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 iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you, y'all? I'm working on an episode that's
Speaker 1: still in progress. I wanted to get something to you
Speaker 1: today while I still work on that episode, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: it's spooky season. I've got quite a few episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff that relate to spooky topics, and I thought
Speaker 1: this would be a fun one. It originally published on Halloween,
Speaker 1: October thirty first, twenty to eighteen. It is titled tech
Speaker 1: Stuff's Spooky Halloween Spectacular and I hope you enjoy as
Speaker 1: I revisit an article from my old employer, House stuff
Speaker 1: Works ten scary modern technologies. Enjoy this classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, and I'll have a new one for you
Speaker 1: on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Either everybody, and Welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 2: Jonathan Strictly, the executive vampire here at Hall Stuff Works Halloween.
Speaker 2: If you're listening to this on Halloween otherwise, that was
Speaker 2: the worst possible introduction I could have given for this episode, and.
Speaker 1: 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 tech, 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 I'm 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 Stuffworks
Speaker 1: website and I pulled up a classic article, which is
Speaker 1: also always a dangerous thing when you're talking technology. But
Speaker 1: this article is titled ten Scary modern Technologies. It was
Speaker 1: co written by David Russ and my former editor and
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff co host Chris Pollette. So get ready for
Speaker 1: some tech that goes bump in the night, I guess.
Speaker 1: And actually, to be more serious, the technology I'm listing
Speaker 1: here does not fall into the supernatural or ghostly categories
Speaker 1: at all. The technology represents stuff that could be unsettling
Speaker 1: or at worst could cause massive enormous problem due to
Speaker 1: overreach or unintended consequences. So there are some serious intreges
Speaker 1: in here, even though I'm having a little bit of
Speaker 1: fun with the presentation. So let us get started. Number
Speaker 1: ten on the list hollow sonics and the audio spotlight system.
Speaker 1: This is more in the creepy, unsettling vein technology that
Speaker 1: focuses sound. That's what this is all about. It's focusing
Speaker 1: sound into a narrow beam, which provides the opportunity for
Speaker 1: ultra targeted sound for stuff like advertising. It's not necessarily creepy,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily welcome either. But imagine that you're
Speaker 1: walking through a store and just as you're passing in
Speaker 1: front of a certain store item, let's say it's cookie
Speaker 1: crisp cereal, and you start hearing a voice whispering to you, Hey,
Speaker 1: that cookie crisp looks pretty good. It might seem really weird,
Speaker 1: this little disembodied voice, And as soon as as you
Speaker 1: get past a certain point, you can't hear it anymore.
Speaker 1: You just have this experience as you're going through the store,
Speaker 1: you keep hearing these targeted sounds in very narrow spots
Speaker 1: and as soon as you're out of those spots, you
Speaker 1: can't hear it. That sounds pretty creepy, right, Well, how
Speaker 1: does it work well? According to the company, the secret
Speaker 1: is in the size of the sound waves compared to
Speaker 1: the size of the sound source. The company states that
Speaker 1: if you have a sound source that is much larger
Speaker 1: than the comparable size of the sound waves it's producing,
Speaker 1: you get more directionality out of your sound so you
Speaker 1: can focus it more like a beam. So if you
Speaker 1: were to create loud speakers that are much much much
Speaker 1: larger than the sound waves they're producing, and sound waves
Speaker 1: can measure from a few inches up to several feet
Speaker 1: in size, you could direct those sound waves in a beam,
Speaker 1: more like a directional beam, rather than having them propagate
Speaker 1: outward in all equal directions. But that would not work
Speaker 1: very well for something like targeted adzing, because you would
Speaker 1: have to have these enormous speakers perched behind the cheerios
Speaker 1: and that would be very distracting. So this company has
Speaker 1: gone with an approach that has these devices producing ultrasonic
Speaker 1: beams of sound. Ultrasonic sound waves are very very tiny.
Speaker 1: They're also normally imperceptible at least directly, they are imperceptible
Speaker 1: to us. We cannot hear in this frequency. They do
Speaker 1: have a very strong directionality as a result of the
Speaker 1: way they are generated. So, according to the company, as
Speaker 1: the ultrasonic beam travels through the air, the inherent properties
Speaker 1: of the air cause the ultrasound to change shape in
Speaker 1: a predictable way. This gives rise to frequency components in
Speaker 1: the audible band which can be accurately predicted and therefore
Speaker 1: precisely controlled. By generating the correct ultrasonic signal, we can
Speaker 1: create within the air itself any sound desired. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, it's the interaction of these ultrasonic frequencies with
Speaker 1: 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 speaker
Speaker 1: is moving, a diaphragm in and out, and pushing air
Speaker 1: around the ultrasonic emitter creates a column of the air
Speaker 1: itself to act like a speaker, which is pretty nifty.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I meant spooky number nine. DNA hacking. So
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and three, scientists finished mapping out
Speaker 1: the human genome. But that was obviously just the beginning.
Speaker 2: That's just.
Speaker 1: A long list of base pairs. Next came the work
Speaker 1: to examine the genome closely and determine which base pairs.
Speaker 2: In the more than three billion.
Speaker 1: Pairs that make up the human genome are responsible for
Speaker 1: different stuff like our 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 considered to be superior. Now that's
Speaker 1: the stuff of lots of science fiction and horror cautionary tales.
Speaker 1: Stuff like Gatica saying yeah, but who gets to decide
Speaker 1: what is superior and what happens to people who aren't
Speaker 1: able to take advantage of that technology, and what happens
Speaker 1: to the people who do take advantage of that technology.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of ethical questions around it. However,
Speaker 1: beyond that, there are other scary things to consider. DNA
Speaker 1: hacking could allow for individually focused biological warfare. So imagine
Speaker 1: that you're living in a world and someone can get
Speaker 1: access to your DNA. Maybe they get a skin sample
Speaker 1: or some hair or something. They're able to get something
Speaker 1: from you that has traces of your DNA in it,
Speaker 1: and they're able to analyze your DNA and see what
Speaker 1: makes you you and look for any vulnerabilities. Maybe they
Speaker 1: find out that you have a predisposed weakness to a
Speaker 1: particular type of virus, and then they engineer a virus
Speaker 1: to attack you specifically. That was actually the premise of
Speaker 1: a twenty twelve article in the Atlantic, and that article
Speaker 1: hypothesized a future in which the president of the United
Speaker 1: States could be targeted and assassinated through the use of
Speaker 1: a particularly nasty virus that was tailor made for the president.
Speaker 1: Yikes or imagine more than that, maybe a widespread plague.
Speaker 1: Les Stephen King's the stand engineered through a deep understanding
Speaker 1: of DNA paired with a really crappy containment strategy. So
Speaker 1: how realistic is all of that, Well, in a short term,
Speaker 1: it's probably not terribly realistic. It's certainly pausible, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily plausible. But it does require a deep understanding of
Speaker 1: DNA and a means to manipulate it easily in order
Speaker 1: to pay it off. We've seen some advances in those areas.
Speaker 1: There are a lot more ways that we can manipulate
Speaker 1: DNA than there used to be, but it's not exactly
Speaker 1: easy to do. It's easy, yer, but that's a matter
Speaker 1: of degrees. However, you can make a convincing argument that
Speaker 1: it would not require too deep and understanding to cause
Speaker 1: real harm unintentionally, and that would be a very difficult
Speaker 1: argument to counter. And while DNA hacking could produce all
Speaker 1: sorts of different futuristic results, we do already have a
Speaker 1: culture of biohackers also sometimes known as grinders, who have
Speaker 1: taken body alteration to new places. These folks are not
Speaker 1: working on a DNA level. They're not changing themselves fundamentally
Speaker 1: in that way. Instead they're doing alterations, you know, upgrades.
Speaker 1: So one example would be there are people who have
Speaker 1: chosen to have small magnets implanted under the skin of
Speaker 1: their fingertips. So these little nubby magnets sticking out on
Speaker 1: their fingertips. It's kind of weird, right, Well, what's the
Speaker 1: purpose of that. Well, because of the effects of magnetism
Speaker 1: and electromagnetism, they would actually be able to sense when
Speaker 1: they were near magnetic or electromagnetic fields. So it'd be
Speaker 1: kind of like Spider Man's spidy sense. They'd feel tugging
Speaker 1: on their fingertips as they pass through it. So instead
Speaker 1: of detecting danger like Spider Man would, you'd be able
Speaker 1: to tell like whether or not electricity was flowing through
Speaker 1: a conductor, for example, because you could bring your fingers
Speaker 1: close to that conductor. Maybe it's some wires. You bring
Speaker 1: a thing close and if you start feeling the pulses
Speaker 1: from an alternating magnetic field, a fluctuating magnetic field, that
Speaker 1: would tell you, oh, electricity, alternating current is flowing through here,
Speaker 1: because I can feel it in my fingertips. That would
Speaker 1: be something you normally would not be able to feel
Speaker 1: so you kind of have a sixth sense due to
Speaker 1: having these magnets implanted in your fingertips. And people have
Speaker 1: actually done this. However, a word of caution. From what
Speaker 1: I understand, these operations are pretty painful. They usually are
Speaker 1: not done with anesthetic. There's not really a place you
Speaker 1: can go that's medically licensed to do this because it's
Speaker 1: not a standard medical procedure. As far as I know,
Speaker 1: there are no accredited medical facilities that do it. I
Speaker 1: think any doctor who did practice this would have the
Speaker 1: danger of being barred from practice. So you're usually talking
Speaker 1: about entrepreneuring body modify cation specialists, you know, like piercers,
Speaker 1: who will do this kind of operation. And anytime you're
Speaker 1: talking about introducing something foreign to the body, you're also
Speaker 1: raising other risks like infection, so you've got to be
Speaker 1: super duper careful about that kind of thing. In other words,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna find me putting magnets under my fingertips
Speaker 1: anytime soon. Number eight on the list cyber war who boy.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: The scenario of the article specifically lays out is an
Speaker 1: all out cyber warfare attack where one nation targets another
Speaker 1: nation's infrastructure, like its power grid system or water system,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, the US Department of Homeland Security has
Speaker 1: reported that there's lots of evidence to show that various
Speaker 1: hackers have infiltrated critical infrastructure with such tactics like Russian
Speaker 1: hackers and the things like power plants and gas pipelines,
Speaker 1: and that's terrifying. And before that report had even made
Speaker 1: the news, that was in twenty eighteen, security experts have
Speaker 1: for years been warning that Chinese hackers have been infiltrating
Speaker 1: American infrastructure. CNN reported on that back in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: So this is not exactly a new story. It's a
Speaker 1: continuing story that continues to be really problematic and concerning.
Speaker 1: So the infiltration part is a reality. We know for
Speaker 1: a fact hackers from other countries have infiltrated various systems.
Speaker 1: There have been traces found of their activities, so we
Speaker 1: know that there have at least been people snooping around
Speaker 1: our systems. Whether or not they've installed anything to help
Speaker 1: shut stuff down as another matter, but they've definitely been there,
Speaker 1: and they appear to have been there from places like
Speaker 1: Russia and China. That does not automatically mean that the
Speaker 1: infiltration was state directed. In other words that it was
Speaker 1: a government backed project, but that seems to be The
Speaker 1: general consensus is that these were lifely the activities of
Speaker 1: a state back group of hackers. What about shutting everything down?
Speaker 1: Is that realistic? Well, it could be more challenging to do,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily impossible. Many utilities have started installing self
Speaker 1: healing systems. A self healing system isn't quite as cool
Speaker 1: as it sounds like. It's not like it's Wolverine in
Speaker 1: infrastructure form, but it does involve having a system that
Speaker 1: when it detects problems automatically tries to reroute services to
Speaker 1: get around those problems. So with a power grid, it
Speaker 1: might be if a smart power grid system detects that
Speaker 1: there's a short for some reason, or there's a break
Speaker 1: in connectivity at some point, it may try to reroute
Speaker 1: power to work around that as much as possible. That
Speaker 1: could help confound a cyber warfare attack a little bit.
Speaker 1: At least it might mitigate the impact of an attack,
Speaker 1: though preventing one entirely maybe not. But then there are
Speaker 1: also attacks on other systems, not just power grids and
Speaker 1: water and gas, which are all scary enough. But there's
Speaker 1: the evidence that showed Russian hackers were targeting election systems
Speaker 1: in the United States leading up to the twenty sixteen elections.
Speaker 1: I talked about this in a recent episode of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go all the way through
Speaker 1: it again. But the really insidious thing about those attacks
Speaker 1: is they don't even have to be super successful to
Speaker 1: be effective. If you can so doubt in the minds
Speaker 1: of a nation's citizens as to the validity of any
Speaker 1: given election, you have undermined the very foundation of that
Speaker 1: nation's government. A government that doesn't have the confidence of
Speaker 1: its population is on shaky ground and has to move
Speaker 1: more and more towards totalitarianism in order to maintain power.
Speaker 1: If you don't have any confidence that your system works,
Speaker 1: then you don't have any confidence in your government at all.
Speaker 1: So cyber war is something that is continuing right now.
Speaker 1: It is actually happening. It is already in place. And
Speaker 1: obviously I've given examples of how the US has been
Speaker 1: the target of cyber warfare, but don't forget the US
Speaker 1: has engaged in it too. We're not, you know, the
Speaker 1: United States has not been just the poor victim in
Speaker 1: all these cases. The United States has certainly played a
Speaker 1: hand in cyber warfare activities. One example would be Stuck's Net,
Speaker 1: the computer virus that was designed to sabotage uranium enrichment
Speaker 1: facilities in Iran. So this is not something that everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing and the United States is the victim.
Speaker 1: This is something that everyone is doing as much as
Speaker 1: they 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, so let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. Number seven is the technological singularity. Now, out
Speaker 1: of all the science fiction ideas I find particularly interesting,
Speaker 1: this one ranks near the top of them. The singularity
Speaker 1: refers to a general concept that could be brought about
Speaker 1: in several different ways, but from a very high level,
Speaker 1: the idea goes something like this. Imagine that technology has
Speaker 1: advanced to the point that the newest stuff coming out
Speaker 1: is already designing the next generation of stuff. And imagine
Speaker 1: that 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 a computer AI. That's
Speaker 1: one possible version is pure artificial intelligen that has superhuman
Speaker 1: capabilities in processing information. This is your basic deep thought
Speaker 1: from Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy or Skynet from the
Speaker 1: Terminator that scenario. This would be a scenario in which
Speaker 1: we humans have created an AI so powerful we are
Speaker 1: unable to control it, and then it goes on to
Speaker 1: redefine our world in ways that we could not anticipate
Speaker 1: because we cannot operate on the same level as this
Speaker 1: superhuman intelligence. But that is not necessarily the only pathway
Speaker 1: to the technological singularity. Another way might be that humans
Speaker 1: find a way to boost our own intelligence, and thus
Speaker 1: we evolve beyond what we traditionally think of as being human.
Speaker 1: We might do this through a deeper understanding of biology.
Speaker 1: We could boost our intelligence that way, going back to
Speaker 1: the concept of DNA hacking and things related to that,
Speaker 1: or it might involve using technology to create cyborg like
Speaker 1: beings where we merge with technology on some level and
Speaker 1: with tech and biology working together, we boost our intelligence
Speaker 1: to new level 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 singularity scenarios is that a
Speaker 1: lot of it rests on the belief that we're going
Speaker 1: to 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 sustainable,
Speaker 1: or even applicable to some technologies. So Moore's law applies
Speaker 1: to the processing power of computers generally speaking, but it
Speaker 1: may not apply to other elements that would be necessary
Speaker 1: to bring about superhuman intelligence, because processing power by itself
Speaker 1: is not intelligence. You also have to have the software side.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of other pieces that have to
Speaker 1: be in place. However, if it is possible, it could
Speaker 1: very well mean the end of the human race as
Speaker 1: we know it today. Now that doesn't necessarily mean it's
Speaker 1: the end of humanity entirely. It just may mean that
Speaker 1: humanity will transition into something different, So it could be
Speaker 1: a new beginning. It's not necessarily the end of everything,
Speaker 1: but still spooky. Number six Google Glass, I mean that
Speaker 1: was the number on the article Google. You remember Google Glass,
Speaker 1: the augmented reality glasses. Back when Chris and Dave were
Speaker 1: working on this article, Google glass was still a real thing.
Speaker 1: It was poised to become an actual consumer product outside
Speaker 1: of the relative small sample of bleeding edge adopters aka
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 theory, Google could listen in
Speaker 1: as well, not just see everything, but hear everything, which
Speaker 1: raises some big privacy concer 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 unethically. And while Google Glass is now far
Speaker 1: more limited in its rollout, you know you only see
Speaker 1: it in a few industries. At this point, the company
Speaker 1: Google is still very much in the business of knowing
Speaker 1: where its customers are. In August twenty eighteen, numerous tech
Speaker 1: journals reported on a study that was conducted by Douglas C.
Speaker 1: Schmidt of Venderbilt University that say said that a stationary
Speaker 1: Android phone running Chrome in the background would ping Google
Speaker 1: servers with location data three hundred and forty times in
Speaker 1: a twenty four hour period. Even if you turn the
Speaker 1: location history feature off of the phone, the phones were
Speaker 1: still sending location data back to Google, according to the study. Google,
Speaker 1: by the way, has disputed the findings of this study.
Speaker 1: Then there are the numerous personal assistant devices that are
Speaker 1: out there, including Google Home, that also are always listening
Speaker 1: for commands. And of course that's just Google. There are
Speaker 1: other companies out there, like Apple and Amazon that also
Speaker 1: have technologies similar to these. All of these could be
Speaker 1: monitoring users and sending data back so that the companies
Speaker 1: might later exploit that information for profit, usually to sell
Speaker 1: you stuff to advertise directly to you. But that's still
Speaker 1: pretty creepy, right. Even if the companies are not actively
Speaker 1: exploiting that information, the fact that the data could be
Speaker 1: transmitted and recorded at all is problematic, though again I
Speaker 1: should say the companies generally say they do not record
Speaker 1: user data in that way. So whew, that's a relief, right.
Speaker 1: Number five drones. Drones are legit creepy. Many drones have
Speaker 1: cameras mounted on them. That does allow potential filmmakers unprecedented
Speaker 1: access and capabilities. Now, a low budget film can have
Speaker 1: the equivalent of an expensive crane shot. It's a fraction
Speaker 1: of what it would cost to rent and operate a
Speaker 1: film crane with all the associated personnel, the safety features,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. You could reduce all that
Speaker 1: down to an operator and a drone and it would
Speaker 1: be much less expensive. But it also means a drone
Speaker 1: operator who's using one of these devices could use it
Speaker 1: to do stuff like peeping, super darn creepy, to be
Speaker 1: spying on neighbors and stuff. That's just the consumer technology
Speaker 1: version of drones that is already troubling. But then you
Speaker 1: have to remember there's also tons of military grade drones
Speaker 1: and they're being used to do everything from surveillance work
Speaker 1: to active strikes on military targets. Weaponized drones, these drones
Speaker 1: may be semi autonomous or completely under the control of
Speaker 1: an operator who's potentially hundreds of miles away. They greatly
Speaker 1: extend the surveillance case abilities of various government agencies and divisions,
Speaker 1: from military to law enforcement. In the United States, Congress
Speaker 1: passed a bill in twenty twelve giving the Federal Aviation
Speaker 1: Administration or FAA, the authority to drop rules for commercial
Speaker 1: and police drones in US airspace. The FAA hasn't been
Speaker 1: super fast to share that information. That prompted the Electronic
Speaker 1: Frontier Foundation or EFF to sue the FAA under the
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act to at least share a list
Speaker 1: of the public entities in private drone manufacturers that applied
Speaker 1: to fly drones in the United States, as well as
Speaker 1: thousands of pages related to license applications. But the FAA 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 Bot, and maybe you
Speaker 1: think the scariest thing about three D printers is that
Speaker 1: they could lead to minor burns as you try to
Speaker 1: deal with melting plastic. In fact, there are other things
Speaker 1: to worry about as well, like fake ATM facades. See
Speaker 1: back in twenty eleven, some thieves used a three D
Speaker 1: printer to create a false front for an ATM terminal,
Speaker 1: and they installed a skimmer on some ATMs, so unsuspecting
Speaker 1: customers would come up and it would look like a
Speaker 1: real ATM front that you couldn't necessarily tell immediately that
Speaker 1: there was a projection on there that was a false front.
Speaker 1: So they would put their their ATM card into this.
Speaker 1: They would then type in their pin and meanwhile the
Speaker 1: skimmer was actually scanning the data on the card and
Speaker 1: recording it with the pen and allowing the thieves to
Speaker 1: steal more than four hundred thousand dollars in the process.
Speaker 1: And you know, all it took was a three D
Speaker 1: printer to create that convincing ATM facade. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: a guy named Cody Wilson made headlines when he published
Speaker 1: five else for his three D printed Liberator handgun, which
Speaker 1: fired three eighty ammunition. That scared a ton of people
Speaker 1: because it means that anyone who had access to a
Speaker 1: three D printer and the appropriate materials could have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to make an untraceable weapon. There'd be no background
Speaker 1: check required because you just print the thing out. And
Speaker 1: it also raised other possible problems if the plastic were
Speaker 1: not of a sufficiently good enough quality. It could mean
Speaker 1: that the printed gun would not contain the explosive reaction
Speaker 1: properly when you fire the bullet, so it could end
Speaker 1: up breaking apart in a person's hand, causing injury to
Speaker 1: the person holding the gun. 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 fracture as part of
Speaker 1: 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: principle 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 grow tired,
Speaker 1: so I need the goal and drink some blood, and
Speaker 1: by blood, I mean oh grade t I'll be right
Speaker 1: back after this word from our sponsors. Number three driverless cars.
Speaker 1: This is a.
Speaker 2: Still a big worry.
Speaker 1: Back when Chris and Dave were writing this, driverless cars
Speaker 1: were still kind of coming out of the very very
Speaker 1: limited testing situations. Google was the best known version. But
Speaker 1: now we actually have some at least some rudimentary 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.
Speaker 1: Tesla has said that this system was not meant to
Speaker 1: be used as a driverless car solution, but people have
Speaker 1: still done it because you hear a word like autopilot
Speaker 1: and you want to test it out. I guess so
Speaker 1: that has been an issue. It has raised concerns that
Speaker 1: perhaps this autonomous car technology is nowhere near ready for
Speaker 1: full rollout, which I think most companies that are working
Speaker 1: on the technology would say is correct. They're still working
Speaker 1: on the tech to make it a reality. There have
Speaker 1: been a lot of of a lot of stories published
Speaker 1: about various problems, philosophical problems that you need to resolve
Speaker 1: in order to make a consistent and predictable autonomous car solution,
Speaker 1: one of them being the infamous trolley problem. The basic
Speaker 1: version of the trolley problem is that you've got out
Speaker 1: of control trolley. It's going down some tracks, and there's
Speaker 1: a switch that will allow you to change the pathway
Speaker 1: of the trolley. And if the trolley continues where it's
Speaker 1: path where it's going now, it's going to collide with
Speaker 1: a group of people. If you throw the switch, it
Speaker 1: will change the direction of the trolley and it will
Speaker 1: collide with one person. Do you throw the switch? If
Speaker 1: you do nothing, then maybe you feel like I'm not involved.
Speaker 1: Therefore my decision did not affect anybody. It just played
Speaker 1: out the way it was going to play out. If
Speaker 1: I throw the switch, is that I'm actively condemning that
Speaker 1: other person to death? Other people would say no, by
Speaker 1: not choosing, you've actively chosen to condemn the first group
Speaker 1: to death. There are variations of this problem. Maybe you say,
Speaker 1: all right, well you've got a choice. You can not
Speaker 1: throw a switch, which means the out of control trolley
Speaker 1: will eventually come to a stop, but everyone in the
Speaker 1: trolley 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 someone,
Speaker 1: but everyone in the trolley lives. Or you don't do
Speaker 1: anything and everyone in the trolley dies, but the person
Speaker 1: who is just innocently crossing the pathway they live. These
Speaker 1: sort of ethical problems are things that people talk about
Speaker 1: and debate amongst themselves, but it turns out to be
Speaker 1: 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 encounters a non avoidable car accident, that all the
Speaker 1: problems have aligned in such a way that there is
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: MIT 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 it vo 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 and ethical decisions. However, the study
Speaker 1: authors stated that experts really should be the ones to
Speaker 1: make the final call when designing these algorithms, that just
Speaker 1: going by public preference alone may not be their best decision. However,
Speaker 1: another thing to remember is that in twenty sixteen, thirty
Speaker 1: seven thousand people died from car accidents. If driverless cars
Speaker 1: can reduce that number year by year, if we can
Speaker 1: find a way to make driverless cars more reliable so
Speaker 1: that it reduces the overall number of fatal accidents. That
Speaker 1: would be an incredible thing and it would definitely be
Speaker 1: a good argument in support for autonomous cars. It is, however,
Speaker 1: that there possible that there's a psychological barrier of a
Speaker 1: machine quote unquote causing deaths, and that that could be
Speaker 1: enough to screw things up, because while you might be
Speaker 1: able to statistically state fewer people died because there were
Speaker 1: autonomous cars, the fact that the cars were autonomous and
Speaker 1: then people died has a psychological effect. You're thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a machine killing a person. Number two geoengineering, So
Speaker 1: this is the use of science and technology to quote
Speaker 1: unquote hack the planet. This is one of those ideas
Speaker 1: that's meant to help counteract problems like climate change. So
Speaker 1: 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 CO 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 well, some of the proposed methods would
Speaker 1: definitely have nasty consequences.
Speaker 2: We know that.
Speaker 1: So, for example, one possibility would be, let's put some
Speaker 1: more iron in the oceans in order to spur algae
Speaker 1: blooms to soak up carbon dioxide, which that could help
Speaker 1: you could actually soak up CO two from the atmosphere. However,
Speaker 1: that would also have a huge negative impact on the
Speaker 1: ocean itself. You would create dead zones in the ocean
Speaker 1: because of this algae bloom, and that means messing up
Speaker 1: a really complicated ecosystem that lots of lifeforms to depend upon,
Speaker 1: including life forms that aren't you know, directly in the ocean,
Speaker 1: So you would have a ripple effect. Fittingly enough, since
Speaker 1: we're talking about water, you could have die offs happening
Speaker 1: other places in the world that are a result of this,
Speaker 1: and you know, not even places where there are oceans,
Speaker 1: So unintended consequences could be really, really nasty. Another tactic
Speaker 1: besides trying to capture CO 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: emitted back into the ris'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'd be taking a lot of
Speaker 1: potentially irreversible actions without a full appreciation of what was
Speaker 1: going to happen. However, if we employ these responsibly and carefully,
Speaker 1: it's likely that we could use them as part of
Speaker 1: an overall plan to help reduce climate change. Experts warn
Speaker 1: us that these are not magic bullets. These are not
Speaker 1: going to miraculously reverse the course that we've seen over
Speaker 1: the last few decades. They would at best be a
Speaker 1: good additional strategy along with reducing our carbon dioxide emissions,
Speaker 1: that would be our most important action to take. We
Speaker 1: can't just assume that we're going to come up with
Speaker 1: a technological solution that will allow us to continue to
Speaker 1: behave the way we've been behaving and magically erase the
Speaker 1: consequences of those actions. That's just not a realistic outlook
Speaker 1: at this point. Number one on the list from Chris
Speaker 1: and Dave was Internet surveillance, which kind of ties back
Speaker 1: into that Google problem I mentioned earlier, but it goes
Speaker 1: well beyond that. So Internet surveillance comes in all forms, right,
Speaker 1: the social media we use, when we do our actions
Speaker 1: on there, all of that's getting tracked. All of that
Speaker 1: is going into various tech boxes based on our profiles,
Speaker 1: so that we are encountering the ads that are closest
Speaker 1: tied to our behavior, so that we have the most
Speaker 1: the most incentive to click on those ads or to
Speaker 1: act on them in some way, thus benefiting the company
Speaker 1: that makes the social platform as well as the company
Speaker 1: that's doing the advertising, and whatever company is ultimately in
Speaker 1: charge of the product or service that is being advertised.
Speaker 1: So there's that there are companies like Google that are
Speaker 1: taking this to extremes, tracking all sorts of behaviors for
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff, so that whenever we're doing searches,
Speaker 1: we're also getting served up search results that are catered
Speaker 1: to us more and more, which in some ways is good,
Speaker 1: you know, you're getting stuff that is more relevant to you,
Speaker 1: and in other ways comes across as super creepy because
Speaker 1: it means that there's this enormous corporation out there that
Speaker 1: might know you better than you know yourself, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of worrisome. But then you have other things like
Speaker 1: the NSSA, which a couple of years ago is famously
Speaker 1: revealed that the NSSA was tapping into all sorts of
Speaker 1: different communication tools to spy on communications between lots of
Speaker 1: different people in an effort to promote national security. But
Speaker 1: you could argue it was also a huge violation of
Speaker 1: people's expectation of privacy and that it also took almost
Speaker 1: a presumed guilty approach and applied it to absolutely everybody
Speaker 1: who uses these forms of communication, from cellular phones to
Speaker 1: website traffic to all sorts of stuff. Then you have hackers,
Speaker 1: either state back to hackers who are working to spy
Speaker 1: on behalf of a government or independent hackers who are
Speaker 1: just trying to gather as much information as possible to
Speaker 1: exploit it. Maybe that information is your bank account, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's your social Security number, it could be all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff, but ultimately they're doing it so they
Speaker 1: can make money and they have no real concern about
Speaker 1: what happens to you and your information. Information is valuable,
Speaker 1: whether it's for a government to try and protect itself
Speaker 1: or the citizens that it represents. Ideally, we would like
Speaker 1: to at least se a government try to protect the
Speaker 1: people it represents. Maybe that's being naive, or if it's
Speaker 1: a you know, a corporation that's doing this in order
Speaker 1: to make a profit, or a hacker that's doing this
Speaker 1: in order to make a profit in an even more
Speaker 1: unethical way than the corporations are. Information is valuable. It's
Speaker 1: also a good reminder of why you should do stuff
Speaker 1: like use VPNs when you can so that you can
Speaker 1: protect your activities from prying eyes and not have to
Speaker 1: worry quite so much about your every move being spied upon.
Speaker 1: Don't use public Wi fi, especially to do anything sensitive.
Speaker 1: You know, be careful, be responsible with your browsing activities
Speaker 1: so that you limit the ways that you can be exploited.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying don't make use of these various platforms
Speaker 1: social media. I'd be a hypocrite if I did. I
Speaker 1: use them all the time. Just know what you're getting
Speaker 1: into and be aware of what could potentially happen. If
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with those consequences, I say, you're all good.
Speaker 1: If you're not, then you need to think about ways
Speaker 1: you can change your behavior. Whether it's using VPNs or
Speaker 1: backing off on using the Internet as much, or whatever
Speaker 1: it may be, so that you feel you're using technology
Speaker 1: to benefit you as opposed to having other people receive
Speaker 1: a benefit because of you don't be used. In other words,
Speaker 1: now as I say that, I think you should also
Speaker 1: go to tea public dot com slash tech Stuff. We
Speaker 1: got a merchandise store. It's awesome. You can go buy
Speaker 1: stuff and every purchase helps the show. Again. Hypocrite, I know,
Speaker 1: but that's why spooky. Hey guys, if you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with me and talk about how scared
Speaker 1: you are after this spooky episode, you can go over
Speaker 1: to tech stuff podcast dot com. That's our website. You'll
Speaker 1: find all the contact information there. Check it out, and
Speaker 1: I will haunt you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.