Speaker 1: The second hour of a Tuesday show. I'm Mandy Connell.
Speaker 2: I've got Zack Seegers in with me today for Anthony
Speaker 2: Rodriguez and joining us now.
Speaker 1: He's our futurist Thomas Fry.
Speaker 2: And Thomas you sent me stories about two things that
Speaker 2: I am the most excited about. And this is gonna
Speaker 2: sound dumb, because when I'm about roadways, right, but I
Speaker 2: read that there's a road in either China or Japan
Speaker 2: where the road itself is on almost like little springs,
Speaker 2: right at little tiny springs, and when a car drives
Speaker 2: over it, the spring bounces and they use that energy
Speaker 2: to create power, right, And I'm fascinated by this. It's
Speaker 2: like the coolest thing ever because now we're talking about
Speaker 2: different ways to integrate how we power our world and
Speaker 2: create more power in a way that has almost no impact,
Speaker 2: right because we're already going to drive on that road,
Speaker 2: but of course it's prohibitively expensive, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But today you.
Speaker 2: Send me an article about something that is happening in
Speaker 2: the United States of America, which, honestly, I feel like
Speaker 2: this is going to be the thing that finally tips
Speaker 2: the scales in favor of electric vehicles, and that's part
Speaker 2: of what your article's about.
Speaker 3: I think you're right there.
Speaker 4: This is a test run in Florida, four and a
Speaker 4: half mile stretcher.
Speaker 3: They're going to embed.
Speaker 4: Induction coils into the Interstate Highway and then as cars
Speaker 4: drive over it, they will recharge themselves as they go. Now,
Speaker 4: this becomes really important if you start doing it nationwide.
Speaker 4: So if you think about the interstate system when it
Speaker 4: got built, it was built in nineteen fifty six because
Speaker 4: of something General eisenawer As signed as president.
Speaker 3: This was to improve the defense system for the country.
Speaker 4: And so over the next few years it just built
Speaker 4: interstates all over the con It'll be something like that
Speaker 4: where they build this charging system inside of the highways
Speaker 4: and build it all over the country, and then you
Speaker 4: have electric trucks or electric garbies and electric cars driving
Speaker 4: down the road and they charge themselves as they go.
Speaker 2: I mean, the real potential here is that my big
Speaker 2: hang up. I'll be perfectly honest, and this is so irrational.
Speaker 2: Even as I'm about to say this, I know that
Speaker 2: for the way I drive and the way that I
Speaker 2: utilize my automobile, this concern for me is a complete idiocy, right,
Speaker 2: but range anxiety, that is the number one reason that
Speaker 2: people don't want to buy fully electric car. They're like, look,
Speaker 2: I don't want to get out on the road, especially
Speaker 2: in Colorado where we've got really cold weather. Sometimes we've
Speaker 2: got high mountain air that you know, it does wreak
Speaker 2: havoc on these batteries. But if I could be assured
Speaker 2: that my tootel down I twenty five was going to
Speaker 2: recharge my battery at the same time I was toodling,
Speaker 2: I'd be I'd probably be all in.
Speaker 4: Right, right, That's that's the big anxiety that most people have,
Speaker 4: especially living in the Midwest, because there's lots of lots
Speaker 4: of places where there aren't charging stations yet still Kansas.
Speaker 4: But if you think, if you think, yeah, if you
Speaker 4: think about just the way Tesla car is built right now,
Speaker 4: about fourteen thousand dollars is spent just on the battery itself.
Speaker 4: If you could reduce that down to a battery fourteen
Speaker 4: thousand dollars battery will go about three hundred miles. If
Speaker 4: you reduce that down eighty percent and only go fifty miles,
Speaker 4: then you're only spending three to four thousand on the battery,
Speaker 4: and it can charge itself as it goes. That makes
Speaker 4: it much more efficient, lighter weight car, and you can
Speaker 4: just go.
Speaker 3: Anywhere you want.
Speaker 4: Then it'll take a while to get that whole system
Speaker 4: build out, but that's kind of the vision behind it.
Speaker 2: Is this something that could be done retroactively on our
Speaker 2: highway system easily? Or do you have to go in
Speaker 2: I mean, like, could you in theory, lay down, you know,
Speaker 2: a layer of this and just kind of asphoaled over it,
Speaker 2: or are you up to speed on the engineering of this.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure exactly what all that would take, and
Speaker 4: I think there's going to be probably some competing systems,
Speaker 4: competing technologies to see which one does it best.
Speaker 3: But it'll take a little while.
Speaker 4: And as I understand, you'd have to drill holes into
Speaker 4: the interstate to embed these coils, and then the cars
Speaker 4: themselves aren't set up for induction charging at the moment,
Speaker 4: right that would be an add on to the vehicles.
Speaker 3: That's the other.
Speaker 2: Question, like how because you're riding on rubber tires which
Speaker 2: are not known to transmit electricity, that's kind of kind
Speaker 2: of the way we've used them, right to not conduct electricity.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious and to be clear, the four point
Speaker 2: five mile sprand in Florida, all of that is not
Speaker 2: going to have the charging capability in it.
Speaker 1: It's only going to be about three quarters of one mile.
Speaker 2: So this really is kind of a beta project, right,
Speaker 2: Like we're just going to kind of see what's going on.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, how does that work? How do you?
Speaker 2: I mean, do you is it going to be like
Speaker 2: where they drag a metal bar underneath the car?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? How does that look?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just bridges that air gap in between.
Speaker 4: So the charging plates on the bottom of the car
Speaker 4: are close enough to the road so that they'll pick.
Speaker 3: Up the charge.
Speaker 4: Well, they don't have to be in contact with it,
Speaker 4: but they have to be close. And so this is
Speaker 4: a real short distance wireless power.
Speaker 2: Somebody asks what about RFI radio frequency interference?
Speaker 4: There might be some of that to begin, but those
Speaker 4: are things that can be engineered around.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people are asking, like, who's going
Speaker 2: to pay for this electricity? And I think that's another
Speaker 2: question that's going to have to be answered on a
Speaker 2: large scale.
Speaker 4: Right So, right now there's a massive amount of electricity
Speaker 4: generation being engineered into our grid, and we're doing that
Speaker 4: because of data centers. Data centers are going to be
Speaker 4: the big power suck in the future. But as we're
Speaker 4: doing that, we're also learning how to generate a lot
Speaker 4: of power. So we could put the solar panels alongside
Speaker 4: all the interstates.
Speaker 3: That would help build some of some of the national grid.
Speaker 4: But I think the people that are using the power
Speaker 4: are the ones that have to pay for it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so some kind of metered system, right.
Speaker 3: I think that's the only fair way of doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so as well. What is the do
Speaker 1: you right now?
Speaker 2: Obviously this is going to be the first addition of
Speaker 2: this in the United States, and I'm sure that as
Speaker 2: we get to scale and things of that nature, pricing
Speaker 2: is going to change dramatically. But what would this I
Speaker 2: mean what you have you even thought about how much
Speaker 2: this is going to add to the price of rebuilding
Speaker 2: or building a road.
Speaker 5: No, I don't think we have any clue on that
Speaker 5: at the moment, But I'm I'm guessing we're going to
Speaker 5: figure out an automated way of doing that that won't
Speaker 5: be that expensive.
Speaker 3: So that it can be built into the roads real quickly.
Speaker 2: I mean, it would be super nice because I just
Speaker 2: drove from here to First we went up through Iowa
Speaker 2: and drove the northern route over to Ohio, and then
Speaker 2: we came back through Kansas, and I got to tell you,
Speaker 2: our interstate system is hot garbage.
Speaker 1: It is terrible.
Speaker 2: It is undrivable in Indiana, it is undrivable in parts
Speaker 2: of Kansas, it is undrivable in parts of Colorado.
Speaker 1: So maybe this would.
Speaker 2: Be the thing that actually makes them have to take
Speaker 2: care of them, because I'm guessing that you cannot let
Speaker 2: an electric generating road crumble the way that we're letting
Speaker 2: our roads crumble.
Speaker 4: Now, right, this is a whole new piece of infrastructure
Speaker 4: that would generate a.
Speaker 3: Huge number of jobs.
Speaker 4: I think it would be good for all the people
Speaker 4: using it, as well as the people that are building
Speaker 4: these roads.
Speaker 3: I think once we can prove that it works well.
Speaker 4: And it's just a matter of time before somebody flips
Speaker 4: the switch and says, let's do it everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I agree, I mean it just amandy you
Speaker 2: think government maintains this. That's a text that just came in.
Speaker 2: That's exactly the point I was just making. So somebody asked,
Speaker 2: what about for larger electric trucks? I mean that's really
Speaker 2: where this is going to be the biggest game changer, right.
Speaker 4: Right, right, Yeah, So if you don't ever have to
Speaker 4: stop your truck, you can just keep it going all
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 3: And we're going to be having.
Speaker 4: Driver lest trucks on the road a lot in the future.
Speaker 4: This is the way to transport stuff all across the
Speaker 4: country very quickly. And in addition to trucks, it's a
Speaker 4: lot of the larger vehicles, so like driving office driving
Speaker 4: an RV that is something that you could actually live
Speaker 4: and sleep in and it's going across the country and
Speaker 4: the things things like that. We don't see any electric
Speaker 4: RVs right now because they're they're too inefficient to make work,
Speaker 4: so we need something much better than that. That's that's
Speaker 4: where a roadway like this would change the ballgame tremendously.
Speaker 2: This textra said, Mandy, heavy cars are going to bottom
Speaker 2: out if they need to be closer to the road,
Speaker 2: shocks will need to be much more rigid. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: these are all sort of technological things that what the
Speaker 2: car makers are probably already working on in conjunction, right,
Speaker 2: because is it a standardized.
Speaker 1: Out put right right? I want to know the science
Speaker 1: behind this. You know what I mean. I want to
Speaker 1: know how this actually works.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll reach out to the company doing it and say,
Speaker 2: can you guys can explain how this is actually going
Speaker 2: to work, because I just think it's super cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is an induction charging system, so it's the
Speaker 4: same as if you built one at a charging station
Speaker 4: the money you can just drive over the TAPA and
Speaker 4: charge it that way. This will be one that's continuous
Speaker 4: so that you can keep driving at the same time
Speaker 4: you're charging.
Speaker 1: Is this going to it?
Speaker 2: It sounds like the any wireless charging that you have
Speaker 2: for your phone right that you just put it on
Speaker 2: top and you don't have to have a cord going in.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to see if I can get the
Speaker 2: engineers working on this project on just to explain it.
Speaker 2: I just think I think it's so fascinating and truthfully,
Speaker 2: as I said, the way I use my car, I
Speaker 2: should not have range anxiety at all, but I do.
Speaker 1: So this is a very interesting tournaments.
Speaker 2: What kind of timeline are we looking at here before
Speaker 2: you could see widespread deployment.
Speaker 4: I think this is twenty twenty eight for the project
Speaker 4: in Florida. If we see that being real successful, I
Speaker 4: can see this getting adopted pretty quickly. After that, there's
Speaker 4: going to have to be more than that test case
Speaker 4: to prove it works. And we've got to have all
Speaker 4: the carmakers buy into it as well. So there's a
Speaker 4: little negotiating that has to happen along the way here.
Speaker 2: And that's the Devil's in the details right there, Thomas.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think this is so far away.
Speaker 1: So far away.
Speaker 2: Anyway, let's talk about the second story, because I love
Speaker 2: this story as well, especially because I'm of the age
Speaker 2: where more and more people are showing.
Speaker 1: Up with cancer in my life.
Speaker 2: I'm just out of the age where more people that
Speaker 2: I know are dealing with cancer of some sort.
Speaker 1: And I, after talking to you now.
Speaker 2: For these many years, Thomas, I get excited when I
Speaker 2: read stories about nanobot technology that's actually happening. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: read a story and go, oh, my god, Thomas talked
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 1: Four years ago. So I'm super excited about how AI
Speaker 1: is going to change medicine.
Speaker 2: And I think it is going to change medicine significantly,
Speaker 2: like maybe more than any other industry.
Speaker 1: And you, yeah, you in this article.
Speaker 2: About what the future of AI and medicine could start
Speaker 2: to look like is absolutely fascinating. And you have a
Speaker 2: column you talk about talking to the defect? What does
Speaker 2: that mean and why is AI a game changer here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, it all started with the idea of being
Speaker 4: able to talk to the problem and the programming routine
Speaker 4: that you're doing, because that's a piece of science, and
Speaker 4: that you can actually personify it and actually give it
Speaker 4: a voice, and then you can talk to it and
Speaker 4: find out what's wrong with it. So the idea is
Speaker 4: to actually give a voice to your personal defects, what
Speaker 4: disease you might have. So you give a voice to
Speaker 4: your cancer or your diabetes, or your heart condition, whatever
Speaker 4: that might be. So then you can go and find
Speaker 4: out what makes your cancer tick and find out what
Speaker 4: can be done to kill it.
Speaker 2: And do they do that by putting in like what
Speaker 2: would that practically look like?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Okay, a surgeon goes in and biopsies a tumor, right,
Speaker 2: and then they take the cells of that tumor, and
Speaker 2: then then they input it in what way? I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm curious as to how that AI assumes that voice correctly.
Speaker 4: Well, so this just works on the assumption of all
Speaker 4: the information that you feed into AI.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: And it doesn't include any probes into the body, doesn't
Speaker 4: include any biopsy or anything like that.
Speaker 3: You just talk to the disease.
Speaker 4: You can you can talk to your own laziness, You
Speaker 4: can talk to your own depression, talk to your own diabetes.
Speaker 2: But how does AI correctly become your depression, your diabetes,
Speaker 2: your cancer.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm confused about.
Speaker 4: It based on the input that you use. Okay, and
Speaker 4: that's the problem. It may not be that correct.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 2: So if you're not honest, or if if your input
Speaker 2: is bad, if you if you're suffering from a deep
Speaker 2: depression but you don't give all the reasons that you're
Speaker 2: feeling a deep depression, you're not going to get a
Speaker 2: satisfactory AI chatbot to discuss it with, right.
Speaker 4: Right, But it's going to ask you questions to make
Speaker 4: sure it gets as good as good information as possible.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: So now if you think about this, this idea of
Speaker 4: talking to the defect, we can expand this notion of
Speaker 4: being able to talk to the conspiracy theory, being able
Speaker 4: to talk to the contrails in the sky, being.
Speaker 3: Able to talk to.
Speaker 4: A drought or the flood conditions that are happening somewhere.
Speaker 4: This idea of being able to talk to these abstract
Speaker 4: things that are happening in the world, can give them
Speaker 4: a voice so you can interact with it and you
Speaker 4: can understand what's going on on that end that I
Speaker 4: think is so inspiring and challenging at the same time.
Speaker 2: And then how does the AI learn from that? And
Speaker 2: you know, I'm always looking at because ultimately I am
Speaker 2: concerned that AI learns in such a manner, a stacking manner,
Speaker 2: instead of a sorting of pertinent information. One of the
Speaker 2: things that I think our brain is both brilliant at
Speaker 2: and it's a defect of our brain, is that we
Speaker 2: have this ability to make judgments about what information is
Speaker 2: important right, what information to really glom onto, and you know,
Speaker 2: make that sort of a foundation of our thought processes.
Speaker 2: How is AI learning in that way? Like if you said, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk to this flood and we're going
Speaker 2: to put in all these I'm gonna use drought because
Speaker 2: Colorado that's a much more familiar position. Okay, we're going
Speaker 2: to go to the drought in the southeastern part of Colorado.
Speaker 2: We're gonna put in all the data points, We're going
Speaker 2: to give it all the information and then we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about that drought. Well, what if somebody else says, Okay,
Speaker 2: I've got my drought in California and we're going to
Speaker 2: put in all these data points. That's where I'd like
Speaker 2: to know more. And I think that's a really big
Speaker 2: question that I just asked. But I'd like to know
Speaker 2: more about how AI uses all of those inputs and
Speaker 2: how that together affects the outputs that I'm getting back.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think.
Speaker 4: I think AI then takes on the task of going
Speaker 4: after more and more information, okay, from different sources, and
Speaker 4: the better the information, the.
Speaker 3: Better it can can we can interact with it. Okay.
Speaker 4: So I like the idea of the contrails in the
Speaker 4: sky because this is something that body's wondering about, what
Speaker 4: why the hell are they up there, and whether they
Speaker 4: look so funny and it's just really a Bill Gates
Speaker 4: project going on.
Speaker 2: I'm not big on the contrails the conspiracy theory, because
Speaker 2: I've worked and I've made contrails with airplanes and seen
Speaker 2: it happen in real time.
Speaker 1: So I do have a question going back to the
Speaker 1: road project.
Speaker 2: But this is about how that technology could be used elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Somebody asked, can this be used on the railroads to
Speaker 2: displace electric diesel locomotives with fully.
Speaker 3: Electric That's a great question. I think it could.
Speaker 1: I think there's a power issue there though.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that you could have enough batteries even
Speaker 2: if they were constantly being recharged to replace the power
Speaker 2: that you have from a diesel engine just for starting
Speaker 2: and stopping, right.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know about it. I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: you never know.
Speaker 4: There's a weight factor there that trains are super heavy. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that would be real interesting to actually scale that out
Speaker 4: and see if that actually would work. Maybe they could
Speaker 4: actually start building trains that are much lighter, wait easier
Speaker 4: to carry things around.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: See Thomas fry Our futurist. He can be found at
Speaker 2: impact lab dot com. I put links to both of
Speaker 2: these articles on the blog today. You should go check
Speaker 2: them out. They're super super fascinating and I'm ready for
Speaker 2: some of these things to start happening.
Speaker 1: Thomas, good to see you man. Happy Happy new year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, happy new year to you as well.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right.
Speaker 2: That is Thomas Frye, one of my favorite guests and
Speaker 2: super super interesting, Mandy, I already talked to my defect.
Speaker 2: It's called calling my liberal sister. Now, that's not nice.
Speaker 2: Another text, or what about psychological defects?
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: I think that kind of stuff from a diagnostic perspective
Speaker 2: is absolutely going to be the way of the future.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick time out when we
Speaker 2: get back. I have so many other things, but I
Speaker 2: have to ask this question. How in the world did
Speaker 2: Mike Johnston blow two million dollars for a four hour
Speaker 2: appearance in front of Congress.
Speaker 1: I'll explain after this. Keep it on, Koa