Speaker 1: Really now, really.
Speaker 2: Really now, really welcome, Welcome, Welcome. I am Jason Alexander.
Speaker 1: Here you are.
Speaker 3: You're very good at that. I'm Peter Tilden, and you're
Speaker 3: very good at that. And this is this is.
Speaker 2: Really no really our little podcast when we delve into
Speaker 2: things that make us think or ask really, no, really,
Speaker 2: that's a thing, that's a fact, that's true. And today, Peter,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna tee it up for you.
Speaker 1: Ready, what are we gonna do? What a you're gonna
Speaker 1: do again? Your hear it be? There was that dominic
Speaker 1: the day. Wow, it's droning drones. Drones, I was droning.
Speaker 1: Did you get funny?
Speaker 3: I called Jason and I go, you know, drones. I
Speaker 3: don't think it's ever gonna happen. How is it gonna
Speaker 3: do delivery drones? You're worried about the air traffic of
Speaker 3: the whole time. I don't get how it's even possible.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make sense that we can do drones in
Speaker 3: the sky.
Speaker 1: So that's my take.
Speaker 2: Your take is My take is listen, it's a feather complete.
Speaker 2: First of all, they're already on the ground, they're rolling
Speaker 2: down the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: The drones.
Speaker 2: And second of all, we now live in a world
Speaker 2: where if I need it, you were supposed to give
Speaker 2: it to me a second ago. You have to there's
Speaker 2: no patience. Everybody can't get here tomorrow. I order something
Speaker 2: on the phone at two o'clock this afternoon. It comes
Speaker 2: eight o'clock tomorrow morning.
Speaker 1: No good. Now it has to be there in an hour,
Speaker 1: in a minute, in a second.
Speaker 3: I hate it kills me to agree with you, but
Speaker 3: you realize we used to have restaurants. Then we had takeout, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: then we had fast food.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Then we had drive food because that wasn't good enough.
Speaker 3: And now I'm the four h five. I'm going eighty
Speaker 3: drop that in my car. I want it now, I'm
Speaker 3: on a toilet paper lowered it into my bathroom. I mean,
Speaker 3: but how are you going to do that? So you
Speaker 3: know what we do. You're in the show we get
Speaker 3: experts on a Dell and we're looking at doctor Roger Connor.
Speaker 1: How are you, sir?
Speaker 4: I'm great.
Speaker 1: Thanks, let me go through.
Speaker 3: I usually don't take the time to go through a bio,
Speaker 3: but yours is so extensive. Doctor Connor curates the Museum
Speaker 3: of the Air and Space Music, a Space Museum's vertical
Speaker 3: flight collection. Jasion, what the vertical flight collection? He curates
Speaker 3: the vertical flight collection. Correct, that's it, just the vertical.
Speaker 3: It has to go up and down, that's it.
Speaker 2: Otherwise you're so you don't do Loudand if he rolls
Speaker 2: five feet down the runway before he goes up, not
Speaker 2: his area, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: Can't do it. You do how it sidles for a moment?
Speaker 1: No good? Only straight up, straight down? All right? Very
Speaker 1: limited collection? All right, go ahead, all right.
Speaker 3: Let's see here to he's a specialist when it comes
Speaker 3: to remotely pilot and an autonomous.
Speaker 1: Aircraft SYS, ground effects vehicles.
Speaker 3: Sure, he's a specialist when it comes to air traffic control.
Speaker 1: Oh good, airports airport a specialist. Good.
Speaker 2: Maybe before they listen, it's going to be a left turn.
Speaker 2: But if you can explain to me what the hell
Speaker 2: they're doing at Los Angeles Airport, that would be because
Speaker 2: I don't You don't get it. They've been building it
Speaker 2: for seven years and all I know is I can't
Speaker 2: get where I need to go, and I can't drive
Speaker 2: a car in there. I can't get picked up, I
Speaker 2: can't get a bag onto a thing there are people
Speaker 2: there going?
Speaker 3: And why ma'am, why is it at lax? I have
Speaker 3: to kind of slow down enough and say to more
Speaker 3: get out. I'm not stop. I'm just like I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Slow That's right, My god, all right.
Speaker 3: He's also an experience commercial pilot with over four thousand
Speaker 3: hours a flight.
Speaker 1: Four thousand hours? Is that a flight time? Is that?
Speaker 1: I had a lot?
Speaker 2: I thought it was ten thousand, everything thousand. You put
Speaker 2: in ten thousand hours. You know what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You didn't you didn't commit to the ten fourteen.
Speaker 2: It takes fourteen hours to fly from here to Australia
Speaker 2: and back is twenty eight hours, and he does that
Speaker 2: ten times that now, all of a suddenly expert.
Speaker 3: In his doctoral dissentation, Yeah, I think close to yours
Speaker 3: rooftops and rice rice patties, utopias and helicopters in the
Speaker 3: creation of national security.
Speaker 1: Yes, I didn't include rice patties, but so it's similar.
Speaker 1: He Sai's very similar to what you do. So how
Speaker 1: are you?
Speaker 4: I am great? Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Sounds like you're busy, you're a you're a you're an
Speaker 2: expert on many many things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have to be a time traveler in this job.
Speaker 5: So I'm in World War one in the morning and
Speaker 5: dealing with what's happening in twenty fifty with sustainable aviation
Speaker 5: in the afternoon.
Speaker 3: Wow, this is a god This so drone delivery drones.
Speaker 3: You've got chimneys, You've got why electrical wires, you got birds,
Speaker 3: you got all kinds of stuff going on, and you're
Speaker 3: gonna tell They're going to try and convince me that
Speaker 3: I'm going to get my pizza in twenty five minutes
Speaker 3: or less than it's free.
Speaker 2: Dodging all that already is the thing dominoes thirty minutes more,
Speaker 2: it's free.
Speaker 1: So they got to do better than that. They got
Speaker 1: to eight. So how how is it possible?
Speaker 3: And the back end of that is, I know that
Speaker 3: billionaires are investing in it, so obviously I'm wrong. How
Speaker 3: is that going to be possible? Doctor that delivery drones
Speaker 3: are a reality?
Speaker 5: So it is a reality. But the question is who
Speaker 5: is a reality for? And the short answer right now
Speaker 5: is criminals.
Speaker 2: Sorry, So okay, sounds to be with us.
Speaker 5: Wow, buggling is where it's at right now with delivery drones.
Speaker 5: And so the real question is, can uh somebody that moves.
Speaker 5: Coffee by drone be as successful as the criminals.
Speaker 3: So can't I piggyback my pizza on like a cocaine run.
Speaker 1: They can't. They multitask well.
Speaker 5: The advantage of the criminal element is they don't have
Speaker 5: to worry about regulations or safety or some of those
Speaker 5: other things.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Hold on a second, Wow, give us a second. Really, No, really,
Speaker 3: it's the criminal that's that's where it's working.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 3: And you know, I've been to the border and I
Speaker 3: went with the border agents and they said they're outmanned
Speaker 3: and outspent because the drug guys have unlimited resources. I'm
Speaker 3: assuming same thing with the drunes, unlimited resources to create
Speaker 3: these things.
Speaker 5: Yes, right, And you know it's it's across the northern
Speaker 5: southern borders of the United States. It's into prisons, which
Speaker 5: is a particular problem. And then we see it on
Speaker 5: an international scale.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait, there's a drone use in the prison.
Speaker 4: Community of some kind, smuggling into prison.
Speaker 5: So the a drone, a drone dropping into the prison
Speaker 5: yard is really what's happening.
Speaker 6: Right as the drone over, whether they have prison guard watching,
Speaker 6: whether there's a guy a sniper or and a turret
Speaker 6: they can't see that they're they're droning right past these guys.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, if you get it up high enough,
Speaker 5: really hard to see with the naked eye, you're probably
Speaker 5: not going to hear it, so pretty hard to detect.
Speaker 4: And you drop a cell phone.
Speaker 3: Or feed up, isn't the cell phone going to take
Speaker 3: out inmate eighty three four seven of it?
Speaker 5: Hitsham might be, but see that's an acceptable loss by
Speaker 5: their their standards.
Speaker 3: So how big is the drone criminal business? How big
Speaker 3: of a business is that we know?
Speaker 4: It's we don't know.
Speaker 5: Uh So, the federal government has not been releasing a
Speaker 5: lot of information on this, and it's not clear that
Speaker 5: even they have a particularly good handle on it.
Speaker 4: So we really only know anecdotally.
Speaker 5: And what we do know is that it was starting
Speaker 5: to increase rapidly before the pandemic, but we don't have
Speaker 5: solid figures really in the public after that. We do
Speaker 5: have a lot of anecdotal reports. So there are occasions
Speaker 5: where these things either crash or they're captured or something
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 2: And Roger, are we talking about the kind of drone
Speaker 2: the kind of drones I'm picking up at Target and Walmart?
Speaker 1: I mean, are they literally the ones that are sold.
Speaker 5: For Most of these are commercially Yeah, we do see
Speaker 5: in some particularly in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, we see
Speaker 5: some more military grade drones being used for but mostly
Speaker 5: we see either domestically with these prison drops or with
Speaker 5: narcos are using are essentially the off the shelf commercial drone,
Speaker 5: some of the kinds that you would see in Hollywood
Speaker 5: for filming, but even some of the ones that you
Speaker 5: can buy on Amazon.
Speaker 3: So we know about the positive uses for drones as
Speaker 3: far as inspection of buildings, delivering to remote areas of
Speaker 3: medicines and stuff. I get that, But drones in la
Speaker 3: and urban environments as livery systems and everybody's trying to
Speaker 3: cut back on last mile. That's what every business is
Speaker 3: trying to do deliverbent is how do we figure out
Speaker 3: the most efficient way. So gig workers are getting too
Speaker 3: expensive for these companies. They also can't find enough, so
Speaker 3: they're trying to replace them with drones. But a drone
Speaker 3: from prepping for this subject to have the right radar
Speaker 3: or leader and be able to navigate its weight. The
Speaker 3: more you put in a drone, the heavier gets. Can
Speaker 3: we do commercial drones that actually deliver a package that's
Speaker 3: fifty pounds now safely. I know they've tried it in
Speaker 3: remote areas. Have they done it in dense areas at all?
Speaker 1: Not?
Speaker 4: So the real problem here is the size of the package.
Speaker 5: So we have companies that are actively demonstrating the ability
Speaker 5: to operate in at least a rural or a suburban
Speaker 5: environment relatively safely. Now, the real problem is that the
Speaker 5: regulation is so far behind because of all the complexities
Speaker 5: that you're mentioning that it's not entirely clear how much
Speaker 5: of that additional technology you have to add to keep
Speaker 5: the thing safe. You know, it's actually a lot more
Speaker 5: challenging problems than say a self driving car, which really
Speaker 5: the self driving car what it has to do is
Speaker 5: read the road signs and you know, apply the rules
Speaker 5: and it more or less is going to function effectively
Speaker 5: as long as it navigates the traffic. In terms of
Speaker 5: aviation terms, it gets to be a lot more complicated
Speaker 5: because there's there's no set routes, so you know, you're
Speaker 5: constantly running into things like power lines. That was an
Speaker 5: incident that happened fairly recently in Australia where a delivery
Speaker 5: drone landed on a power line and knocked out power
Speaker 5: to two thousand homes.
Speaker 1: Okay, delivered a blackout. Well, what are you saying that?
Speaker 2: So the the aerial drones that we're discussing are not
Speaker 2: operator controlled are they autonomous drones?
Speaker 4: So it's a combination that it's actually the ones that.
Speaker 5: Are under trial right now by the e commerce companies
Speaker 5: are essentially supervised. So there are a ton of in
Speaker 5: the sense that there's not a pilot with a joystick
Speaker 5: actively controlling them, at least unless there's an emergency, so
Speaker 5: there's an ability to kind of take over. But really
Speaker 5: what they're looking for is that you would have ten
Speaker 5: or more drones being supervised simultaneously by an individual that's
Speaker 5: essentially washing at a at a station. Of something's not right,
Speaker 5: then they have the ability to intervene and either give
Speaker 5: it a land immediately signal or a recall notice or
Speaker 5: something like that.
Speaker 3: What was interesting because you go self driving cars, the
Speaker 3: number of self driving cars that are crashing and I
Speaker 3: don't want to give a stack because it changes all
Speaker 3: the time in the self driving world is not acceptable
Speaker 3: where they want it to be. And I noticed with
Speaker 3: what would be zero would be really good and.
Speaker 1: Zero's the bard Again.
Speaker 3: Tech tech can't do certain things. And what fascinated me
Speaker 3: was with self driving car and with a drone. So
Speaker 3: it comes upon a train, a train, a long train.
Speaker 3: I know what a train is. They think it's a wall.
Speaker 3: It looks like a wall. Sure, unless it has velocity detection,
Speaker 3: it thinks it's a wall, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: after five minutes, it's not there. The drone doesn't know
Speaker 3: what to do, correct, Isn't that that's something that a
Speaker 3: drone can't necessarily figure out, right without more and more
Speaker 3: and more tech stuff on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this gets too.
Speaker 5: I think the major problem not just for drones, but
Speaker 5: aviation as a whole as we move through the century,
Speaker 5: and that is automation right there. The biggest problems that
Speaker 5: we've seen in commercial aviation over the last couple of
Speaker 5: decades has not been mechanical failure, but the problem of
Speaker 5: the human crew members understanding the automation and what's doing.
Speaker 5: It's that disconnect that's led to the most serious accidents
Speaker 5: in recent commercial air travel. And you know, same sort
Speaker 5: of thing here. You know what happens when the algorithm
Speaker 5: is deciding you know where exactly to fly, and it's
Speaker 5: not just a safety issue, it's an environmental justice shoe.
Speaker 5: You know, whose house gets blown over, who owns the
Speaker 5: airspace over that house? At particularly low level, these are
Speaker 5: things that have not been decided yet and are really
Speaker 5: kind of, you know, major hurdles to implementing this, that
Speaker 5: kind of thing on a large scale.
Speaker 2: Let me take a little bit of a turn and
Speaker 2: ask you a question, because you talked about the air
Speaker 2: rights over there. So I don't I don't think this
Speaker 2: has happened to me, But I do have celebrity friends
Speaker 2: who have been in their backyard and they look up
Speaker 2: and there's a camera drone.
Speaker 1: Over the over the yard.
Speaker 2: It is there a height at which they can claim
Speaker 2: that it is trespassing or is there is there any
Speaker 2: rights for the airspace.
Speaker 1: Above their property to.
Speaker 5: Prevent the airspace is a really difficult problem at the
Speaker 5: at the federal scale because there's very little case law
Speaker 5: on it. Essentially, the FAA has the authority to regulate
Speaker 5: navigable airspace, and in general terms, that's traditionally meant basically
Speaker 5: not coming within five hundred feet of people or structures. Now,
Speaker 5: what happened when the drones came in the fa said, look,
Speaker 5: we do not want this type of technology mixing with
Speaker 5: aircraft with humans on them, and so they have to
Speaker 5: be completely segregated out. So we're basically going to limit
Speaker 5: drones to operating between the surface and four hundred feet.
Speaker 5: The problem is is that's not really in this navigable
Speaker 5: airspace environment, and the you know, the rules about who
Speaker 5: actually owns that airspace is not at all clear. And
Speaker 5: so what we've seen is the regulation for what you're
Speaker 5: talking about, you know, things like trespass or spying on people,
Speaker 5: that's really kind of come down to local ordinances, so
Speaker 5: you know, you really have to complain to local authorities
Speaker 5: and then you know the person flying is going to
Speaker 5: be held to account in terms of the spying aspect
Speaker 5: by the local authorities, whereas the FAA has some kind
Speaker 5: of loose regulations things like careless and reckless operation that
Speaker 5: they can apply. But it's a wild west in terms
Speaker 5: of exactly who has who's going to have the greatest
Speaker 5: authority over over this this type of deliveries.
Speaker 3: And now are you concerned by the way that the
Speaker 3: big companies that are investing and they all are the
Speaker 3: Amazon's and the Walmarts eteremter.
Speaker 1: They have lobbing that can change.
Speaker 3: They push Washington to doolo poles and change the restrictions
Speaker 3: to benefit them, which I get. I mean, they're trying
Speaker 3: to move business forward, and this is going to be
Speaker 3: the jobs of the future. The gig economy is going
Speaker 3: to kind of diminish, and this will be the new
Speaker 3: jobs of the future. Do you see that happening soon?
Speaker 3: Do you see delivery drones anytime soon in major cities?
Speaker 5: The pattern of regulation for this type of technology, and
Speaker 5: especially how novel it is and how much we don't
Speaker 5: really understand about the interface between all of this automation
Speaker 5: suggests that the FAA is.
Speaker 4: Going to be extremely cautious, which is what they've.
Speaker 3: Signaled, which we hope and pray that they're not going
Speaker 3: to have. They're not smeared with money and saying we'll
Speaker 3: let just fly over your house.
Speaker 1: Is there, Russia?
Speaker 5: Is there?
Speaker 1: Do you see an upside to the advent of the drones? It?
Speaker 1: Does it pollute less?
Speaker 2: Is it really a far more efficient means of delivery?
Speaker 1: Or is it?
Speaker 2: Because when I look at it, I just look at
Speaker 2: people losing jobs. But is there is there a net
Speaker 2: positive for society at large to have this become a
Speaker 2: more standard delivery system.
Speaker 5: There are applications, so the most problem of those is
Speaker 5: zip Line, which is a company that's been operating primarily
Speaker 5: in Africa, and what they do is they deliver often
Speaker 5: blood supplies to remote medical facilities by It's essentially a
Speaker 5: drone airplane that that parachutes out the package using GPS,
Speaker 5: so they basically launch it with a giant slingshot, has
Speaker 5: a kind of a wire recovery system that snatches out
Speaker 5: of the air. It's amazing in terms of its operation.
Speaker 5: I think they've just recently dropped their five hundred thousand
Speaker 5: package from one of these things, and Walmart's had an
Speaker 5: association with them testing it in the United States. So
Speaker 5: there's a case where the roads are really bad in
Speaker 5: certain areas in Africa, particularly you know, in wet seasons
Speaker 5: for instance, and so if you were to try and
Speaker 5: take that blood supply around via moped you know or something,
Speaker 5: you might you might not make it through. The ability
Speaker 5: to parachute it in is a huge advantage. So there's
Speaker 5: an application that has a you know, a clear advantage
Speaker 5: over other approaches. Military is obviously another case where there's
Speaker 5: huge advantages, and we already see the Air Force and
Speaker 5: Marine Corps are moving very aggressively to develop relatively large
Speaker 5: delivery drones, much larger than what the e commerce companies
Speaker 5: are experimenting with.
Speaker 4: So Connor, I would expect to see those come in. First.
Speaker 3: Am I hearing a dog or you're having stomach issues?
Speaker 3: Do we need to stop?
Speaker 1: Okay? If I've heard some kind of that's the last
Speaker 1: time you hear before the drone comes in. And you know, well,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm worried about. Distract liability, distracted droning.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like you got you've.
Speaker 3: Got gamers who are now coordinating these drones, and once
Speaker 3: they give him more than one, they've got like find
Speaker 3: that they got to do, and it guys talking on
Speaker 3: his phone playing whatever it is he got distracted droning
Speaker 3: going on, and liability.
Speaker 1: Did you just coin this phrase distracted drowning? Is that
Speaker 1: a phrase that exists? Or does that? Does that exist?
Speaker 1: Distracted running?
Speaker 4: It's an interesting question. I think what we're actually saying
Speaker 4: much automation now.
Speaker 5: That it's uh, it's it's really the algorithm that's that's
Speaker 5: the problem, more so than the human operator.
Speaker 4: In a lot of these.
Speaker 2: Cases, you're worried, so your fears are over. Nothing to
Speaker 2: worry about it automation. There's no distracting drone. There's no
Speaker 2: kid with a game.
Speaker 3: Automation always works, it's always good, always, you know, always,
Speaker 3: Automation cannot reply.
Speaker 1: We'll have this conversation that.
Speaker 2: He is an example of how it doesn't work. Because
Speaker 2: this was a story I read in researching for this.
Speaker 2: So there was an Amazon primere apparently is a you know,
Speaker 2: Amazon's putting quite a bit of money into developing this technology,
Speaker 2: so they've flown ten of these, you know, test deliveries. Well,
Speaker 2: first of all, according to this, the FAA says the
Speaker 2: drone cannot fly over a road. Can't fly over a
Speaker 2: road unless there's a spotter. So you're already not saving
Speaker 2: money on human now because you got spotters every time
Speaker 2: it crosses road.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: But in the ten that they've flown, five of them
Speaker 2: have crashed in a four month period, and one of
Speaker 2: them the crash started a fire that burned twenty five acres.
Speaker 1: I'm lucky. Run just that is that all?
Speaker 5: Bad?
Speaker 1: Run? Yeah? Bad run? Oh?
Speaker 3: But Amazon Amazons have been trying to get this off
Speaker 3: the ground for a while and they've had issues, right,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't mean they're going to bag it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And the issue with the spotter on the road
Speaker 5: was caused because they're that particular aircraft was operating above
Speaker 5: the threshold of fifty five pounds, which is kind of
Speaker 5: where the FAA has capped with a consider you know,
Speaker 5: essentially a safe drone for this kind of initial phase
Speaker 5: of operations. So once you go above fifty five pounds,
Speaker 5: the FA is looking at as an entirely more intensive
Speaker 5: experimental category.
Speaker 2: Thankfully, So if you kidding, the FAA is on it
Speaker 2: because I know if a fifty three pound package falls
Speaker 2: on the perfect fifty five that's an alley.
Speaker 1: It can do.
Speaker 3: A package under fifty five pounds, or a third grader
Speaker 3: who's late for school, it can kind of do that.
Speaker 1: I just well, look, it's fascinating to me because I
Speaker 1: look at it.
Speaker 3: And I go, I can't ever imagine that. I don't
Speaker 3: know how they're going to regulate whatever. But again, every
Speaker 3: major company is doing it.
Speaker 1: So before you go, I got to ask who's I got.
Speaker 3: I have houn insurance, car insurance, fire insurance, earthquake insurance,
Speaker 3: and flood insurance. Do we not have to have drone
Speaker 3: crashing insurance because it's my car. They're not responsible, I'm responsible,
Speaker 3: and we got to start wearing a hard hat to work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a it's a huge question, absolutely a fair question.
Speaker 3: You're supposed to have to answer the expert.
Speaker 1: All we do all day is come up with good questions.
Speaker 1: I heard about this because we ask good questions.
Speaker 3: We need you, the expert, mister drum drune fans, to
Speaker 3: answer the question.
Speaker 1: I guess we didn't ask a vertical question. We a
Speaker 1: horizontaled a little bit assa rather than you.
Speaker 3: So liability hasn't been figured out yet obviously.
Speaker 5: Again for you, Yes, yeah, and I think it's obviously
Speaker 5: there's going to be a huge risk. I think if
Speaker 5: this starts with, you know, delivering coffees and burrios and
Speaker 5: that sort of thing, I suspect what you're going to
Speaker 5: see is more supply chain oriented delivery, where you know
Speaker 5: you have a factory complex and uh, you know different
Speaker 5: components or different parts of the factory are separated by
Speaker 5: some distance, and you know within that compound you can
Speaker 5: move things by.
Speaker 3: Your routine roots between between So business to business more
Speaker 3: so than business to consumer.
Speaker 5: And it's also I would say fairly certain and when
Speaker 5: we do start to see a broader application that it's
Speaker 5: going to be limited in terms of where it's traversing.
Speaker 5: So are these things going to be following public right aways?
Speaker 5: For instance, They're probably not going to be traversing across
Speaker 5: people's neighborhoods to get from A to B.
Speaker 4: You know, for the most part, we'll have to see
Speaker 4: how that develops.
Speaker 5: But certainly, in terms of this liability question, I think
Speaker 5: you're going to see a pretty measured and careful approach
Speaker 5: because of that very issue.
Speaker 2: But to that effect, can't these things be hacked? Did
Speaker 2: somebody hack into them and redirect them?
Speaker 4: Cybersecurity is a huge concern with this, There's no doubt
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 3: So or of course, a kid with a rock, Yeah,
Speaker 3: hear it, you can steal yourself. I mean, then it's vulnerable.
Speaker 3: You can shoot it down, you can whatever. Yeah, a
Speaker 3: lot of ways to take it down. It's a fascinating world.
Speaker 3: I just read that you know about the Chinese grown
Speaker 3: that swims and flies? Yeah, what is that?
Speaker 1: Hello? Really? Yep?
Speaker 5: And I you know there's even some I've seen in
Speaker 5: this country that you know are fully aquatic that you
Speaker 5: know you it'll take off from the bottom of a
Speaker 5: swimming pool.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Can I ask a question? With all
Speaker 2: this technology, I'm sixty three years old. Back in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six, I believe I saw a man on television
Speaker 2: with a pack on his back fly through the air
Speaker 2: and soar around. It is twenty twenty three. Where's my jetpack?
Speaker 2: What are we falling around with these drones? Give me
Speaker 2: the package, Give me the jetpack. I got nothing else
Speaker 2: to do. I'll get it where it needs to go.
Speaker 4: If you have the money, you can do it today.
Speaker 1: But they're not.
Speaker 2: But I know you can because I've seen videos of
Speaker 2: people doing it. But there we haven't really extended the
Speaker 2: range of these things, right, I mean, like a three
Speaker 2: minute flight is a big deal, and maybe it's a
Speaker 2: mile or two or three. But we're not really they're
Speaker 2: not becoming more viable than that, are they?
Speaker 1: At this moment? They are?
Speaker 5: There is the upscale version of these smaller drones are
Speaker 5: whether called e VETEL or electric vertical Takeoff and Landing
Speaker 5: in verticle. This is an entirely different aspect of the market.
Speaker 5: Right In twenty seventeen, Uber announced this huge effort to
Speaker 5: attempt to create autonomous four person, four passenger air taxis
Speaker 5: that was going to be the board, and some of
Speaker 5: those aircraft have come a very long way. Billions have
Speaker 5: been thrown in venture capital, particularly in Silicon Valley towards
Speaker 5: towards these projects, and some of them are actually getting
Speaker 5: relatively close certification.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 5: When they do get certified, it's pretty certain that they're
Speaker 5: going to have a human pilot on board instead of
Speaker 5: an autopilot running it. So it's going to be essentially
Speaker 5: a variant on a helicopter when they actually come into being,
Speaker 5: but they'll be electric and essentially upscale drones.
Speaker 3: And what's amazing is prepping for you. I read it
Speaker 3: in the forties they promised people that they have personal helicopters.
Speaker 3: This has always been a thing, correct.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, if you back to the eighteen nineties and
Speaker 5: there's this vision of what has been called urban air mobility.
Speaker 1: What this boils down to a lot of times for
Speaker 1: our show is should we invest? That's what it comes
Speaker 1: down to, where we putting money into this thing.
Speaker 4: Or not invest carefully? It would be my advice.
Speaker 1: Really, Yes, still a long way. It's still a long way.
Speaker 1: It's an air taxi.
Speaker 2: I'm nervous about getting into a ground taxi at this point.
Speaker 3: In air taxi. Well, thank you for look, thank you
Speaker 3: for coming on. You've got a breath and death and
Speaker 3: knowledge for this and the Air and Space Museum. We
Speaker 3: did a live show there. What a wonderful place are you?
Speaker 3: Is that where your offices? Yeah, we're under the soyer,
Speaker 3: We're into the spot. Make are you onto Apollo War above?
Speaker 3: It is amazing. By the way, we did a show there.
Speaker 3: I was starting to tell you before we went on.
Speaker 3: Everywhere we went a you couldn't rehearse, and you couldn't
Speaker 3: set up a stage because it's open to the public
Speaker 3: until five or six they close. They rush us into
Speaker 3: this area, build a stage. And everywhere I went they said,
Speaker 3: don't open that door, don't open that door. What's behind
Speaker 3: us stores? What are you hiding at the Air Space Museum?
Speaker 4: Usually those stores are just the fire exits.
Speaker 7: Yeah, sure they are sure they are just fire Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: Well thank you doctor Roger Connor the National Air and
Speaker 7: Space Museum.
Speaker 3: Even though he says it's a while in the future,
Speaker 3: it's hard to predict that this could really happen, But
Speaker 3: I got to go with the big guys. They're all Walmart, Amazon,
Speaker 3: They're all in on this. My take, though, is that
Speaker 3: autonomous the AI could I started really thinking about it
Speaker 3: and gave it very serious thought. A. I would have
Speaker 3: never come up with marshamallow fluff because there's no need
Speaker 3: for it. Would have never made marshamallow fluff, would have
Speaker 3: never made an air horn, bagpipes. Would AI have said
Speaker 3: we need bagpipes, crops, croc shoes, circumcision, would have never
Speaker 3: done it right?
Speaker 1: What else? Greeting cards, tie die spanks.
Speaker 3: A I would have never come up with that stuff
Speaker 3: because it wouldn't have known to sheep adoodle. It would
Speaker 3: have never said, you know what, combine that dog with
Speaker 3: that dog because I'm thinking you need that.
Speaker 1: You don't need it. So A I would have never
Speaker 1: come up with that.
Speaker 3: Serious several unnatural sexual positions it would have never come
Speaker 3: up with. Also, A I can't hold a grudge right,
Speaker 3: so it's not human and it can't I can't write
Speaker 3: somebody out of a will A lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: AI think. Can I just ask you a question I
Speaker 1: give a lot of thought to that. I can tell
Speaker 1: that you did.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Now here's my question but talking about drones that are
Speaker 2: going to deliver items to people and need people not
Speaker 2: in need people. You you veered off, you did a
Speaker 2: vertical lift. If I may into AI and things AI
Speaker 2: can because what.
Speaker 1: Do you think AI? What do you think is dry? Hello?
Speaker 1: What does that? What do you do with a drone?
Speaker 1: Do you want to explain it? Now?
Speaker 2: Perhaps a drone will one day be piloted by an
Speaker 2: ailing an AI. Drone to go from point A to
Speaker 2: point B and carry a box has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with crossing the dog breeds to make a sheep of
Speaker 2: doodle on a marshmallow fluff.
Speaker 1: David, where did David? David Google? Could you? Could you
Speaker 1: alern from me?
Speaker 3: David to me and don't be thrown by his celebrity
Speaker 3: or or adjacency to celebrity.
Speaker 1: To me, he just got a delivery of me? He
Speaker 1: is off the rang you have? Do you have toys?
Speaker 1: Here you go? They're all the time? Autonomous? Is AI?
Speaker 1: J the word autonomous? That's how the go ahead, David. No,
Speaker 1: AI is artificial intelligence. It's not autonomous intelligence.
Speaker 3: I hate the word intelligence coming out of your mouth,
Speaker 3: but go ahead, David.
Speaker 8: Most drones and certainly the drones that we're talking about
Speaker 8: in this situation are not one hundred driven by people.
Speaker 8: But there are algorithms and whatnot keep the drones stable
Speaker 8: and flying and without crashing and dissan.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of algorithms. And let me ask you, David, let.
Speaker 2: Me ask you regular is in your research and the
Speaker 2: whole internet lays before you has a drone created through
Speaker 2: any kind of artificial or automated intelligence ever tried to
Speaker 2: make fluff a nutter? How did we go from we're
Speaker 2: talking about a machine that picks a thing up and
Speaker 2: puts it somewhere else. And he gives me a list
Speaker 2: of things that that machine that was designed for that.
Speaker 9: And that alone man couldn't make. You know what, you
Speaker 9: can't make a marshmallow floor. Here's here's the point, mister connection.
Speaker 9: This is why you're not working in the lab. Or
Speaker 9: what I'm trying to say is AI can't replace us.
Speaker 9: So there's a lot of decisions.
Speaker 1: Again, it can replace you today.
Speaker 2: Today, i'd have a better time I'll do to that
Speaker 2: little stuffed Bobby dobbin.
Speaker 1: I'll go over there fault to be my grandmother. All right?
Speaker 1: Why do I even try? Why do I want do
Speaker 1: what you want to do he's doing.
Speaker 3: When Jason loses, it's always the you know what, do
Speaker 3: what you want, what you want to do, which means
Speaker 3: that is.
Speaker 1: If you fail, I told you so, right, if it wins, I.
Speaker 2: Didn't say that's.
Speaker 1: Right, that's this whole show. So google time what happened
Speaker 1: during this segment. I don't want to know. My take
Speaker 1: on the will not anymore.
Speaker 3: I really could give her, honestly, if the show is
Speaker 3: gonna be honest, I could give her crap.
Speaker 1: It's really really I don't really know. Go ahead, out
Speaker 1: of courtesy, go thank you out of Curticy alone. Aren't
Speaker 1: you magnet? This is magic.
Speaker 2: Let's give us another list of things that you're not
Speaker 2: going to any gift.
Speaker 1: This year for your birthday? Oh like last year Head's spectacular.
Speaker 1: Oh it was actually pretty good.
Speaker 2: Take it back off, So go ahead, I want let's
Speaker 2: hear your Taken't wait, here's what I'm going to say.
Speaker 1: This is going to be brilliant here.
Speaker 2: I do believe this technology is going to come in,
Speaker 2: it's going to pervade.
Speaker 1: And that some way technology grow.
Speaker 2: I don't think it is going to further split a
Speaker 2: very divided economy. I think that the people who have
Speaker 2: invested in it and developed it and run companies like
Speaker 2: Amazon and all these things. They're going to see great
Speaker 2: profitability from being able to have these delivery systems. However,
Speaker 2: I think is going to be devastating to the human economy.
Speaker 2: These are hundreds of thousands of jobs that are going
Speaker 2: to be eradicated because of these things. And the more
Speaker 2: and more we do that, the more and more we
Speaker 2: replace human work and human endeavor with technology, the worst
Speaker 2: off we're going to be. But it is inevitable because
Speaker 2: of what I said in the beginning. People are out
Speaker 2: of patience. I'm out of patience with you. You're out
Speaker 2: of patience with me.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know, wait herefwith I can give you the
Speaker 3: time when that happened. Really, I'll tell you a year,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you who was president. But it's nobody can
Speaker 3: wait for anything. I actually think this notion of.
Speaker 2: Medicine, I understand, you know, vital organs, I understand, But
Speaker 2: this notion that I can't wait a day to get
Speaker 2: my delivery from action at home thirty.
Speaker 1: Minutes I ordered a mic for this. I think it's
Speaker 1: still not here.
Speaker 3: I think you're right partial credit, but I do think
Speaker 3: and This is a little serious for the show. But
Speaker 3: I know in other countries they're preparing the next generation
Speaker 3: for the jobs that are going to be happening. In
Speaker 3: this way right, let me figure where we're in this country.
Speaker 3: We're not necessarily preparing kids for the jobs that are
Speaker 3: going to be happening.
Speaker 1: You can't them, you can't keep you one. I'm the
Speaker 1: one that loves America. But what do you Oh my Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm not honestly.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, technical jobs, technical jobs, but warehousing
Speaker 3: is going to change, Manufacturing is going to change and
Speaker 3: be more automated. This is going to be more automated.
Speaker 3: So we have to move education to how do you fix?
Speaker 3: How do you program?
Speaker 1: How do you do?
Speaker 3: That's the future. You can't just say, oh my god,
Speaker 3: stop the future. It's going to be horrible for mankind.
Speaker 3: It's it's marching on. So if we know what the
Speaker 3: technology involves, train the kids.
Speaker 1: By the way, the dumb, dumb that I am, dumb
Speaker 1: that I am.
Speaker 3: I told my kids don't play video games, and I've
Speaker 3: shown pilot makes anywhere from seventy grand up and now
Speaker 3: they have weight, they have video videoed and you guys
Speaker 3: know this in the other room.
Speaker 1: Race.
Speaker 3: Have you seen the video racing which witham I haven't
Speaker 3: seen this. These drones, it's a bird's eye view. David
Speaker 3: can talk to this. There's gambling. These guys are racing
Speaker 3: drones through real courses at eighty to one hundred miles
Speaker 3: an hour and it looks like Star X wing fighterser.
Speaker 3: It's a POV. If you're listening, go check it out.
Speaker 3: I think it's DSL racing. Imagine it. Imagine it's going
Speaker 3: really fast and it's really cool.
Speaker 2: But you know, your premises is that we are going
Speaker 2: to train the next generations to prepare for these jobs.
Speaker 2: But our kids are roughly the same age. They're grown men, right,
Speaker 2: they grew up in the age of oh, computer science,
Speaker 2: computer technology. It's coming, it's coming, it's coming. We're going
Speaker 2: to train the next generation for computer jobs. My kids
Speaker 2: are barely more literate on the computer than I am,
Speaker 2: and I'm illiterate. So you know, we don't do such
Speaker 2: a great job at preparing the next generation.
Speaker 3: Saying I'm that's what I'm saying when you went to
Speaker 3: die Love America. We need to prepare them for the
Speaker 3: next job. Google, I'm talk about racing for.
Speaker 8: People who want to just check it out for themselves
Speaker 8: instead of having us describe. I'm at four minutes the
Speaker 8: Drone Racing League dot com. They can check it out
Speaker 8: for themselves. But the Drone Racing League or DRL is
Speaker 8: a fully functioning racing league like like motorsports or basketball
Speaker 8: or NFL or whatever it is, where it's six to
Speaker 8: twelve pilots are racing these drones up to ninety miles
Speaker 8: an hour during the.
Speaker 1: Is the coolest looking thing.
Speaker 8: I am addicted their neon lit They have lights on
Speaker 8: them to follow them as they're dipping and diving and
Speaker 8: going through squares and triangles.
Speaker 3: And they do they take a storre courses they do.
Speaker 3: Twenty five million people want sure and gambling now big
Speaker 3: time gambling.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a questions. Cut to the chase.
Speaker 1: Five million followers on TikTok. Yeah, what's the first place?
Speaker 1: Perse hunderground? I saw hundred grand Because if it's a
Speaker 1: hundred grand, I'm going to run out right now. And
Speaker 1: I'm in the idiot who said to my kids, don't
Speaker 1: play for your labor. Here for two years with this
Speaker 1: craziness they make a dollar. Yeah, you're gonna be a drumming, Well,
Speaker 1: why can't I act like have your kids trained?
Speaker 3: You know why you can't be a drone vilet? And
Speaker 3: this is the end of the show. We are youre
Speaker 3: ending right now? Tell me I've seen your hand on
Speaker 3: coordination and we're out. Oh, come on, go and try
Speaker 3: and smack me.
Speaker 1: Right we guys?
Speaker 8: Did you?
Speaker 1: Guys didn't get a big error though? Yeah, what's that?
Speaker 1: You said that?
Speaker 8: And this could be something that the drones could fix us.
Speaker 8: Domino's no longer offers the third day.
Speaker 1: I got get it or less. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: a company could do that anyway.
Speaker 3: In the city like Los Angeles, you can't get I
Speaker 3: can't get to my den in thirty minutes or less.
Speaker 1: In LA you can't get out. When did they stop
Speaker 1: doing that?
Speaker 8: Then after a nineteen ninety three lawsuit, they dropped it
Speaker 8: because a woman won seventy eight million dollars against the company,
Speaker 8: and it is alleged that there are twenty fatalities related
Speaker 8: to that.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I got to kick up or some of
Speaker 1: the delivery drivers pizza.
Speaker 3: Now, that's when I was under four hundred dollars that
Speaker 3: Laurie's giving us the wrap up figure starting here in
Speaker 3: your talk Queen christ Is, it's Queen critique. She hates
Speaker 3: that name, Lauri, he called you Queen Critiqua. You hate
Speaker 3: that name. Oh you're gonna pay for that next episode.
Speaker 1: Really Yeah now, Really Really No Really. Thank you for
Speaker 1: being with us on another episode of Really No Really.
Speaker 1: Next one coming to you by Drone. If you liked
Speaker 1: it half as much as we liked doing it, we liked.
Speaker 3: It twice twice as much as you like listening, which
Speaker 3: is not man whatever to see you bye.
Speaker 8: Thank you again, doctor Roger Connor for helping us out
Speaker 8: today with our drone inquiries. You can find us online
Speaker 8: at reallynoreally dot com or we're on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok,
Speaker 8: and threads at Really No Really.
Speaker 4: Podcast.
Speaker 8: Most of all, thank you for listening, subscribing, and sharing
Speaker 8: the show. We release new episodes of Really No Really
Speaker 8: every Tuesday, so make sure to follow us on the
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Speaker 8: Really No Really is a production of iHeartRadio and Blase Entertainment.