Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. M Hey the everybody, and welcome
Speaker 1: to text Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan strictly executive
Speaker 1: vampire here at how Stuff Works. Happy Halloween if you're
Speaker 1: listening to this on Halloween. Otherwise, that was the worst
Speaker 1: possible introduction I could have given for this episode, and
Speaker 1: 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 Attraction,
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 call as massive enormous problems due
Speaker 1: to overreach or unintended consequences. So there are some serious
Speaker 1: entries in here, even though I'm having a little bit
Speaker 1: of fun with the presentation. So let us get started.
Speaker 1: Number ten on the list hollow Sonics and the Audio
Speaker 1: Spotlight System. This is more in the creepy, unsettling vein
Speaker 1: technology that focuses sound. That's what this is all about.
Speaker 1: It's focusing sound into a narrow beam, which provides the
Speaker 1: opportunity for ultra targeted sound for stuff like advertising. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily creepy, but not necessarily welcome either. But imagine
Speaker 1: that you're walking through a store and just as you're
Speaker 1: passing in front of a certain store item, let's say
Speaker 1: it's cookie crisp cereal, and you start hearing a voice
Speaker 1: whispering to you, Hey, that cookie crisp looks pretty good.
Speaker 1: It might seem really weird, this little disembodied voice, and
Speaker 1: as soon as you get past a certain point, you
Speaker 1: can't hear it anymore. You just have this experience. As
Speaker 1: you're going through the store, you keep hearing these targeted
Speaker 1: sounds in very narrow spots, and as soon as you're
Speaker 1: out of those spots, you can't hear it. That sounds
Speaker 1: pretty creepy, right, Well, how does it work well? According
Speaker 1: to the company, the secret is in the size of
Speaker 1: the sound waves compared to the size of the sound source.
Speaker 1: The company states that if you have a sound source
Speaker 1: that is much larger than the comparable size of the
Speaker 1: sound waves it's producing, you get more directionality out of
Speaker 1: your sound, so you can focus it more like a beam.
Speaker 1: So if you were to create loudspeakers that are much much,
Speaker 1: much larger than the sound waves they're producing, and sound
Speaker 1: waves can measure from a few inches up to several
Speaker 1: feet in size, you could direct those sound waves in
Speaker 1: a beam, more like a directional beam, rather than having
Speaker 1: them propagate outward in all equal directions. But that would
Speaker 1: not work very well for something like targeted advertising, because
Speaker 1: you would have to have these enormous speakers perched behind
Speaker 1: the cheerios, and that would be very distracting. So this
Speaker 1: company has gone with an approach that has these devices
Speaker 1: producing ultrasonic beams of sound. Ultrasonic sound ways are very
Speaker 1: very tiny. They're also normally imperceptible, at least directly. They
Speaker 1: are imperceptible to us. We cannot hear in this frequency.
Speaker 1: They do have a very strong directionality as a result
Speaker 1: of the way they are generated. Uh So, according to
Speaker 1: the company, as the ultrasonic beam travels through the air,
Speaker 1: the inherent properties of the air caused the ultrasound to
Speaker 1: change shape in a predictable way. This gives rise to
Speaker 1: frequency components in the audible band which can be accurately
Speaker 1: predicted and therefore precisely controlled. By generating the correct ultrasonic signal,
Speaker 1: we can create within the air itself any sound desired. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it's the interaction of these ultrasonic frequencies
Speaker 1: with the air itself that causes the ultrasonic frequencies to change,
Speaker 1: and then you produce these audible frequencies. And because this
Speaker 1: is all very controllable in a predictable environment, you can
Speaker 1: produce whatever sounds you want. This is based off the
Speaker 1: work of an inventor named Woody Norris. He demonstrated this
Speaker 1: technology at a TED talk in the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: Rather than generating the audible sound on the face of
Speaker 1: the speaker as a traditional speaker would, where the speakers
Speaker 1: moving a diaphragm in and out and pushing air around,
Speaker 1: the ultrasonic emitter creates a column of the air itself
Speaker 1: to act like a speaker, which is pretty nifty. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I meant spooky. Number nine DNA hacking. So back in
Speaker 1: 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 genome 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 Gattica 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 aden 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 crappy 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, year, 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: that 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, license
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 talk 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 back in two thousand and fourteen. So this is
Speaker 1: not exactly a new story. It's a continuing story that
Speaker 1: continues to be really problematic and concerning. So the infiltration
Speaker 1: part is a reality. We know for a fact hackers
Speaker 1: from other countries have infiltrated various systems there have been
Speaker 1: traces found of their activities, so we know that there
Speaker 1: have at least been people snooping around our systems. Whether
Speaker 1: or not they've installed anything to help shut stuff down
Speaker 1: as another matter, but they've definitely been there, and they
Speaker 1: appeared to have been there from places like Russia and China.
Speaker 1: That does not automatically mean that the infiltration was state directed,
Speaker 1: in other words, that it was a government backed project,
Speaker 1: but that seems to be the general role. Consensus is
Speaker 1: that these were likely the activities of a state back
Speaker 1: group of hackers. What about shutting everything down? Is that realistic? Well,
Speaker 1: it 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 and water and gas, which
Speaker 1: are all scary enough. But there's the evidence that showed
Speaker 1: Russian hackers were targeting election systems in the United States
Speaker 1: leading up to the twenty sixteen elections. I talked about
Speaker 1: this in a recent episode of Tech Stuff, so I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna go all the way through it again. But
Speaker 1: the really insidious thing about those attacks is they don't
Speaker 1: even have to be super successful to be effective. If
Speaker 1: you can so doubt in the minds of a nation's
Speaker 1: citizens as to the validity of any given election, you
Speaker 1: have undermined the very foundation of that nation's government. A
Speaker 1: government that doesn't have the confidence of its population is
Speaker 1: on shaky ground and has to move more and more
Speaker 1: towards totalitarianism in order to maintain power. If you don't
Speaker 1: have any confidence that your system works, then you don't
Speaker 1: have any confidence in your government at all. So cyber
Speaker 1: war is something that is continuing right now. It is
Speaker 1: actually happening. It is already in place. And obviously I've
Speaker 1: given examples of how the US has been the target
Speaker 1: of cyber warfare, but don't forget the US has engaged
Speaker 1: in it too. We're not, you know, the United States
Speaker 1: has not been just the poor victim in all these cases.
Speaker 1: The United States has certainly played a hand in cyber
Speaker 1: warfare activities. One example would be stuck s net, the
Speaker 1: computer virus that was designed to sabotage uranium enrichment facilities
Speaker 1: in Iran. So this is not something that everyone else
Speaker 1: is doing and the United States is the victim. This
Speaker 1: is something that everyone is doing as much as they
Speaker 1: can and stepping it up as much as they can. Well,
Speaker 1: we have a lot more scary technology to talk about,
Speaker 1: but I need to have a sip of tea to
Speaker 1: comfort myself. Let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Number seven is the technological singularity. Now, out of all
Speaker 1: the science fiction ideas I find particular liarly interesting, this
Speaker 1: one ranks near the top of them. The singularity refers
Speaker 1: to a general concept that could be brought about in
Speaker 1: several different ways, but from a very high level. The
Speaker 1: idea goes something like this. Imagine that technology has advanced
Speaker 1: to the point that the newest stuff coming out is
Speaker 1: already designing the next generation of stuff. And imagine that
Speaker 1: the gaps between these generations are getting smaller and smaller,
Speaker 1: and eventually you reach a point where the present is
Speaker 1: defined by constant change, and that's the only way you
Speaker 1: can define it. Because things change so quickly it is
Speaker 1: almost impossible to describe the present in any coherent way.
Speaker 1: That's how quickly everything is evolving. The thing that would
Speaker 1: fuel this would be the emergence of superhuman intelligence in
Speaker 1: most of the scenarios that involve the technological singularity. However,
Speaker 1: that would not necessarily require just, uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: computer AI. That's one possible version is pure artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: that has superhuman capabilities and processing information. This is your
Speaker 1: basic deep thought from the Hitchecker's Guide to the Galaxy
Speaker 1: or sky Net from the terminator that scenario. This would
Speaker 1: be a scenario in which we humans have created an
Speaker 1: AI so powerful we are unable to control it, and
Speaker 1: then it goes on to redefine our world in ways
Speaker 1: that we could not anticipate because we cannot operate on
Speaker 1: the same level as this superhuman intelligence, but that is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the only pathway to the technological singularity. Another
Speaker 1: way might be that humans find a way to boost
Speaker 1: our own intelligence and thus we evolve beyond what we
Speaker 1: traditionally think of as being human. We might do this
Speaker 1: through a deeper understanding of biology. We could boost our
Speaker 1: intelligence that way, going back to the concept of d
Speaker 1: n A hacking and things related to that. Or it
Speaker 1: might involve using technology to create cyborg like beings where
Speaker 1: we merge with technology on some level, and with tech
Speaker 1: and biology working to get other we boost our intelligence
Speaker 1: to new levels and achieve superhuman intelligence that way. So
Speaker 1: 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: gonna see progress continue on a pace that's similar to
Speaker 1: what Moore's law has observed with computer processing power. And
Speaker 1: the thing is that pace may not be realistic or
Speaker 1: sustainable or even applicable to some technologies. So Moore's law
Speaker 1: applies to uh to the processing power of computers generally speaking,
Speaker 1: but they may not apply to other elements that would
Speaker 1: be necessary to bring about superhuman intelligence, because processing power
Speaker 1: by itself is not intelligence. You also have to have
Speaker 1: the software side. You've got a lot of other pieces
Speaker 1: that have to be in place. However, if it is possible,
Speaker 1: it could very well mean the end of the human
Speaker 1: race as we know it today. Now that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean it's the end of humanity entirely. It just may
Speaker 1: mean that humanity will transition into something different, So it
Speaker 1: could be a new beginning. It's not necessarily the end
Speaker 1: of everything, but still spooky. Number six Google Glass, I
Speaker 1: mean that was the number on the on the article Google.
Speaker 1: You remember Google glass, the augmented reality glasses. Back when
Speaker 1: Chris and Dave were working on this article, Google glass
Speaker 1: was still a real thing. It was it was poised
Speaker 1: to become an actual, a consumer product outside of the
Speaker 1: 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 here thing, 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 say said
Speaker 1: that a stationary Android phone running Chrome in the background
Speaker 1: would ping Google servers with location data three forty times
Speaker 1: in a twenty four hour period. Even if you turn
Speaker 1: the low in 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 personal
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
Speaker 1: creepy to be spying on neighbors and stuff. That's just
Speaker 1: the consumer technology version of drones that is already troubling.
Speaker 1: But then you have to remember there's also tons of
Speaker 1: military grade drones, and they're being used to do everything
Speaker 1: from 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: Federal Aviation Administration or f a A, the authority to
Speaker 1: drop rules for commercial and police drones in US airspace.
Speaker 1: The FAA hasn't been super fast to share that information.
Speaker 1: That prompted the Electronic Frontier Foundation or e f F
Speaker 1: to sue the f a A under the Freedom of
Speaker 1: Information Act to at least share a list of the
Speaker 1: public entities and private drone manufacturers that applied to flight
Speaker 1: drones in the United States, as well as thousands of
Speaker 1: pages related to license applications. But the f a A didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, explain how those entities were planning on using
Speaker 1: the drones. So that's a problem. Number four three D printers. Well,
Speaker 1: I just recently talked about Maker Bought, and maybe you
Speaker 1: think the scariest thing about three D printers is that
Speaker 1: they could lead to minor RNs as you try to
Speaker 1: deal with melting plastic. But in fact there are other
Speaker 1: things to worry about as well, like fake A t
Speaker 1: M facades. See back in two thousand eleven, some thieves
Speaker 1: used a three D printer to create a false front
Speaker 1: for an A t M terminal, and they installed a
Speaker 1: skimmer on some A t M s so unsuspecting customers
Speaker 1: would come up and it would look like a real
Speaker 1: A t M front that you couldn't necessarily tell immediately
Speaker 1: that there was a projection on there that was a
Speaker 1: false front. So they would put their uh, their A
Speaker 1: t M card into this. They would then type in
Speaker 1: their pen and meanwhile the skimmer was actually scanning the
Speaker 1: data on the card and recording it with the pin
Speaker 1: and allowing the thieves to steal more than four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in the process. And you know, all it
Speaker 1: took was a three D printer to create that that
Speaker 1: convincing a t M facade. In two thousand thirteen, a
Speaker 1: guy named d Wilson made headlines when he published files
Speaker 1: for his three D printed Liberator handgun, which fired three
Speaker 1: a D ammunition. That's scared a ton of people because
Speaker 1: it means that anyone who had access to a three
Speaker 1: D printer and the appropriate materials could have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to make an untraceable weapon. There'll be no background check
Speaker 1: required because you just print the thing out. And it
Speaker 1: also raised other possible problems. If the plastic were not
Speaker 1: of a sufficiently good enough quality, it could mean that
Speaker 1: the printed gun would not contain the explosive reaction properly
Speaker 1: when you fire the bullet, so it could end up
Speaker 1: breaking a part in the person's hand, causing injury to
Speaker 1: the person holding the guns. So even if the person
Speaker 1: who had printed the three D gun did so as
Speaker 1: kind of just a proof of concept and they're firing at,
Speaker 1: you know, just a paper target, there's the possibility that
Speaker 1: the gun itself could explode or or fracture as part
Speaker 1: of this if it weren't made out of sufficiently strong material,
Speaker 1: and severe injury could follow. Cody Wilson, I should add,
Speaker 1: has recently been in the news again. He resigned his
Speaker 1: role as director of Defense Distributed, the company that he
Speaker 1: used to promote the design and distribution of three D
Speaker 1: printaple gun files. It's unrelated to the gun side of things,
Speaker 1: so that organization still exists and continues to push Wilson's
Speaker 1: vision even without Wilson at the helm. I've got some
Speaker 1: more spooky things to talk about, but I grew tired,
Speaker 1: so I need the goal and drink from blood, and
Speaker 1: by blood I mean Earl great t I'll be right
Speaker 1: back if through this word from our sponsors number three
Speaker 1: driverless cars, this is a h's still a big worry. UM.
Speaker 1: Back when Chris and Dave we're writing this driverless cars,
Speaker 1: we're still kind of out of the very very limited
Speaker 1: testing situations. Google was the best known version. But now
Speaker 1: we actually have some at least some rudimentary UM automated
Speaker 1: car systems out there in the real world, like Tesla's autopilot,
Speaker 1: which has contributed to some notable accidents, including a fatality. UM.
Speaker 1: Tesla has said that this system was not meant to
Speaker 1: be used as h and a driverless car solution, but
Speaker 1: people have still done it because you hear a word
Speaker 1: like autopilot and you want to test it out, I guess. Um,
Speaker 1: So that has been an issue. It has raised concerns
Speaker 1: that perhaps this autonomous car technology is nowhere near ready
Speaker 1: for full rollout, which I think most companies that are
Speaker 1: working on the technology would say is correct. They're still
Speaker 1: working on the tech to make it a reality. Um.
Speaker 1: There have been a lot of stuff, a lot of
Speaker 1: stories published about various problems, philosophical problems that you need
Speaker 1: to resolve in order to make a consistent and predictable
Speaker 1: autonomous car solution, one of them being the infamous trolley problem.
Speaker 1: The basic version of the trolley problem is that you've
Speaker 1: got our out of control trolley. It's going down some
Speaker 1: tracks and there's a switch that will allow you to
Speaker 1: change the pathway of the trolley. And if the trolley
Speaker 1: continues where it's path where it's going now, um, it's
Speaker 1: going to collide with a group of people. If you
Speaker 1: throw the switch, it will change the direction of the
Speaker 1: trolley and it will collide with one person. Do you
Speaker 1: throw the switch? If you do nothing, then maybe you
Speaker 1: feel like I'm not involved. Therefore, my decision did not
Speaker 1: affect anybody that it just played out the way it
Speaker 1: was gonna play out. If I throw the switch, is
Speaker 1: that I am actively condemning that other person to death?
Speaker 1: Other people would say no, by not choosing, you've actively
Speaker 1: chosen to condemn the first group to death. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are variations of this problem. Maybe you say, all right,
Speaker 1: well you've got a choice. You can uh not throw
Speaker 1: a switch, which means the out of control trolley will
Speaker 1: eventually come to a stop, but everyone in the trolley
Speaker 1: is going to die as a result of this accident.
Speaker 1: Or you can throw the switch and the trolley will
Speaker 1: hit somebody, but the trolley will stop and everyone who's
Speaker 1: in the trolley will survive. So either you actively kill
Speaker 1: someone but everyone in the trolley lives, or you don't
Speaker 1: do anything and everyone in the trolley dies, but the
Speaker 1: person who is just innocently crossing the pathway they live.
Speaker 1: These sort of ethical problems are things that people talk
Speaker 1: about and debate amongst themselves, but it turns out to
Speaker 1: be an actual practical problem when you're designing autonomous car systems,
Speaker 1: because eventually you have to build in some sort of
Speaker 1: decision making system for a car in the event that
Speaker 1: it it encounters a non avoidable car accident that all
Speaker 1: the problems have aligned in such a way that there
Speaker 1: is no possible outcome in which there isn't a car accident.
Speaker 1: So what does the car do? Does it behave in
Speaker 1: a way that preserves the life of the person writing
Speaker 1: in the car? Does it behave in a way that
Speaker 1: preserves the life of the people in the surrounding area.
Speaker 1: There are a 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 general 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 in 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 driverless cars more reliable so that it reduces
Speaker 1: the overall number of fatal accidents, that would be an
Speaker 1: incredible thing and it would definitely be a good argument
Speaker 1: in support for autonomous cars. It is, however, that there
Speaker 1: is possible that there's a psychological barrier of a machine
Speaker 1: quote unquote causing deaths, and that that could be enough
Speaker 1: to screw things up, because while you might be able
Speaker 1: to statistically state fewer people died because there were autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: the fact that the cars were autonomous and then people
Speaker 1: died has a psychological effect. You're thinking, oh, it's a
Speaker 1: machine killing a person. Number two geo engineering. So this
Speaker 1: 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 CEO two in the atmosphere along with
Speaker 1: other greenhouse gasses. So by creating technologies designed to capture
Speaker 1: and sequester carbon dioxide so that it's not in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere anymore, we could help slow or maybe even stop
Speaker 1: the process of climate change. But the thing is, we
Speaker 1: don't know for sure that some of these proposals would
Speaker 1: work or what the other consequences of those actions might be.
Speaker 1: One of the uh, well, some of the proposed methods
Speaker 1: would definitely have nasty consequences. We know that. So, for example,
Speaker 1: one possibility would be, let's put some more iron in
Speaker 1: the oceans in order to spur algae blooms to soak
Speaker 1: up carbon dioxide, which that could help you could actually
Speaker 1: soak up CEO two from the atmosphere. However, that would
Speaker 1: also have a huge negative impact on the ocean itself.
Speaker 1: You would create dead zones in the ocean because of
Speaker 1: this algae bloom, and that means messing up a really
Speaker 1: complicated ecosystem that lots of life forms depend upon, including
Speaker 1: 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 sponsibly 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 on 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 their, all of that's getting tracked,
Speaker 1: All of that is going into various 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 was famously revealed that
Speaker 1: the n s A was tapping into all sorts of
Speaker 1: different communication tools two spy on on 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 too, website traffic, to all sources of stuff. Then
Speaker 1: you have hackers, either state backed hackers who are are
Speaker 1: working too i 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. UH.
Speaker 1: Information is valuable, whether it's for a government to try
Speaker 1: 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 activity from prying eyes and
Speaker 1: not have to worry quite so much about your every
Speaker 1: move being spied upon. Uh, 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, now, as I say that,
Speaker 1: I think you should also go to t public dot
Speaker 1: com slash tech stuff. We got a merchandise store. It's awesome.
Speaker 1: You can go buy stuff and every purchase helps the show. Again, hypocrite,
Speaker 1: I know, but that's why it's spooky. Hey, guys, if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me and talk
Speaker 1: about how scared you are after the spooky episode, you
Speaker 1: can go over to text stuff podcast dot com. That's
Speaker 1: our website. You'll find all the contact information there. Check
Speaker 1: it out, and uh I will haunt you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics because
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com