You Have Twenty Seconds To Comply

Robot security guards have been around for a couple of years. What role do they fill? Are we creating the robot army destined to overthrow us?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
that looks at the future and says Yoshimi, they don't
believe me, but you won't let those robots defeat me.

(00:21):
I'm Jonvin Strickler and I'm Lauren foc Obam, and I
was hoping that you would use Yoshimi battles the Pink Robots,
uh quote for this particular episode from The Flaming Lips.
I'm so pleased you recognized where that came from. I
think this is like the third time that's happened in
the entirety of the what like two or three years
we've been recording. There was I think that when I
used maps once you got that one. To be fair,

(00:44):
my musical references are different than Lauren and Joe's musical references.
That is generally true. Speaking of Joe, he is not
with us today, as you probably guessed from the fact
that he did not chime in. Joe McCormick, our third
co host, will be very soon. In the meanwhile, if
you couldn't tell, we're talking more about robots. Yeah, we

(01:05):
mentioned in our last episode that we were having a
duo robot conversation this week, and in fact, this topic
that we're going to talk about today, robot security guards,
was a suggestion from Joe himself, and so we hope
to do justice to the topic, Joe, and we look
forward to you being back in the studio very soon.
So let's talk about robots and security guards and and

(01:29):
and robot security guards. Yes, because well, okay, we've talked
many times on the show before about the amazing and
sometimes strange ways in which robots are taking over traditionally
human work, the type of human work that frankly just stinks, uh,
you know it worked that's physically hard or repetitive, or
dangerous or just boring. Yeah, and all of those things

(01:52):
are detrimental to a person's sense of self worth. They
can affect job satisfaction. Like if your job ends up
devolving into something that is repetitively dangerous, obviously, that can
have a profound effect on you stress, either physical or
emotional or both. And even if it's just dull, if
it's just boring and repetitive, then that can have an

(02:15):
effect on you as well, a big negative impact. Absolutely.
And okay, so so security why is security this type
of a field, this type of field in which we
would potentially want to get robots into. Well. Well, uh,
some some background factoids on security. According to the U. S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were about a million human

(02:37):
security guards employed around the United States as of Um.
They generally make about twelve or thirteen bucks an now
or on average patrolling and monitoring premises for suspicious behavior
and crime. And they're important because even even in this
world of ours that is increasingly rigged with security cameras everywhere,
security guards, you know, having having a physical person with

(02:59):
a physical presence can absolutely be a deterrent to crime, right,
I mean a camera might deter a criminal, it might not.
And if the criminal has decided to go ahead and
commit said crime, perhaps they've got a mask on or something,
they feel fairly confident that the camera's not going to
be able to figure out their identity. What's the camera
gonna do? Not not a whole lot, just going to

(03:21):
record like it usually does the same thing it does
every night, pinky yeah. Um. And furthermore, as we know
from every heist movie ever, cameras are really easy to trick, uh,
and very entertaining in the ways that you can come
up with to do so. So okay, um, this job
is important, but it is not an ideal job. It

(03:42):
is it is dangerous by nature to put your soft
and fleshy body in the way of a person who's
desperate or determined enough to steal or destroy property and
uh and furthermore, it can just be lonely and boring
and patrolling an area over and over again isn't really fun. Yeah,
so it's already fitting two of the three DS that

(04:02):
are often cited as work that is ideal for robots
and not for humans. That would be the dangerous and dull.
But depending upon where you're doing your security gig, you
might even hit the third D, which is dirty. Dirty
meaning not just like, oh, that place is poorly maintained.
But it may be that we're talking about security guards
for areas like where there might be hazardous waste and

(04:24):
you don't want people wandering into that place. But then
you put a human being in danger by placing that
person in close proximity with those hazardous materials. So what's
the solution. Why not put some robots there? Robots? So
here's the thing, Lauren went out and started looking at

(04:45):
this crazy, crazy company that has a security robot that's
that's been active for a couple of years now, particularly
over in the Silicon Valley area. But recently we saw
some news coming out because he has started to use
one or maybe two of these robots at one of
their lots. Right. Yeah, we were inspired by this news story,

(05:08):
and so we wanted to to look in to this
startup called night Scope, which is awesome name. Yeah. Night
is in like the stabby like armored human kind of
not not night the Holy Grail style. Yeah yeah, not
the nighttime but the dark dark thing. Yeah. Okay. So
so in this this startup in Mountain View, California, home

(05:29):
of Google, home of Google and etcetera, UM started designing
this robot that they called the K five and what
they eventually brought to market is a five ft three
inch three hundred pound shiny white doom egg. Yeah that's
a good way of describing it. It is conical, not comical,
although I guess depending on what happens to it, that

(05:51):
also could be the case. But but conical in shape
and uh three hundred pounds, I mean this is this
is not a lightweight. Yeah, I mean, I am five
foot three, y'all. For for for reference and and the idea. Like,
I'm thinking that I could easily like ride one of these,
like a like a doo meg pony, but but I
probably shouldn't. It might start making noise, but we'll talk

(06:14):
about that in the second Yeah, yeah, okay. So, so
these things are outfitted with just a whole lot of sensors.
You've got four high definition cameras in there that give
it three D sixty degree vision. You've got a license
plate recognition camera, four microphones, a thermal camera, a laser
range finder GPS, and a weather sensor um or or

(06:35):
an environment sensor really you should say that can monitor
the temperature, the barometric pressure, and carbon dioxide levels in
the area. So what all of this does is help
it find its way around, watch any humans that are
in the area, detect fires very important, uh huh um,
watch for license plates for potential troublemakers like a recently

(06:56):
fired employees or like a car that seems to be
casing the joint something like that, and etcetera. Um it
also has Wi Fi capacity so that it can communicate
with fellow security bots and also with human personnel. Who
are either remote or on the site, but not you know,
like poking it right, not right, not not walking, not
literally walking step by step with the robot um for furthermore,

(07:18):
like like room bas they know when they're running out
of juice and can go head back over to their
recharge station. Now was interesting to me, beyond the technology here,
which is already impressive, this idea, you know, it seems
fairly comprehensive for your basic uh guarding type of duties.
I mean you're talking about some surveillance, some recording patrolling.

(07:40):
Is that nine scopes come up with a clever means
for generating revenue. They're not like, obviously these robots have
to be mega super expensive, but they're not. They're not
just saying, hey, come look at our catalog and you
see this dollar robot. How many would you like to order? Yeah? No,
they they have a rental business model. So uh so

(08:03):
the official company line and how much they cost to
rent is that you should totally speak with a sales
representative to find out a plan that works best for you.
But but news reports have listed it at about seven
dollars per robot per hour, or about sixty dollars a
year for seven surveillance. Right, So if you think, uh,

(08:23):
seven dollars per hour for a robot, like that's probably
less than what you would pay a human person, and
in fact, according to averages, it is. So in that case,
you've got night Scope having a sales pitch saying, well,
if if your needs don't require an actual human being
to be there all the time, all the time, then

(08:46):
perhaps this robot would be a way that not only
could you maintain security at your space, but you could
save money in the process. Yeah, and uh and and
under under this kind of concept, they are in use
by a few tech companies around the Silicon Valley area,
like like qual Common and Uber we mentioned, and they
were certainly in use for a demonstration at Microsoft. I'm

(09:07):
not sure if they actually Yeah. Well, what's interesting to
me is when I started doing research on this, I
keep coming up with articles from different time periods, like
two years apart. They were like and every time it
was like people had just discovered them right right, and
I had known I had only seen them right now.
So and I read a lot about robot I'm like,

(09:28):
how did I miss this? They're glorious, to be fair,
even people in Silicon Valley have missed it because every
time there's another report about these robots being put in
place by someone, it's like, this is amazing, it's brand new,
that happened two years ago. There's a hashtag on Instagram.
I don't anyway, Yeah, that is hashtag security robot. By

(09:49):
the way, if you'd like to look it up and
see some pictures and videos of it interacting with humans. Um,
so let's say that you rent a few of these.
How do you set it up? How does it know
where to patrol? Well, you lead it around with a
wireless controller to help it build out a basic map
of its patrol roots. That makes sense because it sounds adorable.
It wouldn't magically have the information stored in its data banks.

(10:13):
It has to learn clearly, So yeah, it's it's kind
of like taking an employee on a tour, right exactly,
just your giant metal employee. Well, and the other neat
thing is because it's a machine, it doesn't forget unless
its memory gets corrupted, so exactly will always remember where
everything is. Yeah, and so, and by observing its surroundings,
it starts to learn, you know, where it can and

(10:34):
cannot roll because it is a rolling machine, walking machine.
So you can defeat the security robot by with a
short curb or yeah, exactly, just a just a slight ledge.
It's it's kind of got the classic dollic uh weakness.
Although I know, I know that today they can fly,

(10:58):
but back in the day they couldn't know. And and
the first time that a Dollek said elevate and went
up some stairs, like, I was terrified. I was genuinely upset.
Spoiler alert for first season of Dr Who reboot season nine.
I guess of the technically, but whatever at any rate. Um, yeah,
so so you so you lead it around to to

(11:19):
show it where it can cannot go. It will start
building up its own personal database of its surroundings there.
And furthermore, you can program in GPS coordinates to give
it like an outline of like like a fence almost. Yeah,
so it's like it's a very invisible fence that the
robots not going to go beyond. All right, So all right,
I've decided to rent my security my RoboCop and and

(11:42):
he says, your move, creep. No wait, no, I put him.
I put him out there, uh, patrolling the area that
we have determined. Let's say that it detects something hinky
is going on. What happens next? Not a hinky thing
anything but a hanky thing. Um, it phones home, and
by home, I mean whatever humans are on security team

(12:02):
at that current moment um. You can have an alert
different people during different shifts, and anyone who gets an
alert can tune into a live stream of what the
boat is seeing and hearing. Okay, So in other words,
you whether it's you've got a team that's on site,
but they are maybe they're overseeing the entire area. Like
if you're talking about a really big area, you might
have multiple robots to like on different floors of a

(12:24):
building for example. Oh absolutely, Or you might even have
I imagine like a like a larger security call center
that that's servicing many different robots over different businesses. Right,
that would make sense, and you would have certain teams
assigned to specific robots. Therefore you would get that notification.
So all right, let's say that, uh, we've got the
security robot. Clearly, this is something that's meant to interact

(12:48):
with human beings, whether it's someone that needs help or
it's someone who's doing something they shouldn't be doing so,
how how does the robot actually perform those interactions. Does
it just like say like please don't do that? Well, yeah, yeah,
because because on on the ground level, you know, like
it's it's going to phone home if it senses a problem.

(13:10):
But um, but it's it's the humans in the in
the security team that are going to actually choose what
what happens, like basically the robot disengages. Essentially, the robot
is programmed to not interact with humans. Um, I mean
it's it's which is a strange feature because and I
think that the team put really quite a lot of

(13:30):
research and development into the physical design and the response
design of this robot um too, to to make it
this object that can interact when it has to. But
that really isn't meant to It's not it's not interfering
with someone. It's not it's not intimidating someone who is

(13:51):
perhaps just they're under normal circumstances or perhaps they need
help and they're coming to the robot to get help.
And because the robot actually can can communicate back to yeah,
there's there's a button for that. If you need help,
you can push a button. It's essentially an emergency call button. Yeah, exactly.
So you don't want to design your robot to look like,
you know, like the Queens and aren't Killbot two thousand

(14:12):
with spinning saw blades all over. Yeah. Yeah, You're not
going to go up to that kind of robot for help.
I mean also, you gotta run from that robot screaming help. Yes. Furthermore,
if if your if your kid wanders up to it,
that's it's bad time. It's probably you don't want so.
So you know, you wanted to make it intimidating enough
to deter crime, but you don't want to make it unfriendly,

(14:34):
cute enough that it doesn't scare people, but not so
cute that people are twisted, lee willing in, or motivated
to mess with it, as we have seen before in
studies of human robot interaction. Uh remember that that hitchhiking robot,
the one that successfully got all the way across Canada
and then maybe two days into the United States before

(14:55):
it was stolen and disassembled. Good, good job, Pennsylvania. That
tells you so much about the different cultures of Canada
and the United States. Or yeah, okay. There was also
a study in Japan of how people would interact with
a robot that was designed to to help the elderly

(15:15):
shop Yeah, good good robot. Kids messed with it even
and perhaps because it was saying things like somebody helped
me or ouch that hurts. But I imagine in Japanese
there is something tragically comical about a robot crying out
saying somebody helped me, because you know, it's not really

(15:36):
feeling anything. Yeah, it's not in pain, and that kind
of makes it funny, and that kind of makes you
want to mess with it more. I mean, I'm a softie,
so I have a feeling that I would totally feel
empathy for such a machine, but I can also see
the perverse appeal of messing with it further. Right, Yeah,
there's there's really interesting and probably terrible psycho oology at

(16:01):
work here. Um So, so the team, it seems like
what was aiming to make the K five like clearly
inhuman like, like clearly a a robot and not attempting
to to tug on your heart strings. Right, it doesn't
have big puppy dog eyes no no, no, no like that. Yeah,
but also obviously autonomous and obviously intelligent. Um So, if

(16:25):
it's approached by a human person, it will turn turn
to watch you with all of its big front sensors
because it kind of kind of has a front in
the back. Um, if you corner it, it will stop moving.
Just I'm pretty boring anyway, Why would you want to
mess with me? I pounds? Where are you gonna come on?
What are you gonna do? Stop? Um? If you keep
it cornered or if you start poking at it, it

(16:47):
will chirp at you and and also phone home like
like a low level alert like hey, And then you
can actually have a person say something like hey, knock
it off, we can see you. Yeah. Yeah, and if
you if you try to mess with it, it'll sound
an actual alarm like like not like a friendly like hey,

(17:07):
more like a yeah, more like more like imagine the
worst fire alarm you've heard at the loudest level, something
akin to that, because I have seen uh it described
as ear piercing Yes, uh so so yeah and and
and then then that will send like an official alert
to to the team managing it, and uh and the

(17:30):
team managing it can I'm pretty sure, like I like
I wasn't clear, but but it sounds like you think
that this is the case that the team can like
speak to you through the robot. I mean, if you
have if you have a help button, I would imagine
you have to have some sort of communication back or else.
All I would do is have like an elevated sense
of this button is doing nothing and we just beak

(17:51):
behind the curtain. Laurenen Lauren wrote, and I recorded an
episode of brain Stuff about placebo buttons. That's one case
where you don't want a placebo button. No, No, that's
emerge as they call. You want a real effective button. Yeah,
that would be very, very upsetting. So my guess is,
while I didn't see anything specifically, uh yeah, common sense

(18:11):
would dictate there has to be some sort of speaker
through which people could could talk. And I would imagine
that you would that would become useful both in a
security feature where you say, hi, we're you're under surveillance,
don't do that, go away, or we we heard you
were sending police or ambulance or whatever the emergency might

(18:32):
be to your location right now, and we'll stay on
the phone with you that kind of stuff. Yeah. Um,
but but there's also a list of things that will
will absolutely not do. Yeah, it won't physically interact with
a person. It's not gonna it's not gonna roll up
and be like, hey, back off, dude. I likely did
the universal fronting like pull me back, coming back. Yeah,

(18:55):
that's not going to do that. Um. The closest you
will get to any sort of physical interaction is that alarm,
which is powerful enough for you to perhaps and sound
is technically a physical phenomenon. So I guess by then
you could say that's how it gets physical with you.
But it doesn't like like, it doesn't have a little
zapper that comes out allah r two D two. No,

(19:16):
it's not weaponized in any way. It's it's not it's
not more about that one in just a moment. It's
not going to mess with you back. Um. And I'm
delighted by by the existence of this thing, a little
bit creeped out. Um. You know, the fact that it
can look me right in my beady eyes. You know,
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. I
also the fact that they one of the owners of

(19:37):
the company or one of the creators of the robot,
in one interview, said like it's the absolute minimum height
that it could be in order to Um, to look
around a parking lot, and I was like, absolute minimum.
You can't be any shorter, Lauren, you will be lost
in every parking lot. Um. Well, one of the things

(19:57):
that makes me think about is that, Well, on the
one hand, and like you get into the discussion about, yes,
this is taking a job that is not the greatest
job for a human being, But on the other hand,
you're like, well, there are human beings who are depending
upon jobs like these in order to make a living.
So there's there's two sides of that point. You would
hope to be able to come up with a means,
and it's beyond the scope of nights scope. It's beyond

(20:20):
their scope to come up with the means, But you
would hope you could come up with some way of
getting those people who would otherwise be be out of
a job into a different line of work or some
other related field so that they could continue to make
a living and contribute to society while also not being
put in physical harm or in a situation that's going

(20:40):
to be soul sapping because it's so dull and repetitive.
The robot is not going to care, so so it's
up to us to care. Yeah, I also I like
the idea of a robot being able to to record everything,
uh perfectly, like with video and audio. Uh. Once upon
a time, Laren, before I worked at How Stuff Works,

(21:02):
by about ten years, I had attempt job working for
a security a private security firm. My job was to
transcribe security officer reports, handwritten reports, so that they could
be filed in the computer system. And that was not
the best or most rewarding job I've ever had. The

(21:24):
people who were working there were perfectly earnest and hard working,
and I give all the credit to them. They were
not writers, and sometimes deciphering what they were writing, not
just like physically deciphering what a word was, but trying
to figure out what they've meant. Um, I'll have to
tell you the story of Cookie after this podcast. I

(21:47):
tell it now, but it would be such a huge
tangent that it would be a waste of time, so
I'll tell you afterwards. But but you wouldn't have to
worry about that because the robot would be recording everything.
So that of data and having a cont tenual stream
of that data at a certain point becomes a little
bit of a big data problem. Um, But it's probably
a good problem that many companies would love to have, well,

(22:09):
especially if you have to pursue a legal claim against someone,
because you're not relying upon uh eyewitness account or a
security person's account of what happened. For a stationary camera's
footage right where you might not have a good view,
you've got a three degree view, a mobile view, because
they can move to wherever the problem is or somewhere

(22:29):
where has a better line of sight of where a
problem might be and have a recording of that thing
that is incredibly valuable, well beyond like an eyewitness account,
which we know is not entirely or even largely reliable
or scientifically. Yeah. Absolutely, um. But but this, this night
Scope K five is not the only security bot out there. No,

(22:51):
I found a couple of others. There's the Avatar three
security robot from Robotex. It's t e X for the
into that word. But it's twenty four by fifteen point
inches by six point fourteen inches, which is about sixty
two by thirty nine by fifteen point six centimeters, so
a little bit more than two ft long, a little

(23:13):
bit more than a foot tall, and bigger than a
bread box half Yeah, yeah, and uh it looks like
a like a little tread robot, Like it's got treads
to propel it, so don't we Well, it's got wheels,
but wheels to turn the tread like so to treads
kind of like a tank. It's got a little kind
of glass dome on the top that has all the
cameras and sensors on it, and a pull for an

(23:36):
antenna to connect to WiFi. This one is under manual control.
It's not intended to be autonomous, but it would allow
someone to patrol an area without having to leave their
they're nice air conditioned security room, for example. Oh yeah,
you're to check out a situation that could potentially be dangerous. Yeah,
if it's if it's something where, you know, maybe someone

(23:58):
spotted a box and you're like, well, let's get a
closer look before we call in any authorities. Yeah, because
it may just be that, oh, someone accidentally set their
stuff down while loading things into a car and then
drop off for getting it. Or it could be that
it's clearly a package of ramen. Yeah, then let's not
let's call the swat team. Uh. So it's a little different,

(24:19):
it's not it's not like the K five and that's
the K Fi've been semi autonomous, mostly autonomous, really, But
then you have the a mott a n bot from China. Now,
this one is a little shorter and and and about
half the weight of the K five. It's one point
five meters tall, which is about five ft and ways
seventy eights are about a hundred seventy two pounds. It's

(24:42):
also cone shaped. In fact, it looks a lot like
the K five, to the point where I start to
wonder if this is one of those cases where one
person maybe possibly copied down an idea of someone else had.
It could very well be that these are parallel forms
of development that have nothing in connection with each other.
Happens frequently remarkably similar designs. However, um to the point

(25:04):
where when I looked at the first picture, I thought, well,
why do they have a picture of the K five
on here? And then I was like, wait, that's not
the K five. That's central and but um so uh.
It is meant to patrol areas prone to civil unrest,
according to Newsweek, at any rate, and it is autonomous,
and that it can patrol an area, has obstacle avoidance technology,

(25:28):
and it is able to go back to like a
recharging point in charge itself. But it is also quote
equipped with weapons, although to be fair, those weapons must
be manually operated by someone. So it's not like the
robot just decides to hit you. Yeah, that's that's a
much better option. Someone controlling the robot has decided to
hit I guess, depending upon who's controlling the robot. The weapon,

(25:50):
by the way, is an electrically charged right controlled tools,
so essentially like a stun gun or a cattle prod
something along those lines. So it is like the zapper
from R two D two popping out and giving someone
a jolt of electricity. But if that ever does happen
to you, if you are ever zapped by an and bot,
it's because somebody controlling it doesn't like you or doesn't

(26:13):
like what you're doing. It's not because the robot didn't. Yeah,
unless the robots malfunctioning in some way. If you see
an and butt in China and there's a little protrusion
extending from it and sparks are coming off, just walk
the other way, yeah, don't. You don't need to go
in that direction anymore. There are other places they're China
is big there's a lot of stuff to see. Yeah,

(26:35):
so anyway, um, I thought that was interesting. But there
are of course tons of robots that sort of fall
into the spectrum of security. But but most of them
are really not meant to be security robots. They are
robots that have features on them that can be part
of security system. Typically we're talking about cameras, so vacuum

(26:57):
robots that happen to have a camera on them. While
they don't necessarily need the camera for doing the vacuum job,
but it allows you to go through an app and
see what's going on in your house while the vacuum
robot is active and it acts as sort of a
surveillance camera. So really it's it's not so much a
security robot. It's more like just a webcam. Well it's
it's a robot that does Yeah, it's it's on the

(27:21):
it's on the light end. It's in the spectrum. But
this is just where we are. Now, where are we going?
This is forward thinking think about the future. Uh yeah, well,
I mean okay, like we were saying earlier, this this
could potentially if we if we follow this out into
having full fledged security robots, we we were gonna have

(27:44):
to deal with a with a with a job deficiency
UM and and Night Scope says themselves that that robots
like the K five are not intended to replace human
security guards certainly not yet UM, but rather to keep
them out of harms away as much as possible, and
to arm them with better ADUTA about the environment that
they're guarding. But but what if we do create robots

(28:06):
that are sufficient enough to replace replace HUM human staff
Like they they have the features that will allow them
to do a security guards job without the need for
the team team right right now, nothing to to make
the decisions or to come out and zap people themselves.
It would be tough, uh tough for many many reasons.

(28:28):
One of the big ones that we've said it other episodes.
There's some things that humans can do really well, like
naturally well we you learn how to do it as
a kid and you do it for the rest of
your life, and robots are not good at those things. So,
for example, the K five isn't really great at staying
upright on uneven ground. There was one or one article

(28:49):
I read where they talked about as they were chatting
with a representative in the background, they saw a K
five get too close to the edge of like a
curb and tilt over, and it doesn't have arms. It
can't push itself back out. It can't. Yeah, so then
you have to pick up a three pound robot and
put it back on its base. Um, not necessarily easy

(29:09):
to do. And the Darbo robot challenge that we talked
about in a previous episode, Yeah, the best people in
the world working on robots that can do a multitude
of tasks are still pretty crap at making robots that
can walk around. Yeah, like that. It's hard to make
a robot that can climb stairs or open a door

(29:30):
and step through things that that most people find you know,
at least, if if not effortless, at least not so challenging.
It's impossible, right, but there are robots that literally like
you can watch that that video clip of the robot
fails of the Darba challenge, and usually it's set to
yakety sax, which makes hilarious and also sad at the

(29:53):
same time. But it's it's crazy to see the little
things that robots just find incredibly challenge JNG. And you
start when you start to think about you realize, yeah,
replicating what humans can do creating a machine that can
operate within a human world, a world that we have shaped,
that that we able bodied more or less average sized

(30:14):
humans have shaped. Right, It is not easy to do that. Um.
So Also we have to point out security guards would
likely need at minimum the basic skills of a typical,
able bodied human, and maybe more than what just a
typical person would be capable of doing, depending upon the
type of security guard and the type of gig right,
and and plus in addition to that, if you don't

(30:36):
have that team of people that it can phone home
to in order to make decisions for it, you need
the capacity to autonomously decide when, when someone's a threat,
how much of a threat they are, and then how
to stop them. Um. Computers only just learned how to
identify cats. Yeah, I'm not sure how long it's going
to take us to get to a design of of

(30:58):
that level of decision makeing and intelligence until I can
encounter a robot that not only knows what what cats are,
but can tell you don't go see the show cats,
it's really not that great, and furthermore, don't scritch its
belly immediately. Cats. Yeah, there are a lot of like
a lot of subtle things. I think exactly that if

(31:21):
a robot isn't able to tell me what those are,
I'm not going to trust it to be guarding something
of supreme importance, especially in a way that is at
least in a way that's not going to hurt somebody, Right,
which brings us to the next point, the idea of
security guards occasionally have to use some form of force

(31:42):
in order to protect a person or protect property. Yeah. Yeah,
we would be talking about designing a robot to physically
incapacitate humans, and instinctively that seems bad. Yeah, I mean
I mean at the very least, like potentially hazardous and litigious. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean, like that goes back to our discussion from

(32:05):
European Union and liability. Who's liable? Well, if you've got
a security robot zapping people, I mean, even if they've
done something wrong, there's there's some liability issues there, and
it does seem to go against those laws of robotics
we talked about in our last episode do not harm humans. Yeah,
that's a big one. It's right, there's number one. In
fact number one that the rest of them are kind

(32:26):
of all based on number one. So yeah, and there
exactly so. And again these are laws that robots are
born with. But these are the sort of ideas we've
had of saying, if we're going to go down the
road of building robots, we probably want to make sure
they're not going to hurt us. That seems like a
pretty wise thing to build into them. Yeah, and I

(32:49):
do think that that part of that, that intrinsic instinctive
sense that we have about creating robots that could hurt
people is based in science fiction. Um, is based in
all of the fun exploding movies that we see where
all Arnold Schwarzenegger has a metal skeleton and Any's stomping
around and terrifying the living daylights out of everyone and

(33:13):
all of that, all of that kind of stuff that
that is so far away from being any kind of reality.
Even if you do create a security robot that can
zat people, UM, that's that that robot is not are Schwartzenegger. Uh,
it probably doesn't even have an Austrian accent. I can't
I can't be positive. I don't know. I don't know
what they're up to in China. Kind of want them

(33:33):
all to have it now. But but yeah, but you know,
it's the idea of a robot running a muck is
pretty pretty unlikely. Yeah, really, yeah, I mean it's yeah,
we we have a ways to go before that that
becomes before Paul Paul McCartney butt is a reality. Yeah yeah,

(33:55):
but okay, so I don't know, you know, it's like,
if you're really just designing something like this to prevent crime,
which is bad. Crime is bad. And if and if
it's a robot that's freely good at making decisions and
it definitely super never kills or maims anyone accidentally or

(34:15):
on purpose, those would both be that would also fall
into the realm of bad. Um. If all of that
is true, then then it would be a good thing
to have a security robot. Right, So we just need
a robot that can have like a whole bunch of
arms and it just very gently hugs the criminal and
holds the criminal there like they're all all arms are soft,

(34:39):
so as the criminal is struggling to get away, he
or she is not actually hurting him or herself and
yet can't get away because robot also weighs like seven pounds,
just like just just a giant panda robot. Is what
I'm imagining that kid that can hug a criminal into submission. Yes,

(35:01):
I approve of this plan. I will pitch this series
to sci Fi call us. Yeah, if we can get
this on, we can get this on sci Fi. I
think we got a future in uh in science fiction programming. No, no,
I mean if if we can create this, this panda security,
but you know, it's it's it means fewer humans being

(35:23):
exposed to risky situations, which is always kind of one
of those like like golden standards of how robots will
do us good in the incredible future. Yeah, so there's
definitely a place for it. The question is to what
extent I think. I think the K five is a
great implementation of this because it is taking what appears

(35:44):
to be a very responsible approach to incorporating robots into
the realm of of security, um without causing at least
initially anyway, at least at least in no obvious way
risk or danger. Yeah. So, uh, I can't wait to

(36:04):
revisit this topic in like ten years and talk about
remember our innocent days when the robots were being friendly
and when we thought that panda robots were a great plan.
The other day I went and by myself a Soil
and Green bar and it was a little slow reaching
for my money, and um, well that's why I got
the cybernetic leg. Now coming up next, we're gonna talk

(36:28):
about the future Soiler Green. This episode brought to you
by soil It. No, I mean that's I'm hoping that's
not going to be the way this show isn't ten
years but we'll find out. Um, maybe thought that would
be a really interesting accent for you to spontaneously developed. Well,
it may be one of those that's mandated by our
robotic rewards. Like Jonathan, you have to have a weird

(36:49):
cartoonish accent for the rest of your life, at least
when you're on microphone. Um. Alright, So guys, if you
have any comments about this episode, or robots in general,
or even just some other topic that you want to know,
like what is that going to be like in the future,
right to us. Let us know what you think we
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(37:10):
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(37:32):
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