This episode is sponsored by Cards Against Humanity, the only card Flora. They
asked us not to read an ad oh enjoy the show Shape Changers, Root
Monster Guys. Deep in the heart of the steck Upticon Layer Mega Chon Chon
lays out his latest nefarious plan to defeat oop Optimus Prime and the Florautobots.
Sasquawg take thunder Sounded to escape boss Swamp, where we can seize the human
technology to step down our voltage from four forty to a more manageable two twenty.
But Megan chan shot, I don't know what that's called. Never mind
the name, just go seize the technology. Meanwhile, at the Florado Bouts
headquarters of nineteen eighties, Tokyo Oop Optimist Prime addresses his loil Florautobots. So,
using my new algorithm, we were able to take a function in the
time domain and map it into the frequency domain. I call it a lapplause
tread Swamptimus Prime. There's trouble and skateboard swamp in North America. We'll need
to check this out. Bumble BEVP. You're with me, Florautobots, get
going, keep me down. Thundersounder We need to loathe this equipment before the
Florado batterrive. Look, bumbled LEVP, it looks like they're trying to steal
electrical equipment. Are you going to eat that, Princel? You're right,
bumble BVP. It sure does look like a ferromagnetic core wrapped in copor windings.
Let's take care of this. Floratobots get going to Florado botzar Year.
I don't know why they're just here. We have to go. You'll kiss
your primary engineer with that BA star square. Drop that electrical equipment after this
pride. It's not random electrical equipment. We're stealing, tres drop it because
tears are creaky. That's right, bubble BVP. Whose stars clog to mega
chat chat. We have to leave. That was a close one, mumble
BVP. Looks like that electrical equipment was more than meets the eye shape changers
Robot monster eyes. Yes, that is the high quality drum drama you expect
from US drama JERBA drama man. Hello, everybody, how do how dud
indeed? Welcome to Blurry Photos. I'm David Flora, I'm Dave Stecco and
and there is no end it is a two man operation, and there's no
room for a sexy third wheel. There's an end today, mother Liquor.
That's right, we become a badass big wheel. Flora and I, the
little tiny ones in the back floor, is the little with the break because
he knows how she works. I broke mine where you see, we have
a very special big wheel. Because today we are talking today, tonight till
whenever you're listening, we're talking about robots, boots, more specifically, robotcalypse.
Is robot apocalypse or robopocalypse? Well, I think robo is what the
kids are saying. Robopocalypse the idea that we are currently building the machine of
our own demise, that robots will inevitably overthrow us all and and we are
just just happily skipping down the path. And uh we we mentioned it on
the Apocalypse episode. This one's honing in because we have a bona fide expert.
That's right, we did. We had this is this one's out of
our pay grade, and so we brought in. Our guest today is Johnny
Ma. He's a processed automation engineer, a master student who focus on robotic
control system and the alumni mentor for UC's Robotics Club engineering design team. Who
this mother Hubbard knows robots like I know saving the Titanic, which is to
say, very well and also with a lot of shame. Hello, Johnny,
Hey, Dave, Hey David. Thanks for having me. It is
our delight. So let's let's talk. We've got We've got a pretty good
road to walk with you, Johnny, and at the end of it,
we're all dead. Does it have to be this way? I'm gonna go
ahead and say that it does not have to be this way. I think
a robo of pocalypse is very unlikely. Oh, Jojose is your typical,
typical pro robot talk. I mean, I should have betted this guy before
he came out. I didn't realize we're gonna have to listen to his his
propaganda. You want to keep your family saying, stop using fear and intimidation
to make money. Now where I have a quick break? Do you love
your family? Are you worried about the coming cataclysm? If your family does
not have clean fresh water to drink, colloidal silver to rub all over their
bodies, and fresh will food pouches with my face on them, you don't
love your family. So um yeah, okay, So so what we're gonna
talk about in this episode is, um, I guess how how would the
world go about, uh spiraling into a robopocalypse? Uh? And then what
what can we do to save ourselves? Stairs would be the best defense against
all that? Snap? He did go there? Yeah, I mean like,
yeah, I guess what we're looking at is why why are robots on
the wheel of potential death? And what are we doing now to not only
move towards them killing us, but what are we doing to keep them from
killing us when we get there? So yeah, let's start. Let's start
with well, tell us a little bit about what you do in your Rome
words, what you're working on these days. A reminder you are under oath
well and volunteering at the Chicago Engineering Design Team. I basically come in a
couple times a week, help out young students, learn about robotics, learn
how to fabricate in design robots. It's a really good club. It's free
for anyone to join. A lot of these students come from zero to one
robot households and they have a non robo noormative. They've never had a robot
to look up to. Broken homes zero to one robot household. Yeah,
it's a it's basically just a laboratory slash workshop where any student can come in
and collaborate with other students on robotics projects. And you swoop in to be
like whoa, whoa, whoa, guys don't have the brand. Yeah,
you're focused on the death claw, but you really need a buzz so your
armature doesn't even work. What goodes the death claw without a functioning programmable armature?
Exactly? You see a big picture, yeah, exactly about the basics.
Yeah. We go to three competitions a year. One is the Jerry
Sanders Creative Design Competition, which is for telepresence robotics, which is basically a
fancy way of saying remote control. Okay, We go to one put on
by the United States Department of Defense. The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition is that
in any way connected to DERAPA at all, mk ultra it is there's an
obstacle course in Michigan where different teams from all around the world compete and see
whose robot can go the furthest around the obstacle course. Do do robots ever
finish it? Or is it it just like a grueling hellscape and you just
get as far as you can. Some do finish it. Occasionally, the
course changes from year to year, and if people seem to be able to
beat it, they'll increase the difficulty next year. Okay, and if and
if the winning team gets whisked away in a windowless van, the winning team
gets twenty thousand dollars and that's awesome. But they redid the interior, so
yeah, it's it's really comfortable. It's a nice ride, it's got some
it's got some Sabbath on the stereo, so you're doing all right. What's
the third painted on the side. The third is the Lunar Mining competition from
NASA, and that is where student teams compete against each other to compete in
a simulated lunar environment, or this year it's a Martian environment where they have
an autonomous robot which attempts to collect certain types of material from the Martian landscape
while avoiding other types of material. So basically, you can think of in
the soil aggregate, there's certain desirable compounds you'd like to gather and some that
you'd like to leave behind. So it's who can gather the most of whatever
the desired compound is in the least time, it's like well navigating a new
new timey prospector. Yeah, it's it's chickens Bot twenty fifteen, the Mars
Rush. You guys know Gus Chickens. No that it's I'm going to take
the time to explain it because I love Gusts Chicken so much. He's a
a one time use Will Ferrell character when he was on Saturday Night Live,
who is just an old timey prospector that just shows up to inappropriate places and
he's, oh, I remember the guy. He's covered in pots and pans.
And now I'd be more worried about Koch if I were you. Now,
Uh, Flora and I actually went to visit the robotics lab and we
got to see this exact robot in It's in its build state as it as
it moved forward. It's got a high capacity hopper, you can hold a
lot of aggregate. Got some treads. Now is it? So? Does
it does it load and then separate or does it preferentially load? I believe
the current iteration of it uses a sieves system to preferentially load. Nice,
but that's who knows. It could always change. Well, that's design,
isn't it right. I've altered the project scope. Pray do not alter it
further. Yeah. See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. This
is what I like. So I'm glad that we talked about like mining on
Mars, mining on the Moon. What is the purpose then, of as
we make more complex robots and they're good news? There are no stairs on
Mars or on the Moon that the government has allowed you to know about it.
This is just one episode. Dude. Oh my nose is bleeding.
We have a rule. We spread this shit out. Okay, that's how
you get multiple seasons of a podcast. Um. So, given the fact
that we are making increasingly more complex robots, and you have the best idea
of how well we're doing with that, do you think that it is necessary
or even um worthwhile to send humans into space? I think it's very worthwhile
to send humans into space because it's so cool, it's awesome. Why would
you not want to go to space? Correct answer everything. Well, here's
the thing. Whenever someone is an expert on robots, you got to know
who side they're backing, and the best way to do that is to ask
a series of questions and very calmly, get your gun out here to help
us, all right, good, help get us into space? All right?
Then once there, it's anybody's game. It's like the Wild West,
dude, because we do have I mean, is there's space for both humans
and robots seeing So what do you think do you think it's easier to start
at the end and discuss why people are so damn afraid of robots overthrowing everything
and then kind of build that back to I think we save it. Okay,
I think we save the dessert. I'm interested in how we get to
that point to where robots actually I guess become sentient and want to take the
world for themselves or whatever whatever they want. What do they want? Yeah?
And I imagine you can get down a rabbit hole of how you how
you would define sentience and to what degree, because I mean, a very
elaborate set of operating instructions could mimic sentience. It could. It could create
a situation where a robot is making its own decisions about but but still operating
within its parameters, but or even learning the robots trying to harm you.
You don't really care if it's self aware you just you're trying to be harmed.
You're right, yeah, that giant pipe wrench. It goes back to
like why does the robot want to harm you? You know, does so?
I mean there's like either spiteful harmware robot has decided you know, yes
I do need to eliminate these humans there in my way, or if you
read different AI researchers, they'll talk about, you know, accidental harmware.
You can have a robot whose function is to build as many cubes as possible,
and it will eventually run out of material, and there's material and humans,
so it will just not even differentiate between raw building material. Bone cubes
are almost as good. Um. You know. There was a really interesting
thing they were talking about with I mean, an autonomous the Google cars that
they keep talking with, these autonomous navigating cars, those are Google cars.
Those aren't robots, you know, they they absolutely are. And there there's
been a lot of discussion about how do you program, for lack of a
better word, ethics into a car a car. Say say, for example,
you're in your Google car, you're your autonomous car. You're ripping down
the roadway, you're going over a bridge and up ahead of you is a
bus full of school kids. You can't slow down in time. What does
what does the your autonomous car do? It can either veer you off the
bridge, I kill you, thus saving the busload of kids. It can
continue going and slam everyone into the busload of kids. I assume a robot
would be smart enough to not be going so fast in the first place.
But we're ignoring that part of this. It could have been hacked, could
have been hacked well then by it could have been hacked by that four chan
teenage cybersecurity experts. That's right. I think when you introduce an outside force
to that, then I don't think I don't think the outcomes are irrelevant at
that point. But I mean, it's gonna it's gonna do whatever the outside
force wants it to do. You know, it's going to slam into it
or kill It's gonna do one or the other. Right, But what what?
Which? What does it? What do? What do you program it
to do? What? Choice? Because I mean my example is a bad
one because it assumes that it wouldn't have stopped in time. But there are
situations that I'm just not thinking of right now. Wherein that where it's it's
plausible that you would find yourself in a situation. Does the car kill you
the passenger, or does it does it opt to drive into three people on
a sidewalk or you know, like, I think that's the main sort of
realistic danger you would have with the robot is having unforeseen consequences of how it's
programmed. Yeah, whereas you know, you'll read a lot about evil robots
are coming to get you, Whereas realistically it could just be, hey,
someone didn't carry you one and now this robot is just mad with rage,
and but what is rage? Some guy? Yeah, some guy is not
as good as math as he thought he was. Or well, I'm just
thinking that in that case, the robot would probably do the most statistical probability
to keep you alive, right, I mean you would think, I mean,
unless it's programmed to the most statistical probability to keep the most number of
lives alive. I don't know. I wish there were easy laws of botox,
like yeah fo yeah, yeah, zeroth law. I you know what
as am off around here? I don't know that I can find anything nice.
I've never read. I've never read asimof look at me not ready for
this episode. So, Daisy, what are the rules? First rule,
don't talk about robot, don't. I just want you to say that no
robot can harm a human right, No robot may harm itself unless all right,
let's fine, fine, you chuckle heads, I'll ask a robot.
I'll just escort myself to the penalty box. Now. No, no robot
can where a viola can can do. No. No, do the rule
to that that violates the first rule. No, no robot hurt nobody.
That's the rule. I my mom, no robot, Okay, robot,
all right, here we go. My name should be Chill. The three
laws of robotics, as written by Isaac Asimov in his book I Robot are
As, follows. In Chinese, it's e robot. In franch it's a
robot. One. A robot may not injure a human being or through an
action, allow a human being to come to harm. Two. A robot
must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would
conflict with the first law. Three, A robot must protect its own existence,
as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
Robot four. Sat Davis High School fotball rules. So great, So
there you go. Those are those are I mean that that works? There's
this works for Asimov? Yeah, work for will Smith? Did it?
Did it? So? What was it in you know, a robot that
caused them to be malicious? Though it was an intentional programming, it was
it was done by someone else, like someone was like the robots weren't doing
anything wrong, someone hacked their code and made them into an army of dick
first so that they they ignored the rules, right, Yeah, I don't
know. I mean I don't think they're a programmed to not follow them,
right, Yeah, I don't think robots had the option of ignoring rules.
They just have Daniel Pool or whatever his name was. Yeah, stop,
it's right. I mean we're a long way off from the robots making decisions.
I don't know if you guys saw last year there was a huge deal
where a team of students from I think Harvard had an autonomous robot by sandwich
from subway or it might it might have been University of Tokyo, but some
school they gotten all the robotics press for having a robot by a submarine style
sandwich. So we can speculate about these things. But right now that's cutting
edge. Look, let's build a robot to punch itself in the nuts.
I would do that, suckbots. But here's the thing. We call it
it Projects scorpion Um. But but these things, these things, these things
advance so quickly that that every one of these milestones is as kind of silly
as it may be. I mean, within our lifetimes, I mean these
are going to get very very I mean we will have like when we're when
we're in old age homes, we will have robotic helpers. That's that.
What do you think do you feel like that's It depends what day you ask
me on that. I think there is well, computers will continue to keep
getting better and better. Robots is a very difficult field where you need If
there was a firm with unlimited money and unlimited resources, they could probably get
there. But realistically, son of people are competing against each other where I
feel like we don't have the robotics growth that we could have, and that
stinks. I would like to see. I would like to see more robots,
and I think I think that yeah, pro robot, probot, prot
I think that we're gonna have more. I think it's I think it's going
to blow up. I think in the next ten years. I mean,
look at the rate at which just like we're talking about Moore's law, Well,
the that's the about computing power more. Uh, the watchmend More's law
that the better year graphic novels are the weirder. You have to look how
that goes. No, I mean there's there are groups working to commonize pieces
of robotics research. UM robot Operating System is an open source project where Ross
robbering System. I don't know what I'm talking about. It's for people who
can read but only three letters. It's the idea of making as much of
robotics software open source as possible. So I can write a program to control
a robotics arm and whatever my preferred languages, and then you could fortranport that
usually Fortran, and you can import that to control your robotic arm at different
projects. So that way, it is pushing people away from repeating things that
have already been done before. So right, that gets a lot of the
low level lifting out of the way for you to try new novel things.
And I imagine that there's so many I mean, it's not an AX that's
so many different Like you see these robots. Sony is making robots, um
uh is it Toyota, Honda Honda? Thank you? And I think Toyota
has some robots at all, but you're talking about the one that walks up
the stairs and yeah, they all they all look like they just took it
down their pants. Um but they but they all operate very similarly because these
companies are all developing them from scratch, and they're kind of they're like just
what you said, they're they're no, they're not sharing at all, actually
there, but they're they're they're duplicating work that the other has already done.
Um, but what you said earlier, like you mentioned Google buying up a
ton of robotics tech companies. I mean, like most of the companies that
had contracts with DARPA in the last eighteen months have been bought by Google.
I mean this now that Google is a very forward looking company. Do you
do you think that? I mean, and I'm very consciously trying to stay
away from like, oh, do you think they're trying to control our future?
There? They're a tech company, but they see they see a profitable
future in robotics. They're they're trying to get in on the ground floor of
as much of this work so they don't have to build it up from nothing.
They're already cherry picking the most promising robotics programs and designs available and and
and buying them up for for good knows what reason. I don't know,
Sentinels, stop the mutants. Boston Dynamics, which if geez, yeah,
any of the listeners. Oh, it's already been discussed. So no,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Don't go to YouTube. Do a just do
a bang search for Boston Dynamics pet Man and you'll see some incredible videos.
You you just had to bing searcher, didn't You had had to drop that
if you know, a different decision engine should use Internet. I'm all yours,
Johnny. Do you watch fringe? I have never seen fringe, but
this is exactly the kind of quirkiness I associate with a robotic expert. They
there's a mega um technology corporation called Massive Dynamics that's based in Boston. Oh
really yeah, it's really really funny. So so my question is, then,
like, what do you think the purposing of that is, if if
not to functionally build a future business on robotics. I mean, I don't
know. I'm asking me to speculate what the people to build a functional future
robotics. I mean I think that uh, autonomous cars will be a very
profitable thing. Whoever it gets that problem right. Yeah, and I personally
can't wait for them neither hat driving on the highway in the commute, I'm
all for having a glass of scotch and of read a book on the way
home from work. Yeah. And if that can't come fast enough for me,
the more cars that are autonomous, the less traffic there is, the
less submissions. I think you wouldn't need stoplights. No, they would just
time themselves to go through. It would be fantastic, exactly. It would
be glorious. And the other thing is that you wouldn't need to buy a
car anymore. There would just be this continuous car jump like functionally. Yeah,
I mean, it's exactly like you pour superglue on yourself instead of I
mean, instead of buying a car. It's just like Uber or anything else.
You buy into a service wherein you have access to their fleet of cars
and there's always a car near you, and so now you don't need parking
lots anymore, sign me up for that, you know, I mean there's
so much wasted space taking up a parking lots. But then when you're in
Chicago you can never find a place to park. It's a fine. So,
yeah, the car drops you off, it goes, it goes right
back into circulation with other things, or or maybe they do have if if
you know, obviously demand at five pm on a Wednesday is going to be
much different from you know, five am on a Sunday morning. And so
maybe they go into hubs, but there's always a car ready to pick you
up and drop you off. But in they're all playing by the exact same
rules, the efficiency, the lack of emissions. It's it's great, it's
safer. I mean, think how many car accidents happen due to negligence on
the part of the driver, right, you do hear occasionally mechanical failures in
the car, but that accounts for a much smaller percentage. Well that's another
thing too, like are they going to be self repairing cars or they're going
to be you know, little car bots drones that fly around to command and
when there's a malfunction or something, you know, do you well, that's
a whole new How do you know how bad the malfunction is? Can you
make it back to the shob yourself? Yeah? Do you need to?
The compute day onboard computer would just relay you know, everything that's wrong and
take a worse case scenario, like I imagine you're you're whipping down in our
fair city of Chicago. You're whipping down Lakeshore Drive, and your car experiences
a malfunction. It determines that it cannot continue to go, so it makes
its way to the side or the other cars, which are also autonomous communicating,
make room for it. It slides over one of those cars that's empty,
pulls in right behind you. Another one pulls next to it to block
any other traffic, which you don't need to block anyway, because they're all
aware that there's a problem because of the laws, they've automatically rerouted themselves.
And you simply walk to the other car. You go about your business,
and maintenance car has already been dispatched to the location. There's virtually no interruption
to anything in that worst case scenario. Now, I actually no, that's
not the worst case scenario. That's the best case scenario for a malfunction.
If the malfunction is you don't have any breaks yep, or are you suddenly
can't the car is submergible, slow you down like the classic pincers maneuver abotic
cop would do that. Oh man, what about a Johnny cab. You're
in a Johnny cab hell day, huh. I mean they'll probably be able
to, um, you know, be submergible and you could just drive on
into the lake if you need to, right at that point, right,
everybody, right, that's just me. No, they'll obviously be able to
also get you a subway sandwich. We've solved that problem. People one number
four, well, I mean you've heard of the Amazon and uh, he'll
just Amazon U having the drones that they want to get to deliver packages to
people, right like you order something online and then like four hours later it
buzzes in on a drone. They're currently testing that in England. The FAA
roles in the US ban it out right, so they're never going to they
don't get to test them, but they're currently testing it in a limited in
England right now. I wonder how it's going. Hey buddiss, hey friends,
it's not six is in sevens. Get your mince meat pies delivered to
your door to hours nice the good life. I said birds, Someone say
birds. Um, I wish we could have the Amazon drones here. That'd
be fantastic. People would knock them out of the skies for fun though.
Yeah, yeah, thugs kids. What's the difference? No, I mean
let them try. Amazon will clump with the more evasive drone. There's no
human pilot on it. You can perform maneuvers that would you know, make
a normal pilot black out. I don't know. You can target wamp rats
and your T sixteen turning the targeting computer shut myself. Yeah, two shade
gentlemen. But like I because I like in my work, like I work
at an art at an art auction house, so I have to make sure
that things don't get stolen or or things like that. I was thinking about
security. So so my mind, part of my litmus when I walk through
a room is well, what would I take, like if something sticks out
to me, is something that's particularly easy to do? I would I'm like,
Okay, then we're gonna make sure you know, it's like the way
anyone would do that. I ain't in my heart of hearts. If I
saw a little basketball sized drone, yeah, Amazon drone whipping by, I'd
be like, man, if I had a baseball in my hand right now,
you know I'm put that thing they would you be able to hit it?
I mean try and you know, throw snowballs at birds and fail to
hit them. What's to say? Thing? If you have will smaller robot
kids who are programmed to throw rocks at these drones. You've got a backpack
full of little little robots that throw tennis balls. That's the thing. These
kids are smart nowadays, They're going to build small robots to throw rocks at
these robot drones. It's gonna be brilliant. They got trajectories down, they
got velocities down. They're already working on how to combat that though. With
the facial recognition and ce TV cameras everywhere, they'll they'll have you apprehended in
ten minutes. Bro, it'll be worth it. Took that bird down.
Somebody didn't get a Danielle Steel novel out Win America wins, It's right.
So yeah, I mean like there's there's so many different ways that robots are
are currently or just about to be a part of our lives. And I
mean obviously, you know, robotic manufacturing has been around for the majority of
our lives. UM you know, mechanical mechanically assembled things. It's one of
the reasons why UM our TVs are so cheap, and that's why we don't
have repair shops anymore, because people can't replicate the work of the robots.
They can't they can't solder circuitry as finely as these robots do. And the
reason why chievs are so cheap that we don't need to repair them any longer.
It costs more to repair than to replace them because of robots. You
guys like TVs? Anybody watch TV? Actually, Oh so Johnny, tell
us what a robot goes into Making a robot? Can you boil it down
to like like five steps? Like, yeah, that's a really good question.
So if you're going to I don't know, I never built a robot.
Oh I hear something. First of all, you need to really define
what the robot is going to do. I think most people I know,
probably in my head when I first started building robots, I think like,
oh, this is gonna be my little robot helper. He'll do everything.
Um not really if everything is to you know, pick in place, I'll
try a components on a circuit board for soundering, you know, then everything.
So you really have to define what the robot will do. Once you
have that, then you can start brainstorming ways to accomplish the goal. So,
if we're on to do a robot to navigate an obstacle course like which
is a very real thing that people do, you have to decide, Okay,
what are the sizes of the robot, like it kind of does have
to carry things. Is gonna be gonna be small? How long does it
need to last for in terms of energy like power usage, things of that
nature. You do that, then you can start doing your actual like planning
and design of the robot itself. Once you've brainstormed how it's going to accomplish
those goals. It's going to have kick ass flames. Flame decals are step
to five getting ahead of miss No, it's we work in parilel. Usually
you have to flame decals, you know, because vector graphics can scale them
up or you can scale them down. So you got to go vector.
You need you need you need to be thinking about the flame work right off
the bat. But it doesn't get applied till the separates the pros from the
amateurs. Right. Um, No, you can build some small prototypes,
get the proof of concepts work, and once that happens, you can scale
it up. And so there will always be problems. Then you go back
and try and eliminate individual problems. Then realistically the robot could always have some
kind of improvements to it. You get to a point where this is close
enough for Jazz, I'm doing what it needs to do. Now is there
a component of programming into some kind of jeez, I don't see. I
you're the expert. I'm trying to like come up with the terms. Is
there do you do you put in programs anything? Do you do you do
you program it with with code or anything? Or is it something different some
kind of different. Yeah, it's usually a collection of computer programs running.
So earlier in the episode we mentioned robot operating system and the rope do you
think of The creators call it ROSS, But it's a publisher subscriber network of
computer programs. So it's a meta OS which it's on top of a Linux
computer or series of Linux computers, and you have lots of different programs that
are each doing their own thing, and they communicate back and forth to each
other, and they do it in a very public way where everybody gets to
see the data. Everybody being the different programs see the data being broadcasted,
but only certain programs will utilize some the data. So you might have we're
talking about autonomous cars, you need line detection. How can you identify the
lines on the road. That's a very real thing. So you'd have one
program looking for that, and then that would relay information and say, hey,
you are veering too close to a line on the left, and that
would give that data to the steering components and it would correct the course and
you're going too fast, you know, things of that nature. So it's
usually not just one program. It's it could be hundreds of programs running simultaneously,
and they have different usually like there to be a safety program where hey,
we're very not control override everything, put on the brakes. You see
prioritize programs. But and are these all on board or did you the way
you were saying it, it sounded like they were from like some centralized system.
You know, it depends. Sometimes it's all on board. A lot
of times there will be some components of it that are off board, where
a computer is very expensive usually in terms of power consumption. So if you
can get away with it, it's nice to be able to dump a lot
of that stuff off of the actual robot itself. Yeah, unless you had
an unlimited power source, right or yeah, I mean we're still working on
that. Is that is that one big drawback of that's desci why we're talking.
You know, the robo apocalypse is coming with current battery technology. That's
that's a good point. You know, you never think about the power that
they need to actually snap a neck. I mean I think about it all
the time. They can snap a few necks, but eventually they're going to
run out of energy. Well, and I think that that's something that that
that not just the robotics industry, but but but I mean the world in
general. Is this technological bottleneck at batteries right now? Oh, most of
the low hanging fruit has been picked already for improvements in battery technology. We're
making small incremental improvements. But it's just one of those logistic things where you
know, everybody watches the zombie survival shows, but no one ever writes into
the script, Well, Okay, the stabilizing agents in the gasoline have all
broken down, so we can't use these motors anymore. A bitch to Annie
all the time about how are they still driving on season five or six or
whatever the they're on. I'm like, there's no way the gasoline would stay.
No, it would not be viable. Annie goes, She goes,
Yes, dear Bro, the zombie apocalypse is hard. There are there are
elements to The Walking Dead that are not entirely accurate to realize. Yeah,
stilling, but yeah, I mean there are and robots running out of batteries.
Are they going to get to new batteries? If you have certain types
of batteries, you need special chargers. Robots chasing you robot it gets low
on power if you're in the vicinity of a special charger which specifically fits the
connectors on that robot. Enough, I mean there's I mean there are.
I mean, just in the last week, I've read two different articles about
two different styles of battery. One of them was an aluminum um It was
an aluminum micro powder battery that used used graphite. And now I thought it
was going to be graphine because everything on Earth wants to use that these days.
But graphine is so hot right now, it is graphine is so hot,
right It was an aluminum graphite battery that can charge completely in sixty seconds
and it holds a good, solid, stable charge. At this point,
it holds virtually no power, I mean, so it's not hard to charge
it. It's a start exactly, And so there, and then there's like
the liquid metal batteries or molten metal batteries. Wow, that that powered two
one thousand exactly it is. They're called I'm trying to remember the exact phrase
for it. I should look it up, and I'm not gonna that'll show
them. But it again, it's it's this high capacity, high energy capacity
battery that is also as you can imagine, has some stability issues, but
the amount of energy required to keep it liquid on the inside is still less
than what it can withstand what it can hold an output. So it's like
you almost have to charge the battery for the battery I mean again, like
I mean, then a lot of the best materials for batteries are rare,
good finding them. Yeah, And there's a big political problem China most likely,
Yeah, because there's there's this constant threat of we import all of our
rare earth elements, almost almost all of them. Think Larry Page is actually
working in a robotics mining company to mine asteroids for some of these rare earth
exactly. Oh and we're right back to space mining because yeah, getting these
these rare elements that we use is really difficult. Like, I mean,
lithium for batteries, Johnny, do you have any opinions about that? Lithium
is one of my least favorite elements. Actually, it burns an air.
It's just crap. And if you look, if you look on YouTube,
you can see videos of like it's that little foil packet battery of someone just
stabbing it with a knife and it just going boom. With all due respect
to lithium, it does have high charge density in these batteries. But good,
so lithium you're safe. Yeah. Now now, bra Now are they
do you think that, I don't want to say there's a conspira thing.
Do you do you think that they're withholding battery technology? There's there's that shadowy
they right? I don't think so, because whoever would could produce a new
batter technology would just rake in the cash. So I feel like people's breed
is always going to be more than their willingness to have a conspirae. Well,
but I don't see how you make money by hiding a battery technology.
It's kind of like a monopoly thing though, right, Like they they withhold
the technology until they need to release it. I realize, I mean,
I'm I've already put on the tinfoil head everything. But well, yeah,
because well that's that's sort of like a water powered car argument. That's that's
that's what I'm drawing the parallel too. But I mean, and not to
get into the water powered car thing at all, but like these are very
different because the water powered car, that argument is, oh, it's big
oil versus clean energy or whatever, regardless of it's true or not, because
it's not. On the other hand, you've got battery technology which benefits irverything
across the board. It's not just like big livium. I don't know,
I don't know who the sides are in that. But if yeah, if
a company had the ability to to to make these these these these great high
capacity batteries, they just all the school like there there you couldn't there's nothing
that they that they could you could offer them to hide it. That would
be greater than what they get for releasing it for public sale. Is that
kind of what Tesla Motors is doing right now? I believe Tesla is going
open source with their charging technology right now where they want. I think they
want everybody to use their technology, so they're just giving the plans away.
Yeah, that was a huge thing a few months ago where they were they
actually rang the bell in the New York Stock Exchange and said, Hey,
guess what, everybody, this is how we do it. Because exactly what
you were describing earlier about operating systems for robots, they want to be for
lack of a kind of an approximation that the operating system for electronic cars and
for charging systems for batteries. That if if all automotive makers who are working
on electronic cars or up and coming companies all use a universal system, you
know, it would be imagined by Tesla Motors, Inc. Well, imagine
if it's going to take a lot of R and D, even with having
a full set of plans, to procure places to produce it, get workers
skilled enough to make it, train these workers, workout shipping logistics. It's
just going to be cheaper to buy from Tesla in the end, and they're
going to get a monopoly on electric charging stations exactly. Imagine also, if
if every gonna make money hand over fist for this, if every automotive maker
required for their engine to work a different chemical compound of gasoline, they if
they required something drastically different. If they all said, well, in Ford
Country, we use a highly sulfurrated hydrocarbon, and they're like, well,
over here in Toyota Town, we use an ethanol base that can't really ever
work with That wouldn't that would defeat all fueling stations like it would? It
would kill the ability for people to even own them. And I think what
Tesla is saying is this is an opportunity to be getting of this, to
establish an industry standard. And since we're the first people who are successfully doing
this, it's they most certainly are Why not us, bro, We solved
this problem, So here you go. I think it's it's it's a smart
move um fiscally for the will then they're the cool electric car. Yeah,
nobody wants a Chevy volt no, but that's less serious. Yeah. Yeah,
one of those I'll take. I'll take two of those. I mean,
I'm gonna take three two to pull one like a chariot. You win.
I just ride on the hood of it, big leather strap techno rains.
That's great. I have heard that the technology is being developed where I
don't know if it's a robot per se, but there are programs that are
being created too. Learn. Is that something you all are familiar with?
Have you heard of this? Like a neural network a learning computer? Especially
free? Shout out to Courserah. The machine learning course is excellent. Oh
see or any of the listeners. It's a free course. I think they
offer it two or three times a year. It's an awesome introduction to machine
learning. You need a little bit of linear algebra skills, but they have
some math prusher Upper videos to get you up to speed, and it's a
really cool way to see about machine learning, which is a big part of
robotics. So define machine learning. Machine learning is having algorithms which the more
exposure they get to a certain task, the more refined they get, where
eventually they can counter newer situations and extra playing on old data, figure out,
you know, new patterns to try and work out. It's how does
Netflix recommend a movie to you, they see what movies you've liked better.
Yeah, and eventually they'll you know, they'll recommend movies to that are pretty
good. The more movies that you select that you like, the better your
Netflix recommendations will be gotcha. So that's you know, machine learning. It
sets up established patterns and that data's kind of bringing up bigger picture. What
is a robot? You know, robots is a pretty huge field. You
have robots that just weld things, you know, big arms, and you
have the ones that walk around robotic cars. Is a learning algorithm the same
as a robot. It's using an electronic device to manipulate surroundings based on input
data. Could there be porn to some people? I think it could be
a robot? Could there be? I mean two things. One, there
was a really great Onion headline like ten to twelve years ago that as far
as machine learning, it says, TVO gets it you like porn. But
is there a scenario? I mean, I'm inventing this. You've got a
robotic arm with a plasma cutter on the end, and its job is to
cut one inch steel plates and that's what it does. And one day a
worker gets in the way of that and it I mean, it's it's well
built. It realizes there's a problem, and it stops, and it incorporates
that over time. What if it over working realizes, oh well, I
didn't actually have to stop. I could have just kept going. I could
have just cut the plate. And maybe maybe I'm packing that up by saying
it realizes one day, like whoa, what if I cut that dude's hand
off? But could could a process like that incorporate a burnt a barren data
and and and sort of kind of get off the rails with that? I
mean, there could always be any kind of malfunction, right, I guess
I mean mostly Johnny, why don't you know everything about my hypothetical situation.
You're really pissing me off here. Okay, So a factory, right,
the government, the government, you know, Big Safety is trying to shove
down all these safety regulations to us and wants to get railroaded down your throat.
A lot of times robots will just observe the states around them. So
in the instance of your cutting thing, there could be you know, sonar
sensors around the base of it, where if it notices that something is in
a defined field, it will just shut down so that way you don't actily
to get cut. If it's a force robot like pushing something, if it
notices, well, I'm gonna experience force when I'm at full extension and pushing
this crate. When I come back, if I encounter some force, I
know I'm bumping into something, there's a stop. And so all of these
things will actually they'll break robot parts before they would break a human or they're
just hard stops, you know, gears will crack, you know, because
that's the other thing is that it's hard. I think that we don't and
that's why robots are good at things that we're not. Like we we have
a hard time conceptualizing the world as seen by a robot. I mean,
you see these those really great demonstrations of articulated robot arms where they they hold
like they'll they'll have like this tiny pinpoint and it just perfectly moves the entire
armature around it, but the tip of the of the armature stays at the
exact same point in space. Sorry, I get so excited, I hit
the microphone there. Um, the robot wouldn't do that. But that's the
thing. The robots like we we conceptualize our world and well I'll push this
hard. Nope, a little bit harder. Oh too hard? Um,
But a robot knows exactly what it's doing into the precise degree to which it's
doing. And so for example, you're saying that in that that that pushing,
you know that that force application, the robot will know. I mean,
it's it's designed to know if there's more force going into it then it
than it usually does. And there's there's so many safeties built in and that
we have access different senses that we don't have. Yes, you can use
vision with cameras, you can use audio sensors, but temperature night vision goggles
uh, any source of goggles uh, like adaptive vision algorithms for low light
situations that would be worn overocular cavities. Oh yeah, you could do.
I mean there's so many different kinds of sensors where you get input data from
all sorts of things that we don't necessarily have access to or if we do.
You know, we can differentiate between hot and cold, but humans gonna
have a really hard time telling between sixty eight and sixty nine degrees, right
or ninety eight degrees? My favorite band. But I got an example.
Actually I used to work I've worked in for a summer at circus side show
really good. Decided exactly how much people weighed. Continue, Johnny, I
forgot where we were. Actually, yes, let's start the episode Transformer.
No, don't take that. Uh No. I worked at a post it
note factory, really at a three M Yeah, that's awesome. I worked
on the machine that cut the post it pads into the little blocks that had
to have been so satisfying. You know, it was a long hours.
It was twelve hour swing shifts, so it was but just see it just
like Shunk. Yeah, I mean it was one of the cooler machines in
there, I guess, but it was. You know, you could set
it up, of course, you could program it to you know, whatever
size you want it and it would you basically just had to square up the
blocks of pads and then press press, go and let it like chi kung
and then it pushes and chi kung and push and chi kung. But it
had optics sensors under the blade, so anything that passed in those sensors it
would automatically just freeze, just stop wherever it with the blade. Because the
blades were like three three and a half feet long, you know, huge
razor blades. How often did they have to reach sharp up in the blades?
Um, you know, probably every few days. Wow, I mean
there was a lot of a lot of paper moving through those right, I'll
bet um all my questions have nothing to do with robots. I'm sorry.
You should have told me this some other time, because I think that's so
cool. I would love to see that happen all day. There was.
Everybody likes seeing automated processes. Yeah, yeah, just thinking about where kids
seeing mister Rodgers, how crans are made made, absolutely all of seeing these
lack of better word robots perform all these Yeah, it's fascinating how it's made.
Is one of the best TV shows ever because you can just have it
on and then suddenly you you really care about, you know, how a
pencil is assembled. Yeah. There were actually two blades, two different stations.
They were just a table apart and one blade would cut them horizontally and
then you would take the big long strips of pads and that the table was
pneumatic air with ball bearings, and you just slid it down to the other
person at the other station and they turned the the slabs and stuck them in
and it did it again and that cut them into the cubes. From there.
Oh man, I wish that. I wish that job paid a lot
of money, because I would want that job. It does pay a lot
of money. Really. Yeah. It was like, I'm going to Kentucky.
You could you can get up there with I want to be Jimmie.
I mean, it's a factory job. You got to wear goggles, ear
earplugs, still toed boots. You know, it's pp personal protective equipment.
But and they I think they've actually gone. My mom worked there retired now
and that's how I got a summer job there. But it's it's just they
went from twelve hours shifts to eight hours, I think, which if you're
like my mom who worked there for so many years doing twelve hours and was
used to that, yeah, it's a little a little bit of a shock
to go suddenly to eight hour days, you know, But I would.
I would just be so fascinated to see all this. All that stuff's really
cool, Like it's the whole Like after you get done cutting the second time,
everything's on like these little sheets like you you slide them all onto these
these big wobbly sheets, and the whole like the whole second part of the
table just moves down onto a palette and like drops the sheet off and then
moves back up. It's it's really like the whole thing's so intricate and amazing.
They even had like a cage system, so if you had different colors
of of pat you know, you had like a purple, a yellow,
a blue, a green, you could program which one you want. And
they'd had this big sucker system go in and go and put down like the
pads on top of each other, and then they would they would get slid
into the cutter and that's awesome. Yeah, it's pretty crazy, but all
right, anyway, sorry then that I love factory stuff like that. That's
it. I'm fascinated by it. Yeah. So, so the point was
that, you know, it had an optic um sensor that that would sense
if anything and the and the point is safety. You know, if if
somebody's hand or finger gets in there, and it didn't I think there were
ways around it. It didn't go all you know, like there were blind
spots that that you could find in there, and I can't remember if somebody
not when I was there, but I feel like somebody might have found one
one time. But um, that's that's like what what you were talking about.
You know the machines they they have. So if somebody builds a machine
that has all these different sensor inputs, they integrated it with a learning program
something. I guess it depends if if these things went Robopocalypse style, it
would depend on what they were program to do, right, I mean that
and just their mobility. I mean, if a post it cutter became sentive,
good luck to someone who goes in the path of the cutting blade,
but to someone who is feed away from the machine, they'll probably be okay.
So literally, how would you ever know? I mean, like,
it's not like anyone's putting their hands underneath the cutting blade anyway, how do
you test the machine? If it's you do have to get like under the
here to like straighten the pads and pull them out and stuff. You you
have to put yourself. So in order to um bake a robopocalypse cake,
you need a robot that first of all, is accomplishes the mobility that's required.
And I'm I guess I'm just I've got the picture of Arnold Schwartzenegger in
my head. Right, Oh, yes, you need a T four hundred.
Yeah, I mean that. I think that is absolutely Schwartzenegger is a
four hundred, right, yeah, I hope. So some listeners going to
call in and I'm gonna check. I'm not back next week, so I'm
check some more bullshit about the Terminator series. I think we might be a
T three hundred. So we so we have a skeletal robot or something that
mimics human form. Let's say that's that's step one you've got. It doesn't
even necessarily have to mimic human form, just a mobility function. If there's
a better way. You can also have a flying thing, right like if
a flying drone or something. So step two is having a program that would
be um I guess, harmful to humans when run. And then when we're
talking about learning programs, you know, having it be able to learn from
its environment and make decisions that it can adapt to and with that is sort
of like an icing on the cake. Right It's it doesn't necessarily need that
to accomplish a robopocalypse. I think if I were to be a mad scientist
looking to start you know, a small start up to have evil robots.
I don't want to first tackle mobility, then tackle reliable energy, right right,
then I'd want to get away just to have the robots to be harmful
in general, right besides just like them strength or maybe shooting well, yeah,
I mean, I mean obviously accurate shot. Robots will be stronger than
humans pretty much all instances. Yeah. Um, I mean, as long
as we're speculating on robot apocalypse is I think the most likely thing will be
an accidental If a robot apocalypse were to occur, which I don't think is
very likely, I think it will be one of an accidental nature where you
know, you have some sort of self replicating robot and there's an error in
the transcription as it's replicating itself. Yeah, and the error propagates down the
line. Something doesn't work right, and it's for some reason harmful humans.
I think that's too much handle or something. I think that would be the
most likely scenario for That's that's the scariest thing to me, is self replicating
robot. Yeah. There's something called a von Neuman probe, which was a
I just read an article about those last week. They're fascinating. Yeah,
it's they don't exist. But a mathematician, John von Newman, who I
think he has actually worked on the atom bomb. So he's one of these
olds how to kill you can kill effectively. He had the idea of Schwarzenegger
was a T eight hundred. Oh wow, yeah, T eight hundred twice
as good as you thought. Next time you watch Terminator and you see all
the computer vision, they have computer code going down the side. Intel X
eighty six assembly language. Really, that's why your Windows ninety five machine runs
on. Fun fact for the listeners at home, where you said Lennox was
was one of the popular things to that that softwares because you're you're you're you're
building it from the ground up. Linux alsoe's assembly language though, so so
if you want to so store that away, listeners learn, go on online
and learn some Linux stuff current that might that might help you one day.
So yeah, the most important von Neuman probes Basically John von Neuman hypothesized a
way of exploring the universe where he thought you could have self replicant probes that
would spread out across the universe. They would we would build one, send
it out, it would build copies of itself. Those copies would go out
and it would just keep propagating down the line and it could relay signals through
each other. Right, You're still bottlenecked by the speed of light for information
transfer. Yeah, but it'd be a way of exploring. And one of
the arguments people have for or against alien civilizations is why have we not encountered
any von Neuman probes yet? Is its big first? Well? Newman probe
is also a way to bring about the end of the universe. I mean
of they keep play glocus. There was an episode Futurama I could cancer you
know, they could have a transcription error and they you know, obviously there's
a finite or maybe there's not. Who knows a finite amount of material in
the universe. You could program the robots to say, hey, only replicate
three times. Yeah, stop. But if there's some kind of transcription error,
which I could very easily see what happening, Maybe they'm replicate eight times,
so I'm replicate eight thousand times? Yeah, and just where does it
stop? Is there a way to get back into the code after it's been
programmed? And like, I mean, if you have a robot that is
eight hundred light years away from you. It would take at least eight hundred
years to get a destruct signal to that robot in that time. Yeah,
and could have made billions of more copies of itself. And keep in mind,
these things are off doing their thing, or respective of what happens here,
we could launch the Von Newman pro tomorrow, nuke ourselves out of the
picture and they'll keep going. Yeah, and that probe's just out there doing
its thing. It's there was an episode of a Futurama where Bender was replicating
himself and then he would make uh, two smaller versions, and then the
two smaller versions, until there was just this like silver silver Yeah, there's
Yeah, there's silver gray goo that was made up of microbenders that was destroying
everything. Same thing. Yeah, I mean that's a comedy television program,
but I think that's a future It's it's a comedy television program that has some
of the best science and math behind it anything that's ever been commentaries. Yeah,
some of the best math jokes I've ever seen on television. Yeah,
I mean that that is one of the most literate shows as far as science
and things like that. But yeah, So so let's say that could be
like a very you know, if there were to be a robo apocalypse,
I would bender theory. I couldn't see that being a very the reasonable way
for us to all day the robot robot. The article that I read started
out with the discussion about von Neuman probes, but said that there's so many
different ways for that too, for that to happen. For example, UM
nano assemblers. You know, if we sent out self replicating nanobots to build
something out in orbit or in space, just like you said, a transcription
error. If one of them is built incorrectly or there's some sort of issue
with that, that that can just like it just like a DNA transcription er.
It can create cancer. It can create a problem where there's just could
create wolverine or badgerine. You need space kids to throw space rocks at these
space probes. They see, that is what we youths could save us.
Youths. Um but yeah, and that could happen on Earth as well.
There was I want to say it was it was a William Gibson. Maybe
it was neuromancer. But he talks about how nanobot uh nanobots are controlled in
his science fiction world as tightly as say, like weapons grade plutonium, like
you can't get near them because the potential for catastrophe so great. The other
thing, I mean to play Devil's Advocate against the Von Newman probes and self
replicating there's only so much stuff on the Earth. You're not going to take
a pine tree and turn that into like a silicon wafer for a computer chip.
Yeah. So unless you can start finding ways to recavoc with the strong
nuclear force. In that case, you already playing with giant energy and right,
and the fundamental laws of nature. You're just being silly with physics.
So okay, So so we've run into a limited resource problem because because you
kind of well maybe you do, maybe you don't. But like the matrix
comes to mind where the planet's taken over by you know, the robots and
the whole of the outer surface of the Earth is turned into a huge electrical
grid or whatever they do. But like that's not really feasible easier either,
right, because yeah, I mean, maybe the best way to avoid a
robo apocalypse is to prohibit the construction of all thinking machines. Have as you
had to destroy all current thinking machines, maybe train humans to think like computers.
Probably need some sort of berry juice to augment their computational abilities. Get
some sort of spice that could help them think faster and live longer. I
don't know. That's just out there of a way to do that. You
could You could do that, Yeah, and have enlist Patrick Stewart to help
you lead money. But who's gonna who's gonna ride the worms? Man?
Well, somebody will be born one day, dude, motherfucker. We're of
course talking about the Brian Sanderson New Dune novels. Is he doing du Dune?
Yeah? No way, Yeah, bro, that guy gets the pick
up and just do whatever he feels like. I've got the Missboarding trilogy.
I still haven't read it. I haven't either. Well, he did a
damn fine job with the abortion that Robert Jordan had left behind in the way
of his death. Hey man, the wheel wheels, you listen. I'm
not I'm not some little boy that needs to be on apron string still,
man. So okay, let's say let's say we've got the robo apocalypse on
us. It's it's upon us, it has dawned. Were we're being systematically
eradicated what's going to be the best way to combat I'm glad you asked that.
I love this. I'm like, uh, nukes really, ms brou
one of nuclear devices detonated, A large electromagnetic wave propagates before the actual blast
wave of the bomb, and that would fry most robots. I mean,
yeah, potentially these robots could have taken courses on electromagnetic compatibility and found ways
to shield themselves. A lot of times shield won't be big enough for an
event this big, So I think, you know, any kind of EMP
technology would be awesome. Water, yeah, garden house, You don't think
some circuits if if they were you know, they could surround themselves in silicone
casing or something. Maybe jellybots in silicone is vulnerable to heat. So I
think we're looking at best case scenario a combination flamethrower super soaker. So well,
and that's him. I mean, I mean I think that you know,
there's like kind of like this idea of like a maximum overdrive scenario where
where everything that's that's linked electronically or through Wi Fi suddenly it was like kill
all humans again. I mean, what is your coffee maker going to do
to kill you? Nothing? Like what, like most most things around you
would have a very hard time expressing their new found desire to destroy. But
then then you have things for like military, like drones, um or autonomous
robots. They I was reading an article about um UH. In twenty eleven,
the Army shut down a program for autonomous armed vehicles. They just they
just I mean, or at least officially they did, I don't know,
and get as weird with you as you want with it. But it was
going through trials. They thought it was going well, and then they were
just like, I forget it. But in that in a robe apocalypse,
that's what you have to worry about. You have to worry about military hardware.
It's built to a lot of that stuff would be designed to be electromagnetically
shielded. Pretty sure, it'd be somewhat waterproof, you know, like the
machines that were already designed to kill people are the machines you most need to
worry about. But I mean, you know, like those, I think
there is like almost a mundane nature to it that, like, you know,
how how on earth would my wrist watch kill me? See? And
that's where I think you and I are on a different page. Because I'm
not thinking of just anything that's got an electrical charge uprising, you know,
I'm thinking of specific machines that are built to eradicate the human race allah terminator
or uh you know something that's that's drones that that are programmed to seek out
and destroy or I don't know. And that's assuming their uniform and thought.
I mean maybe some will be robopacifists. Yeah, they might come to different
difference conclusions. But also, uh, take a Predator drone or a Raptor
drone. Those are armed by humans. Those are loaded, so they're they're
flown by humans. So once they're out of their ammunition there, that's it.
That's it for the time being. Well, uh, we could sit
here and theorize on any anything, right, which you've done a pretty good
job of so far. I mean we could go add nausium about well,
dude, what if what if there's like a re emmoing drones that come around
and refiel the ammo. I'll have to make more ammo. We'll take our
there's a machine that makes ammo. I mean, we'll go into the saltpeter
mines must shut black powder. And that's not even talking about like energy weapons
and stuff that we you know that's not even around leather, be leathers,
lightning bolt, magic, missile, prisbetic ray. Yeah. I think to
me, the scariest the scariest concepts are the self replicating and the and the
nanobots, which kind of go hand in hand. Sign me up for also
thinking those are the scariest. Yeah, and that's that's where you hear the
gray goo talked about the gray goose. Hundreds of millions of you know,
if not more, miniscule bots. Robots buildos and build up right, and
and it just would have washes over and eats up everything or just dismantles everything
in its path. You have tiny little nanobots crawl into your ear cavity.
Yeah, you would have your brain like three or four degrees and you would
just act Yeah, syphilispots. That would be it. You can't fight against
that, yeah, cli clemto botsios. Well, okay, there you go.
Nanobots, that's the answer. That's the worst thing. How do you
combent nano bots? You don't extreme temperature? I love this. I love
these questions, as though there's like right right, well, professor says that
yeah, uh no, I think temperature would be a pretty solid way electro
magnetic stuff like would do Would they be susceptible to magnetic force? I think
that might be susceptible to shocking. Where when you're that small, you're not
gonna be very good at shielding. To mean a lot of that's just having
bulk for stuff to go through. So if you're tiny, you can't have
very big shielding. So you know, you could be vulnerable too if there's
a gray pool. You know, so two and twenty volts, two and
twenty one volts, whatever it takes. Just so here's the deal. But
wait, what if you have four hundred forty volts, you need two hundred
twenty volts. What would you use to make that a shape changer? I
would get a pharo magnetic core, some copper windings around it, and use
magnetic induction to change the voltage from one voltage to a lower voltage. Okay,
good, Oh so you mean not today a transformer, You mean an
amplifier. He amplifier takes an input voltage and changes it um So so nanobots
beget the force like you need. You need to learn force force powers,
and everybody becomes Jedi and Sith, particularly Sith because they can shock them about
the meta Chlorians. Aren't those just nanobots? It's probably just nanobots me,
And for even saying that that's are your cells nanobots? There you go?
Are we just robots? Insects? Our little tiny robots just meat robots?
Meat bots? We do run off electrical charge? Yeah? Well wow,
yes, what a discussion. What have we done? Thanks for coming in
to talk to us. Thank heaving me guy. This has been fantastic.
And for us, we always we always like throwing out there the the scary
ideas and right exactly and in the dumb theories. That's that's always a fun
thing. But in the end it sounds like we're no weird near something like
this happening, right Yeah, No, I think there's a lot more scary
things going on right now. Yeah. Yeah, we don't have to do
we don't find have to find something that exotic to take us all out and
wed. And it's not the same thing as the Singularity, right Nope.
So have you seen the movie Transcendence? I haven't. Why am I?
Why am I shaking my head on a podcast because I'm an idiot? No,
it's I think it's on Hubbug right now, one of those we watched
it and you know it's it is what it is, but it deals with
that and it has some great good in it. So check it out if
you like this episode not about do it. So. I think that's that's
a little bit of the robopocalypse and a self replicating waterproof. I like to
magnetically shielded, like romagnetically shielded nut nutshell. I can think of something harmful
to humans based around robots. Really? What robot puns? Nice? That's
glorious. I gotta warn you, Flora, you you are about to cross
swords with one of the great slash worst pun masters I've ever met in my
life. Are we allowed to use puns? We already wrote down? You
have to do them all? Stop her head down? Oh my god.
It's like, oh, I never see the podcast. I just listen to
everything's written down for me. Yeah, I I don't. I make mine
up at the very end, as you can always usually tell, Well,
Johnny, you're our guests, so why don't you go ahead and start off?
Okay? UH first one is I have a new UH store that sells
thank you cards for robots. Oh yeah, yeah, what's it called.
It's called numbers stationary. That's that's a couple that hits on a couple levels.
Yeah, all right, Um, this this one is gray gray goo,
but it's it's got a little bit of um, a light blue tinge
in some parts of it. And it's it's a bunch of small, small
robots that are designed to uh, save people, save people in trouble,
fight villains and and I'm pretty sure that no one knows who created these robots.
The robots don't have any parents. It's Batmanobots, Jess bat Man.
There is one um technological constructor robot that they're that they they're working on right
now. It's theoretical, but they're hoping that in the near future it will
be able to serve mankind um and and not only help mankind, but protect
them thermally from from the the hot summer months. It's the Froobot. But
so you guys hear about this new Russian fairy tale. It's about an evil
robot Grandma, that lives in the woods and gives runaway children chores. Robot,
you guy, he really does have iron teeth. Yeah, this is
good. This is glorious will play Johnny, I've got I've got this robot
that hasn't actually been built yet, but it's it's there's a theory behind that.
Somebody's you know, come up with this idea of a robot that that
they launch into space and it goes and plays music in space and space jam.
Yeah, and then it replicates its seven nice triatle but no, and
it replicates itself and it sends that, and it just keeps replicating out into
the cosmos, and and it's all the time, each one of them,
they're they're playing music, and mostly the music they play is on like PVC
pipes and drumming. It's the Von Blueman probe. Jeez, that's terrible,
fantastic. You know, there's been a problem in Eastern Europe recently recently,
Yeah, we're very very recently that they tried to automate UM some bath houses
and spasm. But the problem is is the UM they became essentially they became
self aware, and they started trying to reproduce with the male clients and in
the attempt to seduce them, ended up chewing up their mouths terribly, really
tearing up their Yeah, yeah, they were um Albot stores. It sounds
like a really bad fifties shopping are the only thing more unstoppable than Johnny's pun
tirade? Yeah, is the self replicating greygo that is listener? All right?
Right off the bat, Amy, who is extraordinarily prolific, wrote us
in a story for our future ghost spectacular stories, I think it'll probably be
our summertime camp fire jamboree. Fire. Ghosts can't find, can't fire,
good stories can fire. Okay, all right, let's see how about this
uh not so superpower. No matter what you put in the microwave, no
matter what the time is selected, the item always stops right in front of
the door where it's easiest to pick up. With this not so superpower.
You are, With this not so superpower, you are the master of nuke
nuke box roulette. Um, and this is an this is an interesting question,
she writes. I love Betty and Tabitha, and I'd love to hear
their reactions to our podcast. I think they'd find it U like dancing with
the devil, you right into the floor. Yeah, I don't, I
don't. I don't think they get into this sort of stuff. I don't
think so either. I think that there are certain things best I've done.
They had undisgusted, left underneath, the filthy, dirty rocket came under and
who needs a half man, half goat to keep you awake all night instead
of sleeping? That's what I think. That's that's probably what they'd say,
probably exactly what they say. What do you get, Flora? Thank you?
Amy? Thanks Amy Dave. I I'm having a lot of trouble thinking
straight because you're drunk. No, sadly, I just I've just got mindless
focus. Ah yeah, mindless focus right into uh say that he loved the
one hundredth episode, thank you, thank you, and looks forward to the
next one hundred and he says, check out Mysterious Universe podcast. And we
do we were familiar, Yeah, we do. Indeed, who doesn't.
Who doesn't like to hear about weird stuff with an Australian Accent's right, That's
that's why we do it so often. Well, good night, I've we
have came to Blarry Photos. It's not a good Australian night. Yeah,
you wait till we go down there. We'll visit, will learn the accent.
Sorry to all of our Australian listeners for attempting that I can't even think
of something to say that to even try, I'm like, no, well,
finish, finish up, mindless focus all right, because I have something
to say, useless superpower to bring it to end with blurred dedic memory,
the ability to perfectly recall any image at any time, but all slightly blurry,
like idetic memory, but more blurry. I like that, all right,
Thank you, thank you. And speaking of Australia, goat girl,
thank you so freaking much. You guys, we got a package from Adelaide,
Australia full of amazing things cool uh, some cool postcards from her gallery
work. She's an artist there. We've read her emails before. Her and
her husband do amazing work. We got some slightly suggestive but really cool Christmas
ornaments perfect, and we got some dangle fingers and just a bunch of really
cool stuff which is the nicest thing in the world. Tons of cool um
Australian movie suggestions, some show suggestions, just a fun care package from Australia.
I can't think of anything cooler or nicer. It's it's amazing. You
guys are amazing. Go girl, You're you're the best. And your work
is amazing too, it is. I really liked it. I like how
much textiles you incorporate. Yeah, so so yeah, big big shout out
to Jules. Yeah, I've got an email here from Rachel. Rachel,
Rachel. She says, hello, love your show and just started listening in
January. Well, welcome by started with a diatlov pass episode and been binge
listening if that's a thing ever since. Yes, it is, it's it
is, And she has a show suggestion. This is something I think we
may have discussed once. Flora the Georgia guidestone. Oh yeah, you should
get on that then, because that's that's that's coloring out there a few times.
Yeah, I definitely want to get back into that. And uh and
if you do any bumper stickers or t shirts, Eye for one would love
one that says thunder sound. I think that's totally doable that that'd be a
great bubber stinger. I like that nice easy yeah, slam dunk. Thank
you, Rachel. Thanks. I got one more here. Dave heard from
Nerdal Lingus. I love that. Heard for some Nordal Lingus here says hello,
fellow nerd Lingers. I enjoyed your Duruid episode whilst rotting away in my
cube. Oh, your pronunciation of Boudica was correct. I only know because
as I listened to many history podcasts. Awesome, there you go. Also,
please keep up the Alex Jones impression. It's hilarious. I'm glad you
like it. I always I'm always like, oh man, nobody, nobody,
nobody's gonna want to hear more than like ten seconds of this. And
I've been telling you for months to stop along along with the others Reagan and
Nixon on the other presidents, our signature sends up of America's leadership. You
gotta really get the jowls going and it messes up the headphones. Yeah yeah,
And he says on that vein, I'm from Washington State and I have
an Alex Jones is m pun inspired by the Pompey reference in the Druid episode,
with a local flair. This one's this. This pot has a lot
of ingredients going in. Let's see how how it tastes. A roller Gonna
blow the lid off this one. The Mount Saint Helen's was an inside job.
Rock doesn't melt at those temperatures with without thermite. The globalist to contaminate
spirit like with with mine, control fluoride and bury their evidence. Bye bye
water filters. See I should have been raided that pun for months. People
should have been to read this months ago. That's your family's gonna die by
my water colloidal silver. Good night, Thank you, nerdal Lingus. Oh
well, I will see you to close this out. I will see your
nerdal Lingus, and I will raise you a mingle Dingle Dongelheimer. Yeah,
you're not touching my old mingle Dingle Dongelheimer writes, just wanted to write you
verbally to show my appreciation for the podcast. One of the few that makes
me laugh like an idiot on a regular basis. It's a weird experience sometimes
too uh. He feels like it's like doing karaoke with a group of friends,
mostly funny, but at times awfully awkward and leaving you feeling ashamed afterwards.
Well that's what we shoot for. Just kidding. Love the show and
much love from Argentina. Felt needed felt I needed to say this since I
doubt you have many South American listeners. That's true, that's amazing. Well,
we're we're really really expanding south of the equator. That's that's great.
Yeah, so thank you very much, Grossius. Yes, so that's what
we got. That's what we got for listener mail this week. We have
quite the stack. Keep it coming. Once again. We find ourselves at
a crossroads. That's right. You can either sit there in your in your
cubicle, rotting away and keep working on junk. Or you could go to
Facebook and like us. Yeah, or you could go to iTunes and write
a five star ribs two three, four five stars Twitter and follow us some
blurry underscore photos. Or you can I mean, you know, somebody asked
us, why why don't we mention stumble Upon anymore? I don't. Does
it still exist? Well, yes, we're on stumble Upon. The when
I redesigned the new website, I didn't have an option to put in a
stumble Upon chicklet. Oh so it doesn't exist. So on our website it
doesn't. But if you can, you can naturally stumble upon it still do
what you do, We're gonna do it. You can also be a citizen
patriot and it's citizen patriots squat hunter and punch that donate button. Oh yeah.
As in addition to visiting any of the lovely sponsors that have have sponsored
us this month in last please go and do business and tell them that we
sent you. And as always, uh, get yourself a free audio book
right. Uh, it's it's it's it's easy, it's free. You get
a book, we get a monetary high five. Everyone's a freaking winner.
It's it's it's a win win win situation. It's uh, it's what Actually
I've learned this today on Different on the Planet Money podcast. It's an arbitrage.
It's it's a guaranteed uh free money. Yeah, that's the that's what
an arbitrage is. I learned that just today. Well played. Yeah,
I was really proud of myself for that too good form. So uh,
don't forget it's audible trial dot com slash blurry Photos. Do that get your
thing, We get our thing, and then we all do our thing together.
Doo doo doo doo doo do do do do do do do do do
do do do do do do. Let's see, our thing is trufflin.
What's your thing? So that's all that's what we're gonna do for this episode
of Blurry Photos. I have been David Stepticon and I have been David Transflormer.
Yeah, I've been Johnny five, You're alive booo Byewrito shape changers.
But no, it morbid Jim jam skies morbid. Obi's guys, Johnny,
I think that you probably have one more in the cut. At least I
have a lot more. Yeah, yeah, hit us, hit us.
Uh. Some robots were on a camping trip in the fifties and uh it
was a big accident. Nobody knows what happens. They never returned. It's
a total spooky mystery. It's called the Dialatov low pass filter event. I
don't even I don't even know enough for to get that. How did the
robot repair his internal clock? Wow? Crystal healing? Has it used at
quartz crystal crystals? Oh? Well? What was the favorite algorithm of robots
living in Miami in the nineteen eighties? Line detection because of the cocaine.
Did you guys read that new article on telepresence robotics on the Internet. I
thought I did, but I guess not. It was riveting. Jesus Christ,
did you guys hear about this new battery charging robot? If? I
say, yes, it really has potential? Oh my god, I think
I think something's malfunctioning. He's on rogue tank. Tread suspensions are really gaining
traction in the robotics community. I swear to God, I'm gonna murder you.
So the police actually just arrested a robot. It's going to be a
period in circuit court soon. Okay, that was pretty good. Uh they
just made a new RPG for autonomous robots. Oh yeah, it's called Pathfinder.
I have a lot more so. Yeah, we'll wait till you till
your stand up at the shut. The problem is is that his battery is
self charging. We the puns are like my number one favorite thing.