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? So what you're about to hear is
Speaker 1: an experiment. I decided to see what chat GPT could
Speaker 1: scramble up if I asked it to create a tech
Speaker 1: podcast episode. Now, I didn't specifically say a tech stuff
Speaker 1: episode in particular. Instead, my prompt literally read quote, create
Speaker 1: a tech podcast episode about airbags, end quote, and I
Speaker 1: just chose airbags at random. This is what it came
Speaker 1: up with. So, without further ado, listeners, I bring you
Speaker 1: the following episode from chat GPT, and this will all
Speaker 1: be quoted directly from chat GPT. You'll know when I
Speaker 1: come back in. So here we go. Tech Innovations, air
Speaker 1: Bags and Automotive Safety. Host Welcome to Tech Innovations, the
Speaker 1: podcast where we explore the latest and greatest in technology
Speaker 1: and innovation. I'm your host, your name, and today we're
Speaker 1: diving into a crucial aspect of automotive safety. Airbags. These
Speaker 1: life saving devices have been a staple of vehicles for decades,
Speaker 1: but their technology and impact are often overlooked. Today, we'll
Speaker 1: uncover the history, technology, and future of airbags. Let's get started.
Speaker 1: Segment one, The history of airbags. HOST. Air bags have
Speaker 1: a fascinating history that dates back to the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: The idea of a cushion to protect drivers in a
Speaker 1: crash was first conceived by John W. Hetrick, who filed
Speaker 1: the initial patent in nineteen fifty one. However, it wasn't
Speaker 1: until the nineteen seventies the airbags started to become a
Speaker 1: practical reality. Guest expert joining us today is doctor Emily
Speaker 1: Roberts and automotive safety historian Doctor Roberts. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us about the early development of air bags in their
Speaker 1: initial reception? Dtor Roberts. Absolutely, The early prototypes were quite
Speaker 1: rudimentary compared to today's standards. They relied on compressed air
Speaker 1: and were often bulky and unreliable. However, as the technology evolved,
Speaker 1: especially with the advent of solid state crash sensors in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, airbags became more efficient and began to
Speaker 1: gain acceptance among manufacturers and consumers. Segment two. How airbags work. HOST.
Speaker 1: Modern airbags are marvels of engineering at their core. They're
Speaker 1: designed to deploy within milliseconds of a collision to cushion
Speaker 1: and protect the occupants. But what exactly happens during those
Speaker 1: critical moments? Guest expert to explain the technical workings, we
Speaker 1: have James Lee, and automotive engineer specializing in safety systems. James,
Speaker 1: can you break down the process for us? James Lee?
Speaker 1: Or When a crash sensor detects a collision, it sends
Speaker 1: an electric signal to the airbag control unit. This unit
Speaker 1: triggers an igniter that rapidly inflates the air bag using
Speaker 1: a chemical reaction, typically sodium azide. The airbag then deploys
Speaker 1: at speeds of up to two hundred miles per hour,
Speaker 1: providing a cushion to reduce the impact on the occupants.
Speaker 1: Segment three types of airbags host airbags have evolved beyond
Speaker 1: just standard front airbags. There are now side airbags, curtain
Speaker 1: air bags, knee air bags, and more. Each type serves
Speaker 1: a specific purpose in protecting different parts of the body
Speaker 1: during various kinds of collisions. Guest Expert, we're joined by
Speaker 1: Lisa Fernandez and expert and vehicle safety systems. Lisa, could
Speaker 1: you tell us about the different types of air bags
Speaker 1: in their roles Lisa Fernandez. Of course, front air bags
Speaker 1: are designed to protect the head and chest in a
Speaker 1: frontal crash. Side airbags help protect the torso and pelvis
Speaker 1: and side impacts, while curtain air bags deploy from the
Speaker 1: roof to shield the head in rollovers. Knee airbags are
Speaker 1: intended to prevent leg injuries. Together they create a comprehensive
Speaker 1: safety net. Segment four. The impact of airbags on safety
Speaker 1: statistics HOST. The introduction and widespread adoption of airbags have
Speaker 1: had a profound impact on vehicle safety. According to the
Speaker 1: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA, airbags have saved
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of lives since their introduction. Guest expert,
Speaker 1: we have doctor Michael Harris, a statistician with the NHTSA,
Speaker 1: to provide insights into the data. Doctor Harris, what do
Speaker 1: the numbers tell us about the effectiveness of airbags, Doctor Harris?
Speaker 1: The statistics are compelling. Front airbags have been credited with
Speaker 1: reducing driver fatalities by about twenty nine percent and front
Speaker 1: passenger fatalities by thirty two percent in frontal crashes. Side
Speaker 1: airbags with head protection have shown even greater potential, reducing
Speaker 1: deaths in side impacts by about thirty seven percent. Future
Speaker 1: of airbag technology. Host. As we look to the future,
Speaker 1: airbag technology continues to advance. Innovations such as pedestrian air
Speaker 1: bags and smart air bags that adjust deployment based on
Speaker 1: the occupant's size and position are now on the horizon.
Speaker 1: Guest expert. To discuss these future trends, we have doctor
Speaker 1: Sarah Kim, a researcher in automotive technology. Doctor Kim, what
Speaker 1: exciting developments can we expect in air bag technology? Doctor Kim.
Speaker 1: One of the most promising areas is the integration of
Speaker 1: advanced sensors and artificial intelligence. These systems can assess the
Speaker 1: severity of a crash and adjust airbag deployment accordingly. Additionally,
Speaker 1: external air bags that deploy to protect pedestrians and cyclists
Speaker 1: are being tested, which could significantly enhance overall road safety.
Speaker 1: Closing remarks, Host, it's clear that airbags have revolutionized automotive
Speaker 1: safety and continue to evolve from their humble beginnings to
Speaker 1: the sophisticated systems we have today. Air Bags play a
Speaker 1: crucial role in protecting lives. Thank you to our experts
Speaker 1: for sharing their insights, and thank you to our listeners
Speaker 1: for tuning in, Stay safe and stay curious. Host. This
Speaker 1: concludes today's episode of tech Innovations. If you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 1: please subscribe and leave a review. If you have any
Speaker 1: questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes,
Speaker 1: feel free to reach us on social media or via
Speaker 1: our website. Until next time, I'm your name, and this
Speaker 1: is tech Innovations. Okay, there we go. That's it. That
Speaker 1: is the chat GPT generated episode about airbags. Obviously very
Speaker 1: light episode, right, not like a tech stuff episode, doesn't
Speaker 1: last forty seven minutes. In fact, it lasted less than
Speaker 1: seven minutes with me reading through that, although I imagine
Speaker 1: that the different segments would probably have things like musical
Speaker 1: transitions and such if this were a fully produced episode,
Speaker 1: and probably each of those segments was meant to be
Speaker 1: fleshed out right like that was not meant to be
Speaker 1: a full episode. It was more like the outline of
Speaker 1: an episode. And after I read this, I wanted to
Speaker 1: know what sources the AI actually used in order to
Speaker 1: craft this episode. So this is what it had to
Speaker 1: say when I asked for that information. The episode script
Speaker 1: was created based on general knowledge about airbags and their history, technology,
Speaker 1: and impact on automotive safety. The information is drawn from
Speaker 1: widely known facts and common sources in the automotive safety field,
Speaker 1: such as National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in HTSA reports
Speaker 1: and statistics on airbag effectiveness and safety data, automotive safety
Speaker 1: engineering principles, including how airbags function and their deployment mechanisms,
Speaker 1: historical records and patents such as the original airbag patent
Speaker 1: by John W. Hetrick. More on that in a minute,
Speaker 1: Current trends in automotive technology, including advancements in smart air
Speaker 1: bags and pedestrian protection systems. For more detailed or specific information,
Speaker 1: here are a few potential sources that could provide the
Speaker 1: data used in the episode. NHTSA website and their publications
Speaker 1: on vehicle safety features, automotive engineering textbooks and technical papers
Speaker 1: on airbag technology, interviews and articles from industry experts and
Speaker 1: researchers in automotive safety, automotive history books that cover the
Speaker 1: development and evolution of vehicle safety features. If you need
Speaker 1: specific references or more detailed information from these sources, I
Speaker 1: can look them up for you. Okay, I didn't bother
Speaker 1: to go into deeper detail here. Maybe I should have,
Speaker 1: but already this is a little puzzling, right because it
Speaker 1: says here are a few potential sources that could provide
Speaker 1: the data used in this episode, which is pretty darn ambiguous.
Speaker 1: You know, the sources could do that, but there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee they will, or that they actually served as a
Speaker 1: crucial source for the data that was ultimately pulled for
Speaker 1: this AI generated episode. The plot thickens now. I would say,
Speaker 1: on the surface, this rudimentary tech podcast episode is more
Speaker 1: or less fine, but let's dive down a bit and
Speaker 1: double check the homework assignment, because there are problems here,
Speaker 1: some of which are factual in nature and a lot
Speaker 1: of which I would argue are more ethical. So the
Speaker 1: AI generated episode is correct that John W. Hettrick frequently
Speaker 1: gets the credit for inventing the airbag. The Institute of Physics,
Speaker 1: which in turn cites sources such as D. Sherman's article
Speaker 1: The Rough Road to Airbags, gives a slightly different date. However,
Speaker 1: the AI had said that Hettrick filed for this patent
Speaker 1: back in nineteen fifty one, whereas the Institute of Physics
Speaker 1: says he actually got the idea in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: after he got into an automobile accident with his wife
Speaker 1: and child in the car. So why would he patent
Speaker 1: something in nineteen fifty one if he didn't even get
Speaker 1: the idea for it until nineteen fifty two. Well, this
Speaker 1: one is easy to solve. All we have to do
Speaker 1: is pop over to a patent database and search for
Speaker 1: Hendrick's name in the inventor field and see what it
Speaker 1: has on there. When I did that, I saw that
Speaker 1: the date for the initial filing of a patent from
Speaker 1: John Hendrick about airbags was on August fifth, nineteen fifty two. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's one data point that's wrong, but it's only wrong
Speaker 1: by a year, right, Like, this isn't the worst mistake
Speaker 1: that AI could make. It's the right person, it's the
Speaker 1: right invention, it's just the wrong year. And goodness knows,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of tech topics that I cover
Speaker 1: in the show where I can't find a reliable source
Speaker 1: to give me a definitive date for certain things. The
Speaker 1: further back you go, the harder it is to do
Speaker 1: that unless someone has specifically filed a document. But in
Speaker 1: this case, we do have that. We have an official
Speaker 1: filed document. In fact, Chad GBT said that the patent
Speaker 1: could be one of the sources that pulled from it.
Speaker 1: Obviously wasn't because if they had pulled from that source,
Speaker 1: it would have said nineteen fifty two, not nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: This was a claim that was easily verifiable. The AI
Speaker 1: did not do that, But no big deal. Human writers
Speaker 1: make these kind of mistakes all the time, right, like
Speaker 1: they just don't take the extra effort. Heck, there are
Speaker 1: episodes of tech stuff that have gone out there where
Speaker 1: I have made similar errors because I did not take
Speaker 1: the extra step to actually verify something that's on me.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to hold AI to too high
Speaker 1: a standard, but it's already proven to not be one
Speaker 1: hundred percent reliable, which is an issue if it's being
Speaker 1: presented as being one hundred percent reliable. Right not to
Speaker 1: say that AI has to be better than humans, but
Speaker 1: at least has to be as good as it's claim
Speaker 1: to be. Well, what happened next is I would argue
Speaker 1: a very big deal and a real issue, more so
Speaker 1: than the fudging a year. That is because the AI
Speaker 1: creates an expert and it wouldn't be the last time
Speaker 1: the spoiler alert, and I'll say it again when we
Speaker 1: get to each one, but all of the guest experts
Speaker 1: appear to me at least to be invented. I do
Speaker 1: not believe doctor Emily Roberts exists. Now. There are plenty
Speaker 1: of people named Emily Roberts. There's even one who's named
Speaker 1: Emily Roberts who's a child Passenger Safety technician or CPST,
Speaker 1: and she creates content for TikTok and YouTube shorts about
Speaker 1: the proper way to ensure children are protected while riding
Speaker 1: in vehicles. So she's at least in the ballpark for
Speaker 1: an expert who's talking about automotive safety features. But there is,
Speaker 1: as far as I can determine, no automotive safety historian
Speaker 1: named doctor Emily Roberts, at least not anyone I could find. However,
Speaker 1: that's probably for the best, right because unless chat GPT
Speaker 1: was pulling directly from an actual interview with a real
Speaker 1: doctor Emily Roberts, the only conclusion we can draw is
Speaker 1: that the AIS fabricating a quote. And I would hate
Speaker 1: to see an AI generated script that purported to feature me.
Speaker 1: And the words that are being spouted off are not
Speaker 1: my own. They're AI generated standing in for me, that
Speaker 1: is really troubling. So I do wonder if chat GPT
Speaker 1: came up with the name Emily Roberts all on its
Speaker 1: own and that's just a coincidence, or if within the
Speaker 1: vast database of information it draws from, in the large
Speaker 1: language model that feeds into chat GPT, there happens to
Speaker 1: be a record of Anne Emily Roberts, who does work
Speaker 1: related to automotive safety. Like maybe that was what statistically
Speaker 1: guided chat GPT to choose that name. I don't know,
Speaker 1: So it's either a coincidence or it's a stone's throwaway
Speaker 1: from impersonation, at least in my opinion. Okay, we're just
Speaker 1: scratching surface here. We've got a lot more to talk
Speaker 1: about as far as this AI generated episode goes. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors. We're back with our AI generated
Speaker 1: technology podcast episode and the issues that I found when
Speaker 1: I did a deeper dive. So, the fictional doctor Emily
Speaker 1: Roberts explains that early prototypes of airbags used compressed air.
Speaker 1: This is true. It is correct at least Hettrick's patent
Speaker 1: refers to quote an air accumulator or reservoir end quote
Speaker 1: that would hold air under pressure, and then there would
Speaker 1: be a valve that would connect this reservoir to deflated
Speaker 1: air bags housed somewhere in the vehicle, such as in
Speaker 1: the steering column and the dashboard. In Hettrick's design, there
Speaker 1: is inside the scent a weight attached to a spring,
Speaker 1: and this controls the valve. So normally the valve's position
Speaker 1: remains firmly closed because the spring, when it's in its
Speaker 1: normal uncompressed state, holds the weight in place. And on
Speaker 1: the other end of the weight is the connection to
Speaker 1: this valve, which is kind of like a plug. Imagine
Speaker 1: a plug in a bathtub, right, and it's connected to
Speaker 1: this thing. When a vehicle were to stop very suddenly,
Speaker 1: such as in the case as a head on collision,
Speaker 1: the momentum the inertia really would mean that the weight
Speaker 1: would continue to move forward even as the vehicle itself stopped.
Speaker 1: Just as people in the car would continue to move forward, right,
Speaker 1: the weight would move forward. This would compress the spring
Speaker 1: that otherwise holds the weight in place, and thus the
Speaker 1: weight would pull the plug forward this valve, and it
Speaker 1: would open the valve between the reservoir of air and
Speaker 1: the deflated air bag. So the idea is the compressed
Speaker 1: air would then rush up of that's reservoir and into
Speaker 1: the area of low pressure, which is the deflated airbag
Speaker 1: in other words, and thus inflate it. So this would
Speaker 1: be a purely mechanical system. There was no actual censor
Speaker 1: to speak of, at least not an electronic one. Momentum
Speaker 1: itself would determine if the weight would open the valve
Speaker 1: or if everything would stay in place. Now you might
Speaker 1: be thinking to yourself, huh, that sounds like it's, you know,
Speaker 1: possible for airbags to deploy if you just stop the
Speaker 1: car really fast, right, like not a collision, but you
Speaker 1: breaked really hard. And yeah, I thought that too. And
Speaker 1: my guess is that is a possibility and of a
Speaker 1: definite drawback on this particular design. At any rate, Hettrick's
Speaker 1: invention didn't really get any traction. It was, as the
Speaker 1: fictitious Emily Roberts points out, not reliable enough, so Hettrick
Speaker 1: never made any money off this particular idea. It would
Speaker 1: serve as kind of a launching point for other inventors,
Speaker 1: but it was not sufficient to actually spur the creation
Speaker 1: of airbags. But I do have another note about that
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one discrepancy. If you remember, before the break
Speaker 1: I mentioned the AI episode said that Hettrick filed for
Speaker 1: the patent in nineteen fifty one. He didn't. He filed
Speaker 1: for the patent in nineteen fifty two. But there was
Speaker 1: someone else who did file a patent for airbags in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, a whole year before Hettrick did it.
Speaker 1: On October sixth, nineteen fifty one, Walter Linderer applied for
Speaker 1: a patent for his quote device for protecting people in
Speaker 1: vehicles from injuries in the event of a collision end quote.
Speaker 1: Now he filed for this patent in Germany, not the
Speaker 1: United States, so it wasn't the US Patent office, it
Speaker 1: was the German one. That might be why some sources
Speaker 1: cite Hettrick as being the inventor of airbags. It's that
Speaker 1: good old American bias, like it doesn't count unless Americans
Speaker 1: did it. But like Hettrick's design, Linderer proposed using compressed
Speaker 1: air to inflate an air bag in the event of
Speaker 1: an accident. Now Lenderers design allowed for either mechanical or
Speaker 1: electrical control of the valve that would either allow air
Speaker 1: to rush out of the compression chamber or keep it
Speaker 1: stoppered up. Interestingly, in Lenderer's invention, there was the potential
Speaker 1: for manual control, so in other words, the driver could
Speaker 1: throw a lever that would open the valve and deploy
Speaker 1: the airbags. I don't know when this would ever be useful,
Speaker 1: because you know, when you know how fast a car
Speaker 1: accident happens, and how comparatively slowly we humans react to
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff. I don't know that there's any
Speaker 1: scenario where someone would have the time to switch a
Speaker 1: manual lever to deploy airbags and have it be useful.
Speaker 1: If anything, I would think such a lever would actually
Speaker 1: make it more dangerous to operate a car, because what
Speaker 1: if you threw the switch by accident in the middle
Speaker 1: of a trip, and then suddenly airbags deployed. That would
Speaker 1: not be good. But Lenderer also allowed for automatic deploy
Speaker 1: and his proposal was not this mechanical system that Hettrick
Speaker 1: had had thought up. His was an electric contact, actually
Speaker 1: a pair of contacts that would be built into and
Speaker 1: behind the front bumper of the vehicles, so normally the
Speaker 1: two points of contact would not touch. There'd be a
Speaker 1: gap between them. But if the car were to collide
Speaker 1: with something, then the pressure on the bumper would push
Speaker 1: back and cause the contacts to touch one another and
Speaker 1: thus close a circuit, which Linderer saw as drawing power
Speaker 1: from the car's battery to operate the valve electronically and
Speaker 1: to have it open. So it was a rudimentary crash detector,
Speaker 1: in other words, and one that wouldn't be prone to
Speaker 1: the issue of deploying after just a hard breaking you
Speaker 1: would have to have contact with something. While Lenderer would
Speaker 1: file for his patent in Germany a year before Hettrick
Speaker 1: would do the same in the United States, Hettrick actually
Speaker 1: got his patent first. He was awarded his patent about
Speaker 1: three months before Lenderer would get his in Germany. So
Speaker 1: maybe that's why some people think Hettrick is the inventor
Speaker 1: of the airbag, because he got his patent first, even
Speaker 1: though Lenderer filed his a year earlier. I think all
Speaker 1: of this is interesting. I think that this is stuff
Speaker 1: that should be included in any episode about the history
Speaker 1: of airbags, but sadly we don't get any of that
Speaker 1: in the AI generated episode, and rather we seem to
Speaker 1: get a case where the host is conflating two different
Speaker 1: inventors and the invention date. Now I'm not done with
Speaker 1: our fictional historian yet. Doctor Roberts then goes on to
Speaker 1: say that the technology becoming more efficient and reliable and
Speaker 1: going to solid state is what led to the industry
Speaker 1: in general and consumers accepting it. But that's not really true.
Speaker 1: The solid state thing, I don't think really plays into
Speaker 1: it that much, and Chad GPT doesn't seem to factor
Speaker 1: in to account things like the political landscape and the
Speaker 1: automotive industry's flex in US politics, and thus the reason
Speaker 1: why airbags took so long to become mandated safety features
Speaker 1: within vehicles. So there's another cat we got to talk
Speaker 1: about who is left out of the AI version of
Speaker 1: the episode, and his name is Alan K. Bred, an
Speaker 1: engineer and overachiever if ever there was one. So. Breed
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen twenty seven, and by the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties he had done more than most folks doing an
Speaker 1: entire lifetime. He rushed through a four year college program
Speaker 1: in just two years. He did that by attending different
Speaker 1: lectures simultaneously, and he managed that by leaving a tape
Speaker 1: recorder in one lecture Hall, while he would actually attend
Speaker 1: another lecture. So this guy was driven and ambitious anyway.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen sixties, he was tackling automotive safety
Speaker 1: and airbag design. The mechanical and electrical switch proposals by
Speaker 1: Hettrick and Lenderer were kind of a non starter. They
Speaker 1: weren't reliable, and anyway, compressed air would not inflate an
Speaker 1: airbag fast enough to provide a cushion for a passenger
Speaker 1: in the event of a crash. It would still be
Speaker 1: inflating long after the passenger had already completed their full
Speaker 1: range of motion in the wake of a crash. So
Speaker 1: Breed innovated both on the crash detection part of the
Speaker 1: problem as well as the airbag inflation bet Now this
Speaker 1: is actually going to overlap into our second fictional guest,
Speaker 1: the supposed automotive safety engineer named James Lee. So James
Speaker 1: Lee is a pretty darn common name, and there were
Speaker 1: lots of hits when I started searching for this to
Speaker 1: see if maybe James Lee was actually a real person
Speaker 1: that was being quoted here. One James Lee I found
Speaker 1: is an engineering manager at a tire company, So you know,
Speaker 1: general automotive industry area. There another served as an in
Speaker 1: turn for automation controls over at TESLA, So again someone
Speaker 1: who's working at least within the industry, though not in
Speaker 1: the same capacity as our supposed guest expert. There's also
Speaker 1: an associate professor at a tech university who specializes in
Speaker 1: manufacturing and mechanical engineering, but not specifically in safety. So
Speaker 1: maybe Chad GBT looked around for a likely name for
Speaker 1: a safety expert and found some instances of various James
Speaker 1: Lees working in jobs relatively in the same industry and
Speaker 1: use that name for this episode. Or maybe again it's
Speaker 1: just a coincidence. Either way, I feel confident saying that,
Speaker 1: like Emily Roberts, there's no real James Lee who is
Speaker 1: being quoted here. Instead, we have an invented expert and
Speaker 1: invented quotations. So back to Breed and his improvements in
Speaker 1: airbag design in the sixties, So on the crash detection front,
Speaker 1: Breed proposed a new kind of electronic sensor that folks
Speaker 1: would refer to as a ball in tube device. So,
Speaker 1: what the heck is a ball in tube? Well, some
Speaker 1: of it is just kind of self explanatory. You got yourself.
Speaker 1: A small ball made of something like steel, something that's
Speaker 1: you know, affected by magnets, and this ball is nestled
Speaker 1: inside a tube and the tube is not affected by magnets.
Speaker 1: It's made out of something like plastic. And there is
Speaker 1: a permanent magnet that holds this ball in place at
Speaker 1: one end of the tube. But with enough force, the
Speaker 1: ball can be dislodged. It can break free of this
Speaker 1: magnetic hold, and at that point it rolls down the
Speaker 1: tube and ultimately it hits an electrical trigger that closes
Speaker 1: a circuit, so a contact in other words, or it
Speaker 1: pushes two points of contact to touch one another. So
Speaker 1: in some ways Breed's design married what Hetrick and Linderer
Speaker 1: were both working on independently. Now, this is not a
Speaker 1: solid state electronic device. Solid state electronics are based on
Speaker 1: semiconductors like microchips essentially, So this is an electro mechanical
Speaker 1: switch that detects crashes and it and variations of this
Speaker 1: would be used in air bags for decades. So modern
Speaker 1: cars do have lots of semiconductor microchips, tons of them,
Speaker 1: like more than one hundred in your typical automobile, and
Speaker 1: these include everything from the chips that connect to entertainment systems,
Speaker 1: to navigation systems, to yes safety systems, including air bags.
Speaker 1: But the sensors themselves work on mechanical principles involving inertia. Right.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about a solid state chip that detects
Speaker 1: a crash, not usually anyway. We're talking about this electro
Speaker 1: mechanical switch. There are a couple of different variations of this,
Speaker 1: so some of them aren't ball and tube systems. Some
Speaker 1: use a cam like a little swinging Think of it
Speaker 1: like a lever. It's a swinging lever and it can
Speaker 1: freely swing, but in the event of an impact, it'll
Speaker 1: swing hard enough to push two contacts together and close
Speaker 1: a circuit, thus sending the command deploy airbags. Other sensors
Speaker 1: use a coiled spring. So think of like one of
Speaker 1: those party favors, like the classic party favor, where you
Speaker 1: blow into it and it unwraps this long paper tube
Speaker 1: that otherwise is coiled up. Same sort of thing, right,
Speaker 1: except at the very end of this coil, like in
Speaker 1: the interior part of the coil, is a contact, and
Speaker 1: when the coil is uncoiled, that contact can touch a
Speaker 1: second contact that completes a circuit. So again, normally it's
Speaker 1: coiled up, but with a sudden, sudden stop, like an impact,
Speaker 1: the momentum will force this to uncoil and thus the
Speaker 1: contacts come into touch with one another and boom, you
Speaker 1: get your air bag deployed. So again, interesting stuff. But
Speaker 1: our safety engineer James Lee and our historian doctor Emily Roberts,
Speaker 1: they don't touch on any of this, right, But I
Speaker 1: feel like these things understanding how these sensors work is
Speaker 1: it's really cool and interesting, but it's not at all
Speaker 1: covered in the episode. Also, solid state electronics and automobiles
Speaker 1: would become a thing well before the nineteen eighties, which
Speaker 1: is what doctor Emily Roberts said was what led to
Speaker 1: the adoption of airbags, right, was that solid state crash
Speaker 1: detectors were really one of the driving components. I'm using
Speaker 1: a lot of puns here, but the AI one did too,
Speaker 1: They just didn't acknowledge it, but one of the driving
Speaker 1: components that would lead to the adoption of airbags. Solid
Speaker 1: state electronics were already a thing well before the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: And nineteen seventy two article in Popular Electronics by John D.
Speaker 1: Drummond details a list of features in upcoming vehicles that
Speaker 1: would rely upon solid state electronics and microchips. This was
Speaker 1: kind of like the article talking about the automobiles of
Speaker 1: the future. Drummond also glumbly pointed out in that article
Speaker 1: that vehicles that were most likely to feature this kind
Speaker 1: of cutting edge technology would actually come from places like
Speaker 1: Japan and Germany rather than the United States, because the
Speaker 1: American automotive industry did not have strong collaborative relationships with
Speaker 1: electronics companies and semiconductor companies the same way that foreign
Speaker 1: car companies did. Like he said, these car companies had
Speaker 1: reached out and proactively created these relationships with other companies
Speaker 1: that together could collaborate on these kinds of systems. But
Speaker 1: in America that wasn't happening. That Detroit was very insular
Speaker 1: and they weren't eager to reach out to other companies
Speaker 1: and collaborate on this kind of stuff. At any rate,
Speaker 1: Solid state components and vehicles were in place well before
Speaker 1: we would get up to the nineteen eighties. Even in
Speaker 1: safety features now, the AI, James Lee does reveal that
Speaker 1: compressed air wasn't the way to go, and Breed agreed
Speaker 1: with that back in the nineteen sixties. Lee cites a
Speaker 1: chemical compound called sodium azide, and sure enough, that's a
Speaker 1: compound found in a lot of airbags, particularly older airbags. However,
Speaker 1: the industry has moved away from sodium azide in large
Speaker 1: part due to the fact that the compound is both
Speaker 1: highly react and extremely toxic. We'll talk more about how
Speaker 1: airbags actually work in just a moment, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break. Okay, before the break, I was
Speaker 1: alluding to the fact that airbags don't rely on compressed air.
Speaker 1: That compressed air just isn't a fast enough agent to
Speaker 1: inflate an airbag in the event of a crash. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about what happens with the chemicals that are
Speaker 1: in airbags, such as sodium azide. Well, sodium azide isn't
Speaker 1: the only one at the party in these older airbags.
Speaker 1: There are other chemicals that are in there too. Some
Speaker 1: are meant to accelerate a chemical reaction. So just like
Speaker 1: you know, it's like pouring gasoline on a fire, and
Speaker 1: it really some of the chemicals are meant to be
Speaker 1: the ignition for the chemical reaction, and so literally they're
Speaker 1: the most reactive element inside this mix, and they will
Speaker 1: then initiate a larger chemical reaction that will be responsible
Speaker 1: for inflating the bag. Some of the chemical agents inside
Speaker 1: air bags are there to combine with the byproducts of
Speaker 1: the chemical reaction that inflates the bag in order to
Speaker 1: make those byproducts safer for humans to be around them.
Speaker 1: But essentially what happens is you have an electric charge
Speaker 1: which ignites the ignition chemicals inside the air bag. They
Speaker 1: in turn cause a further reaction, which is essentially an explosion,
Speaker 1: and the solid compound rapidly converts to new gaseous components,
Speaker 1: inflating the air bag in the process. So with sodium azide,
Speaker 1: the explosion creates sodium and nitrogen. Now, sodium is pretty
Speaker 1: darn dangerous to humans, is highly reactive stuff, so typically
Speaker 1: airbags would also contain something like silica and potassium nitrate.
Speaker 1: This would bind with that sodium and thus render it inactive,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't be dangerous to be around. Heaven help
Speaker 1: you if that sodium were to come into contact with
Speaker 1: water first, that would be disastrous. So this reaction happens
Speaker 1: very very quickly. It is explosive, so in less than
Speaker 1: thirty milliseconds you'll have an inflated airbag because of this
Speaker 1: with the nitrogen gas that's generated filling it. Now, like
Speaker 1: I said, a lot of modern airbags actually use other
Speaker 1: chemicals to get the same effect as sodium azide. These days,
Speaker 1: sodium azide just isn't as common, at least not to
Speaker 1: the degree that the AI created James Lee would suggest.
Speaker 1: So this is another bone I have to pick with
Speaker 1: the AI generated episode. It gives a definitive answer saying
Speaker 1: sodium azide is like the most common airbag ingredient today,
Speaker 1: and that's not necessarily true. It was true, but it's
Speaker 1: not really true now, Like a lot of the industry
Speaker 1: has moved away from sodiumazite for various reasons, mostly to
Speaker 1: do with safety. So yeah, I take issue with that
Speaker 1: particular part of the AI generated episode too. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get back to another claim that was made by
Speaker 1: doctor Emily Roberts, the automotive industry historian, And she had
Speaker 1: said that the industry was quick to adopt airbags once
Speaker 1: they became efficient and less bulky, But that's not what
Speaker 1: was holding up the automotive industry really. What was holding
Speaker 1: them up was that adding in components that don't have
Speaker 1: a strong customer demand attached to them and ones that
Speaker 1: are not mandated by some sort of government means that
Speaker 1: you don't put it into your car because it just
Speaker 1: adds to the cost of production and you're not going
Speaker 1: to realize a higher profit from using that particular technology.
Speaker 1: If no one's asking for it and the government's not
Speaker 1: requiring it, it's not going to go in because it
Speaker 1: just doesn't make sense from a business perspective. That was
Speaker 1: the view of the automotive industry. The automotive industry in
Speaker 1: general in the United States long resisted lots of attempts
Speaker 1: to impose safety regulations because it would mean things would
Speaker 1: get more expensive and it would be hard to pass
Speaker 1: that expense on to the customer and plus make even
Speaker 1: more profit because customers weren't super excited about safety systems.
Speaker 1: That wasn't really what was being marketed to drivers in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. They wanted cars that
Speaker 1: looked fun, fast. They didn't really care if they were safe.
Speaker 1: Why incorporate safety devices in your car if you didn't
Speaker 1: have to, and if market research didn't show that there
Speaker 1: was some sort of demand for it, it's not like
Speaker 1: you could use it in order to sell more units,
Speaker 1: and if the government didn't give a fig one way
Speaker 1: or the other, you might as well just save yourself
Speaker 1: the money and leave it out of the design entirely.
Speaker 1: That's the real reason airbags would not become a standard
Speaker 1: feature for decades, not that folks aren't trying to change that.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, a lawyer who would become a
Speaker 1: future politician, Ralph Nader. He wrote a book titled Unsafe
Speaker 1: at Any Speed, The designed in Dangers of the American Automobile,
Speaker 1: and it really raked the American auto industry over the
Speaker 1: coals for ignoring safety concerns and failing to include proper
Speaker 1: safety technologies, including basic stuff like seat belts, and generally
Speaker 1: the automotive industry contributing to an environment in which thousands
Speaker 1: of people were experiencing terrible tragedies, like thousands of people
Speaker 1: were dying or getting really badly injured because of traffic
Speaker 1: accidents and a lack of safety equipment. To say that
Speaker 1: this book was influential is putting it lightly. It was
Speaker 1: incredibly popular. It was one of the most popular nonfiction
Speaker 1: books on the bestseller list in nineteen sixty six, and
Speaker 1: it really pressured the US government to create the Department
Speaker 1: of Transportation that year. Later on the US government would
Speaker 1: also create the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in HTSA.
Speaker 1: That would be in nineteen seventy. Nator's book singled out
Speaker 1: a specific make and model, which was the Chevrolet Corvare,
Speaker 1: but his criticisms extended to the automotive industry in general
Speaker 1: in America. Now, some states already had laws in place
Speaker 1: that required auto manufacturers to include seat belts and vehicles
Speaker 1: sold in that state, but it wasn't a US federal
Speaker 1: requirement until nineteen sixty eight. A requirement to include airbags
Speaker 1: would wait quite a bit longer. It would not officially
Speaker 1: become a mandated requirement for passenger vehicles and light trucks
Speaker 1: until September one, nineteen ninety eight. That was actually seven
Speaker 1: years after the respective law had already been passed. It
Speaker 1: was a nineteen ninety one law, but didn't go into
Speaker 1: effect until ninety eight. Now, that long gap was partly
Speaker 1: there to give manufacturers time to take all the necessary
Speaker 1: steps to incorporate airbags into vehicle design. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: airbag requirement in the US is actually fairly recent. One
Speaker 1: reason it took so long for airbags to become a
Speaker 1: required safety feature in the US is that initially they
Speaker 1: were being viewed as an alternative to seat belts, not
Speaker 1: an augmented complementary safety feature. You weren't necessarily talking about
Speaker 1: a car that had both seat belts and air bags,
Speaker 1: but rather seat belts or air bags, and auto manufacturers
Speaker 1: were able to convince the US government that seat belts
Speaker 1: were a much better safety feature than airbags alone, which
Speaker 1: you know, not necessarily false, that is true, like it'd
Speaker 1: be best to have both of them, But that's not
Speaker 1: what the auto manufacturers were focusing on. They were saying, well,
Speaker 1: if you're going to require us to have these, at
Speaker 1: least make us have the ones that are more effective
Speaker 1: and also significantly cheaper, though they didn't say that part
Speaker 1: out loud so much so the matter was tabled for
Speaker 1: a couple of decades. Airbags just weren't a requirement, but
Speaker 1: seat belts were. Now. A few car companies did experiment
Speaker 1: with including airbags before it would become required. In the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies, both GM and Ford would test air
Speaker 1: bags in fleets of vehicles, but these were not consumer vehicles.
Speaker 1: They weren't passenger vehicles that just any old schmoe could
Speaker 1: go buy off a lot. The first passenger vehicle that
Speaker 1: was sold to the general public that had air bags
Speaker 1: as an option was the nineteen seventy three Oldsmobile Toronado.
Speaker 1: GM called it the Air Cushion Restraint System. The Toronado
Speaker 1: was a luxury car, so it was not the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that, again, an average car buyer would be
Speaker 1: in the market for. Like it was way above the
Speaker 1: average person's price range for a vehicle, and it would
Speaker 1: take quite some time for air bags to become a
Speaker 1: more common option in other makes and models. Safety, however,
Speaker 1: remained a big concern for Ralph Nader, largely because while
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty eight law required manufacturers to include seat belts,
Speaker 1: there was no federal law requiring drivers and passengers to
Speaker 1: actually use use them, and apparently like twenty five percent
Speaker 1: of folks in cars actually bothered to buckle up and
Speaker 1: everyone else didn't. To this day, there is no federal
Speaker 1: law in the United States that requires seat belt use. However,
Speaker 1: every state in the US, with the exception of New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: requires everybody in a vehicle to wear seat belts, and
Speaker 1: every state also has laws about seat belts for children.
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. If you're an adult, you don't have to
Speaker 1: wear a seat belt, but that's that's the only exception.
Speaker 1: Penalties for not wearing seat belts vary from state to state.
Speaker 1: Some states, the police are allowed to stop someone if
Speaker 1: they see that that person's not wearing a seat belt,
Speaker 1: but in other states that's not a big enough crime
Speaker 1: for a cop to be able to justify pulling someone over.
Speaker 1: Now it is a secondary offense, So if the person's
Speaker 1: also doing something else, like failing to signal or whatever,
Speaker 1: something that is enough for a cop to pull them over,
Speaker 1: they can also get cited for not wearing a seat
Speaker 1: belt in that particular instance, but they're not allowed to
Speaker 1: be pulled over just for not wearing a seat belt
Speaker 1: in those particular states. Gradually, more car manufacturers began to
Speaker 1: offer vehicles with airbags because it turned out that over time,
Speaker 1: the desires of the American buying public were changing and
Speaker 1: safety was becoming a bigger concern. So airbags became a
Speaker 1: selling point for certain types of cars and the folks
Speaker 1: who typically shop for those types of cars. So there
Speaker 1: were market forces guiding the automotive industry to start to
Speaker 1: embrace the air bag, at least for certain models, but
Speaker 1: the industry as a whole continued to resist any efforts
Speaker 1: to make air bags a required safety feature. Again, this
Speaker 1: was largely because air bags would add to the cost
Speaker 1: of manufacturing, and there was a concern that customers wouldn't
Speaker 1: be so happy to foot the extra expense, plus you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the profit margin the car company had in mind
Speaker 1: on top of that. So the airbags issue got battered
Speaker 1: around back and forth legally due to various political and
Speaker 1: industrial reasons. So in nineteen seventy seven, under the Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter presidency, a rule would have required all car manufacturers
Speaker 1: to start including airbags or automatic seat belts starting in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. However, in nineteen eighty one, under the
Speaker 1: Reagan administration, as part of a widespread attempt to deregulate everything,
Speaker 1: this rule was struck down before it could go into effect,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen eighty three, the Supreme Court overturned that decision.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four, the US passed an amendment to
Speaker 1: federal motor safety standards that would require all manufacturers to
Speaker 1: include a passive restraint for the driver of any vehicle
Speaker 1: that was made after April first, nineteen eighty nine, so
Speaker 1: that could either be an airbag or an automatic seat belt,
Speaker 1: because again, not everyone would even bother buckling up when
Speaker 1: they would get in, so automatic seat belts took that
Speaker 1: decision out of their hands. It would automatically end up
Speaker 1: buckling someone in. By the way, automatic seat belts were
Speaker 1: often cited as being less effective than normal seat belts,
Speaker 1: which is a reason why a lot of automotive industry
Speaker 1: experts were arguing against it, although another reason is again
Speaker 1: automatic seat belt systems tend to be more expensive than
Speaker 1: just passive seat belts. The mandatory requirement for airbags really
Speaker 1: did not become a thing until a nineteen ninety one
Speaker 1: revision to US laws, and again that didn't actually go
Speaker 1: into effect until nineteen ninety eight. None of this has
Speaker 1: to do with the technology of airbags or their efficiency.
Speaker 1: It has everything to do with an industry resisting regulations
Speaker 1: in an effort to avoid taking on more costs. So
Speaker 1: I feel the AI generated episode does a disservice by
Speaker 1: painting an oversimplistic picture of what was going on. But
Speaker 1: let's breeze through the rest of this AI generated episode.
Speaker 1: So our next guest expert is Lisa Fernandez. She appears
Speaker 1: to be another fabricated expert. I guess it's possible that
Speaker 1: the former Olympic softball player Lisa Fernandez, who now is
Speaker 1: a coach at UCLA, is also really into air bags,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't find any information supporting that. So this
Speaker 1: presumably fake guest does talk about different kinds of airbags,
Speaker 1: and there certainly are all kinds of different airbags, including
Speaker 1: things like side impact airbags and curtain air bags. So
Speaker 1: this section from a content standpoint is more or less
Speaker 1: fine once you get past again an invented expert. Next up,
Speaker 1: we have another really important bit, which is safety statistics
Speaker 1: and airbags, and this has a supposed expert from the
Speaker 1: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA, a statistician named
Speaker 1: doctor Michael Harris. Now I found a safety claims adjuster
Speaker 1: who goes by Mike Harris. I found a doctor Michael
Speaker 1: Harris who is a biological safety scientist and biomedical engineer
Speaker 1: at NAMSA. There's an Atlanta Braves center fielder named Michael Harris.
Speaker 1: The second, but again we appear to have ours a
Speaker 1: fake expert, although maybe Michael Harris the second can talk
Speaker 1: to Lisa Fernandez. They're both coming from the world of
Speaker 1: sports and apparently getting involved in automotive safety. Again. When
Speaker 1: you have a supposed statistician from an official agency providing
Speaker 1: actual safety figures, but it turns out that person is invented,
Speaker 1: I think that's an enormous ethical problem personally a bulk
Speaker 1: at that Anyway, chat GPT's host says that the NHTSA
Speaker 1: claims thousands of lives have been saved due to the
Speaker 1: introduction of airbags. That checks out. The NHTSA's overview on airbags,
Speaker 1: which is available on the web at the NHTSA website,
Speaker 1: says quote Frontal airbags have saved more than fifty thousand
Speaker 1: lives over a thirty year period end quote. So we're
Speaker 1: good there. Next up, this supposed expert cites that airbags
Speaker 1: contribute to a reduction in fatalities for frontal collisions for
Speaker 1: both drivers and right front passengers. There's a twenty nine
Speaker 1: percent reduction in driver fatalities and a thirty two percent
Speaker 1: reduction in passenger fatalities. Now I was able to track
Speaker 1: these statistics down. They come from a twenty fifteen report,
Speaker 1: and it is from the NHTSA. It is titled Lives
Speaker 1: Saved by Vehicle Safety Technologies and Associated Federal Motor Vehicle
Speaker 1: Safety Standards nineteen sixty to twenty twelve. The information on
Speaker 1: driver fatality reductions is on page one twenty five. The
Speaker 1: one on right front passengers is on page one twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Just in case you want to check up on it
Speaker 1: yourselves now, this expert also cites a statistic saying side
Speaker 1: air bags with head protection reduced driver fatalities by thirty
Speaker 1: seven percent in cars and fifty two percent in SUVs.
Speaker 1: This figure seems to come from a totally different document.
Speaker 1: This one was written in two thousand and seven by
Speaker 1: Anne McCart and Sergei Kirichinko. It's titled Efficacy of side
Speaker 1: air Bags and Reducing driver Deaths in driver side car
Speaker 1: and Suv collisions. So these authors work was published in
Speaker 1: a journal titled Traffic Injury Prevention. This is not an
Speaker 1: NHTSA publication, so this particular bit being attributed to an
Speaker 1: NHTSA statistician is a bit of an issue. However, Traffic
Speaker 1: Injury Prevention is a journal with peer review. I think
Speaker 1: they use a single anonymized peer to review papers. I
Speaker 1: don't know how rigorous the review processes, but it is
Speaker 1: peer reviewed, and I would say that traffic injury Prevention
Speaker 1: is probably a reliable source. It's just not the NHTSA,
Speaker 1: and I would argue the chat GPT generated interview implies otherwise.
Speaker 1: So this information does reflect official studies, though from one
Speaker 1: report that's nearly a decade old, and on top of that,
Speaker 1: this report actually covers information that spans between nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: to twenty twelve, so it's even more dated. And then
Speaker 1: the other piece is from a paper that was published
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven. I don't have more recent
Speaker 1: reports to pull information from, or at least I didn't
Speaker 1: uncover any while I was researching this, But I have
Speaker 1: to imagine that the statistics are different today. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: they're likely better today than they were when this initial
Speaker 1: report was written in the NHTSA. And that's just a
Speaker 1: guess on my part. I actually don't have the data
Speaker 1: to back it up, but I remain I still have
Speaker 1: ethical concerns about the fact that they invented a statistician
Speaker 1: representing the NHTSA in this AI generated podcast However, at
Speaker 1: least the data that was pulled seems to be more
Speaker 1: or less above board, so that's good. Okay, we still
Speaker 1: have one more expert to go, and I have a
Speaker 1: lot more thoughts to share about this, but we're running along,
Speaker 1: so let's take another quick break and we'll be right back. Okay.
Speaker 1: So final and yes, fictional guest expert is doctor Sarah Kim.
Speaker 1: I looked for a doctor Sarah Kim who is an
Speaker 1: automotive safety expert. I could not find one. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of Sarah Kim's, obviously, but I could not find
Speaker 1: one who would have been an expert that a podcast
Speaker 1: host would cite on an episode about airbag safety. But
Speaker 1: this expert says that AI and advanced sensors will improve
Speaker 1: airbag deployment situations. Right now, you have an airbag micro
Speaker 1: controller like a microcomputer essentially that's in charge of this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, and your typical airbag microcomputer system, it's
Speaker 1: detecting which seats have occupants, so that way it quote
Speaker 1: unquote knows which airbags should be deployed in the event
Speaker 1: of a crash. So when it detects a crash, it
Speaker 1: sends signals to the appropriate airbags to inflate and then
Speaker 1: other ones don't have to. So there are microcomputers that
Speaker 1: are part of this. This is those solid state electronics
Speaker 1: that doctor Emily Roberts talk to us about at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the episode. But these sensors also can gauge
Speaker 1: the actual impact. So if it determines that it wasn't
Speaker 1: a hard enough stop, like if it wasn't a great
Speaker 1: enough impact, then it can prevent the airbags from going off.
Speaker 1: So if you have like a little fender bender bump,
Speaker 1: then your area airbags aren't going to just spontaneously deploy
Speaker 1: in most cases, and that's good because otherwise it can
Speaker 1: make things much much worse, like the airbags need to
Speaker 1: deploy when the crash is severe, but otherwise probably shouldn't happen.
Speaker 1: Doctor Kim makes a pretty safe bet that this is
Speaker 1: just going to get better in the future, which I feel.
Speaker 1: I feel that that's one of those cop out answers
Speaker 1: which I'm guilty of doing myself. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: I hate doing it now, but man, I used to
Speaker 1: be real bad about this, where I would say, I
Speaker 1: guess we'll have to wait and see, or some variation
Speaker 1: on that. Occasionally I'll still do it, and I hate
Speaker 1: myself every time I do. It's just one of those
Speaker 1: trophy kind of things. Now, the fake doctor Kem also
Speaker 1: says that airbags will protect people outside the car and
Speaker 1: that these are in development. There are cars that are
Speaker 1: going to have external air bags. This is kind of
Speaker 1: true because as far back as twenty twelve, Volvo was
Speaker 1: using an air bag system in which a vehicle detecting
Speaker 1: an impact with a pedestrian or a cyclist would deploy
Speaker 1: an external airbag. Essentially, it was meant to cush in
Speaker 1: a person from hitting the windshield of the Volvo. So
Speaker 1: the Volvo's hood or bonnet, if you're across the pond
Speaker 1: would lift up close to the windshield and an air
Speaker 1: bag would inflate there. And in fact, this feature was
Speaker 1: present in the Volvo V forty. This was not just
Speaker 1: a prototype, it wasn't a concept. It actually made it
Speaker 1: into a production line vehicle. But Volvo did discontinue the
Speaker 1: V forty in twenty nineteen, and as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, I haven't seen any other vehicles that actually
Speaker 1: have this kind of system in it. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: did exist for one line of cars for a while. Now, overall,
Speaker 1: I think chat GPT made a pretty mediocre tech podcast episode.
Speaker 1: Most of the information wasn't outright wrong or misleading, but
Speaker 1: it was incomplete. It didn't tell the whole story, and
Speaker 1: in some cases it kind of gave an oversimplification and
Speaker 1: misdirect on the story. It also required a lot of
Speaker 1: fact checking on my part, which makes my heart go
Speaker 1: out to any editors out there whose job is to
Speaker 1: read over AI generated articles and make sure that they
Speaker 1: are accurate, that they make sense, because as short as
Speaker 1: that episode was, it took me hours to go through
Speaker 1: all of the different statements and to check them and
Speaker 1: make sure that they were accurate or see what was missing.
Speaker 1: The creation of fake experts is incredibly concerning to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know why why chat gpt made that choice, Like,
Speaker 1: why was it necessary to invent experts to whom the
Speaker 1: host could talk? Why not just create a pair of
Speaker 1: podcast hosts. If you want to have it be a dialogue,
Speaker 1: make two fictional hosts who talk to each other and
Speaker 1: they just cite information, right, They just say the NHTSA
Speaker 1: says that, blah blah blah. Why create people out of
Speaker 1: whole cloth to stand in as experts? That is what's
Speaker 1: going to get you into trouble. You might remember the
Speaker 1: story there was a lawyer who presented arguments that turned
Speaker 1: out to be AI generated, and the problem was the
Speaker 1: AI created case histories that didn't exist, So the lawyer
Speaker 1: was citing precedents that wasn't even real. And when the
Speaker 1: judge reviewed it and said, hey, hang on a minute,
Speaker 1: none of the cases that you're referencing in this report exist,
Speaker 1: the lawyer got into really deep trouble and write so
Speaker 1: like they were just relying upon AI being accurate and
Speaker 1: not just making stuff up. We see even in this
Speaker 1: simple example, that's just not the case. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: like the idea of anyone just making up an expert.
Speaker 1: I could do that if I wanted to in episodes.
Speaker 1: It would make the episodes a lot easier if I
Speaker 1: just invented experts who gave me supposedly reliable information. But
Speaker 1: it's not ethical. And what's with offuscating the sources of
Speaker 1: the information in the first place. Why couldn't it just
Speaker 1: tell me where the information originally came from. I probably
Speaker 1: should have followed up and asked more specific questions about that,
Speaker 1: just to see did it ultimately pull this information from
Speaker 1: the primary source. Did it pull the info from the
Speaker 1: actual report where the information first appeared, or did it
Speaker 1: pull it from some blog post or article that cited
Speaker 1: that initial report. My guess is the second, but I
Speaker 1: don't know for sure because I didn't follow up, So
Speaker 1: I can't reilly fault chat GPT for that yet because
Speaker 1: I did not take the steps needed to determine whether
Speaker 1: or not it was being lazy quote unquote, but off
Speaker 1: these skating the sources just seems weird. Like when I
Speaker 1: asked it, what sources did you use? That seems like
Speaker 1: a pretty straightforward question that it would be able to
Speaker 1: rattle off, like, oh, it was pulled from this and
Speaker 1: this and this and this, But that was just not
Speaker 1: the case. If you're the kind of person who wants
Speaker 1: to be sure that the stuff you're consuming is accurate,
Speaker 1: it makes it really much more difficult. If the AI
Speaker 1: bot can't give you the sources it's pulling from, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make it impossible. Clearly I did it, like I
Speaker 1: did all the research. It is a lot more work
Speaker 1: on your part, to the point where again, I wonder,
Speaker 1: what's the point in having the AI synthesize everything? If
Speaker 1: you can't be sure that what you're getting is really
Speaker 1: accurate and meaningful. Yeah, I feel like this experience has
Speaker 1: reaffirmed a lot of my concerns around generative AI in general.
Speaker 1: But that's not to say that it's always going to
Speaker 1: be this obtuse. I hope that there will be greater
Speaker 1: transparency in the future so that it becomes easier to
Speaker 1: make sure that the stuff you're being presented is accurate.
Speaker 1: This also will depend upon AI training itself on data
Speaker 1: that didn't get generated by other less capable versions of AI.
Speaker 1: We talked about that in an earlier episode about how
Speaker 1: that kind of process can lead to model collapse, where
Speaker 1: a large language model essentially crumbles in on itself because
Speaker 1: it's been trained on AI generated material. And the more
Speaker 1: that happens, the poorer the quality is of the output. Right,
Speaker 1: garbage and garbage out essentially. But yeah, that was an
Speaker 1: AI generated episode of a technology podcast and then me
Speaker 1: eviscerating it. I do think that generative AI can be
Speaker 1: great for thought starters, like I think if I had
Speaker 1: used this just in general to make a podcast about
Speaker 1: whatever tech topic, and then I went through and actually
Speaker 1: researched everything, it could help me structure an episode. It
Speaker 1: could give me direction on the things that are really
Speaker 1: important that I think is valuable. What I worry though,
Speaker 1: is that a lot of people and organizations are skipping that.
Speaker 1: They're not really worried about that step. They're just using
Speaker 1: AI to generate as much junk as they can in
Speaker 1: order to monetize it. To just blast out a massive
Speaker 1: amount of content on the internet, post ads against it
Speaker 1: and hope that the money rolls in from SEO. That
Speaker 1: is dreadful. Like I've never liked content farms ever. I
Speaker 1: always hated whenever house Stuff Works would do stuff that
Speaker 1: kind of started to tread a little close to content farms.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, like lots of image galleries and slideshows
Speaker 1: and puzzles or quizzes that would have lots of page
Speaker 1: views added to them. I always felt gross about that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't my call, but I really didn't like it.
Speaker 1: I much preferred writing high quality articles whenever possible. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not always the world we live in. And content farms,
Speaker 1: while they don't provide much of value in my opinion,
Speaker 1: they're getting worse through AI generation. So that's it. That
Speaker 1: was this episode being written by AI kinda. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. I hope,
Speaker 1: if anything else, this convinces you to not rely too
Speaker 1: heavily on generative AI for stuff that you have to create,
Speaker 1: using it as again a thought starter or a way
Speaker 1: to guide you when you're structuring things. I think that's
Speaker 1: perfectly cromulent, as the Simpsons would say, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a good idea to just lean on that
Speaker 1: to do your work for you. It doesn't do a
Speaker 1: good enough job. It misses important and interesting things that
Speaker 1: I think are absolutely crucial to having a deeper understanding
Speaker 1: of the subject matter. And it might tell you some
Speaker 1: wrong stuff, like when somebody filed a patent, so keep
Speaker 1: that in mind. That's it for this episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I hope all of you are well, and I will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.