A Word on Words; 3718; Peter Singer

liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on words with johnson ron johnson in bello welcome once again to word on words our guest today is peter du center not the center's senior fellow and director of the twenty first century defense initiative at the brookings institution he's considered one of the world's leading authorities on changes in modern warfare two the day to talk about his latest book wired for the robotics revolution and conflict in the twenty first century welcome you sing at a world where it's great to have you here and it's great to talk about the subject that you're being interviewed by fellow knows about as much as robots as i know lessening skywalker knew about to beat even though i know that i have to do two it has come back in in real life and there is now

an arc to the two robot in real world there is this amazing revolution happening with these systems where when we went into iraq we had just a handful of these unmanned drones in the air we now have more than seven thousand on the ground we went into iraq just a few years ago with zero of these underground systems we now have twelve thousand and so many ways it feels like science fiction is coming true our modern day battlefield know it's so new to everyone when you say the word drone there's somebody out there or miller so he listens really doesn't know what and roll is an obese and to talk about what these new systems make it possible to mean it's one thing to say you know and people don't understand it you have a robot that can explode and narrow alley more sophisticated weapons now being used to

kill us soldiers in iraq three years ago i understand but it is much so much more than than that they just remarkable kid who is probably good illustration of this would be the global hawk drum it's a pilotless plane it's an innovative looks a little bit like a joke a flying albino whale it's about the size of a large whale has a curtis front and flies and give me a sense of its capabilities they can take off on its own from san francisco fly on its own from san francisco all the way to tennessee using gps great circle over tennessee staying in the air for twenty four hours straight as incredible mapping camera devices a bit harder for a terrorist to run the entire state tennessee twenty four hours straight then flies back his severance is go without ever landing and

then on the west coast land itself that all happens without a pilot inside michigan i can remember i'm old enough to remember a man named gary powers some big money allows us great many won't remember i use and something calling you to he was piloting a plane that went down in the territories held captive major scandal that thing down today but they wanted gary powers are his modern day counterpart exactly these things these systems they say the really good for the three d's jobs that are dangerous and dull or dirty so dangerous of course your cinnamon a spy plane you don't have a pilot if you get shot down there's no cure diabetes or the zone bomb defusing bots like the pack bodies one that they use in iraq you don't have to send a soldier out to try and defuse the bomb the robot doesn't step or for example there's ones that if your arm searching for an enemy inside a house with a soldier that burst through the door and figure out who's an enemy who is a civilian

on a micro second with these systems dickinson the robotic and first so that's the dangerous part of it the dole part of it is can you keep your eyes open thirty hours i can't a robot can arm i would be bored looking at empty desert sands for thirty hours straight robot doesn't get bored and so there that's where the critical useful for these surveillance jobs and thirty dirty is basically the environment that they can operate in the humans can't sell anything from if it's a chemical or biological warfare environment or being able to see in the dark or see through a dust storm or on one of the system's itself on the land robot but it can also go underwater for hours at a time turn itself off and then turn itself back on several hours later and come out from under the water which is something again a person kind of not to pay down the road it's far beyond that and what this really could mean for future warfare but for david let's go back to our robot and these three was

kids one of professor from mit who came up with the idea of creating this was copying their professor their mentor no longer a teacher now and with them an end and this company named i robot after the legendary isaac asimov and anybody knows anything about science fiction those who is in what he knew about robots talk about the creation of that company and the competing company an odd and how it has three levels rapidly into this new world we live in the book is basically about trying to capture all the stores i thought it was fascinating historic period that we're living right now we have all the sinks in science fiction coming true and i thought would be really interesting to go around and gathered the stories of all the players so on one of the groups i visited was a spy robot company it makes the pack by which is the most popular robot in iraq on the

soldiers use them to diffuse bombs find ambushes things like that and also by the way makes the role of the little robot vacuum cleaner so i joke that it's the only company that sells products both to the pentagon and the linens n things that really is a practical example many people watching us as you for ellen book yet defined the brown doesn't fall downstairs doesn't knock over furniture it finds its way an undone in that will work and you know it will work and you see it worked it's not too difficult on the star i don't know can be helpful to the military and the thing that's faster and ayers member is like the model t fords the right flyers compared to what's coming in fact on the company i robot when they sold it to the military actually pulled out some of the artificial intelligence and robots

they made it down there because the military didn't want wasn't yet ready for the smarter version of that but of course now what's the military got some experience with it they said look give us more diverse more and outsourcing the sort of exponential growth upwards in the uc systems and accompanies fascinating because they are just scientists who are inspired as they put it they wanna make science fiction reality the bomb one of the founders of the company was a hit says she got into robotics watching star wars her hero growing up at the age of nine was our to do it essentially surprise that now she's running a company she wants to make that a real and om the interesting thing though is that we got a member in a what asimov when he was writing these books he was using his laws of robotics as about as well as three dollars a robotic for just a moment like science fiction but it's it gives an ethic and to the use of robots in a new science

fiction memory cannot be denied a new world or hopefully it would not be a fund and an iron rule except as you say every lord may be broken but there's talk about his first real clues interesting thing here saddam people wanna talk about the ethics of robot sellers go back to as a maserati and in fact say you know what we just ok for concerned about using more morally systems and what happens when the west has program on what asimov's laws political problem that the first is if as mr rowden as a plot device in all of his stories someone finds a way around the law is om this second is they're written in english you can just program english into software the third thing is that the laws don't work out compared to the way were one and easy systems of rally so one of course is the robot shall not harm human or building these robots for war were arming them with machine guns and missiles and so but we don't want them to harm people so that the military is going to be really excited the

program alas was lost another of course is that as mom said to know what it was was a robotics instruction from any human will do you want a robot that bin ladin can walk up to and say you know robot you were to shoot me but please turn off or reprogram yourself and say the military has no interest in programming asimov's laws there's another part of this that i think is important is that we always want to talk about the ethics of the robots when the real discussion should be about the ethics of the people behind the robots what should we built what should be repealed who should be allowed to have these systems and who shouldn't in the book one of things i found was there was a huge use of these systems by the military but also you have police forces homeland security starting to buy these products same thing on private companies purchasing and there's a private military company that was trying to lease that now there's a darker side of this came across a lot of interest among terrorist groups in utilizing robotics and up with the whole new wrinkle in the war on terrorism

create a law that jesus promised his own and to make a reader i think feel safe laws say the robot will do nothing wv and you know of course as you also point out a role modeling for our focused on being the only yes in many cases defending our true feelings and being on what's what's the international competition in the global that's one interesting questions here is that history tells us there's no such thing as a permanent first mover advantage leader in technology or in war you know we all go use wang computers anymore the same thing in war it wasn't beyond british and the french who first used the tank there was the germans who figured out how to use it better

and in robotics today the us military is deathly ahead that doesn't always have to be the case not something to be very mindful of there's forty three other countries i came across that are working on military products and they include our allies like britain there is real boss includes an interesting countries like russia china pakistan iran and one thing we have to be politically concern for is looking for how does the state of our manufacturing today in our economy as well as the state of our education particularly in science and mathematics training where does that take us in this robotics revolution or another way of thinking about it was it mean to be using more and more soldiers whose hardware is made in china and whose software is written in india the time a scary direction think of it is in the end and then the question becomes how far can a robot in the program

to defend as well as david russell you know as soon as we know a little but i think the program besides what the robots is can do is there any ugly mane and almond isaacs world here are armed when science fiction and it's not that difficult to create a robotic an almost think you can be conditioned to react to different sorts of situations which is almost thinking how far can that go how far can that go into running a defensive weapons was and often to wealthy were very much on that path right now researching artificial intelligence is just amazing and um i think interesting illustration that is that bill gates describes that we're at robots right now where we were with computers in nineteen eighty five just poised for authority on

starting to use them or more facets of life on in our daily lives to the war as well and that we will even called an artificial intelligence or robots anymore but just the part of systems now the interesting thing is that aren't already well before we've gotten two machines they're making all their own decisions we have ones are making some of their own decisions so for example in iraq on defending the green zone in baghdad is a system called the c ram counter rocket artillery mortar it looks a little bit like our to do too except if you put a six merle canon on our judy chu and it automatically shoots down incoming artillery and rocket fire that humans don't have the reaction time to shoot down an incoming missile in just a couple of seconds are judy two dozen on science and his literally tens if not hundreds of soldiers are a lot of that because of that system of the problem is if you get more more of these with a member of that um we still have murphy's law we still have things going wrong with your computer sometimes crash it's the same thing with a

computer armed with a gun and one of the people on that with it was pretty interesting was an executive at one of these robot companies and said you know these are just oops moments like what's an oops moment when it comes to robots and war and sometimes a kind of money on one time they were testing out a machine gun arm robot they're doing a demonstration of it for vips and it went squirrelly and there were just started spinning around that it wanted to spin around and the point it's gone at the reviewing stand of the eyepiece and they of course were freaked out there was no bullets in the gun so known was hurt but other times these boobs moments can be tragic like there was a training exercise in south africa last year where they were testing out automated anti aircraft cannon and in actions of pointing upwards pointed vertically and started firing and nine soldiers were killed three of our robotic friendly fire and the reason they've later

figured out was a quote software glitch for those of you just tuning in i'm talking with the singer about his new book wired for the robotics revolution and conflict in the twenty first century no you hear him to meet with senate committee on foreign relations george benson leader of that group and they like it and hit the mark it is fascinating to me because it's loaded with anecdotes others said there are moments of humor that lee both the page because there are when you're dealing with robots of them and it's fun among other things really begin to think about the potential for lethal potentiality but this is you have in the center of the book a follow all robots and i asked the avenues of the clippers all three of those up on the strain many and you could listen to take a look at odds emotive there is ongoing and tell us about a housing

bubble i know is what they call a humanoid robot it's basically designed to look like little person it's about five foot tall it's actually made by hundreds of all sorts and honda's been looking at is robotics or next area for industry into them and putting a lot of effort in an oslo can walk up stairs on his own walk downstairs right there he's actually doing a little dance at a demonstration and it's a pretty amazing technology and then there's less than there is i do the word barney would not barbie but there is another issue is hello kitty is that that is called actually consciously which is now my joke offend bach like from the austin powers' movies airs and armed she's designed after she looks exactly like a newscaster in japan while exactly like her and it's not just she's not just an electronic you could actually have a conversation

with or she speaks for different languages and if you ask her questions everything from what's the weather like to date how you're feeling she'll respond and the funny thing about art is if you ask her are you a robot she first makes a joke and she told you know i am not a robot and then she goes you know what that's a personal question but i'd rather not say you're talking on the shiites got crazy and any mention the hello kitty part of it the company that makes her the same company that makes hello kitty a little toys and also a light and there's one more you recognize that is a little robot in japan it's about this tall they use it on its both for security but also for companions arm in japan there's a whole different attitude towards robotics and hearing last area and i think in many ways it's because of their different science fiction than ours in our science fiction going back to the very

start the robot has always been a servant a slave that ultimately weiss's up and rises up against us ripples and that's true if you're talking about the stories of eye on you everything from as i'm off to the terminator movies onto metropolis one of the very first movies in now on sign fiction in japanese science fiction the robots always the hero it's the humans that are the bad guys and so in japan you see these different attitudes and that robot it's actually become very popular as a companion for elderly shirt hands that is on and it will wake them up in the morning till some about the news there was one woman who got to like her little scott walker more on that alike are welcome or so much that she put it in her will and attended her funeral and they were talking about a machine we don't do that for a lawnmower we don't do that for our toaster and the thing that's

interesting though is the same kind of psychology starting to play out for the soldiers in the field who use these robots armed soldiers given medals they give them promotions there's one scene in the book it's a true story about a soldier's robot gets blown up he takes it to the repair yard which they call the robot hospital has gotten his arms the bits and pieces of it and the soldier of the sergeant ryan of her looks and goes i can fix it it's completely destroyed the weekend a genuine and they're has tears in his eyes and says i don't want a new robot eye one scooby doo back which is what he called it because when he literally was crying over the loss of this machine this is a battle hardened soldier and it seemed sort of like a funny story but there's a reality behind it which is that that robot had saved his life multiple times and more poorly he'd experienced some of the most searing things you can as a human had gone to battle with this machine and so it makes perfect sense that he didn't want to see it as a machine

it was his body it was his team that you know as you read this book it suddenly dawned on that and it's tragic and war always is the devil is as it always is there will be a natural tendency given power will want to take the human equation out of all qualify or flesh and blood and win a dinner with machinery we know hitler has a buzz long island british listen to formally idea of the machine tool and then an immigration that is remote where

will let leaders it's a great question and one of the people i interviewed about that i thought had an important thing to say he was a former assistant secretary defense for ronald reagan and he said effectively i support these machines i like the systems because they saved american lives but i also worry about more market position of war morris he called it shock and all talk to defray discussion of the costs of war and i thought i was a really interesting quote the three packaged the impact of the scenes maybe our own body politic maybe on our own democracy because we have a lot of trends in play right now in our politics that maybe this takes to their final indian point no we don't have a draft anymore we haven't declared a war since nineteen forty one we don't buy war bonds anymore we'll pay higher taxes for war and war and now we have this trend where more and more of those are being sent into harm's way were outsourcing that two machines and so it may be taking those

already lowering bars to war may be dropping into the ground and that's something we have to be mindful of and discussions of politics is does it make it easier to go to war or does it make us less serious about the discussions around more but there's another part of this i find it's fascinating these machines unlike your eye they record and are able to share everything that they see so they don't just de link the public they reshape the public's relationship with war you can go on the internet right now and download thousands of video clips of combat footage videos of these robots in action in iraq or afghanistan and i can be a good thing because you know they built a link between the home front and the war for but the challenges members is happening in our weird world and so for many people is turning these wars into a form of entertainment they're downloading these clips for fun to watch war for fun your one that i was sent was actually an email that the video clip attached to eye of a predator

drone strike in a missile coming in and bombs bursting in air and was set to music it was set to a pop song called i just wanna fly and on for me it actually is a candid a relationship of fans to sports you know when you're watching a basketball game on tv you see a little tiny players on the screen versus the experience of watching a bass walking in person she would summon a seven foot tall really does look or even the experience of playing a bass walking yourself and so the thing is you may think you know basketball from watching tv reviewed all and that's kind of the same thing with this experience of war when it's medicated for television you know if only make it secrets parents see their kids were contaminated went along to send most underestimate and own telephone is now

realizes he's not the us on tuesday to talk to do to with a gun will have about a minute left my decision no more about it let anybody the good instead it will be playing the book says that we're as i don't i think we're entering an era where the future of war is going to be both more and more of these machines but we also can't forget the human side of this so you can forget the impact that these wars are driven by humans and all the dilemmas that come out of it and things like our politics are ethics are a lot it's all about us and so the challenge for us is are we going to face this rally are you know at the fact that it sounds like science fiction it's entertaining like science fiction to those in denial about the fact that it is battlefield reality is that with this the book is trying to do is give us a framework for talking about it in an entertaining manner would also give the some of the

tools to have those discussions will say you were writing it thank you for letting us know and thank you for coming to the cycle of you for watching the world wars on johnson in color he predicts powers in these