The Human Behavior Podcast
The Human Behavior Podcast helps professionals see more, assume less, and make better decisions when the stakes are high. Human behavior experts Greg Williams and Brian Marren examine the patterns behind what people say and do, using Human Behavior Pattern Recognition & Analysis to build clearer thinking, better judgment, and more effective communication.
The Human Behavior Podcast
Better Tools, Better Judgment?
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Better tools. More information. But are we making better decisions?
An alert tells you a vehicle may be stolen. What do you actually know, and what have you already started assuming?
This week on The Human Behavior Podcast, Brian Marren and Greg Williams use Flock cameras and automated license plate readers to examine how technology shapes human judgment. They discuss how a machine-generated alert can become an accepted explanation, why conflicting evidence gets overlooked, and what happens when people rely on technology before developing the skills to question it.
The conversation also tackles privacy, surveillance, mistakes, and accountability: Who can access the information, how is it used, and what happens when someone misuses it?
These questions extend to AI, GPS, and the tools we use every day.
Use technology to see more. Don’t let it give you permission to think less.
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Why Screens Feel Like Truth
SPEAKER_01Hello everyone and welcome to the Human Behavior Podcast. This week, Greg and I are talking about flock cameras and automated license plate readers, but there's a much bigger conversation here. Because whether it's a camera flagging a vehicle or your GPS telling you where to turn, that information influences what you believe and what you do next. When it shows up on a screen, it's pretty easy to go, okay, that must be right. So we get into what happens when that information is wrong, how relying on these tools changes our skills, and who's accountable for the decisions that follow. There are real benefits to this technology, but we still have to question what it's telling us. Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And don't forget to check out our Patreon channel for additional content. Enjoy the podcast, please consider leaving us a review and more importantly, sharing it with a friend. Thank you for your time. And remember, training changes behavior. All right, and we're live, Greg. Hello, everyone, and thanks for tuning in. Excited uh for this conversation today. Uh, we've got a bunch to talk about when it comes to different technologies that people use. Specifically, where we are going to be talking about Flock and the automatic license plate readers, but that's not really there's a larger conversation here with it. And the reason why we're only using Flock is because it's the first one of these technologies in a sense that has a household name now. A lot of them didn't. But this isn't, this is what we're what we're getting into is about you know tools and human decision-making cycle and how these things influence how we behave and how we think and then how we act, and then you know, just how to talk about these technologies, right? They're all getting cheaper, they're getting rapidly adopted, but there's a whole bunch of fun issues in this one too, because not only is this about performance and human behavior and technology and integration, right? There's there's you know, civil liberties, there's uh uh uh safety and security versus uh you know what what we think is private and what we shouldn't have and and and mass surveillance and government tracking and digital, I mean, and digital footprints. So there's so much in here. And you know, we were just talking about this before we started, Greg. A lot of people just kind of throw out these these wild, bold claims, or they just want to be salacious or get clicks, and it's like that it's not, it doesn't help the conversation, and and it's really kind of you know, they're they're they're not really nuanced at all. They're they're they're overly simplified. And so I think this is a good topic that uh that one there's a there's a bunch of uh examples in here that we brought up kind of from from people we know or our listeners or folks that are out there. So we're gonna go ahead and jump into it today.
Sponsor Transparency And New Website
SPEAKER_01And uh, oh, I did want to mention too up front for everyone who has not been to the new Arcadia Cognerati website, you can find the links in the episode details. Arcadia Cognarati is our sponsor, Greg. They're the one that paid for this podcast. Full transparency for those just tuning in for the first time. That's our company. But but the there's a cool uh podcast page that has a search function. So for different, like if you're looking for specific topics or different things, it's all in there and it's because it's got the transcripts that it can access and everything. So check out the uh the podcast website and and see our new website and our new brand.
SPEAKER_00It's a really cool brand. It's a really cool site. It's so easy to navigate, even I can look around on it. I yeah.
SPEAKER_01So we've gotten some great feedback on that. So for those of you who have been following us for a while, please check it out. You'll you'll enjoy the uh the new branding and logo stuff. So shout out Clark for uh for nailing that one. But all right, so here's the thing, Greg. We're talking about this. What happens you know when machine-generated information enters a human decision-making system,
Flock Cameras And Decision Cycles
SPEAKER_01being that and begins influencing what people notice, what they believe, and what they do. And so, like I said, Flock is the current example, but this is a larger discussion applies to all ALPR, which is automatic license plate readers, which is what Flock is, AI, GPS, automation, predictive systems, robotics, autonomous vehicles, medical decision support systems. Like there's a lot of stuff that we adopt. And and so, you know, in general, we would say that technology should increase the capability of the operator without replacing the judgment skill or accountability of the operator, because that's the first thing that that kind of starts to happen is that you know, it becomes something that a technology that supports a person to now it's just the people supporting the technology. And the companies that build this stuff, you know, maybe they're really good at they spend a lot of money and research into like user interface and how people interact with it, but but it's not operational. It's literally how you use the system at a, you know, like hey, the the this is how the system works. Here's where you click, here's where you enter the information. It's not really like, okay, but that's great. I know how to use this thing, but how do I go operationalize this? How do I go use this in real environments? And not enough time is is ever spent in that area. So while we're talking about Flock. So this technology has existed for years. So, Greg, why does Flock suddenly seem to be part of this public conversation? Why is it a household name now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, because of the speed of information, first of all, because it wouldn't have made multiple newspaper articles or magazine articles back in the day, right? But anytime machine-generated information enters a human decision-making system, it fundamentally alters the cognitive mechanisms that dictate perception, belief, and action. And that disrupts how we normally construct baselines, evaluate things like risk, process environmental reality, and that scares people. I'll give you an example. Not too long ago, they came up with a fancy new thing called a laser rangefinder. And first it was only for military applications. Then every golfer, hunter, sniper used them, right? And now it's common. So you're not going to see an article about it. But your argument at the very beginning that technology should increase the capability of the operator without replacing the judgment. Well, what does the laser range finder do? You don't notice you don't have it until you don't have it. Because listen, for a hunter, it's great because you take a more ethical shot. Uphill, downhill, at distance, you know, in in rocky terrain, you can get fooled on how far that animal is and injure an animal. Same thing with the sniper. You'll be more lethal if you know exactly the dope on that scope, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then we come to golfing. Uh yeah. But now I'm taking out my judgment and I'm impacting my skill, and it becomes a competition. So that became the argument. Not about we could ethically kill animals or people at a greater distance, but it was, hey, you're cheating if you use that to determine distances and all this other stuff. So what's different now? Well, again, machine-generated information, a human has to process that information, and it's cognitively different. It doesn't come at us the same way because there's no problem solving. See, the the sense making the decision making is inhibited.
SPEAKER_01So to great example too, especially with the laser rangefinder, because it's different in all those contexts, right? And then now you're, I mean, that that's a so it I I I like that, you know, the the hunter sniper versus the golfer is a good example because it's a it has a different impact. So with with these the those flock camera systems, right? They didn't invent the idea of you know automated license plate recognition. They didn't come up with that. But obviously, you know, what's changed is sort of the scale, the accessibility of it, the effects, the visibility, the public awareness, right? It's now this recognizable name and and technology and kind of makes for a useful case study for a much larger question about technology adoption. So one of the things that it has is like, you know, people get into different, you know, benefits and and and and and you know, negatives of it, but like what you know, you you just gave your example of the golf and the versus the sniper. So sort of what should be the relationship between the operator and the technology? Because we were just at the National Tactical
Attentional Hijacking And Skill Erosion
SPEAKER_01Officers Association conference, right? And had met some amazing folks down there. And I spoke with he was he attended our presentation, a very highly experienced state trooper, and he specializes in interdiction. And so his concern was not that flock doesn't work or that there aren't benefits, right? He his big concern is that these younger troopers were relying on this technology instead of developing the traditional, you know, interdiction skills that he spent years learning and he teaches, right? He he teaches uh for a number of different places, but so he saw it as a different, like obviously the generational gap and how it changes their behavior, it changes their level of competence. So what do you think he was recognizing there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so again, tech alters what people notice. So in human behavior pattern recognition analysis, that's called attentional hijacking. You can only attend to so many things at one time. You can only use 100% of your attention, right? So when something takes over a big part of my essay, my situational awareness, I have to surrender part of my pattern matching and part of my sense-making skills. So we don't need to recognize patterns. We don't need to make sense of incoming stimuli because this external modem, this external media, the synthetic media, inputs a template straight into our brain. And Brian, that takes out a critical step. And once we take out that critical step, the first time, not so much of a bother. The first five times, not so much. But on seventh, your brain goes, go on, and now we're fucked. Pardon my language, but because what happens is we don't have that ability anymore. And if we didn't have it with us, we're not going to be able to create it. In the old days, there used to be a hot sheet, and the hot sheet was on the visor of every patrol car. And you reddit it on duty and you did a pass down log with it. And on that hot sheet was any important felony warrants and important stolen vehicles that you might run into, right? And it was short and it was right to the point. You had to look, Brian. You had to take that and read it and make sense of it and then actively look for it. And that's what Pruma's talking about. I apologize for name dropping them, but but that's what's lacking in those troopers and those officers that get to rely on the system.
SPEAKER_01So in this is let's let's dive into that a little bit because um this is a really good way of explaining how this technology really affects us in the moment. So this is a good one where this, I think he was from Colorado that was what I was talking to at this conference. Yeah. And so, you know, in and what he's talking about is this is you just let's say that normal position, you know, uh you're doing that interdiction job and you're watching and you're observing and you're reading baselines and you're looking for anomalies and you're seeing these incongruent signals, right? So you're developing this. But then what happens is, you know, your your brain is creating an explanatory storyline. It's saying, here's what I think it likely is, but uh, you know what? I have to do some math first, right? I gotta check things, I have to establish reasonable suspicion, then I have to do this, and it has to meet certain criteria. I have to be this is all happening in in nanoseconds, right? Unconsciously. And I I give the the the exam, and then and then you act on that story. So what I'm saying is like you're viewing this, you know, situation, you've created this explanatory story on your line, and then you make your decisions based on that story. And so it's not unlike, you know, if you're driving down, you know, a state road, rural area, and then all of a sudden, you know, you're doing 50 miles an hour, then all of a sudden up ahead you see a deer poke its head, you know, out of the tree line towards the road, you're gonna start walking towards the road, and you immediately you might lock up the brakes, you'll slow down, whatever. And so what you're doing is you're not saying, oh my god, deer hit the brakes. Your brain has already said, that deer looks like it's gonna cross the road. And if it crosses the road, I won't stop in time and it's gonna destroy my vehicle, and I'm gonna kill that deer, and I could get hurt, and so I'm going to slow down. So, so that's what it actually did. So when now I replace that sense making part that happens in nanoseconds with I'm looking at a screen, it's giving me the story. So it's alright, and so my brain goes, oh, okay, that's the story. And so it locks in on that as if this is a, you know, it's like it has a higher level of authority, or or there's there's more robustness in this story than something I created in my head from my own observations. And that's not always true, right? So so our brain takes that as this like, oh, okay, it's a stolen vehicle. I know. Well, if I had to do that on my own, there would still be some doubt, right? If I'm watching the situation, I go, man, it it looks like a description of one that I know was stolen. The guy's driving it similar to I've seen others, like there's still an element of I need to prove this first, or I need to be able to articulate this before I make a decision. When it pops up on a screen, it gives me, we go, well, this is the machine they gave me. This is what they told me to use. This is what it says, so I'm acting on it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And so go ahead. Yeah. It's great. So, so the idea of your story about the deer and the process that humans go through in cognition is exactly right. The problem is, is if a machine is doing that for you and for your car to avoid that danger, it's giving you a story and your brain will read that story and start accepting that data even if it's not true, even if it's wrong or flawed. That's where the the rub is. So the reason I mentioned Prim, Prim does interdiction and training for Western State. The guy that we were talking to, Brian, great guy, he's retiring in just a couple of months, does interdiction for Colorado State Patrol. We've had interdict folks from FDLE, a lot of them come up because these skills help them, right? And and so the skill that you're talking about, and I read a great book once, folks, get your hands on a book and read it once in a while. I read a great book, and inside of it, it talks about the salience effect. And I'm like, well, what does that mean? Well, our brains inherently respond to the most salient, the most attention-getting cue in our environment. So machine-generated feeds hijack our cognitive process and cause us to miss the subtle critical ground truth anomalies that make us want to pull over that vehicle, that make that vehicle interesting, that make us want to develop reasonable suspicion because it's done for us. It's made for us. That's why we get fat, because instead of hunting and producing our own food, we go and open something and eat it, right? So then we eat all the shit that's in it, all the sugar and the fat grams and everything else. We don't think about it, right? I would say always be suspicious of machine-generated probable cause because you weren't there. You didn't do the work, you didn't have a robust, fidelity-filled uh decision-making process that started with sense making and problem solving. So continuous electronic comms are bombarding us. And that'll lead to the erosion of sensory skills over time. Now, somebody's gonna argue with me and they're gonna go, yeah, but that may take months or years. Yeah. Can a cop avoid that? No. And so therefore, you buy it when you buy that gear. It dampens your micro observation abilities. It tells you don't worry about the thing on the left or the thing on the right. This is more important. How many times are you gonna fight with your brain? Cognition has kept us along alive this long, right? And now all of a sudden you're saying, well, yeah, it's my same argument with AI. I I get arguing with AI to write a better story. I get that. But creating a story for you, that's the rub, Brian. Your brain doesn't like that. Your brain wants to be an active part. And somebody, again, is going to argue, well, conservation of calories, not on survival stuff. Your brain conserves calories specifically for survival, and it considers this a stolen plate, a felony warrant, those kind of things. It considers that's a danger that's serious enough that it might take your life. That's why we're on this.
SPEAKER_01Well, and even with the different like large language models and AI systems and the use of it, they're already showing that people like who constantly engage with that or do that in a sense, well, I'm just gonna use this for everything. Like, there's a huge reduction in cognitive like development. There's a huge reduction in cognitive use. You just kind of like it makes you dumber. And I remember even talking on one of the episodes about right when I moved to Minnesota and I was using my, you know, you know, Google Maps for everything to get around. And then, you know, because I didn't know where anything was, brand new area, right? I got fine grocery store, literally. And and then after a month, I was like, wait a minute, like I don't know where anything is. I don't know what that street name is. And it was like I had never had that experience because I wasn't, you know, I wasn't born with the technology, right? And when I've used it before in the past, I used it in an area where I knew, and it was how you know, what's the best traffic route, what's the best times, because it's stuff got really good at it. But and so I literally had to turn it off and be like, okay, look at the directions, find the street name, and then then set the phone down and go drive and go, oh, there it is. Oh, I missed my turn, got to go back because that builds up. Now I'm now I'm building it. So, you know, you know, that that's always that's always going to be a huge issue when we start adopting these things. That it's not looked at, it's not looked at as a trade-off.
SPEAKER_00No, no, and let me let me throw one at you there because you know Jaeger, you know, the the Sharpe human. So Jaeger and I were out off of the La Brea Tarpit uh area, and we were doing an operation. And during the operation, we had radios, and we had cars, and we had all this other stuff, and I got hopelessly lost trying to find the area. We were building what became Combat Hunter at the time. How do you find certain things interesting? Why is this more interesting than the other? So we're working with the coppers on the streets, and so I go, I'm not gonna embarrass myself and pop up and go, hey, I'm at this intersection, how do I get to you? Right. So I pull over at a bus stop and I walk up to a female that had some bags and everything else. And I asked her, I go, I'm here. How do we get there? And she goes, go down. When you see the in and out, take a left. You go all but about halfway down the block, and there's a car wash on your right side. Big, big car wash. It's that turn. And I go, great. So first of all, she gave me landmarks. She didn't give me GPS with streets and distances. And when I got back in the car, Jaeger goes, There was 17 people at the bus stop. Why did you go straight to her? I go, she's a female with her groceries. She's taking the bus. Who else knows the time and the routes and the distances? She doesn't want that gosh damn ice cream to melt. She knows those things, right? And he was like, wow, that's pretty good. No, that's what happens when we reason, when we think through, when when the answer is given to us. Uh I would make the argument that calculators make us dumber. I see now, because I eat a lot. I see now when we go to airport restaurants, they calculate the tip for you. So all you got to do is add the numbers that they already made. That pisses me off because it takes your thought press out of it. Here's the suggestion. Go with our suggestion. How do you know that's right? How do you know somebody didn't have their thumb on the scale, Brian?
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, and that's that's any data or information we always do that. People take it for, oh, well, this thing told me that, and this study said that. And it's like, okay, well, you know, it's five out of six people enjoy playing Russian roulette, you know. But that last that one guy, he's a home game. Well, we couldn't we couldn't couldn't get his opinion on it. But but the idea is can can any of this then just sticking
When Tools Outpace Competence
SPEAKER_01with that kind of you know let me say right there for just one one second. Can can technology improve somebody's performance before they have actually developed the underlying competence? Like can it act as a bridge or a band-aid or something that that helps someone out?
SPEAKER_00So so so you and I didn't understand the chemical comp chemical composition of Curlix before we had to use it in combat combat. We were happy to use it because we saw a difference, right? So the idea was there, the performance, meaning the use case, was strong enough that we didn't have the competence. We just knew that this was likely going to be some. And for people that don't get that reference, let's talk about uh uh something different. Optics, okay? Thermals, uh, night vision, spotting scopes, okay? We we didn't have to be good at them. We just had to hold them up to our eye and go, wow, and you could learn on the fly. Now, were there mistakes fallen uh because I had no depth perception? Do you get what I'm saying? Making those. But but the the idea was the performance was there before I had the competence. And and the the an additional one call back to the anti-stop brakes. When we first got airbacks in the the scout cars, you didn't have to be very smart because the airbag took over when you made that calculated risk and did the error, right? And the airbag went off in your face. You go, wow, I don't want to do that again. The idea was that I just crashed. It took over right at the moment of crash. So I learned things afterwards. So I didn't have the competence going in. And those are good things. But but I would say that most of those, except for thermals and those type of things, are intermediate to low-end opt uh technology rather than the high-tech that we're seeing now, right? The high tech, my my fear only because I'm an old guy, is that it goes too fast. And when processing goes too fast, it outpaces our cognition. And when it does, we fall for things. We will believe it, just like a magician's trick, until somebody comes back and slows it down and we go, holy crap, I never considered that. Well, if you don't consider something, then it's not in your reasoning. It's not in your sense making or problem solving.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So that kind of brings us into like what does this, you know, back to the the kind of flock
What Machines Know Versus Meaning
SPEAKER_01uh uh cameras and stuff. It's like what you know, no one's asking, what does this technology actually know, right? Because if something like this generates an alert, what what does the machine actually know? Like, because it could know certain characteristics about a vehicle with a certain plate at a certain place and time, but you know, another database may associate that information with something else, right? It doesn't medically like it doesn't say anything like who is driving, right uh, why they're there, whether the information is current, whether the database entry is correct, when it's been updated. Cause it because the time and location of stuff is important. You know, now it becomes like, oh yeah, this was absolutely what they were doing here. Well, now it's a girls' school. It's like, you know, it's like, oh, wait a minute, whoops, we didn't update the database on. This before we fired away with this technology and look at what happened. So I always look at it from that point. And so these conclusions that you're talking about that I take at face value, like they they still require some sort of interpretation.
SPEAKER_00It's essential. One of the things that Brian does in class all the time, Brian's an incredible instructor, and and he's developed some great strategies over the year to laser focus in on stuff. And the one thing when we're talking about a dispatch and and how information can be mistaken, Brian says, okay, so I call dispatch and I go, hey, listen, I'm in a room and I'm surrounded by people and they all have guns. And then they're all staring at me. Yeah, yeah, you get what I'm trying to say. So here, that's a very different thing. So what happens is if Compers on the road spot a man with the gun, the recognition of the gun is important, yet it's not as important as the intent. So whether that person poses a threat or what the situation may actually mean in context, it takes a human to determine that. So you remember not too long ago, probably 25 years ago, I'm guessing, they had the new scanner where as you were driving in the vehicle, it would scan people and show whether they had a gun or not, a concealed weapon. Now it could also show stuff in their pockets like wallets and it showed change, but it also showed the people as naked because it did away with the clothing. So you got to see nipples and penises. And everybody went absolutely batshit because that technology was rolled out so quickly for a good reason. Yeah, then all of a sudden, guess what? All of a sudden the accordion effect caught up to it, and people go, Yeah, but you're seeing that person naked. So we have to balance that because the machine knows more than you think it knows, first of all. And so if the machine is programmed, can it still tell whether it's a male or a female or a black or a white or an Asian or Hispanic person that's behind the wheel? Well, if it can read the digits on a plate, it can certainly read things like that. Could it likely read an age of a person? Well, if it does those things, then it can be abused. The idea is I understand where people get afraid, Brian. We're afraid of new things. We're afraid of things that are faster and smarter than we are. And then we always think of the worst-case scenario. We don't sit around and go, oh, that'll be great for saving lives. We sit around and go, that son of a bitch is going to know who's driving that car, and that's ripe for abuse. But but I must add, that abuse has been around forever. Coppers have always used that to stalk people. Anyone that with the with a flock camera now is no different than guys when I was on the road that followed people home, got their plate, ran the all vehicles registered to to try to get a girl's name or a boy's name to contact later. And that's bullshit. So that's that's a worry. That's a realistic worry.
SPEAKER_01Right. And we'll I'll get into we'll let's get into kind of some of the the the yeah, the of course the there's it's a dual-use technology, right? You can use it for good or for bad. Um and there's different, you know, civil liberties around it. We'll get we'll get into that next. But I want to kind of talk more. You give let's let's kind of finish thought on on this about what this thing's actually know. So I guess the best way to ask would be at what point do we stop talking about what the machine observed and start talking about the explanatory story the human built around it? Because like when when I you know uh get a piece of information, you know, your interpretation of it is going to be different than my interpretation of it, even if we have similar roles and responsibilities, right? Based on experience, based on knowledge, based on training, based on all these other things. And and that is what I mean when I talk about you know this human technology interaction. It's not just the user interface and how you do it. It's like, no, what you do with the information is everything. Like information is you know, it has inherent value if used correctly, and you don't even necessarily know which information is the most valuable or which data points are.
SPEAKER_00So so No, that's a great, that's a much better question, Brian. So, so I was still going under the Kamala Harris definition of AI when you first asked that. So let me tighten my shot group a little bit. The the machine-generated whatever creates involuntary uh heuristic manipulation because heuristics are important to how we've been programmed in our genetic wiring to sense make, right? So it's like an availability heuristic. External information is repeatedly presented, it's made readily available to our brain. So the brain begins to irrationally weigh that or believe that pre-packaged information as more important than the true observed facts that are right in front of them on the ground. So we start believing the machine, and that's a form of expectation bias. What that means is people staring at those screens for a long time begin filtering out conflicting evidence and disproportionately, unevenly weighing. And then when you're searching for the information, you only search for information that confirms the conclusion you've already been handed. Okay, well, what do we know? Well, we we've heard of that before. And and the idea is that anytime that we buy into unverified external inputs without checking tangible facts, artifacts, evidence, mistaken assumptions will occur. They have to occur. That's the round peg in the square hole. That's going out and and uh enlisting confirmation bias as your ally, and that's never a good thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you actually brought up some good examples that, you know, kind of like when you talk about availability heuristics and the way we we see things, it's like the, you know, you go out and buy a new car and then you're all excited, you got your new car and you're driving around, and what do you see everywhere? The same car as yours that's been you're like, well, I didn't, you know, and you're going like, hey, there was always that many Toyota cameras on the road. Like, you know, you you're just now noticing them because you have one and now it's insignificant to you, it's available to you, it's something you see more now. And and I and like and you you kind of explain it there and what that means when now I'm interacting with this technology, it begins to tell me these things. Oh, wait, I was right. I found those missing kids. So now there's now I just be start to this this system has this authority, right? And I no longer question it and I no longer look at conflicting information that I otherwise would have before, right? I mean, exactly. So so that's just in and out builds, and then the longer I do that, the more reliant I become. And then now you're two, three generations later, and we're all walking around with these cell phones, and not a single person can tell me how it works, right? And we don't even use it as a phone anymore. You know what I'm saying? Like right. So so it's uh yeah, so so that that's sort of the the the I I think that was a good, you know, this kind of first part of this episode, like talking about the technological, you know, the the issues with adopting technology and the use and the operally operation whatever, operationalizing how we actually use it.
SPEAKER_00Way too early for that much bourbon, that's all I'm saying. So so Fenty, one quick one on that. Listen, we don't adopt shit that we don't fully trust down to our core. So when it came out with the technology of the automatic electronic defibrillators, the AEDs, right? And I always say that term wrong and somebody will correct me. I don't give a shit. It's the box on the wall that jump starts the heart. Okay. I was a cop for a good long time. And Brian, you've met and worked with a lot of great cops that have, you know, double digits already in their careers. Ask them how many times on the road they did CPR, and that CPR saved a life. I'm one of those. I did CPR probably 11 times a year, maybe nine to 15, right? Never had a save. Never. Heimlich saved a bunch, never with CPR. Then all of a sudden the AED came out, and guess what? Now you're getting saves. So even if you don't fully understand the technology, you're willing to embrace it because it saves a life. You saw that immediate return. You didn't have to be a cardiologist, right? So those type of things are a lesser lift, even though that would be a high-tech tool, right? But but the idea is that you buy into that because you see an immediate result. We still haven't seen, uh law enforcement has, but we still haven't seen in our family, in our own life, an immediate result. They're out there, but remember, they posed the argument before they gave us potential evidence to go through. They only gave us one side of the argument. It was binary. You're either for them or you're against them. That's not how we should judge this technology.
SPEAKER_01Well, that and that's a good uh that's kind of a good segue into what what some of the arguments for and against these technologies.
Privacy, Warrants, And Oversight
SPEAKER_01So specifically the the the mass surveillance systems, as people refer to them as, which you can there's, I mean, my your your phone is a mass surveillance system, but your your your Wi-Fi at your house is. But uh so what are let's talk about some of the arguments kind of against you know the these these systems, specifically the flock and the automatic license plate readers. Like one thing that immediately people talk about is civil liberties, right? So one of the most common criticisms is hey, this is an invasion of my privacy, my civil liberties. And but you know, you and I have talked about that before, and you actually kind of were saying, well, that's actually one of the weakest arguments, or our weaker kind of form of the argument. So explain why you why you think that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, and and listen, folks, you can argue with Brian and I anytime you want. Come on, it's an open form. All you got to do is write. We'll put you on the next podcast if your argument's good enough, but don't send us crappy arguments. And the crappy argument is, well, this is uh against my civil liberties. Driving on public roads is highly regulated. Why? Because driving on public roads is a privilege, not a right. You have to have a driver's license, you have to register your vehicle, you have to maintain insurance, you have to obey traffic laws because it's best for all of us. Those things are in writing. Every state has them. There's federal guidelines. Driving privileges can be suspended, they can be revoked. License plates and vehicles are openly visible on public roads. There's no assumption of any sort of privacy. And vehicles historically have always had much less protection than a person's own. We can go back, Brian, to the earliest capers that have to do with cars back when prohibition was running, right? And what did they say? Vehicles are inherently movable, so there's got to be a different standard. Exactly. So the so the idea is don't come at me with that argument because that argument is flawed. Now, if you come at me with other arguments, I'll listen to them. Like you said, one of the things that that I thought was very important, okay? If I'm using it to judge how many people are taking their kids to a certain restaurant or to a polling place or something else like that, okay, if that information is unregulated, hey, we might have a problem. But driving is not the thing. When you drive, you give up certain freedoms to be able to drive on a public road.
SPEAKER_01So I I I understand that that part of that argument, and a lot of people already are in disco, but you can't, I mean, we're if you the on your if you're on private property and you want to do whatever you want in your vehicle and bounce around, you go for it. But that's just the thing. It's not. There's public versus private. When you're in public, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in this.
SPEAKER_00I purposely run those stop signs in front of the Walmart in town, jump open. That's a young copper pulls me over. You get what I'm trying to say? Private property. I don't think those apply. I'll just hold up my ID and drive right by.
SPEAKER_01So no, but but I I think the difference with these systems now is it's not just a snapshot in time. It's not just right now. It's it's it's it's collecting and aggregating information over time and and it's storing it. And that can be searched and that can be brought up again. And it's like that does, I would think, open up some certain, you know, you know, certainly maybe some fourth and fourteenth amendment issues about using that information about me. I mean, right? Because if I go now, I'm under investigation for something and you go, well, we have you, we traced you back using these cameras when I wasn't committing a crime, I was just out in public, which I get it, because you could say, Oh, I'm gonna go to this store and watch, you know, a hundred hours of CCTV footage to see if they walk past. I get that. But now you've built this historical thing and now you're gonna use that information. So it's like I it's I think it's the use and how it's stored and there is it kind of changes that that what you initially said.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so folks, do your homework. Look up the Yorkshire Ripper. I'm not gonna give you all the details of the caper, but they watched roads for this guy's sled for a good long time, and they managed to make a great record of everybody coming in and leaving the area, and so that's how they got the tire impression, the vehicle type and make, and went to the Yorkshire Ripper's home, right? Now, Brian, they didn't not look at all vehicles, they didn't only look at the Yorkshire Ripper's vehicle. What they had to do is they had to come from a larger number to a much smaller number, and that's what you're talking about. So anytime that we go after data, we need a rid of mandamus, we need a form of a warrant that allows us to look for those things, absent everybody else. Because if not, you're gonna start finding other things that you weren't looking for. That's why phone tap, and again, these laws are out there, they've been around forever. If it's on a phone tap and you're listening in and the persons aren't talking about the caper that you want about the people, about the drug, you have to tune out. Okay, so so that's what we're talking about here. And and first of all, when in doubt, whip it out on warrants because they're easy to get. And if you have an interest in a specific topic, write it down as an affidavit. Go to a judge, and the judge will swear to it, and then you can go after those records. Even if the person says no, even if the company says no, you can go after those records. But my thing is, what if it's warrantless? What if it's not? Because when you put two people in a room with high tech, they start messing with it, they start screwing with it, and sooner or later they're going to come up with a way to circumvent logic and reason, right? And and law sometimes and do something silly with it.
SPEAKER_01Well, uh yeah, yes, I I get what you're saying, and I think that's the another the argument against you know, this well, you know, the police can use this, and we've seen all the different cases of like, you know, stalking an axe or doing this, and it's like, yes, that's that's always an issue with any technology, but even with any authority or anything, like I I feel like that's almost somewhat of a non-argument because there needs to be, I mean, that's an argument for governance and how you use it and how it's tracked, but like those things that's not new, right?
SPEAKER_00I mean, people did you even brought that up like regulating AI is not new. AI is new, right? But regulations aren't. So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and and and and misuse of that for whatever your purpose is is not new. Like you even said, like, oh, I'm gonna use this and I'm gonna look up something about this person who is you know now dating my ex-wife and things like that.
SPEAKER_00Look, yeah yesterday there was a caper that I sent you where the copper's brother was gonna be in a lawsuit. So the copper looked up the information and gave it to his brother so he could go confront the person. Okay, that's a misuse. That's not the technology's fault. That's the human in the loop's fault, right? So we have to be aware of that anytime humans are paired with technology.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then that argument alone is like almost it, it's always there. And it's something that needs, like I said, there's comes with governance and safeguarding and how you do it. But like I mean, because of how connected everyone is technologically and how everyone is surveilled by if you have a phone, then a smartphone, you do. I mean, you can right now, even completely legally and completely open source. If I get three locations around when I know where you've been, Greg, all right, he was at you know, this store here around this time, he was over here at this time, you were I can find you and I can find your phone number because just from ad data, from different things, like there's there's there's open source stuff that you can do now that isn't hard to do. So it's like that's a little bit less of a of
False Alerts And Catastrophic Escalation
SPEAKER_01an argument. To me, it's always to me, the biggest argument, the strongest arguments involves mistakes, right? So what happens, what happens is when the machine is wrong.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so look, that's a great talk about segues. That would smooth, babe. Look, if I write down the wrong plate number and testify and make the stop and do something, the defense attorney's gonna tear that up. But but what is the court gonna say? The court's gonna say, hey, the cop made a mistake, okay? Because a lot of times you're running and you misstate something about the person that you're chasing on foot or the vehicle or anything. Court, case law, time and time again, says mistakes are made. The tension is high. You know, you uh thought it was this guy, and then in fact, that's the person you apprehended. So the court goes really, really easy on humans that make mistakes in complex environments. Not so, not so with technology. So if an automated system can misread a plate or confuse a letter or a number or misidentify the state or misread an expiration sticker, all of those things are gonna go into a database and they're gonna be compared. And now they associate the wrong database, and you come back as a member of the, you know, MS-13, you get what I'm trying to say, and it's a it's got not the the the plates not associated with stolen, it's associated with you violating parole. Okay. So what's the worst part? That the machine made the mistake, or what's about to happen when those red and blues come on? There's my question.
SPEAKER_01That that's the biggest thing. And then because of all the you know, reasons we we we we talked about at the beginning is now I'm going, oh crap, this is a stolen vehicle, and it's it's need, you know, what it comes across as the alert. And then now I'm going, well, okay, that's a good stop. You know, I'm getting this. I mean, and then now that turns into a pursuit. Now that turns into a shootout, now that turns into the car crash that kills a bunch of innocent people. And so I I, you know, someone's gonna say, well, those are two separate arguments, or it's like, well, but if it got it wrong, but now that guy's running for some other reason or something. That that's the thing, is like it was or or yeah, now this person's freaked out, they're getting pulled over, and everyone, you know, pulling them over thinks this is a stolen vehicle and this is what's going on, you're you're you're now you're not you're not looking for anything to disconfirm your belief right there. So now it's the guy's reaching for his license or his his wallet and you're lighting away. It's a gun. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So so let's talk about that for just a second in the context of of comparison. So if you compare the rate of of uh mistakes from expectation to explanatory storyline, the machine doesn't have that. So the machine is going on information and gives it to you. And now you think there's a parole violator, it's a gang member, he had a gun before. Why wouldn't he have a gun now? So you see how that loop is shortened. And so now you're coming up with only negative things, right? So now you have a pseudo-negative feedback loop. I know it means something else, but catch where I'm going with this. So now that's in your mind, right? The thing is, ask every cop you know, Brian, you know thousands of them. Ask every cop you know if they've ever had a pursuit just because the person didn't have the license in their pocket. Did a person flee at a high speed and blow intersections and everything just because they they were afraid to stop? So that happens, okay? So that's an extreme, but it happens. So now the person hits the the gas pedal and is fleeing from you. With your information loop, it only confirms that this is a dangerous felon. And now you're TVIing and shooting and doing all those other things. So the human expectation to explanatory storyline to prediction is flawed, right? So if we get that, that's going to create a very, very, very dangerous outcome that's at the end of it. And you wonder, well, how many times has that happened? Anytime that you get a false thing with a name, you know, where a name hits close and it's been around forever, and they run them on a computer and you go, oh, is that this person? And now you're thinking the person in front of you has got all these felony warrants, and it's not. It's the softball coach for the local team. That's ripe with danger because you're at the precipice of a decision. And that decision and action, okay, is shortened because you're afraid. And you're saying, Well, I'm not afraid, it's just my job. You're afraid. You're sphincter titans because you're not sure what this person is going to do to protect their freedom. Anytime you get a warrant, that means the person didn't comply. So why are they going to comply with you? And so the machine making a tactical error can lead to a catastrophic error of sense making on the ground. And I think that's exactly what you're describing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it it sort of hijacks our, you know, this this decision-making cycle that all humans do, whether that's an extremist or not, right? I see some, hmm, that's interesting. Oh, oh, they have, you know, their vehicles not registered, or there's a broken taillight, or there's this. Okay, well, I can pull them over for that. There's a violation, I have reasonable suspicion, whatever I call. And then now I'm talking to the person, okay. Now I'm this is this is confirming what I'm seeing. I'm not seeing anything else. Now I have probable cause. Now I search the vehicle, now I find the dope. Like that, that's the normal process of updating your hypothesis, creating an explanatory storyline, looking at most likely most dangerous course of action. And and what these, you know, especially the these Fox systems do, it goes right to decision. It's like, oh, it's a stolen vehicle. I need to do this. But I mean, and this is insane to me. But the LAPD went back and they studied, they went through their stuff, and they said 32% of stolen vehicle alerts examined in their review were false alerts. So a third. Not not not 3.2%. Yeah. 32%. So so that's like just a recipe for disaster.
SPEAKER_00I mean, you think about that. But how much of a recipe? So, so let me ask you this from a military context, and and I'll give you an answer in a police context because I saw it firsthand over and over. So a non attribution, traffic stop, the guy on the passenger side of the traffic stop, definitely high stakes traffic stop, should have been a Fell and he stopped. And the guy on the passenger side, the copper that's watching the passengers, draws his revolver. When he draws his revolver, he cranks off around between his own feet. Thank God he didn't hurt himself. That bullet skipped under the vehicle and hit the driver contact officer. Okay. So he's hit. Thank God it was in his vest and doesn't kill him. What do you think happened next when there was shots on that track?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. No, no.
SPEAKER_00Answer that in military contact. Oh no. I don't know if I can. Not that you witness personally, but you've heard stories of negligent or accidental discharges. And what does everybody else in that patrol do, man?
SPEAKER_01Oh, to the point that I've heard hey, everyone fire a few rounds because I I just launched one off on accident.
SPEAKER_00It's another extreme, but that's hilarious. That's briefly concreted.
SPEAKER_01I just launched a 40 millimeter grenade. Uh everyone fire some right. Mine might help me up here.
SPEAKER_00And so you got the squad leader firing the tracers toward where you're round. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I've I've I've heard the the comment, hey, where are you guys shooting at? We're suppressing. Suppressing what? The north. Just the general direction of the north.
SPEAKER_00Like uh, okay. But the idea there is, okay, that's a low-tech thing that can happen when a low-tech accident occurs. A mistake. It was a mistake. It wasn't intentional, right? There was no intent. So the machine doesn't establish intent, but we take it that intent is present because it gives us those big words. And that's not fair.
SPEAKER_01Well, we it it not only cannot tell us intent, but it it may it's going to, like we talked about, this kind of decision, you know, loop of of what how you process information on the scene and what you're talking about, it it affects it so much that it it almost makes it seem, it gives you this false sense of, oh, I I now arrived at this conclusion, his intent must be that. And it's like, well, wait a minute, like you're you just jump three steps ahead in in the game here based on what you think is you know accurate information, but you never compare. There was no comparison. So you didn't say that you didn't you you don't say, okay, if this is a stolen vehicle, what else should I likely see? What should I expect when I go up there? Like we're already thinking that. And so it hijacks that sort of decision-making process. So you're farther, you're you're you're you're influencing the outcome more than you recognize. That's what these things do. They influence the outcome of these situations and therefore the second, third order effects, but yet they're not responsible for them. And then you know, you like you can't.
SPEAKER_00Or the consequences of them right now. You see what I'm trying to say? So consequence dictates that certain things get better. Like, for example, if you used a false search warrant, the fruit of the poisonous tree, make sure that none of the information gathered from that is going to be valid. It spanks you until you learn. Okay? The current system doesn't do that. Clearly, it didn't do that in LAPD. You get what I'm trying to say? For a third of the mistakes. And and there's a there's a term for that. And again, I hate to you know bag our own book, but listen, if you read, if you do a little bit of studying on anything that's related to human behavior, entropy is such an important indication. So closed system entropic failure is a tactical decision loop like Boyd's that relies on an outdated or externally distorted mental model, and then it converts an open feedback loop into a closed system. That's why I'm always railing against the OODA loop. And I keep hearing it every day on LinkedIn. This will make you better, this will make your cops better, this will make your business better. No, it's a failure. And not for Boyd, not for what he used it for. Not for what he for your misapplication because you're not a fighter pilot. You weren't in the situation he was. It has to constantly update. So a decision-making system that fails to continuously update its mental models against the actual ground truth is gonna degrade and it's gonna degrade into disorder and make critical errors. Simple entropy. That happens all the time. So it unintentionally forces and reinforces reactive rather than proactive. So instead of operating left of bang, what we're doing is we're making packaged template matches instead of prototypical matches. And what does that put us? It puts us on the X. Now we're at Bang. And so the perceived crisis is already in progress when you go with an ALPR or a flock. And that doesn't give us time. That doesn't give us flash to bang. That doesn't give you and your parents sitting at the dinner table talking about the news. Remember those days? Okay. We don't have that now because the information is so shortened that we don't put reasoning, we don't put decision making at the end of sense making and problem solving. We make it first. Here, here's your decision, go enforce this. It's not right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because the, I mean, the greater, the greater the consequence of being wrong, the more important that corroboration becomes, right? I have to consider like the the these are life, these these are potentially always, you know, life-ending consequences, or you know, that there's there's life and death hanging the balance of these things. And I I I don't think that's you know, we don't fully take into account the second third order effects and how this changes in the moment over time, generationally,
Guardrails For Surveillance Technology
SPEAKER_01what does that mean? And so, you know, the in the the big the big argument with these with the floxists and is that you know it's a it's a surveillance problem. And and you know, I am the you you look, I've I I can I get it from from both sides of this where you know I understand the argument like, well, if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have to worry about it. That yes, that's I I technically agree with that. However, we have a fucking constitution and a bill of rights, and that that's what makes this so hard. That's what makes our society so complex and wonderful and amazing, and and have to have these discussions because it's like, well, yeah, but there's also I I I have I have my own work. This is built on our whole society is built on the concept of Greg, you are free to do whatever the hell you want so long as, so long as you are not impeding on the rights of others. That is the fundamental thing, right? But now we get into the surveillance network and and and and information is very valuable. Hey, it's become more valuable now. I mean, any data and information is extremely valuable, always has been. Information is power, right? And and who has the knowledge and who knows what, when, and that that's everything that drives the markets, that drives everything that we do. But I think that this criticism, you know, it's a point to that it creates this sort of surveillance network. And you know, you've pushed back on this, and and and I I I I I find your take interesting, and I want you to share that about like, you know, you said, well, your phone knows more about you. So like, you know, there's all these things, but so what's what's your argument, not really against that surveillance problem, but like it's it's almost like it's that's a non-argument to you.
SPEAKER_00I don't want anybody to think that we're uh coming away from this, choosing a side against ALPR, against Flock, against surveillance, against technology. What we're saying is everything has to be regulated to a point so that there's less mistakes, so that you have a more pure signal. The less noise, the better the signal. That's my argument right there. Because ALPR is uniquely invasive. I hear that, I read that every day. It's overstated. Most people are already carrying, like you said, devices that continuously generate information about your location, your searches, your purchases, your communications, travel, interest, behavior. The existence of technological surveillance is not unique, and specifically not to flock. And I would ask you now, as my dear friend, when I die, please clear my browsing history. The idea that was not a joke, by the way. Uh furries unite. So you know that I was on a flight recently to the East Coast, and so leaving Denver, we have a total mechanical failure, and we have to make an emergency landing in an airport. That airport wasn't ready for an emergency landing. The emergency services people, I don't want to get into any more detail than that, did an incredible job. We had to park a long way away. We had to take the old style ramp onto the tarmac. Uh, we had to have buses that took us in. And they handled that part of the emergency very well. You know who didn't handle it? The people. Well, what about my bag? Is my bag going to get transferred? What about my next flight? What do you mean you don't have a flight? What do you mean you have so the idea is that what happens is we've become so reliant on it, we we we have to fish or cut bait. You can't say, I want you to know about my travel reservations in my GPS so I can look it up immediately and then get indignant when GPS shows you a road and it's a roaring river. You see what I'm saying? You can't there's a balance there. So is this really a surveillance problem? Brian, Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched was looking out her window all the time and going, Abna, look at what they're doing across the street. That's a surveillance problem. We say if you see something, say something, that's a surveillance problem. Your government neighborhood listing your there you go. So so how is that different? So my argument is that it's a uniquely invasive bullshit. It's happening all the time. It's what am I gonna do with that information and who gets to use that information? That if I was gonna make an argument, that becomes my top argument based on surveillance.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I I see your point, and and that's always, and then you you know you of course are sort of caveating or saying it's about you know who has access to it and what are they using it for is is is a bigger, broader question. Because, you know, these I will the the the arguments for this technology is yeah, look, it's easier to f your car gets sold and it's easier to find it. Like it's your car that's so so then who's gonna start pushing for that? Well, insurance companies are gonna start pushing for that, right? Because that that that great, we got we're recovered your car. We don't have to, you know, pay you out now, so we save some money or we made more money. And then that's gonna create a whole thing behind. And then you're gonna say, well, you know, these kids got kidnapped, and we get it, and and of course, you know, people want that, right? And we even have like, you know, I looked at this as like, well, the the the amber alert was almost this use of community with with an incredible technology when that stuff was invented. And I've I don't know if anyone, if you've ever had it, I've had it several times before where I'm in the area of something happened, and then you know, you get this you know, alert on your phone and it's on there, look for this vehicle, this is, and I'm like, oh shit, like let's let's catch some kidnappers. You know what I mean? Like that's really cool to me because you know, you could do the same thing about stolen vehicles or this. Like, you could how many Uber Lyft Amazon delivery drivers are just puffing around every city all the time, everywhere they go. Like, you know what I mean? You could make it make it a game. Hey, yep, you know, a hundred bucks if you lead to the arrest and fine of this, this, this vehicle. Or so I mean, what I'm saying is that like you, like you said, it's not we'll we're we already we're already part of the the surveillance state, meaning you personally, you know, humans are that's how we are. We want to go, what's going on? What's a neighbor over there doing? Oh, why why do you think social media works so well? It's because it's you know, how many people do you know just never post anything online, but they're always online? It's like it's like you're not interacting here, you're literally just surveilling everyone. You're a stalker, and and and and that's well, that's part of what it is. And well, it's so I but this is where it comes to. We we brought up earlier, it's this is it's this it's an oversight issue, it's a governance issue, it's who gets to use the information and why do they do that? And that's what concerns me. And that's why even like now I think there's they're you know, uh due to recent events, Flock had to come out and say, well, we now delete information after a week and no longer 30 days. And then you had to you already had investigators going, like, well, wait a minute, like, hey, this is we're really helping me out on these cases because I get to go back into that historical data and I can build the timeline of this person that can show they're the likely person who killed someone or robbed this place or did that. So it's like there's always a balance in our society between you know civil liberties and freedom, and you know, then then being safe. So safety and security is always uh in sort of this this this balance of of personal freedom and civil liberty. So like that that's that's in any free society that we have, unless you want to live in a dictatorship, you know what I mean? Like that this is how it's always going to be. And so I think looking at the important parts of the argument about like, well, it's not just, oh, this thing does this, let's adopt it and use it. It's like, well, hang on here. Well, what how are we implementing this? How are we governing this? Who has access to this information, right? What is the specific use cases that it's going to be used for? And I actually think, you know, and in this, this I it's it's a that's an argument against a short, you know, the the the business model maybe of of one of these companies that well, we just want everyone to buy it and start using it. It's like, yeah, but look what happens when you don't do that correctly. Now people are cutting them down. Now people now people are going to their town hall going, like, hey, get this shit out of here. We don't want it here. You spend our tax dollars on it no more. What are elected officials eventually going to say? Like, okay, you know what I mean? So you're done. So what I'm saying is like, if you build in that governance, you build in that reliability and you get you get that sort of community adoption where they go, yeah, this is a good thing. Over the long run, it it does get better. It is a better thing. You don't have to just like every tech thing, oh, just ship it and we'll we'll fix it on version two. It's like, no, like this is people's fucking lives, and it's it has to do with our civil liberties. And that's my biggest argument against this stuff. It's like you didn't plan any of this out. You adopted it, you took it on, you listened to what some asshole from fucking Silicon Valley said, and you know what? You bought it. And and and now you're now you let the genie out.
SPEAKER_00Now what do we do? Right? I I mean, think about that. So let me let me throw this at you. If you're listening to the sound of our voices and you own a corporation and you got a couple of bucks, get yourself flock and a P L R and put it outside your business and put it outside in your parking lot. That's going to save you a lot of damage and trauma later on. One. Part two, I would say that if you work in the security industry, that you should be thinking about having a, you know how they have the remote speed reading things to show you you're going this fast, and they roll them around on tires. Get one of them that does an APLR style flock and have it at a venue because information is great. Those data points are going to compare and help you exclude bad people from the event that's coming up. That's an argument. Why do I make that argument? I make that argument because I I would interrogate you guys that are listening. I know it arrests and what interrogation means, but I would. And I would interrogate you on the medical industrial complex. Does the medical industrial complex want to cure you? Clearly not, because if they cure you, you're not coming back and spending money. So they want to give you enough drugs to do what? To keep you alive for a longer time. That's the problem with industry regulating their own ideas that they came out with. And I'll give you an example of that with the DNA, shit in a box, send it in, find out where. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Greg, uh, I think they I don't I think you're just supposed to give blood. I don't think you're supposed to poop in the box, Greg.
SPEAKER_00My my idea is I did the blood, urine, semen. Yeah, give it all. It's like every hotel room I stay in. Exactly. That's your pillowcase. But the idea is that look, when that poop in the box came out and to tell you about, hey, you could do this. It's a moneymaker, right? But people fell for that scam and still are. The idea, however, is that some savvy cop somewhere goes, you know what? If I had access to that family DNA database, I could look people up and get into the family and start restricting or you know, deleting people and come up with the person. So to me, every technology has the ability to be abused or to be used, like you said at the very beginning, for good or evil. So you know what scares me? Okay, can another jurisdiction or federal agency read my ALPR or or my flock feed? Is a warrant required? Okay. Do they have to have a writ to take a look at it? You said it already, how long information is stored. But is 30 days good enough? Uh, should it be one? Should it be 24 hours? Should it be immediate, like a TSA camera? Can the borrowed recorded information cross state lines without a warrant? What searches are logged? Who routinely audits those logs? When you think about that, what happens when someone abuses it? Is it internal discipline or a crime with consequences? Most people don't know this. If you violate a policy, you might get fired from your business, but it doesn't mean you're violating a law. So you can keep go on offending other places. You get where I'm going? And so all I'm saying is guardrails. I'm not saying be draconian about this shit. I'm saying it's gonna occur. You're gonna have to have it in 10 years. We're not even gonna have this as an argument anymore. It's gonna be automated. So get on a European flight, Brian. Uh, you've done this as recently as I have. You don't have to show your ticket anymore. You walk up, it scans you, and you're on. So, so what about that? Do we not want to fly anymore? So we have to accept certain things. We have to negotiate parts of our freedom to allow for safety. And the U.S. Supreme Court has always backed that. They've always backed the thing that, hey, this situation is quite different for safety and security, we'll allow you to go a little longer, a little further.
SPEAKER_01And for, well, first of all, on the private sector side, if I were, yeah, at some of these companies or these big campuses, and like if I was providing some consulting about security, I would be like, you need to allow it. I would be, I would be like, I agree. If you're asking me for my opinion, I would say absolutely, because one, it's private property, so you can do what you want. And yes, you're gonna maybe there's some informed consent from your employees, but they're they they either say yes, we're okay with it, or they have to go get a different job. I mean, you don't really like you, you you do have a choice as that person, but but then so I I I think that's it that that's definitely different. And and so the use of it and and what you can do with these things, I think goes beyond. And even could well, it it's like your your uh the genealogy testing you just brought up with the poop in the box or whatever with the blood you give. Like now that testing is so good that they can tell, like, oh, here, so-and-so did their 23andMe and found out that's the that's the this person is the brother of that blood sample you found at the crime scene. Like, I mean it's that accurate, they can tell. It's absolutely insane. And I mean, again, maybe that could get pushed back in court, but like it's it's it's pretty it's pretty good. Which I pissed at my brother, he did that thing a while back, and I was like, but why do the hell did you do it? He's like, Well, I just wanted to find out all this stuff. I was like, Yeah, now if I get ramp, you know, jammed up for something, they start to if I want to commit a serious crime and escape. Yeah, I was like, dude, like you're gonna get me caught because you did that. So which they actually have caught, I believe they have caught some serial killers from that too, where someone You're exactly right.
SPEAKER_00Many, many, many murders.
SPEAKER_01Where they where someone was a cousin of someone and they they they their DNA hit, you know, on some crime scene, they went and investigated, oh, your cousin was, you know, was the one hacking these people up.
SPEAKER_00But hopefully they're shit in a box in LA where they only have a one-third chance of catching you, though.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, apparently. Well, this is a big thing with with any of this, and you know, the the uh you know, as these technologies increase, man, this governance has to increase with it. I I think this is a general example of what the conversation is in the United States right now with all of these technologies and with AI and what they're doing and what it means. Like we haven't, you know, once again, the technology always moves faster than any policy or government can, and adoption, you know, it just because that's just how things are, that's how they've always been. You know, they're back when they first started putting radios in, like just AMFM radios in cars. There was a lot of people that were against that, saying, like, this is gonna be distracting, you can't do now. I will say this technically, those people were correct, right? Because I'm gonna look down, I'm gonna change the station. Now I got loud music playing, we know that's gonna like technically they're correct, but that seems right now, a hundred years later, you know, absolutely insane to think that. Like, oh, you thought a radio was bad. You know, so humans do adapt and it changes things. But but but look at the cars now. Look at the safety features, look at the cameras, look at the alerts, the beeps, the lanes assist, all that stuff. Like, what's self-driving that's happening? But we're it's getting us it's getting us dumber. No, it it we have to accept the fact that it it and realize that it is making us collectively dumber.
SPEAKER_00What what what radio station does your self-driving car listen to? That's all I'm wondering. When you were saying that, I was thinking exactly that.
SPEAKER_01Just a bunch of machine noises or something. I don't know. All right. Well, there's there's some some other incidents of this stuff too, um, that I think would make is a good Patreon. I know that that that that we can go in further for those folks who are on the Patreon. Um you know, there's the one about the uh what was that is it in a Waymo, the the uh driverless vehicle where someone had a gun in there and they called the police, and like, you know, that again, you're getting into like, okay, if that was a kid about to go shoot up a school, we would be like, this is the greatest thing ever, right? But hey, we're what about the Second Amendment? And what about well, you know what I mean? Like, what about my own privacy and rights and what I'm doing in this vehicle? So there's a lot we can get into some of these specific ones. I think we'll definitely cover that on Patreon. And then of course, anyone listening to, if you have one or you're curious, you can you can you can absolutely reach out to us and and and we'll cover it on there. But you you know, I I I This is again why we're constantly beating the drum about this human first model. Like, what does a human do? What do they need? What's going to make their job easier in a sense? And then what would that look like? Second and third order effects. Because it's like, you know, any technology, man, what did it actually tell me? I mean, what am I building around this? What am I taking this information and just starting to create a story out of? What am I? So I'm what I've because what you're doing is you're making a lot of assumptions, right? And did I take the time to corroborate any of that evidence? What does my action, is it going to justify it? You know, did I reassess? How proficient am I? There's there's just a lot that goes into these, you know, is is is the final, I guess, kind of question I would ask you, Greg, and ask our listeners as you're listening to this, in a sense, is like after all of these different issues, because each one of these we could have a that we
The Human Factor And Final Takeaways
SPEAKER_01brought up today, we could have an entire podcast on. But like what should we actually be worried about? Is it the camera, is it the system, is the database, is the algorithm, or is it us? Is it is it is it people?
SPEAKER_00So I'll give you one. I'll give you a street one though. Folks, I I never intentionally try to insult your intelligence, it just happens naturally with me. So here's the idea. Years ago, LASIK surgery was one of those things that you might lose your vision, and now robots do it and it's outpatient, and you're back on the road in no time. Okay? Technology can be immediately and immensely valuable to society, and we have to go there. AI, we have to go there. We're not going back. Genie's out of the bottle. We have to do something about it. But LASIK surgery, okay? So let's talk about that for a minute now. We don't even think in the context of that now. The idea is that what we have to do is we have to make sure that we look at the technology, look at the benefits of it, and then embrace the change by saying, what are the safeguards? And what do I mean by that? When somebody was getting LASIK surgery, they got raped. When they went to the dentist to get a tooth pulled, that person took pictures of their vagina. That's humans. That's not the machine. The machine didn't conspire with AI to get you to drop trout. That was a human, and some humans are effed up and they're flawed. And that's the ones that we have to have filters for. We don't have to have filters for you. You're not the one that they're coming after for. We have to have filters for those people that would imbue devious intent on a technological advantage.
SPEAKER_01I I would say that it's always a people issue. I I don't look at any of this, you know, it's the same thing where it's like, no, yeah, guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people. Drugs don't kill people. People doing drugs kills people, right? It's it's there's there's an interaction there. It's the same thing with all this AI shit. It's like, no, it takes a human to do these things. So so people are the problem, but people that means people are the solution. Like that this is the whole idea about gun first. It's you're not obsolete, you're you're the you're the main character in the story, right? And and you know, any change or things that need to be happened, it it's it's about the the person, not about the thing that you're using. It's how you use it, it's your intent. It's this anything can be a dual-use technology, right? Anything could be used for good or for evil. A hammer is just a hammer for building shit until I start bashing your head with it. Then it's now it's a weapon. It goes from tool to weapon because of the human interaction with it. And I think my my opinion is is that is that if we focus on the human interaction with the technology within the context, like that's the most important part because that's the one that we we haven't cracked that code. We're always gonna get better tech, we're always gonna have better ways to use it. And which means someone's always gonna come up with a better way to defeat it, an easier way to defeat it. I mean, just look at the war in Ukraine, how much it's changed over the last few years. So you see this rapid, rapid changes because humans adapt it. So I can I can predict that about human behavior. I can predict likely technological use, whether it's positive or not, based on the past behavior of human beings. And so if you just focus on that element, I think it makes it easier to understand and easier to see what the potential problems are, and then easier to kind of correct those in stride and and account for it in some way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and we're not oversimplifying this. This is a complex issue, multifaceted. The idea is, I think I would revel in your answer that human problems require human solutions. I I am at a loss now because I'm dehydrated, but it was either Philip K. Dick or Isaac Asimov. I'm I'm heavy on the Asimov or Robert Heinlein that wrote iRobot, and I think it was Asimov, and he came up with the three laws. Look up when that book was written. Look up how long ago that he predicted exactly what it is that we're talking about here, that you have to make sure that when you have an artificial intellect, that that intellect is always there to help, never there to hurt.
SPEAKER_01And you they all a lot of the big thinkers too, uh uh uh, you know, especially the scientists, went back to, well, there is with anything, whether it's a new AI system, whatever, there are physical limitations because there are physics at play, and so you can only do so much. So if you start to solve those physical limitations, I would include a human being in that and account for those, then you can get a better system, then you can get it faster. So, you know, I great points. I think you know, technology uses C more, but but do not let it give you permission to think less is what I would what I would take away. I because it does. So any other any other final thoughts, Greg?
SPEAKER_00No, I I I I am excited about Patreon. I would tell everybody if you haven't checked out Patreon, go to the website, pick up an episode or two, and you'll see why we're so excited about that.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, I appreciate everyone for for tuning in. Thank you so much. Again, you can check out the website and the podcast episode page on there to search for different topics and things in there. I know some of you folks kind of will reach out with questions about hey, remember you guys talked about what episode was that? You can look for it right now. It's free. So it's all right there, lots more on the Patreon. So I appreciate everyone for listening. If you made it this far, uh, you know, thank you so much. Feel free to reach out to us anytime. And don't forget that training changes behavior.
