Speaker 1: Thomas Frye joining us from the future. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: maybe you're a little you know, further east than I am.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Good to see you, Thomas, Yeah, on
Speaker 2: your show again. So you sent me.
Speaker 1: This paper that you'd written about a robot changing a diaper.
Speaker 1: And when you say it like that, like, because I
Speaker 1: said this earlier in the show, when will a robot
Speaker 1: be able to change a diaper? And it sounds like
Speaker 1: a simple proposition when you think about when you had
Speaker 1: to take those life skills classes and they gave you
Speaker 1: the doll and you had to do the triangle for
Speaker 1: the diaper, and you're like, sure, a robot could do that.
Speaker 1: But then once you become a parent, you realize that
Speaker 1: it's like trying to put clothes on a fighting you know, octopus,
Speaker 1: angry octopus, and that's pooped everywhere, you know. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of different layers to it. Why is it important? Well,
Speaker 1: what kind of milestone is it for a robot to
Speaker 1: be able to change a human baby diaper?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: See, I I view this as kind of the turning
Speaker 4: test of humanoid robots because it requires, uh these tactical skills,
Speaker 4: It requires the ability having adaptability and the resources to
Speaker 4: deal with the screaming child, and and lots of variables
Speaker 4: that normally don't get programmed into something like this. And
Speaker 4: then also the ability to gain the trust of the mother.
Speaker 3: And that's the key thing here.
Speaker 4: I think that if if you don't get the mother's trust,
Speaker 4: they will never buy a robot for their their home.
Speaker 3: UH. And so this is one of the.
Speaker 4: Kind of the ultimate with litmus tests. I think of
Speaker 4: of of a robot like this, they can they handle
Speaker 4: all of the different things, the the the different UH
Speaker 4: smells and the different chaotic moments and all of that
Speaker 4: and UH and still.
Speaker 3: To perform a flawless job.
Speaker 1: So you just mentioned the touring test, and what is
Speaker 1: the touring test? And t you r I n G
Speaker 1: is what we're talking about? Alan Touring?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Alan Turing in around nineteen fifty he was just
Speaker 4: asking this question can machines think? And so he came
Speaker 4: up with this Turing test. And the crude form of
Speaker 4: the test was as you go into a room and
Speaker 4: it has two curtains, and behind one curtain is a
Speaker 4: computer and behind the other curtains a person. You start
Speaker 4: asking questions and the computer can answer and the human
Speaker 4: can answer, and at a certain point in time, as
Speaker 4: the computer evolves, then he sees surmised that you wouldn't
Speaker 4: be able to tell the difference between which is the
Speaker 4: computer and which is the human. And so we've used
Speaker 4: that kind of that Turing test as kind of a
Speaker 4: litmus test for how far we've advanced with computer technology.
Speaker 4: And clearly we've passed the Turing test and several different categories,
Speaker 4: but there's a lot more categories to go in the future, because.
Speaker 1: I mean chat GPT can have a conversation with you
Speaker 1: that is, you know, realistic enough that if you truly
Speaker 1: didn't know that it was a computer, you maybe could
Speaker 1: be fooled until they tell you something wrack adodle. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, but I think that's an interesting standard. So
Speaker 1: to be passable, let's just call it passables. That's a
Speaker 1: good way to put it. To be passable as a
Speaker 1: human in a conversation with robotics, What is it about,
Speaker 1: specifically the physical part of changing a diaper that would
Speaker 1: have to be addressed that we haven't already addressed, if
Speaker 1: you know what I.
Speaker 4: Mean, Yeah, I think it's all the variables a child
Speaker 4: is squirming and screaming and crying and fussing and around
Speaker 4: and all of this is kind of delicate, little little pieces,
Speaker 4: so you don't want to hurt the child, you don't
Speaker 4: want to pinch the skin.
Speaker 3: There's all kinds of things that can go wrong in
Speaker 3: the middle.
Speaker 4: Of all this, and for people this becomes real high
Speaker 4: anxiety situation.
Speaker 3: At times.
Speaker 4: Most of the time it's fairly straightforward and you can
Speaker 4: change diaper, zip, zip, zip, and you're finished. Other times
Speaker 4: it turns, especially when you're in public trying to do something.
Speaker 1: I think every parent has at least one story of
Speaker 1: that time my kid pooped all over me in public.
Speaker 1: I think everybody has at least one of those in
Speaker 1: their arsenal. If you're a parent, you know, and then
Speaker 1: you're in the in the you know, in the room trying.
Speaker 1: I absolutely understand that. So how far are we away?
Speaker 1: Because I have seen some videos lately that have been
Speaker 1: so realistic that I have to go back and I'm like,
Speaker 1: is this AI?
Speaker 2: Is it? Is it real?
Speaker 1: I hate that AI video has has gotten to the
Speaker 1: point where it truly is impossible to tell if what you're.
Speaker 2: Seeing is real or not. And where are we in
Speaker 2: the robotics?
Speaker 1: Process right now, Like, how close are we to having
Speaker 1: a robot that has just a soft enough touch that
Speaker 1: a mom would feel confident giving her baby to that robot.
Speaker 4: Okay, to put this in perspective, there's over one hundred
Speaker 4: companies throughout the world that have received funding for creating
Speaker 4: humanoid robots, so it's not possible to know exactly where
Speaker 4: all of them are and what stages are at. But
Speaker 4: in some of the videos I've seen of optimists, that's
Speaker 4: the Elon Musk robot that it was creating.
Speaker 3: The way the hand.
Speaker 4: Moves and is manipulated, and everything seems very It has
Speaker 4: some very delicate skills tied in with it. I think
Speaker 4: I think at least by two thousand and thirty, if
Speaker 4: not sooner, he'll be able to accomplish something like this.
Speaker 4: But again, the real litmus test ends up being is
Speaker 4: the mother going to trust the robot to do it?
Speaker 4: And I think there's a lot of barriers there. If
Speaker 4: the robot just screws up in one way or another,
Speaker 4: if the kid gets pinched one time, then they're going
Speaker 4: to be very hesitant to try it again.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I got to tell you, I'm already thinking
Speaker 1: of a science fiction thriller where in the future there
Speaker 1: is a world and robots are starting to become a
Speaker 1: normal part and then this extremist organization who doesn't want
Speaker 1: any kind of robotics goes in and actually kills a
Speaker 1: baby and frames a robot so they can prevent more
Speaker 1: robots from being purchased. That's my new just popped into
Speaker 1: my head right now, So if anybody wants to write
Speaker 1: that with me, let me know. But that's how my
Speaker 1: brain works. Mandy, and I think this is a valid question, Thomas,
Speaker 1: How long before baby pas all over the robot? These
Speaker 1: robots are going to have to be durable, waterproof, They're
Speaker 1: going to.
Speaker 2: Have to be able to function in a urinated on state.
Speaker 4: Correct, right, They're going to be asked to do all
Speaker 4: kinds of crazy things, not just infant care, but elder care,
Speaker 4: managing people, and.
Speaker 3: Therapeutic situations where.
Speaker 4: PTSD issues are occurring, as people that are screaming and
Speaker 4: yelling and probably narcotics are involved, and you have to
Speaker 4: get somebody off of their the high that they're on.
Speaker 4: You can start going through a list of all kinds
Speaker 4: of psychotic situations that they may be thrust into, and
Speaker 4: then you can start seeing the total kind of chaos
Speaker 4: that they're going to have to contend with. I think
Speaker 4: there's going to be lots of challenging situations. I'm not
Speaker 4: sure this is very straightforward at all.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you this, because, like when I
Speaker 1: think about this and I think about what robots could
Speaker 1: look like in the near future, we think of humanoid robots.
Speaker 1: And I'm just going to use data from Star Trek
Speaker 1: Next Generation as an example, because technically he was a droid,
Speaker 1: but it's okay, we're going to use him as an example.
Speaker 1: Are we going to get to a place where they're
Speaker 1: going to have a human skin or a circulatory system
Speaker 1: exterior that is going to allow them to have a
Speaker 1: true human appearance, because that's I think what freaks people out.
Speaker 1: But on the flip side, you know that that could
Speaker 1: solve a lot of problems for people who are lonely.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's so many different weird applications for.
Speaker 3: This, right I think.
Speaker 4: I think the skin is going to change quite a
Speaker 4: bit over time as they become more human like and lifelike,
Speaker 4: and this idea of actually growing the skin on the robot,
Speaker 4: I think we're going to be getting into that fairly soon.
Speaker 4: So these are some of the things that we'll have
Speaker 4: to contend with us as robots evolve over the next
Speaker 4: forty fifty years. Keep in mind that the cars that
Speaker 4: we drive today have been in development for the last
Speaker 4: one hundred and twenty plus years, so it's taken that
Speaker 4: long to get.
Speaker 3: The cars that are this good. Now.
Speaker 4: To get to a robot that is so finally refined
Speaker 4: that it can handle all these human like tests, it's
Speaker 4: going to take a while.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1: I have one more question about the robot thing, though,
Speaker 1: and that is like, in my mind, if I were
Speaker 1: going to have a robot caring for my child, which
Speaker 1: is not a given by an stretch of the imagination, okay,
Speaker 1: so I would want to know that they were programmed
Speaker 1: with everything like first aid, so they'd.
Speaker 2: Know exactly what to do. And I was thinking to myself.
Speaker 1: Like, would there be any limits to what you would
Speaker 1: want your robot to know? Or do you want a
Speaker 1: true know it all robot that you could go to
Speaker 1: at any given moment and say, robot, you know what's
Speaker 1: the flight speed of an unlaiden swallow and ask them
Speaker 1: the question and get an answer so.
Speaker 2: You know, how are there are you going to compartmentalize
Speaker 2: that knowledge? I guess this is my question.
Speaker 4: Well, if you have your five year old kid hanging
Speaker 4: out with robot asking a lot of questions, you may
Speaker 4: want to limit what they're willing to talk about, right right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's probably a good idea. It's probably a
Speaker 2: very very good idea.
Speaker 1: An extraordinary number of people are hitting the text line
Speaker 1: with robot sex doll conversations. What is wrong with you people?
Speaker 1: But that's not what I was talking about when people
Speaker 1: were lonely. I'm talking about the epidemic of loneliness in
Speaker 1: this country, where it would be kind of cool to say,
Speaker 1: I'd like to create a companion for me, and you
Speaker 1: could program the knowledge set that that robot got, and
Speaker 1: maybe you say, look, I want them to have the
Speaker 1: same historical progression that I had growing up, So you
Speaker 1: can almost build yourself a peer And as people get older,
Speaker 1: and I mean in their eighties, late eighties, nineties, most
Speaker 1: of their peer groups starts to die. And that was
Speaker 1: something I learned from my late mother in law. She
Speaker 1: just wanted to talk to people who understood the references,
Speaker 1: you know, she wanted to talk to people who had
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 2: Cultural art that she had.
Speaker 1: So I think from that perspective, it could be a
Speaker 1: really interesting situation where you'd have a care you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a residential facility full of older people, and you
Speaker 1: could literally program them to be a different friend for
Speaker 1: every single person in that.
Speaker 3: Place, right right?
Speaker 4: And if you think about how long would it be
Speaker 4: before somebody is willing to leave and go out on
Speaker 4: a date with their wife or their husband and just
Speaker 4: let the.
Speaker 3: Robot care for the kids.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that'll be a different stage as well. Having the robot,
Speaker 4: you know, prepare dinner for a room full of guests,
Speaker 4: people that show up for you're having invited twelve different
Speaker 4: people over for dinner and you have the robot prepare
Speaker 4: everything and then clean up afterwards and do the dishes.
Speaker 4: How skilled does that robot have to be to accomplish
Speaker 4: all of that? And is this a humanoid robot or
Speaker 4: is this just a kitchen with robotic arms that are
Speaker 4: doing most of that work.
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, I want a humanoid robot,
Speaker 1: at least humanoid ish, right, like those weird Honda dogs
Speaker 1: with no heads. I don't want that running around my property.
Speaker 1: I want something that looks more recognizable. That isn't the
Speaker 1: stuff nightmares are made out of, right, I want something
Speaker 1: that feels a little more rosy the robot than you know,
Speaker 1: a faceless kind of droid that's I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: that straddles a weird line between you know, human and
Speaker 1: plastic that I wanted to somewhat be something that looks identifiable,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So if you yell at your robot dog, you
Speaker 4: wanted to acknowledge that it's being yelled at.
Speaker 1: It instead of it turning around and you know, flipping
Speaker 1: me off. If robots are used for crime, then who
Speaker 1: is responsible? These are the reason I read that question
Speaker 1: because it is kind of silly, but it's not. That's
Speaker 1: part of the ethical dilemma in robotics like that, that's
Speaker 1: a big part of it. Can you order a robot
Speaker 1: to commit a crime? You know, I don't know who's doing.
Speaker 3: That, right, right? Yeah? Yeah, we we think we have
Speaker 3: problems now.
Speaker 4: I think we're going to get into really implicated things.
Speaker 4: But when we get into a world of robots soldiers
Speaker 4: and robot fighting machines, then kind of all bets are
Speaker 4: off because it's not just humanoid robots it's flying robots
Speaker 4: that are drones.
Speaker 1: Right, That's what concerns me. That concerns me a lot more.
Speaker 1: The drone technology has come so far, so fast that
Speaker 1: I think drones are really the next frontier when it
Speaker 1: comes to warfare, more so than humanoid robots, because they're
Speaker 1: way cheaper and they can be deployed right now, and
Speaker 1: the kind of precision nature that drones deliver is very
Speaker 1: concerning to me. I think that might be one of
Speaker 1: the most end up being one of the most significant
Speaker 1: weapons for the next twenty years, used by everybody, terrorists,
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody scares the crap out of me.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to lie, Thomas.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then when you start thinking about, well, what form
Speaker 4: can the these robotic soldiers take, they can look like
Speaker 4: a robotic snake as an example, yep, or a robotic
Speaker 4: fish that goes through the water and jumps out and
Speaker 4: blows up.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks for another thing to worry about fly fishing.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Thomas.
Speaker 1: It's bad enough I'm not going to catch anything now
Speaker 1: I have to worry about a giant fish leaping out
Speaker 1: of the water and using laser eyes to mow me
Speaker 1: down right there in the river.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, robot fish takes your fish off the hook.
Speaker 2: Hey, yeah, there you go, Yeah a whole. It just
Speaker 2: eats it whole. No, did you see?
Speaker 4: And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I saw this last week. I should have found it
Speaker 1: and put it on the blog today, but I forgot.
Speaker 1: South Korean scientists have made tiny little nanobots that are
Speaker 1: based on ants, and it's absolutely the same concept as
Speaker 1: the movie Big Hero six. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you watch the Big Hero six, it's very good. But
Speaker 1: the whole thing is this kid invotes these little nan robots,
Speaker 1: and of course then someone steals and to use.
Speaker 2: Them for evil.
Speaker 1: But it's amazing to see they have these little tiny
Speaker 1: almost like grains of sand or not sand rice, and
Speaker 1: they can move things and they can program these little
Speaker 1: robots wort collaboratively to move stuff the same way ants
Speaker 1: move stuff. And I'm thinking to myself, this is crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is science fiction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're coming in every every scale.
Speaker 4: You can imagine every shape, every possible form, and they'll
Speaker 4: have multiple capabilities that we can we can just start
Speaker 4: going down a checklist.
Speaker 3: Can they fly? Can they swim?
Speaker 4: Right? And they jump? And they can they climb a tree?
Speaker 4: Can they attach themselves to a car or a moving vehicle?
Speaker 4: And that's the world we're moving into, and somehow we've
Speaker 4: got to create limitations to prevent this from just totally
Speaker 4: disrupting the world that we live in.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we we've all seen the science fiction movies,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to lean into it. You know,
Speaker 1: when the robots take over, Yeah, it'll be fine. I mean,
Speaker 1: can they do any worse than we're doing right now?
Speaker 1: On so many levels? So many levels. I also real quick,
Speaker 1: I want to get to this before we run out
Speaker 1: of time. I also linked to a story that you
Speaker 1: did about kids making a move away from college and
Speaker 1: yet still being able to have a successful career, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about this specifically because we've
Speaker 1: been talking a lot, and I know we don't ever
Speaker 1: talk about politics, but there's been a lot of conversation
Speaker 1: about H one B visas and immigrant labor, especially in
Speaker 1: the tech.
Speaker 2: Field, and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: So it seems that what you're saying in this article
Speaker 1: that I linked today on the blog is that there
Speaker 1: are companies that are offering certifications and other things to
Speaker 1: let tech minded kids who don't necessarily need to go
Speaker 1: the college route, go ahead and pursue that as a career.
Speaker 2: Is that what we're can I know?
Speaker 4: Right right, there's lots of alternatives out there. They can
Speaker 4: go to trade schools, they can do apprenticeships, they can
Speaker 4: take online courses, go to community college coding boot camps,
Speaker 4: and these certifications are actually becoming an alternative to college degrees.
Speaker 4: And so that's becoming very interesting. And a lot of
Speaker 4: them are just going straight into entrepreneurship. They're just going
Speaker 4: to start their own company and run with it. And
Speaker 4: so how do we credential people that have this misshmash
Speaker 4: of skills that.
Speaker 3: Are coming into the workforce right now?
Speaker 4: Now there's this the declining birth rates and the expensive
Speaker 4: tuition and the diminishing ROI that people get off going
Speaker 4: to college is amounted to only thirty six percent of
Speaker 4: people express confidence and higher education right now. Wow, So
Speaker 4: that number keeps declining because the price keeps going up.
Speaker 4: I mean, we have one point seven trillion dollars in
Speaker 4: student loan debt in the country and in a huge
Speaker 4: portion of that, three point five million people over the
Speaker 4: age of sixty still over one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 4: billion dollars.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of money for retirement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is this is a problem where we're
Speaker 4: just taking money from the future, and while it enriches
Speaker 4: us today, this creates this massive problem moving forward into
Speaker 4: the future.
Speaker 1: Well, I wanted to bring up the article because I
Speaker 1: think that I know people that have gone this route
Speaker 1: who did.
Speaker 2: Not go to high school.
Speaker 1: I mean, excuse me, did not go to college, but
Speaker 1: got Microsoft certifications, got various network certifications, did a lot
Speaker 1: of other stuff, and just went to work in tech.
Speaker 1: And now at my age, so that was thirty years
Speaker 1: ago before that was cool, and now they're vice president
Speaker 1: level and been developing for thirty years.
Speaker 2: So it is a viable pathway.
Speaker 1: But it's nice that I think it's interesting because I
Speaker 1: believe that Higher ed has one hundred percent done this
Speaker 1: to themselves by not adapting, by continuing to cling to
Speaker 1: a model that doesn't necessarily work for everyone. And now
Speaker 1: it's we're going to We're going to see colleges clothes
Speaker 1: with some great regularity I think over the next ten years.
Speaker 1: But I think that's a good thing, and maybe they'll
Speaker 1: get serious about delivering on a mission by making sure
Speaker 1: that kids graduate with skills that can help them get
Speaker 1: an actual job.
Speaker 4: When you think of the cost of managing an entire
Speaker 4: campus and the student body, and the security, and the utilities,
Speaker 4: and just all of the maintenance and repair an entire
Speaker 4: campus like that, these things are very expensive, and so
Speaker 4: they have to charge a lot of money to maintain
Speaker 4: all that, And I just I think we're at a
Speaker 4: point where fewer and fewer people are.
Speaker 3: Going to be willing to pay that, yep. And so we're.
Speaker 4: Going to see lots of consolidations. We're going to see
Speaker 4: lots of selling off of assets. Mergers are going to happen.
Speaker 4: So we're going to see lots of crazy activity in
Speaker 4: the academia over the next even five years. It's going
Speaker 4: to happen pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: Here Thomas Friar Futurists.
Speaker 1: You can find him if you want him to come
Speaker 1: speak to your organization about anything from the future. He
Speaker 1: is available to make that happen. Thomas, good to see you,
Speaker 1: my friend. I'll see you next time, all right.
Speaker 3: Thanks,