WEBVTT - Fear and the Autonomous Cyber Weapon 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:14.720 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.560 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.800 so today we're gonna be talking about a an issue 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:23.720 in the future of technology, actually not just the future, 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:26.400 the present of technology. And it's going to have to 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:32.040 do with how we assess threats based on different types 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:36.120 of technological regimes that exist in the world. And so 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:39.080 you and I, Robert, are aware that very often we 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:42.559 fear the wrong things, right, Oh yes, I mean we 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:47.120 we fear things that are completely disproportionate to the level 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:49.199 of threat they represent in our lives. And this is 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:51.600 obvious in some ways because we have phobias of things 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.320 that are totally harmless. Some people are afraid of balloons 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:56.600 or something. I guess they're not harmful to birds and fish, 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:59.480 but harmless to us. And some people are afraid of 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:01.880 I don't know, public speaking, something that is in some 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:05.760 ways genuinely threatening to your reputation maybe, but it is 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.160 not is not a threat to your to your body, 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:10.600 to your body integrity. Yeah, and we have a lot 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.720 of these, uh, what some people called paper tigers. You 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:17.279 know where, in fact, we have a whole classic episode 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:19.679 of stuff to build your mind about paper tigers, where 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:23.840 something something that is ultimately not life threatening or even 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:27.360 even something that's not even gonna cause you actual physical injury. Uh, 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:29.560 we build it up in our minds to the level 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:32.240 it's really on par with some sort of a large 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:36.440 predatory creature, you know, in our in our primordial past. 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.120 You know, like we give it the same credence we 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.039 would give a tiger leaping out of the bushes at us. 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:44.360 So those are the obvious ways that we fear the 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.120 wrong things. We fear stuff that isn't even literally going 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:49.480 to hurt us. But then people are just wrong in 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:53.320 the ways they assess the relative dangers of actual physical threats, 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:57.120 like attacks by animals. You know, people are more afraid of, say, 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:00.480 being attacked and killed by a shark, But shark kill 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.200 almost nobody. They kill like less than ten people on 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:07.280 average per year worldwide. Uh, you know, you you are 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:10.160 extremely unlikely to die by shark attack, even if you 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:14.000 swim a lot. Meanwhile, animals that don't come in nearly 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:16.520 as much fear and and grip our minds in the 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:19.840 same way like dogs kill way more people. Dogs kill 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.280 tens of thousands of people every year, and mosquitoes, which 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:27.840 spread diseases, they literally kill hundreds of thousands of people annually. 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:30.760 Nobody's got mosquito phobia. I mean I guess maybe some 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:33.360 people do. Yeah, it's true, Like at least some people 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:35.320 have dog phobias. I think you can. You can basically 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:37.880 look to horror cinema and see this played out right, 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:40.799 how many how many dog horror films can you think of? Yes, 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:42.480 you can think of some key ones here and there, 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:46.520 mainly Kujo, right um, and a few others of note 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:49.800 you can, And then when you think of shark horror films, 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.040 there's just an endless supply. You could spend the rest 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.560 of your life I think watching terrible shark movies. But 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:59.800 when it comes to mosquitoes, you basically just have man squito. 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.120 And that's it's not even just a straight up mosquito movie. 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:05.600 It's a it's a human mosquito hybrid. Well, part of 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:07.880 it has to do with the kinds of imagery that 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:10.200 excite our brain. I mean, you just it's hard to 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:14.440 make a mosquito look scary. Mosquitoes look irritating. Yeah, but 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:18.160 then on the other hand, Uh, ticks are horrifying looking 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.240 and carry illnesses. And as we pointed out in the past, 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:26.080 there's only one there's really only one Tick horror film, 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:29.600 and it's terrific, But there's only one of them. You're 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:32.320 talking about, the one with Seth Green and Clint Howard, 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:34.680 Ron Howard's brother. Yeah, I'll make sure that we linked 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.600 to the trailer talk video episode on the Landing page 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:39.000 for this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, in 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.680 which we talk about this cinematic jewel. Well, if you must. 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:45.760 But people are also totally off base in the way 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:49.080 they assess the relative dangers of, say, travel threats. Everybody's 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.720 heard this statistic right about travel travel methods. Oh yeah, 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.000 fear of flying being a huge one. Um, you know 0:03:56.560 --> 0:04:00.640 driving is considerably more dangerous, and yet it's it's flying 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:04.000 that fills so many of us with varying levels of anxiety. 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:07.080 I can personally relate to this, and I'm continually fascinated 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:12.040 and frustrated by the way like this deeper irrational fear 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:16.480 can overpower, or at least sufficiently overpower my rational understanding 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:19.000 of the risks. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:22.599 I I have had various levels of fear of flying 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:25.000 in the past, And yet I totally understand, Like I've 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:28.000 read all the statistics about how per mile traveled, you 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.520 are so much safer in a in a commercial airliner 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.400 than you are, say, driving yourself somewhere. Yeah, Like, just 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:38.520 as a rational human being, you think, well, I can 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.400 just I can educate myself out of this fear. Like 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:43.359 with it with the airplane thing. I think back to 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:45.839 m was it the escape pot episode where we talked 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:49.480 about like where why there are no escape pods on airplanes? 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:52.400 And it doesn't make sense? Yeah, that it doesn't make sense. 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:55.160 And also if you are going to encounter a dangerous 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:58.120 situation than an airplane, like, it's gonna be far more off. 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:00.960 That's going to be the take off of the landing. Um. 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.239 And uh. And yet I'll I'll run through these facts, 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.520 I'll run through the material that we research and uh, 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:11.560 and it still doesn't quite penetrate the deeper set anxiety 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.800 that sometimes kicks in while flying. Yeah, And this disconnect 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.520 between what we fear and the actual threat is kind 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.160 of troubling. But but it actually gets worse because you 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:23.880 can point out some scenarios where fearing the wrong thing 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:28.120 has direct consequences in reality. So I was reading this 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:31.920 short article on edge dot org from by the psychology 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:35.200 professor David G. Myers about how humans just do not 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:39.320 accurately gauge what the real threats they face are. For example, 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:42.240 people tend to be very afraid of terrorist attacks, and 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:46.520 of course that makes sense. Terrorist attacks are straightforwardly terrifying 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:50.080 like that, they are a horrible thing, but statistically they 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:54.320 are so unlikely to harm you, just as one example, uh, 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:57.919 Myers points to how much more likely you are to 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:01.160 be harmed by writing in a motor vehicle, by being 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:03.520 in a car accident, than by being a victim of 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.760 a terrorist attack. And yet terrorism is designed exactly to 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:09.800 make us afraid of threats in an outsized way. That's 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.120 sort of the purpose of it, right, It's to grip 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:15.000 your mind with a horrifying image that will force you 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:18.599 to behave irrationally in response. Yeah, kind of a forced 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:23.080 recategorization of a safe or reasonably safe place. Uh. And 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:25.640 and of course that can be psychologically damaging. That's again 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.800 the whole point of terrorism. Yeah, exactly. Terrorism plays on 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:31.400 our psychology. And Myers gives an example of how this 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.479 can work exactly against our interests. So after the nine 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:37.800 eleven attacks in America, a lot of people were very 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:40.960 worried about terrorist attacks on airplanes, and as a result, 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.240 fewer people were flying. But Myers did the math on 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.240 the effects of this given the statistics about the relative 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:50.880 safety of these travel methods, and he discovered that if 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:55.160 people in general flew an average of twenty less and 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.040 didn't just like not travel anywhere, but instead made all 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:01.000 those same trips and covered the same out of ground 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:05.279 by driving, then their risk of fatal injury actually went 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.320 up because scheduled airline flights, as we know, are much 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.040 safer than surface travel by car per mile. So if 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:14.400 Americans flew less in two thousand one and made the 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:17.680 same trips by car, we could expect about eight hundred 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.520 more people to die in auto fatalities that year. And 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.600 Myers reports that later there was a German psychologist named 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:29.640 Gerd Gigerinzer who checked this prediction against travel data for 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.520 the year and the year following the attacks, and gird 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:37.600 determined that an estimated one thousand, five hundred Americans died 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:40.960 in traffic accidents while trying to avoid the dangerous of 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.400 air travel. So Myers writes, quote, long after nine eleven, 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.680 the terrorists were still killing us. And in a way 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:50.320 this is true, that they were able to present people 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:54.440 with horrifying images that made them behave irrationally, made them 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.360 worry about the wrong things, and actually led to more 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.080 dangerous decisions that hurt more people. And of course this 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:03.760 is limited merely to people's choice of how to travel 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:06.640 right there. There are obviously other ways that you can 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.760 say terrorism leads to negative consequences that actually harm the 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.080 people who are seeking security and all that. Political decisions 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:17.280 and stuff like that, Yeah, basically affecting at at various 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:19.640 levels how you live your life. Yeah, trying to get 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.920 people to operate on the basis of terror management rather 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:26.280 than rational decision making. And people don't make good decisions 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:28.960 when they're terrified. And part of the reason is that 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:32.360 there's this principle exploited by terrorism. It's the cognitive bias 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:35.600 known as the availability heuristic. And we've talked about this 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:37.600 on the show before, but basically, what this means is 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:41.520 that items and events which you are, which you have 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:45.880 easily accessible in your memory, are given undo weight in 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:50.120 our considerations. So when we try to think about what's dangerous, 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:52.360 what are the things we should worry about and protect 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:56.200 ourselves against. We actually end up not thinking about what 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:59.200 is statistically the most relevant threat, but we end up 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:03.720 thinking basically about what's the most scary. And these are 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.840 two very different things. Scary images stick in the mind, 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:11.720 and real threats very often go unnoticed. Myers writes, quote, 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:16.679 Thus we remember and fear disasters, tornadoes, air crashes, attacks 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:21.280 that kill people dramatically in bunches, while fearing too little 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:24.640 the threats that claim lives one by one. We hardly 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:29.000 noticed the half million children dying quietly each day from rhodavirus. 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:32.720 Bill Gates once observed the equivalent of four seven forty 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:35.880 seven's full of children every day. And we discount the 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:39.440 future and its future weapon of mass destruction, climate change. 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:42.480 And so Myers goes on to quote the American security 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:46.240 and privacy expert Bruce Schneier, who says, quote, if it's 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:48.880 in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:52.720 of news is something that hardly ever happens. Now, of course, 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:54.720 that's not always the case, because, of course you could 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:57.400 see news reports about things that are are real things 0:09:57.440 --> 0:09:59.160 to be concerned about. But I think what he's talking 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:01.040 about there is that if you detect your in a 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:04.240 situation of if it bleeds, it leads, you should do 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:07.000 your best not to let the scary spectacle of what 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:10.360 you're seeing become overrepresented as a threat in your brain. 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:14.680 And of course it's also the case with false news, 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:17.760 which we've talked about recently, um, in which case this 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:20.720 is something that never happens and it can end up 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.480 affecting the way we we live our lives or govern ourselves. 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.720 I mean, think to such moral panics at say Satanic 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:30.120 panic or the or a you know, to a lesser 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.680 degree that the poison candy myth, the idea that Halloween 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:37.160 candy is going to be tampered with and then handed 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:39.920 out to children. These are things that that that did 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:43.719 not happen, but became pervasive ideas. I mean, especially in 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:46.440 the case of Satanic panic, this is the fiction that 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:50.280 there is or was an organized effort amongst secret occultists 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:55.760 to ritually abuse children, a fantasy that resulted in manufactured trauma, 0:10:56.480 --> 0:11:00.199 ruined lives, and a legacy of superstitious persecution and in 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:03.040 violence in parts of the world, including parts of Africa 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:06.080 where you kind of see the echo effect of of 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:10.120 of satanic panic in western nations of predominantly United States 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.320 in the nineteen eighties. Yeah, but we should remember, of course, 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:15.360 while we talked about the myth, to talk about the 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:17.840 causal reality. I think a lot of people think what 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:20.840 was going on when people were coming up with stories 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:24.480 of Satanic ritual abuse in the eighties was that children 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:28.960 were being led in interviews and prompted by police and 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.000 therapists and people who had these pre existing ideas in 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:34.480 their head and children were just sort of like going 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:38.120 along with what they perceived the adults uh to want 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:40.480 them to say, right, and and of course it wasn't 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.720 just the children that the children were a major part of. 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:45.800 You also had adults with these uh these these these 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:50.000 supposed memories that they were reclaiming through therapy that were 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:54.559 revealing past satanic abuse. Um. But but yeah, it all, 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:59.200 it all amounted to a manufactured fear that that so 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:02.560 many people bought into and the thing that everyone was 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:07.400 afraid of did not exist and has never existed. You know, 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:11.240 it's it still floors me there there's an older episode 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:12.880 of stuff to blow your mind about it. Um what 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.240 to link to that it's it's a fascinating psychological event 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.240 in history that it makes you realize yet again that 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:22.920 it's the vividness of the imagery and sort of the 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:27.440 what the what the threat suggests as an idea that 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.560 captures people's fear, not so much the present reality of 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:34.080 the threat. Yeah, and it drives home just how how 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.400 easy it is, then um psychologically to just to have 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:41.080 an unbalanced fear of flying or dogs or terrorism or 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:43.840 what have you. And so for today, I wanted to 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:48.560 take this principle that we don't exactly fear the right 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:52.120 thing and and and try to redirect it in one 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:55.840 particular area, which is the kind of thing we're usually 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:59.800 worried about when it comes to AI and autonomous weaponry 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:05.360 and the dangers of technological weapons. I think we are 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:09.400 worried about the wrong stuff, or more specifically, we're worried 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:11.920 about stuff that we should be worried about, but we're 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:16.440 worried almost exclusively about the smaller threat rather than the 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.920 larger threat. The smaller more dramatic. And I think this 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:22.000 is this is something that came up when you're listening 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:25.720 the examples earlier. A threat that you could you've given 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:29.640 the chance physically run from fearing climate change, for instance, 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:32.200 how do you run from that? How do you hide 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:35.360 behind a bush? Uh like? But a tornado, on the 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:39.120 other hand, you could conceivably run into a bunker, right 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.160 you can, you can. You can attach a lot of 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.440 anxiety to it. But then you could conceivably see it 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:48.559 and and react in real time to its to its threat. 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:51.920 But if you're in a place where tornadoes don't happen 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:54.840 very often, say, and you are investing a lot of 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:59.360 energy and resources into preparing for a tornado threat instead 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:02.560 of in sting that energy and resources into something that 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.760 will definitely affect you in the future, like say, climate change, 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:08.240 which will affect most people wherever you are in one 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:11.720 way or another, especially with all of its secondary downstream effects. 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:15.600 If you're investing exclusively in the lesser threat, than you 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:19.560 are doing yourself and your future descendants a disservice. Absolutely. 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:21.320 All right, Well, let's take a quick break and the 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:23.720 when we come back, we will talk about different types 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:29.280 of technological weapon threats. Thank you, thank you. All right, 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:32.520 we're back. So, Joe, I know that when when we 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:36.720 when we talk about technological weapon threats, what we're really 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:39.280 talking about here is of course ED two oh nine. 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:43.600 We're talking about the terminator, right, We're talking about chopping mall, 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.680 the killer robots of shopping mall that may just go 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:50.080 out of control and start hunting our teenagers down in 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:53.720 the malls of the future. Chopping Mall is a fantastic 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:57.320 piece of eighties trash cinema. But but no, I mean 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:00.440 that is the thing that captures our mind because you 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:02.520 can run from it. Yeah, there's a robot with a 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:06.040 gun on it that that is the standard image. Okay, 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:10.080 what is the AI autonomous weapon threat of the future. 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.880 It is a terminator. It is those killer robots from 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.920 the Matrix. It is something that is an embodied robot 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.280 that is coming to you know, point a gun at 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:22.640 you and make you do something, or hunt you down 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:25.680 for robot sport or something like that. And I want 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:28.240 to be clear that this is absolutely a real thing 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:31.000 worth discussing. Not so much I don't know about terminators, 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:35.120 but the idea of conventional autonomous weapons that I'm not 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:37.640 saying that is not worth discussing, because it is It's 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:40.600 been the focus of a lot of international conversation about 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.320 the ethics of warfare. We're actively trying to figure out 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:46.640 how to regulate this, and there for example United Nations 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:50.720 Conventions on Discussing Autonomous Conventional Weapons and what we should 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:54.200 do about them. Yeah, the ideas of Head two oh 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:58.040 nine terminators, what have you even? Chopping mall Sci five 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:02.800 has always spoken to our anxieties and our fears, uh, 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:06.680 and our hopes about technology and where it's going to 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:09.640 to get us and given us vivid imagery to feed 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:13.440 our availability heuristic for these types of threats. Yea. And 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:15.440 of course give us something that we can we can 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:17.560 we can we can run from you know, we can, 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.040 we can battle, you can fight back against the the 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.480 machines and chopping mall. But to get serious for a minute, 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.600 I mean, we are more and more seeing actual semi 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:32.200 autonomous weapon technology being introduced into military arsenals around the world. Absolutely. 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:34.560 I mean you'd have to be under a rock to 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:38.640 have avoided uh any any coverage of the U. S 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:42.760 military's use of drone strikes in recent decades. Uh. And 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.240 and that's that's just the tip of the iceberg too. 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:48.000 I mean I was reading a little bit about autonomous 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.680 weapons in Max tech Mark's recent book Life three point 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:55.600 oh and he points out that you have. You have 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:58.640 in the U s military, the US Phalanx system for 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:03.840 its Ages class cruisers that automatically detect, track, and attack 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:07.080 threats such as anti ship missiles and aircraft. You may 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.119 have seen images of these these like big dome looking 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:13.080 devices with the weapon on on the front. Oh yeah, 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.840 I mean we'll think about other types of automatic missile defense, 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:21.680 the the Israeli Iron Dome system. Yeah. But in particular though, 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:25.080 this this one system, it's been in service since nineteen eighty, 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:28.159 still in service today, and it it actually led to 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:32.160 the nine downing of Iran air Flight six five five, 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:36.440 a civilian Iranian passenger jet, killed all two nine people 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:40.480 on board and caused international outrage. There was, however, a 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:43.520 human in the loop on this system who made the error. 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:46.359 And that's that's one of the key distinctions between uh, 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:51.280 some of these contemporary and past autonomous weapons systems and 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.560 the possible future of autonomous weapons systems. Is there a 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:57.720 human being that is at some point weighing in on 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:00.439 the decision or having to make a final decision. And 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.879 in pretty much all conventional autonomous weapons systems I can 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:07.480 think of today, they're they're not fully autonomous there's semi autonomous, 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:11.280 there's still a human command structure, a human override, there's 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:15.359 still basically being controlled by humans, but they're making some 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:20.840 kind of uh, they've got some kind of automatic assistance function, right, 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.840 they'll be they'll be a drone pilot somewhere, or in 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:26.040 some of these models, I believe it would be you'll 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:27.880 have a drone pilot and maybe they're looking they're dealing 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:30.320 with with multiple drones, but there's still a human in 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:34.159 the loop on that particular weapons system. And just a 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:38.000 reminder that that Russia is believed to be testing its 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:41.919 first autonomous nuclear torpedo. The idea with this is that 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:45.000 it would be guided largely by AI to strike the 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:48.200 United States even if it lost all communications with Moscow. 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:51.360 A frightening weapon concept, to be sure, and but it's 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:53.760 the one that was originally proposed back in the nineties 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:58.840 sixties by um um Andre Sakarov, and some analysts call 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:01.760 this a doomsday weapon, and with good reason. That's a 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.600 it's a terrifying concept. It certainly is. I mean, one 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:07.840 at least hopes that there's there's still human command structure 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:11.320 there and and but these types of weapons, all these 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:14.159 things we've been talking about are part of this debate, 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:16.879 part of this debate that the international community is having 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:21.240 about what are the ethics of autonomous weapons systems, especially 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.280 if they're not just weapons systems used to say, shoot 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.920 down incoming enemy missiles. I mean that you sort of 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:30.120 see the difference there right now, Like you can imagine 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:33.959 missile defense kind of thing is different from something that 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:36.920 will be aiming at people or aiming at places where 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:39.920 people could be even though even a missile defense system could, 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:43.920 of course, as we've seen, go go awry, right right, 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:46.200 I mean, it becomes increasingly more complicated when you start 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:50.720 thinking about, um, military engagements, say in a city, if 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:54.320 you're having to deal with civilians and or or or uh, 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:58.160 you know, combatants that are not in uniform that sort 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:03.560 of thing, or any variety of uh, morally complex standoff situation. 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:06.520 How do you program for that? Yeah, and so that 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.119 is a very important question. But I wanted to focus 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:14.119 today on a potentially even more dangerous class of weapons 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:17.920 that can actually hurt many more people, and a class 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:21.200 of weapons that in fact already exist in some form today. 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:24.800 And we have a pretty clear vision of how much 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:27.760 more advanced and how much more dangerous they will continue 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:31.080 to get in the very near future, even without access 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.960 to heavy weapons or manufacturing capabilities. So I got the 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:37.359 idea to have this discussion when I read an article 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:41.520 in Undark magazine, which if Robert you ever read an Undark, Yeah, 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:42.719 I don't think I've read this one before we can 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:45.639 mentioned the title. My mind immediately went to various horror 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:48.639 fiction publications. It's got a horror kind of name. I 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:52.119 think it's named after We intentionally named after a type 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.879 of radium paint that was used back in the day, 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:59.240 I think early twentieth century, when before people realize what 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:01.480 the risks of it were. And that's sort of what 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:04.600 the magazine explores. That explores science and a lot of 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:07.919 good long form science writing, exploring the good and the 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:11.119 bad that science has to offer. But anyway, this article 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.280 was published in July of this year by science journalist 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:18.480 named Jeremy Sue, and it's called forget killer robots. Autonomous 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:20.919 weapons are already online. So I was reading this and 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:23.200 I started thinking about this. I thought this would be 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:25.720 a good topic for us to talk today. So Sue 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:29.520 starts by discussing the ways that the problem of autonomous 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:33.840 weaponry has really captured people's attention worldwide in the conventional 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:36.280 weapons since and as we've been talking about, there's a 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:38.840 good reason for this. If we're gonna be increasingly using 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:42.639 robots and AI programs capable of delivering lethal force on 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:45.879 the battleground, or I guess to be less uphimistic, if 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:49.240 we're gonna have machines that can kill people without a 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:52.680 human taking responsibility and directly making the machine do it, 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:55.960 we really need to be having serious conversations about the 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:59.919 ethics of this technology. Should there be international treaties governing 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:02.800 what kinds of autonomous weapons we allow each other to 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:05.360 make and so forth? I mean, we've got international treaties 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:09.720 about nuclear weapons. Shouldn't there be international treaty agreements on 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:13.280 autonomous weapons? Oh? Yeah, I mean it makes sense. Yet 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:16.040 to your point, we have we have treaties about nuclear weapons. 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:18.440 We have we have treaties about biological and chemical agents 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:20.879