Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 1: I'ma's Voloshan and carac prices out this week, so I'll
Speaker 1: be bringing you the headlines of the week, including AI's
Speaker 1: black box problem and open Eyes push to infiltrate college campuses.
Speaker 1: And on today's Tech Support segment, we'll talk to four
Speaker 1: or four Media's Jason Kebler about the weird world of
Speaker 1: body scans and the future of TSA security.
Speaker 2: Airplanes and airports in general are interesting because it feels
Speaker 2: like new technologies are like rolled out there before they're
Speaker 2: rolled out more broadly into society.
Speaker 1: All of that On the weekend Tech It's a Spooky Day, Friday,
Speaker 1: June thirteenth. As I mentioned, Carras out this week, so
Speaker 1: we're going to dive right into the headlines, and a
Speaker 1: couple of big stories have been on my mind, both
Speaker 1: highlighting that as AI becomes more and more ubiquitous and
Speaker 1: as a rush to deploy it, we still don't fully
Speaker 1: understand how these systems actually work. AI models are such
Speaker 1: a black box that even the developers who build them
Speaker 1: can't always explain or predict the behavior of their models,
Speaker 1: And this week, Axios released a detailed roundup of how
Speaker 1: leaders are simultaneously admitting this lack of knowledge while also
Speaker 1: pushing for rapid deployment and implementation. Here's an example. Anthropic,
Speaker 1: while testing its latest model, Clawed four, gave the model
Speaker 1: access to corporate emails, setting up this fictional scenario where
Speaker 1: Claude knew that one it was going to be shut
Speaker 1: down and two that the engineer responsible for shutting it
Speaker 1: down was having an affair. In eighty four percent of
Speaker 1: cases when this test was run, the model attempted to
Speaker 1: blackmail the engineer, supposedly to preserve itself. And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Anthropic doesn't know how the new model chose blackmail as
Speaker 1: a tactic or how to prevent it from doing so
Speaker 1: in future, but Anthropic released the model. Now there is
Speaker 1: an accepted term to refer to this problem I that
Speaker 1: we don't yet understand the why of AI's behavior, and
Speaker 1: that term is interpretability. CEOs of AI companies like open
Speaker 1: Ai Samultman and Anthropics Dario Amode have openly acknowledged that
Speaker 1: quote interpretability is an important problem to solve and that
Speaker 1: our lack of understanding about how these models work can
Speaker 1: pose significant risk in April, A. Mooday wrote that quote
Speaker 1: people outside the field are often surprised and alarmed to
Speaker 1: learn that we do not understand how our AI creations work.
Speaker 1: They are right to be concerned. This lack of understanding
Speaker 1: is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology. The question
Speaker 1: to me is is there enough investment and attention going
Speaker 1: towards this problem versus the race forever stronger performance between
Speaker 1: privately funded companies. AI is being developed and implemented without
Speaker 1: meaningful guardrails, and that's something that US government is actively encouraging.
Speaker 1: In fact, President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill includes a provision
Speaker 1: for a decade long ban on states attempting to regulate AI,
Speaker 1: either through new regulations or through enforcing existing regulations. Now
Speaker 1: the bill has been passed by the House and is
Speaker 1: being heard in the Senate. Changes are very possible because
Speaker 1: even Republican senators like Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marshall
Speaker 1: Blackburn of Tennessee have pushed back on this ban. Now,
Speaker 1: for those hoping humans will maintain control over AI, there
Speaker 1: is some potentially encouraging news coming out of Apple This week.
Speaker 1: The company's machine learning researchers publish an academic paper with
Speaker 1: very buzzy title, The Illusion of Thinking. The paper studies
Speaker 1: reasoning models like open Aiyes three and deep seeks are one,
Speaker 1: which are models designed to problem solve. What the Apple
Speaker 1: paper found is that when these reasoning models are presented
Speaker 1: with complex logic problems, the models fail to solve the problems.
Speaker 1: Mashable reports that in the study, reasoning models were given
Speaker 1: classic logic puzzles like jumping checker pieces into empty spaces,
Speaker 1: or the river crossing problem, the one involving a fox,
Speaker 1: a chicken, and a bag of grain. This is a
Speaker 1: pretty simple test of a human's ability to problem solve,
Speaker 1: because once you figure out the rules, it's actually pretty
Speaker 1: easy to continue solving these problems even when they get
Speaker 1: more complex. But these reasoning models start to fail at
Speaker 1: a certain point. So the big question is is this
Speaker 1: simply a bump in the road or is it indicative
Speaker 1: of a larger problem in how these reasoning models actually work.
Speaker 1: Which brings me to my next headline from the New
Speaker 1: York Times, Welcome to campus, here's your chat GPT. Because
Speaker 1: if critical thinking and logical reasoning skills are where humans
Speaker 1: still have an edge over AI, it's pretty reasonable to me.
Speaker 1: There are concerns about the rise of AI on college campuses.
Speaker 1: Apparently Open Ai has a plan to integrate chatbots into
Speaker 1: every facet of student life, and they're calling the goal
Speaker 1: of this AI integrated higher ed quote AI Native Universities.
Speaker 1: A suite of premium services called chat gpt Edu is
Speaker 1: being sold to universities for faculty and students to use,
Speaker 1: and the company is promising AI tutors and chatbots that
Speaker 1: can do everything from conduct mock job interviews to quiz
Speaker 1: you before exams. Schools are getting in on the action.
Speaker 1: California State University is making chatchipt available to more than
Speaker 1: four hundred and sixty thousand students. Duke University made its
Speaker 1: own AI powered platform called Duke gpt, and in June
Speaker 1: they began offering unlimited Chatchipt access to students and faculty.
Speaker 1: Even if a campus isn't striking a deal with open Ai.
Speaker 1: There's a marketing campaign targeting the handful and I assume
Speaker 1: it is a handful of students who aren't yet using chatchypt.
Speaker 1: Many find this all deeply troubling, especially as there's new
Speaker 1: data and research to suggest that so called cognitive offloading
Speaker 1: I letting a chatbot write your first draft or think
Speaker 1: for you makes you measurably less able to problem solve yourself.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, recent grads are facing historically tough
Speaker 1: job market, especially in fields where AI is starting to
Speaker 1: automate tasks like writing code. So these schools are trying
Speaker 1: to boost their students' prospects by providing them with AI
Speaker 1: tools and with the skills to make the most of
Speaker 1: the tools. So is this strange moment where we don't
Speaker 1: really understand how our lambs make their decisions or how
Speaker 1: using them affects our brains. But they're here, We're using
Speaker 1: them anyway, and we and they are adapting in real time.
Speaker 1: As The Times puts it, quote open ayes pushed to
Speaker 1: AIIFI college education amounts to a national experiment on millions
Speaker 1: of students. I've got a couple more headlines for you,
Speaker 1: and one starts with an old idea brought to life
Speaker 1: with modern technology. About half of all people on Earth
Speaker 1: experience some form of water scarcity. But could that change
Speaker 1: if you drink the ocean. Desalination, the process of removing
Speaker 1: salt to create clean drinking water, has been possible for decades,
Speaker 1: but it's the most expensive way to create clean drinking water. However,
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal recently spoke to three companies that
Speaker 1: are experimenting with an alternative method, a potential solution we've
Speaker 1: known about for years, but that is now being made
Speaker 1: possible by the improved functionality and lower prices of deep
Speaker 1: sea roboots, under sea power cables, and other technologies. Basically,
Speaker 1: the old way of desalinating water involved pumping seawater to
Speaker 1: the surface and then boiling it to create clean water.
Speaker 1: The new way involves an underwater membrane that uses the
Speaker 1: ocean's natural pressure to filter out salt before clean water
Speaker 1: is then pumped to the surface. It's a method that
Speaker 1: could save significant energy and money. Sometimes innovation relies on
Speaker 1: simple upgrades, other times it's all about competition. President Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's one hundred and seventy five billion dollar plan for
Speaker 1: a quote Golden Dome defense system has triggered a race
Speaker 1: between tech companies and defense groups. According to Financial Times,
Speaker 1: the idea is to create a space based system that
Speaker 1: can detect and destroy foreign weapons like missiles at launch.
Speaker 1: The Trump administration is called for quote non traditional contractors
Speaker 1: to help create a system. Cue the competition between ten
Speaker 1: tech companies like Paneteer and Microsoft, and established defense contractors
Speaker 1: like Lockheed Martin. This all comes at a time when
Speaker 1: big tech companies like Meta are stepping into the world
Speaker 1: of developing military technology, and startup defense companies like Anderil
Speaker 1: are raising money at huge valuations ahead of plans to
Speaker 1: go public. The Missile Defense Agency plans to award ten
Speaker 1: year contracts in an open competitive process, and so far
Speaker 1: the agency has gotten over five hundred responses to their
Speaker 1: request for information. After the break, we'll hear from four
Speaker 1: or four Media's Jason Kebler about the dreaded airport pat
Speaker 1: down and its future high tech makeover. So for our
Speaker 1: next segment, we're going to dive into one of the
Speaker 1: more annoying parts travel, especially for anyone who flies frequently,
Speaker 1: airport security and the role technology.
Speaker 3: Plays in it.
Speaker 1: In response to nine to eleven, the Transportation Security Administration,
Speaker 1: or TSA was born. Ever since, TSA has been part
Speaker 1: of the flying experience here in the US, ensuring that
Speaker 1: passengers are safe and highly agitated, one plastic bin at
Speaker 1: a time. If you're not one of about thirty percent
Speaker 1: of American fliers with TSA pre check, you know the
Speaker 1: drill put your personal items in a plastic bin, take
Speaker 1: off your shoes, put your bins through the conveyor belt
Speaker 1: where they will go under a scanner, walk through a
Speaker 1: body scanner, and then if you're unlucky or you've forgot
Speaker 1: to take a receipt out of your pocket, you might
Speaker 1: be pulled aside for an intimate pat down, which can
Speaker 1: be pretty awkward. Over the years, there have been multiple
Speaker 1: upgrades to TSA technology, from more discerning luggage scanners to
Speaker 1: full body scans in place of metal detectors. But the
Speaker 1: latest idea from the Department of Homeland Security, well, I
Speaker 1: certainly don't see it coming. And here to tell us
Speaker 1: how virtual reality could forever alter the dreaded pat down
Speaker 1: process is four or four Media's Jason Kebler. Jason, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming back to tech stuff.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me. So.
Speaker 1: I'm always quite fascinated by airport so I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in them, and so when I saw
Speaker 1: your most recent piece with the headline TSA working on
Speaker 1: heptic tech to feel your body in virtual reality, I
Speaker 1: had to know more. What inspired the piece and what
Speaker 1: did you learn?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that since nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: TSA has been looking for ways to quote unquote improve.
Speaker 3: The security process.
Speaker 2: It's like one day you'll just show up at the
Speaker 2: airport and they'll have all new machines and it will
Speaker 2: be like a totally different process. And I think that
Speaker 2: airplane security and airport security is something that the United
Speaker 2: States really likes to spend money on, I mean, for
Speaker 2: sort of obvious reasons.
Speaker 3: After something like nine to eleven. There's sort of the.
Speaker 2: Security theater of it all where it's like, please take
Speaker 2: off your shoes, We're going to go through your bags.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you can bring liquids, sometimes you can't. It really
Speaker 2: feels like a roll of the dice. And so TSA
Speaker 2: has been basically researching this technology to give their agents
Speaker 2: virtual reality goggles and then haptic feedback gloves, and so
Speaker 2: haptic feedback is like where you wear a glove and
Speaker 2: you can literally like feel in virtual reality. And so
Speaker 2: they've really designed this incredibly complex and seemingly like overkill
Speaker 2: a piece of technology where instead of doing a pat down,
Speaker 2: which notoriously can be very invasive, like that certainly is
Speaker 2: a problem, they're saying, well, people don't like those, so
Speaker 2: we're going to do a virtual reality pat down by
Speaker 2: using these like advanced sensors to detect the outlines of
Speaker 2: someone's body and see if they have like sharp objects
Speaker 2: that they're trying to smuggle in, and then the TSA
Speaker 2: officer will be able to see that in their virtual
Speaker 2: reality and also like feel that in their haptic gloves,
Speaker 2: but without actually touching you. And so I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know how you feel about it. I saw
Speaker 2: it and I was like, this is this seems like overkill?
Speaker 2: And in some ways, it's like the clothes, right, there's that,
Speaker 2: and then there's also like nominally, like if someone is
Speaker 2: touching you, you can say I don't like that, like
Speaker 2: stop doing that. But you know, in this case, they're
Speaker 2: literally creating like a three D scan of your body,
Speaker 2: and in some ways it's like possibly more invasive. I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's it's just like very weird technology. I
Speaker 2: think it's kind of uncharted territory.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to feel when we're talking about
Speaker 1: haptic tech?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've never done it myself. Like this technology
Speaker 2: does exist in rudimentary form, but as I understand it,
Speaker 2: it's like you're wearing a glove that has electronics in it,
Speaker 2: and like let's say you move your hand around, presumably
Speaker 2: some air pockets or some thing in there will activate
Speaker 2: so that your hand is feeling like a force back
Speaker 2: against it. That would simulate you actually touching something. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to think of like analogies for what that might be. Like,
Speaker 2: I think maybe like a massage chair, Like imagine a
Speaker 2: massage chair that.
Speaker 1: You wear, or a video game controller or a steering
Speaker 1: wheel that kind of rattles around and like moves your
Speaker 1: hands and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 2: So it's that and then the sort of like input
Speaker 2: data would come from all these sensors that would like
Speaker 2: project an image onto your hand, and then your hand
Speaker 2: would be connected to this VR system so it would
Speaker 2: track your hand around in virtual reality. And then you know,
Speaker 2: basically like put some physics in there where it says
Speaker 2: like okay, you're touching a table, you're touching a person,
Speaker 2: here's what it should feel like. And that technology does
Speaker 2: exist where like handtrack in virtual reality, object tracking in
Speaker 2: virtual reality, that sort of thing. So really like the
Speaker 2: haptics is the new thing here and sort of making
Speaker 2: that happen in real time where a sensor array is
Speaker 2: grabbing all of that as you walk through security.
Speaker 1: Use the word wild in your story, which I think
Speaker 1: is an appropriate one. You know this obviously a podcast.
Speaker 1: Can you give a visual of what this will look like?
Speaker 1: I mean the TSA agent wearing a headset, wearing these levels,
Speaker 1: because there's also some quite amusing cartoons or like visualizations
Speaker 1: that you're able to source in your reporting of what
Speaker 1: TSA imagine this will look like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I want to stress that a lot of
Speaker 2: this comes from patent applications, which are you know, kind
Speaker 2: of like it's very very early. We don't know that
Speaker 2: if this technology is going to be deployed, whether it
Speaker 2: will be deployed, what it will look like when it's deployed.
Speaker 2: But in patent schematics and drawings, it's like they sort
Speaker 2: of imagine and hey, this is what we think it
Speaker 2: could look like. And so in the information sheet, they
Speaker 2: have a TSA officer who has a computer strapped to
Speaker 2: his face like a VR goggles, and he's holding up
Speaker 2: a gloved hand, and then they have this diagram of
Speaker 2: a baseball, like they drew a baseball on a table,
Speaker 2: and then they have this, uh, they call it a glove,
Speaker 2: but it's really like a hand computer like it's like
Speaker 2: they took a touchpad and put it on someone's hand,
Speaker 2: strapped it their hand, and that is the haptic feedback glove.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: It reminded me of that toy I had when I
Speaker 2: was a kid with all those little pins, the like
Speaker 2: metal pins where you could put your hand or face and.
Speaker 3: It would do an outline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that's kind of what it's like, a
Speaker 2: digital recreation of that. They also have a diagram where
Speaker 2: a person is trying to smuggle in scissors around their chest,
Speaker 2: and so they have like a picture of scissors on
Speaker 2: someone's chest, and then they have a picture of their
Speaker 2: belt buckle and the hands are like right up on
Speaker 2: their waist and the diagram makes sure to say that
Speaker 2: it says, quote scan imagery obscured it due to proximity
Speaker 2: to private body zone. And yeah, so this technology would
Speaker 2: like somehow obscure I guess, your private areas because they're
Speaker 2: conscious of your privacy.
Speaker 1: But the idea is like you will stand facing a
Speaker 1: TSA agent. They'll be wearing a virtual reality headset, running
Speaker 1: their hands up and down your body but not actually
Speaker 1: touching you, and then both feeling on their hands and
Speaker 1: seeing in VR objects that maybe underneath your clothes.
Speaker 3: That's what they're proposing.
Speaker 2: And it certainly sounds like the TSA officer could be
Speaker 2: right next to you, but they also make it sound
Speaker 2: like they could be like in another room. For example,
Speaker 2: you'd walk through some sort of sensor system that would
Speaker 2: like scan your body in real time, and then the
Speaker 2: officer either could be there and would be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you, but they
Speaker 2: could also be in another room doing this sort of
Speaker 2: without you even knowing.
Speaker 1: So how did you hear about this? And do you
Speaker 1: have the sense this is something that would actually be
Speaker 1: seeing in airports anytime soon?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's interesting. The Department of Homeland.
Speaker 2: Security, which oversees TSA, actually published a two page information
Speaker 2: sheet about this on its website. And I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess this is something that they do periodically where they're like,
Speaker 2: we have new research, come check it out, but they
Speaker 2: publish it like pretty deep on their website. And frankly,
Speaker 2: we have like a lot of nerds who read our
Speaker 2: articles and are constantly scanning for things like this and
Speaker 2: know that it's something that we would care about, you know.
Speaker 2: We try to write about futuristic and weird technology, and
Speaker 2: so one of our readers sent it to us. I
Speaker 2: checked it out, and from that information sheet it said,
Speaker 2: like want to learn more, go check out these patents.
Speaker 2: Whether we see this in practice or not, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: It seems pretty early, like I haven't seen video of
Speaker 2: this working, like a prototype or anything like that. It
Speaker 2: seems like it's more of a concept that they're working
Speaker 2: on at the moment and our researching. I also think
Speaker 2: that honestly, like since nine to eleven, TSA has kind
Speaker 2: of dialed in the security screening process. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's anything that anyone enjoys. But we're not waiting for
Speaker 2: two hours at the security line anymore like we were
Speaker 2: kind of immediately after nine to eleven. As unpleasant as
Speaker 2: it can be, it's usually pretty quick. And so I
Speaker 2: don't know if we'll ever see this, but it is
Speaker 2: tech that they're researching.
Speaker 1: And where does the money come from?
Speaker 2: Is this?
Speaker 1: Like do we know how long it? You know how
Speaker 1: much they've spent on it? Like what's the kind of
Speaker 1: the structural backdrop of this type of project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Department of Homeland Security has an Office
Speaker 2: of Science and Technology, but they don't say here's how
Speaker 2: much money we spent on this specific virtual reality haptic
Speaker 2: feedback remote sensing.
Speaker 1: Is the Nintendo we of apod security basically, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think it is important to sort of
Speaker 2: realize that we're in an era where a lot of
Speaker 2: government funding is being slashed for new technologies. And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that DHS shouldn't be researching new technology, Like
Speaker 2: a lot of new technology comes out of agencies like
Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security, like the CIA, like the NSSA.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, like this feels like something
Speaker 2: that's a solution in search of a problem, I would say,
Speaker 2: And so yeah, it's something to consider. Like we're slashing
Speaker 2: budgets for science across the government, but we're not really
Speaker 2: slashing budgets for the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 3: Were increasing that budget if anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I did see on your reporting that
Speaker 1: I think they filed the patents for this technology in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, so I guess under the Biden.
Speaker 3: Administration they've been working on it for a while.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not like a recent fancy, so
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting. I Mean, some people say the
Speaker 1: whole VR is a solution in search of a problem, right,
Speaker 1: But like, what's the wider arc of leading edge tech
Speaker 1: for the miniature industrial complex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting because VR and the metaverse, which you know,
Speaker 2: associated technology, has been a massive flop.
Speaker 3: Like it was the.
Speaker 2: AI before there was AI, it was crypto before it
Speaker 2: was crypto. Like that, there was tons and tons of
Speaker 2: hype about VR being just around the corner and people
Speaker 2: using it for all sorts of things, whether to work,
Speaker 2: to play, to game. But interestingly, like one of the
Speaker 2: places where VR has actually been useful has been on
Speaker 2: the job training and for things like post traumatic stress disorder,
Speaker 2: exposure therapy for soldiers and things like that, and so
Speaker 2: the military actually has found some uses for virtual reality.
Speaker 2: At the same time, DHS has been really interested in
Speaker 2: using virtual reality to kind of like see through things
Speaker 2: for lack of a better term, Like there was this
Speaker 2: project that Customs and Border Patrol tried to do where
Speaker 2: they wanted to use virtual reality goggles in a way
Speaker 2: similar to this to see through boxes in order to
Speaker 2: determine whether like counterfeit goods were being brought into the country.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, they're not doing anything like that.
Speaker 2: That was a project that has been around for many
Speaker 2: years and was never deployed. There's been university research that
Speaker 2: was associated with the Department of Homeland Security where they
Speaker 2: wanted to use VR at the border to see terrorists,
Speaker 2: is what they said, but they never explained. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: never explained like how that would work. But I do
Speaker 2: think that there was a period that is still going
Speaker 2: on but has largely been taken over by AI, where
Speaker 2: you would take any process that the government would do
Speaker 2: or that any business would do, and say, well, how
Speaker 2: can we add VR to this Because it's sort of
Speaker 2: the hyped new technology. We can seem like we're forward looking,
Speaker 2: and we can also maybe get some money to research something.
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
Speaker 1: Are there any other interesting airport tech stories that you've
Speaker 1: come across recently?
Speaker 2: I need to do more reporting on this, but facial
Speaker 2: recognition is very very common at airports now. Global Entry,
Speaker 2: which is a customs and border patrol system where you
Speaker 2: don't need to show your passport if you've been pre
Speaker 2: vetted and are an American citizen, now uses facial recognition
Speaker 2: where you just get off the plane and they detect
Speaker 2: who you are and they say, welcome back to the
Speaker 2: United States. A lot of air lines are using facial
Speaker 2: recognition to just boord planes so you don't need to
Speaker 2: show a boarding pass. And then TSA is also using
Speaker 2: facial recognition at the screenings, and these are all things
Speaker 2: that you can opt in or opt out of, but
Speaker 2: it's becoming a lot more commonplace. There was no real
Speaker 2: big announcement where it was like, hey, we're going to
Speaker 2: be using.
Speaker 3: Facial recognition all over the airport. It was just sort
Speaker 3: of there one day, And like, I think there needs to.
Speaker 2: Be more reporting on sort of where the technology came from,
Speaker 2: like where the initial photos that identify you are coming from,
Speaker 2: whether those images are being retained, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But this is all being done sort of in the
Speaker 2: name of convenience and streamlining the process. And I mean,
Speaker 2: I'll admit it is a lot faster to do some
Speaker 2: of these things with facial recognition. But then you start
Speaker 2: worrying about like is that information being shared, how is
Speaker 2: it being shared, who's it going to, what privacy guardrails
Speaker 2: are there, And that's not something we know a lot
Speaker 2: about unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Well, so the airport is a kind of interesting tech
Speaker 1: testing ground or petri dish because like the contract you
Speaker 1: sign implicitly or explicitly when you go to the airport
Speaker 1: is basically that you surrender all of your rights without
Speaker 1: any questions asked. Right, So, once you're like going through security,
Speaker 1: you kind of accepted the premise that the Apple can
Speaker 1: do whatever it wants to you, right, and that includes
Speaker 1: rolling out technologies that you may technically consent to, but
Speaker 1: in reality like very hard to withhold your consent from exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, the only way to withhold your consent in
Speaker 2: some cases is to just not fly. And I think
Speaker 2: also airplanes and airports in general are interesting places where
Speaker 2: technology is rolled out. Because it's very expensive to fly,
Speaker 2: you sort of have this self selecting group of people
Speaker 2: who go through a security process. They're not bringing guns,
Speaker 2: they're not bringing knives. Like it's very safe. It's like
Speaker 2: incredibly safe to be in an airport. And therefore you
Speaker 2: have like a kind of Petri dish of like transient
Speaker 2: people who are who are only there for a few hours.
Speaker 2: You can test new technologies on them. People are bored,
Speaker 2: and so they might say like, oh, here's like this
Speaker 2: new VR game or this new new thing that I
Speaker 2: can try out while I'm waiting for my flight. So
Speaker 2: like I've seen a lot of like new gaming tech
Speaker 2: at at airports and things like that. And I'm not
Speaker 2: saying that it's all surveillance. I'm just saying that, like
Speaker 2: it feels like new technologies are like rolled out there
Speaker 2: before they're rolled out more broadly into society.
Speaker 1: You know, we've reading these stories about how Newark Airport
Speaker 1: is running on floppy disks and there are these regular
Speaker 1: outages where air traffic control can't even see the planes.
Speaker 1: I think that's why I find it's one so fascinating,
Speaker 1: because it's like it's a perfect place where you have
Speaker 1: technology being used as a solution to a place where
Speaker 1: there is no problem, and then huge real problems that
Speaker 1: no one's interested in solutions for seeming Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and air traffic control problem is one of just
Speaker 2: like standard human labor practices where it's like we're not
Speaker 2: training enough air traffic controllers, we're not paying them enough,
Speaker 2: they're very stressed. It's an incredibly important job where these
Speaker 2: stakes couldn't possibly be higher, and so you have this
Speaker 2: like natural human burnout. And then you also have this
Speaker 2: situation where like handing over something like that to artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence or to like machine vision, or like you could
Speaker 2: see that being more efficient, but the technology clearly is
Speaker 2: not ready and a mistake is a life and death situation,
Speaker 2: and so you have like maybe some technological solutions that
Speaker 2: could come through there, but you're sort of budding up
Speaker 2: against as you say, like these really like old fashioned
Speaker 2: problems of funding and treating workers correctly and you know,
Speaker 2: the pipeline of training them and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And so, I mean, I think that's a great observation.
Speaker 1: Mail Re reported your story without crediting you, of course,
Speaker 1: but has this story traveled far and wide and what
Speaker 1: the response been.
Speaker 2: It's been a lot of people saying this reminds me
Speaker 2: of teledildonics, which is technology that has been created to
Speaker 2: allow people in long distance relationships to have cyber sex
Speaker 2: while actually feeling it. And I mean it relies on
Speaker 2: a lot of these same technologies that we've been talking about.
Speaker 2: And so I mean, we actually do see this time
Speaker 2: and time again where sex tech and porn industry is
Speaker 2: quite ahead of where society is going. And you know
Speaker 2: that technology has been being worked on for.
Speaker 3: Years by.
Speaker 2: Let's say enterprising di I wires and now you have
Speaker 2: like similar technology being looked at by Department of Homeland Security,
Speaker 2: and so that's been a lot of the response so far.
Speaker 1: Jason, appreciate taking the time this week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much. This is fine.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week for tech Stuff. I'm os Voloshin.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Victoria Domingez.
Speaker 1: It was executive produced by me Kara Price and Kate
Speaker 1: Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts but
Speaker 1: he phrased as I Engineer. Jack Insley mixed this episode
Speaker 1: and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Join us next
Speaker 1: Wednesday for an episode all about biometric data, from shopping
Speaker 1: with the palm of your hand to donning multiple wearables.
Speaker 1: How much should we really care about giving away all
Speaker 1: that personal data? Please rate, review and reach out to
Speaker 1: us at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com with
Speaker 1: your feedback, with your story ideas, with whatever you want
Speaker 1: to tell us, because we love hearing from you.