speaker 1: change form into some other type of energy that could
Speaker 1: then escape the system and show a net energy loss
Speaker 1: for the system itself. Remember, the energy is not being destroyed,
Speaker 1: but it can be lost in another form. This means
Speaker 1: that such a machine could not have any parts that
Speaker 1: had any contact with one another, which would make it
Speaker 1: a really strange machine. And that's because friction would be
Speaker 1: a constant means for energy to convert from one form
Speaker 1: to another form, in this case, kinetic energy the energy
Speaker 1: of movement into heat. Friction is the resistance surfaces have
Speaker 1: regarding moving against each other. So if the machine has
Speaker 1: any moving parts at all, those parts will be in
Speaker 1: countering friction, which means some of that moving energy will
Speaker 1: be converted to heat and thus escape the system. So
Speaker 1: the overall system of the machine itself will have a
Speaker 1: net loss of energy. There will be less energy to
Speaker 1: keep it going, which means gradually it will slow down
Speaker 1: and ultimately just stop. As a result, it might take
Speaker 1: a long time if the machine is particularly well designed,
Speaker 1: but it will eventually happen. You would need some form
Speaker 1: of energy input to keep things going on occasion, kind
Speaker 1: of like a little push. Imagine that you've got a
Speaker 1: swing like a rope with a tire at the end
Speaker 1: of it. No one's in it right now. You would
Speaker 1: have to give that tire a little push every now
Speaker 1: and then to keep it swinging, otherwise it will eventually stop.
Speaker 1: But that means you wouldn't have a perpetual motion machine.
Speaker 1: There are other factors that similarly make perpetual motion impossible.
Speaker 1: If the machine makes any sort of sound, than some
Speaker 1: of the energy of operation is going in to creating
Speaker 1: the vibrations that make sound. Sound itself is energy. It's
Speaker 1: kinetic energy, so that would mean the machine as a
Speaker 1: whole would be losing energy through that sound. A machine
Speaker 1: operating inside an atmosphere has to overcome the friction of
Speaker 1: moving through air, and the list goes on. Moreover, if
Speaker 1: we could build a perpetual motion machine, we'd be able
Speaker 1: to harness it for energy, but only up to whatever
Speaker 1: the starting initial energy was to get it moving in
Speaker 1: the first place. Because again, energy cannot be created. We
Speaker 1: can build devices that can harness other forms of energy
Speaker 1: and convert that energy into say electricity, but these are
Speaker 1: not perpetual motion or free energy machines. These machines are
Speaker 1: just collecting and converting energy that's already in the system
Speaker 1: or already present, so they're not making anything. Redheffer, however,
Speaker 1: claimed to have built a perpetual motion machine that could
Speaker 1: potentially serve as a free energy generator. Now, if true,
Speaker 1: this would have been an astonishing discovery. Not only would
Speaker 1: our understanding of the universe be proven to be wrong,
Speaker 1: but we would also have access to an inexhaustible supply
Speaker 1: of energy. Redheffer showed off what he said was a
Speaker 1: working model of his design in Philadelphia, and he was
Speaker 1: asking for money to fund the construction of a larger,
Speaker 1: practical version of his design. A group of inspectors from
Speaker 1: the city came out to check out how this thing worked,
Speaker 1: and they noticed something hinky was going on. Even though
Speaker 1: Redheifer was doing his best to run interference and prevent
Speaker 1: anyone from getting too close a look at the machine,
Speaker 1: the gears of the device, which was supposedly powering a
Speaker 1: second machine, were worn down in such a way that
Speaker 1: it was pretty clear that it was actually the second
Speaker 1: machine that was providing the energy to turn the quote
Speaker 1: unquote per petual motion machine, not the other way around.
Speaker 1: So if we were talking about cars, this would be
Speaker 1: like discovering that the wheels turning were causing the pistons
Speaker 1: of the engine to reciprocate in their cylinders. It's going
Speaker 1: the opposite way. So the investigators then hired a local
Speaker 1: engineer named Azaiah Lukens to build a similar device, using
Speaker 1: a secondary machine to provide power to what would be
Speaker 1: the perpetual motion type machine, and then they showed it
Speaker 1: to Redheifer, who saw that the jig was up and
Speaker 1: he hoofed it out of town to New York City.
Speaker 1: He tried to pull essentially the same scam there, this
Speaker 1: time using a machine that was secretly powered by a
Speaker 1: hand crank in a secret room on the other side
Speaker 1: of the wall. Technically, it was just a feller sitting
Speaker 1: there with a hand crank in one hand and a
Speaker 1: sandwich in the other, providing the work to turn this machine.
Speaker 1: Robert Fulton, an engineer of great renown, exposed the whole
Speaker 1: device as a fraud when he pulled apart some boards
Speaker 1: on the wall and revealed the man sitting there cranking
Speaker 1: away and Red Heifer fled again. Records of what happened
Speaker 1: next are sketchy. It seems he might have tried to
Speaker 1: pull the saying Dangs scheme in Philadelphia again a bit later,
Speaker 1: but he disappeared from the historical record after reportedly refusing
Speaker 1: to demonstrate his new device. When we come back, i'll
Speaker 1: compare this to what I mentioned before a farahnose before
Speaker 1: we chat about other concerns regarding the black box problem.
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. Okay, So THEARRHNOS
Speaker 1: this is the biomedical technology company that was founded by
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Holmes, and she is currently awaiting a trial on
Speaker 1: charges of federal fraud in the United States. The trial
Speaker 1: was supposed to begin in August twenty twenty, but has
Speaker 1: since been delayed until twenty twenty one due to COVID nineteen. Now,
Speaker 1: the pitch for Therahnose was really really alluring. What if
Speaker 1: engineers could make a machine capable of testing a single
Speaker 1: droplet of blood for more than one hundred possible illnesses
Speaker 1: and conditions, So rather than going through multiple blood draws
Speaker 1: and tests to try and figure out what's wrong, you
Speaker 1: could get an answer based off one little pinprick within
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. Maybe you would even be able
Speaker 1: to buy a Theoroughnose machine for your home, kind of
Speaker 1: like a desktop printer, and that would allow you to
Speaker 1: do a quick blood test at a moment's notice. Maybe
Speaker 1: you would get a heads up about something you should
Speaker 1: talk to your doctor about, preventing tragedy. In the process,
Speaker 1: you might learn that with some changes in your lifestyle,
Speaker 1: you could improve your overall health or stave off various illness.
Speaker 1: It would democratize medicine, giving the average person more control
Speaker 1: and knowledge about their own health and giving them a
Speaker 1: better starter point for conversations with their doctors. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great goal. It's a fantastic sales pitch, and
Speaker 1: it did get Holmes and Therphnos a lot of interested
Speaker 1: investors who really wanted to tap into this because not
Speaker 1: only is it something that you would want for yourself,
Speaker 1: you could easily see that if this is possible, that
Speaker 1: business is going to be like the next Apple, It'll
Speaker 1: become a trillion dollar company. Something that powerful would undoubtedly
Speaker 1: become a powerhouse. Now I've done full episodes about Bharrahnos
Speaker 1: and how it fell apart because spoiler alert, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. The technology just didn't work. But I think
Speaker 1: a lot of what happened with Bharaphnos was largely dependent
Speaker 1: upon naivete ignorance, and wishful thinking. Our technology can do
Speaker 1: some pretty astounding stuff, right, I mean if you had
Speaker 1: told me in two thousand that by the end of
Speaker 1: the decade I would be carrying around a device capable
Speaker 1: of really harnessing the power of the Internet in my
Speaker 1: pocket and I would have access to it all the time,
Speaker 1: I would have thought you were bonkers. So if technology
Speaker 1: can do incredible things like that, why can't it do
Speaker 1: something equally incredible with blood tests? The idea is that, well,
Speaker 1: we're already seeing this amazing stuff happen. Why isn't this
Speaker 1: other amazing thing possible? And that is dangerous thinking. It
Speaker 1: equates all technological advances and developments, and that's just not
Speaker 1: how reality works. Moore's law, the observation that generally speaking,
Speaker 1: computational power doubles every two years, has really helped fuel
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding about technology in general. We extend that same
Speaker 1: crazy growth to all sorts of fields and technology when
Speaker 1: that doesn't actually apply, and it gives us the motivation
Speaker 1: to fool ourselves into thinking that the impossible is actually possible.
Speaker 1: That I think is what happened with Pharrhos. Now. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying Holmes set out to deceive people. I don't
Speaker 1: know what she really believed was possible, but based on
Speaker 1: what I've read and seen and listened to, to me, it
Speaker 1: sounds like she figured there was at least a decent
Speaker 1: chance her vision would become possible. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of Therahnosa's activities, in my personal opinion, appear to have
Speaker 1: been meant to stall for time while engineers were working
Speaker 1: on very hard problems to make the blood testing device
Speaker 1: work as intended. The further into the process, the more
Speaker 1: the company had to spin wheels to make it seem
Speaker 1: like it was making more progress than it actually was.
Speaker 1: The company had raised an enormous amount of money from
Speaker 1: the investors, so they were beholden to them. They had
Speaker 1: also secured agreements with drug store chains to provide services
Speaker 1: to customers, so they needed to perform a service. It
Speaker 1: had to show progress, even if behind the scenes things
Speaker 1: had actually stalled out. On top of that, you also
Speaker 1: have the reports of executives like Holmes herself living the
Speaker 1: high life and really enjoying incredible benefits of wealth because
Speaker 1: of the enormous investment into the company, so that plays
Speaker 1: a part too. Sharrhnos's operations were effectively a black box
Speaker 1: to the outside world. It was meant to misdirect and
Speaker 1: give the implication that things were working fine behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: while the people who were actually there were trying to
Speaker 1: keep up the illusion while simultaneously attempting to solve what
Speaker 1: appeared to be impossible problems. At some point, based on
Speaker 1: how things unfolded, I would say that executives that Sharrhnos
Speaker 1: appeared to be perpetrating a scam, not just you know,
Speaker 1: trying to maintain an illusion while getting things to work.
Speaker 1: They were actively scamming people. In my opinion, maybe they
Speaker 1: were still holding out hope that it would ultimately work out,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't change that it was a classic case
Speaker 1: of smoke and mirrors to hide what was really happening,
Speaker 1: such as using existing blood testing technology from other companies
Speaker 1: in order to run tests while claiming that the results
Speaker 1: were coming from actual therenose devices. But again, this is
Speaker 1: all my own opinion based on what I've seen and
Speaker 1: read about the subject. A court we'll have to determine
Speaker 1: whether or not Holmes and others actually committed fraud. A
Speaker 1: lot of the technology we rely upon in our day
Speaker 1: to day lives is complicated stuff, and there are limited
Speaker 1: hours in the day, and it's a bit much task
Speaker 1: anyone to become an expert on all things tech to
Speaker 1: figure out exactly how they work. Tech is also becoming
Speaker 1: more and more specialized, so you might become an expert
Speaker 1: in one area of technology and be completely ignorant of another.
Speaker 1: That's not unusual because it takes a lot of time
Speaker 1: to become an expert at specific areas of tech. These days,
Speaker 1: they've become so specialized. But by overlooking the how we
Speaker 1: can make ourselves vulnerable to bad actors out there when
Speaker 1: it comes to technology. Maybe they are actively trying to
Speaker 1: pull the wool over our eyes, or maybe they're just
Speaker 1: simply misguided and they misunderstand how stuff works. But either way,
Speaker 1: our own ignorance of how tech does and what it does,
Speaker 1: and the limitations that we all face based on the
Speaker 1: fundamental laws of the universe as we understand them, that
Speaker 1: all makes us potential marks or targets. That's where critical
Speaker 1: thinking comes in and plays a part. Knowing to ask
Speaker 1: questions and to critically examine the answers, and to ask
Speaker 1: follow up questions, and to not accept claims at face
Speaker 1: value are all important traits. Now, we do have to
Speaker 1: be care not to go so far as to embrace denialism.
Speaker 1: If we are confronted with compelling evidence that supports a claim,
Speaker 1: we need to be ready to accept that claim. I'm
Speaker 1: not advocating for you guys to just go out there
Speaker 1: and say that any and every claim is just bogus.
Speaker 1: That's not the point. I'll close this out by talking
Speaker 1: about something we're seeing unfold in real time around us,
Speaker 1: and that involves machine learning and AI systems. Now, if
Speaker 1: you follow the circles that report on this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: you will occasionally see calls for transparency. Those calls are
Speaker 1: to urge people who are designing these machine learning systems
Speaker 1: and AI systems to show their work as it were,
Speaker 1: and to have the systems themselves show their work. It's
Speaker 1: not enough to create a system that can perform a
Speaker 1: task like image recognition and then give us results. We
Speaker 1: need to know how the system came to those conclusions
Speaker 1: that it produced. We need this in order to check
Speaker 1: for stuff biases, which is a serious issue in artificial intelligence. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it's a really big problem for tech in general, but
Speaker 1: we're really seeing it play out rather spectacularly in AI.
Speaker 1: Now i'll give you an example that I've already alluded to,
Speaker 1: facial recognition technology. The US National Institute of Standards and
Speaker 1: Technology conducted an investigation in twenty nineteen into facial recognition technologies,
Speaker 1: and it found that algorithms were pretty darn good at
Speaker 1: identifying Caucasian faces, but if they were analyzing a black
Speaker 1: or an Asian face, they were far less accurate, sometimes
Speaker 1: one hundred times more likely to falsely identify somebody based
Speaker 1: on an image. The worst error rates involved identifying Native Americans,
Speaker 1: so let's let that sink in, because when we talk
Speaker 1: about issues like systemic racism, we sometimes forget about how
Speaker 1: that can manifest in ways that aren't as intuitive or
Speaker 1: obvious as the really overt stuff. We live in a
Speaker 1: world that has cameras all over the place. Surveillance is
Speaker 1: a real thing that's going on all the time. Police
Speaker 1: and other law enforcement agencies rely heavily on facial recognition
Speaker 1: algorithms to identify suspects and to search for people of interest.
Speaker 1: And if those algorithms have a low rate of reliability
Speaker 1: for different ethnicities, a disproportionate number of people who have
Speaker 1: no connection to any investigation are going to be singled
Speaker 1: out by mistake by these algorithms. Lives can be disrupted,
Speaker 1: careers can be ruined, relationships hurt all because a computer
Speaker 1: program can't tell the difference between two different faces. That
Speaker 1: is a serious problem, and it points to a couple
Speaker 1: of things. One of the big ones is a lack
Speaker 1: of diversity on the design inside of things. We've seen
Speaker 1: this with tech for a long time. There is a
Speaker 1: really critical diversity issue going on with technology. The people
Speaker 1: who are building algorithms and training machine learning systems are
Speaker 1: largely failing to do so in a way that can
Speaker 1: be equally applicable across different ethnicities. Meanwhile, organizations like the
Speaker 1: American Civil Liberties Union are calling upon law enforcement agencies
Speaker 1: to stop relying on technology like this, entirely, pointing out
Speaker 1: that the potential for harm to befall innocent people outweighs
Speaker 1: the benefits of using the tech to catch criminals. A
Speaker 1: machine learning system trained to do something like identify people
Speaker 1: based on their faces needs to be transparent so that
Speaker 1: when a bias becomes evident, engineers can go back to
Speaker 1: the machine learning system and look and see where it
Speaker 1: went wrong, and then train it to eliminate the bias.
Speaker 1: Without transparency, it can be hard or impossible to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly where things are going wrong within the system. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: real people in the real world are suffering the consequences. Now,
Speaker 1: if we extend this outward and we look into a
Speaker 1: future where artificial intelligence is undoubtedly going to play a
Speaker 1: critical part in our day to day experiences, we see
Speaker 1: how we need to avoid these black box situations. We
Speaker 1: need to understand why a system will generate a particular
Speaker 1: output given specific inputs. We've got to be able to
Speaker 1: check the systems to be certain they are coming to
Speaker 1: the right conclusions. Artificial intelligence has enormous potential to augment
Speaker 1: how we go about everything from running errands to performing
Speaker 1: our jobs, but we need to be certain that the
Speaker 1: guidance we receive is dependable, that's the right course of action,
Speaker 1: and so I hope this episode has really driven home
Speaker 1: how it's important for us to hold technology up to
Speaker 1: a critical view. It's not that technology is inherently good
Speaker 1: or bad, or that people are specifically acting in an
Speaker 1: ethical or unethical way, but rather that without using critical thinking,
Speaker 1: we can't be certain if what we're relying upon is
Speaker 1: actually reliable or not. I also urge, as always that
Speaker 1: we pair compassion with critical thinking. I think there's a
Speaker 1: tendency for us to kind of assign blame and intent
Speaker 1: when things go wrong, and sometimes that is appropriate, but
Speaker 1: I would argue that we shouldn't jump to that conclusion
Speaker 1: right off the bat. Sometimes people just make bad choices,
Speaker 1: or they are misinterpreting things, but they don't have any
Speaker 1: intent to mislead. So while I do advocate that we
Speaker 1: use critical thinking as much as possible, let's be decent,
Speaker 1: nice human beings whenever we do that if it turns
Speaker 1: out someone is truly being unethical and trying to deceive others,
Speaker 1: that's obviously a different story. But before you know for sure,
Speaker 1: I say, we employ that compassion and hopefully we are
Speaker 1: able to solve these problems before they have these real
Speaker 1: world impacts, because the consequences of those are dramatic and
Speaker 1: terrible and avoidable if we use critical thinking. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that rerun episode from just a few years ago.
Speaker 1: Boy seems like a real, totally different era because that
Speaker 1: was obviously several months into the COVID nineteen pandemic when
Speaker 1: lots of us were still on lockdown and stuff. Very
Speaker 1: different time from today. But yeah, as I said, black boxes,
Speaker 1: it's still very much an ongoing topic in tech, particularly
Speaker 1: in the field of artificial intelligence, but not just that.
Speaker 1: We see it in the right to repair movement as well,
Speaker 1: as advocates argue that companies can't, of few skate the
Speaker 1: workings of their products so that it makes it impossible
Speaker 1: for you to do any kind of maintenance or repair
Speaker 1: on them yourself or with an independent operation that can
Speaker 1: do it for maybe less than what it would cost
Speaker 1: you to take it to A quote unquote official repair site.
Speaker 1: So yeah, black Box is still very much a thing,
Speaker 1: still very much an ongoing concern in the field of technology,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure we'll end up talking about it again
Speaker 1: and again as the various artificial intelligence stories continue to unfold.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well, and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.