Drones, Prison Drops + Marshmallow Fluff

Really now, really.

Really now, really welcome, Welcome, Welcome. I am Jason Alexander.

Here you are.

You're very good at that. I'm Peter Tilden, and you're very good at that. And this is this is.

Really no really our little podcast when we delve into things that make us think or ask really, no, really, that's a thing, that's a fact, that's true. And today, Peter, I'm gonna I'm gonna tee it up for you.

Ready, what are we gonna do? What a you're gonna do again? Your hear it be? There was that dominic the day. Wow, it's droning drones. Drones, I was droning. Did you get funny?

I called Jason and I go, you know, drones. I don't think it's ever gonna happen. How is it gonna do delivery drones? You're worried about the air traffic of the whole time. I don't get how it's even possible. It doesn't make sense that we can do drones in the sky.

So that's my take.

Your take is My take is listen, it's a feather complete. First of all, they're already on the ground, they're rolling down the sidewalk.

The drones.

And second of all, we now live in a world where if I need it, you were supposed to give it to me a second ago. You have to there's no patience. Everybody can't get here tomorrow. I order something on the phone at two o'clock this afternoon. It comes eight o'clock tomorrow morning.

No good. Now it has to be there in an hour, in a minute, in a second.

I hate it kills me to agree with you, but you realize we used to have restaurants. Then we had takeout, right, yeah, then we had fast food.

Right.

Then we had drive food because that wasn't good enough. And now I'm the four h five. I'm going eighty drop that in my car. I want it now, I'm on a toilet paper lowered it into my bathroom. I mean, but how are you going to do that? So you know what we do. You're in the show we get experts on a Dell and we're looking at doctor Roger Connor.

How are you, sir?

I'm great.

Thanks, let me go through.

I usually don't take the time to go through a bio, but yours is so extensive. Doctor Connor curates the Museum of the Air and Space Music, a Space Museum's vertical flight collection. Jasion, what the vertical flight collection? He curates the vertical flight collection. Correct, that's it, just the vertical. It has to go up and down, that's it.

Otherwise you're so you don't do Loudand if he rolls five feet down the runway before he goes up, not his area, you can't do that.

Can't do it. You do how it sidles for a moment? No good? Only straight up, straight down? All right? Very limited collection? All right, go ahead, all right.

Let's see here to he's a specialist when it comes to remotely pilot and an autonomous.

Aircraft SYS, ground effects vehicles.

Sure, he's a specialist when it comes to air traffic control.

Oh good, airports airport a specialist. Good.

Maybe before they listen, it's going to be a left turn. But if you can explain to me what the hell they're doing at Los Angeles Airport, that would be because I don't You don't get it. They've been building it for seven years and all I know is I can't get where I need to go, and I can't drive a car in there. I can't get picked up, I can't get a bag onto a thing there are people there going?

And why ma'am, why is it at lax? I have to kind of slow down enough and say to more get out. I'm not stop. I'm just like I'm going to.

Slow That's right, My god, all right.

He's also an experience commercial pilot with over four thousand hours a flight.

Four thousand hours? Is that a flight time? Is that? I had a lot?

I thought it was ten thousand, everything thousand. You put in ten thousand hours. You know what you're doing.

You didn't you didn't commit to the ten fourteen.

It takes fourteen hours to fly from here to Australia and back is twenty eight hours, and he does that ten times that now, all of a suddenly expert.

In his doctoral dissentation, Yeah, I think close to yours rooftops and rice rice patties, utopias and helicopters in the creation of national security.

Yes, I didn't include rice patties, but so it's similar. He Sai's very similar to what you do. So how are you?

I am great? Thank you so much.

Sounds like you're busy, you're a you're a you're an expert on many many things.

Yeah, I have to be a time traveler in this job. So I'm in World War one in the morning and dealing with what's happening in twenty fifty with sustainable aviation in the afternoon.

Wow, this is a god This so drone delivery drones. You've got chimneys, You've got why electrical wires, you got birds, you got all kinds of stuff going on, and you're gonna tell They're going to try and convince me that I'm going to get my pizza in twenty five minutes or less than it's free.

Dodging all that already is the thing dominoes thirty minutes more, it's free.

So they got to do better than that. They got to eight. So how how is it possible?

And the back end of that is, I know that billionaires are investing in it, so obviously I'm wrong. How is that going to be possible? Doctor that delivery drones are a reality?

So it is a reality. But the question is who is a reality for? And the short answer right now is criminals.

Sorry, So okay, sounds to be with us.

Wow, buggling is where it's at right now with delivery drones. And so the real question is, can uh somebody that moves. Coffee by drone be as successful as the criminals.

So can't I piggyback my pizza on like a cocaine run.

They can't. They multitask well.

The advantage of the criminal element is they don't have to worry about regulations or safety or some of those other things.

Wow.

Hold on a second, Wow, give us a second. Really, No, really, it's the criminal that's that's where it's working.

Yea.

And you know, I've been to the border and I went with the border agents and they said they're outmanned and outspent because the drug guys have unlimited resources. I'm assuming same thing with the drunes, unlimited resources to create these things.

Yes, right, And you know it's it's across the northern southern borders of the United States. It's into prisons, which is a particular problem. And then we see it on an international scale.

Wait, wait, wait, there's a drone use in the prison.

Community of some kind, smuggling into prison.

So the a drone, a drone dropping into the prison yard is really what's happening.

Right as the drone over, whether they have prison guard watching, whether there's a guy a sniper or and a turret they can't see that they're they're droning right past these guys.

Well, you know, if you get it up high enough, really hard to see with the naked eye, you're probably not going to hear it, so pretty hard to detect.

And you drop a cell phone.

Or feed up, isn't the cell phone going to take out inmate eighty three four seven of it?

Hitsham might be, but see that's an acceptable loss by their their standards.

So how big is the drone criminal business? How big of a business is that we know?

It's we don't know.

Uh So, the federal government has not been releasing a lot of information on this, and it's not clear that even they have a particularly good handle on it.

So we really only know anecdotally.

And what we do know is that it was starting to increase rapidly before the pandemic, but we don't have solid figures really in the public after that. We do have a lot of anecdotal reports. So there are occasions where these things either crash or they're captured or something like that.

And Roger, are we talking about the kind of drone the kind of drones I'm picking up at Target and Walmart?

I mean, are they literally the ones that are sold.

For Most of these are commercially Yeah, we do see in some particularly in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, we see some more military grade drones being used for but mostly we see either domestically with these prison drops or with narcos are using are essentially the off the shelf commercial drone, some of the kinds that you would see in Hollywood for filming, but even some of the ones that you can buy on Amazon.

So we know about the positive uses for drones as far as inspection of buildings, delivering to remote areas of medicines and stuff. I get that, But drones in la and urban environments as livery systems and everybody's trying to cut back on last mile. That's what every business is trying to do deliverbent is how do we figure out the most efficient way. So gig workers are getting too expensive for these companies. They also can't find enough, so

Not?

So the real problem here is the size of the package.

So we have companies that are actively demonstrating the ability to operate in at least a rural or a suburban environment relatively safely. Now, the real problem is that the regulation is so far behind because of all the complexities that you're mentioning that it's not entirely clear how much of that additional technology you have to add to keep

Okay, delivered a blackout. Well, what are you saying that?

So the the aerial drones that we're discussing are not operator controlled are they autonomous drones?

So it's a combination that it's actually the ones that.

Are under trial right now by the e commerce companies are essentially supervised. So there are a ton of in the sense that there's not a pilot with a joystick actively controlling them, at least unless there's an emergency, so there's an ability to kind of take over. But really what they're looking for is that you would have ten or more drones being supervised simultaneously by an individual that's

What was interesting because you go self driving cars, the number of self driving cars that are crashing and I don't want to give a stack because it changes all the time in the self driving world is not acceptable where they want it to be. And I noticed with what would be zero would be really good and.

Zero's the bard Again.

Tech tech can't do certain things. And what fascinated me was with self driving car and with a drone. So it comes upon a train, a train, a long train. I know what a train is. They think it's a wall. It looks like a wall. Sure, unless it has velocity detection, it thinks it's a wall, and then all of a sudden,

Yeah, and this gets too.

I think the major problem not just for drones, but aviation as a whole as we move through the century, and that is automation right there. The biggest problems that we've seen in commercial aviation over the last couple of decades has not been mechanical failure, but the problem of the human crew members understanding the automation and what's doing. It's that disconnect that's led to the most serious accidents in recent commercial air travel. And you know, same sort

Let me take a little bit of a turn and ask you a question, because you talked about the air rights over there. So I don't I don't think this has happened to me, But I do have celebrity friends who have been in their backyard and they look up and there's a camera drone.

Over the over the yard.

It is there a height at which they can claim that it is trespassing or is there is there any rights for the airspace.

Above their property to.

Prevent the airspace is a really difficult problem at the at the federal scale because there's very little case law on it. Essentially, the FAA has the authority to regulate navigable airspace, and in general terms, that's traditionally meant basically not coming within five hundred feet of people or structures. Now, what happened when the drones came in the fa said, look, we do not want this type of technology mixing with aircraft with humans on them, and so they have to

And now are you concerned by the way that the big companies that are investing and they all are the Amazon's and the Walmarts eteremter.

They have lobbing that can change.

They push Washington to doolo poles and change the restrictions to benefit them, which I get. I mean, they're trying to move business forward, and this is going to be the jobs of the future. The gig economy is going to kind of diminish, and this will be the new jobs of the future. Do you see that happening soon? Do you see delivery drones anytime soon in major cities?

The pattern of regulation for this type of technology, and especially how novel it is and how much we don't really understand about the interface between all of this automation suggests that the FAA is.

Going to be extremely cautious, which is what they've.

Signaled, which we hope and pray that they're not going to have. They're not smeared with money and saying we'll let just fly over your house.

Is there, Russia?

Is there?

Do you see an upside to the advent of the drones? It? Does it pollute less?

Is it really a far more efficient means of delivery?

Or is it?

Because when I look at it, I just look at people losing jobs. But is there is there a net positive for society at large to have this become a more standard delivery system.

There are applications, so the most problem of those is zip Line, which is a company that's been operating primarily in Africa, and what they do is they deliver often blood supplies to remote medical facilities by It's essentially a drone airplane that that parachutes out the package using GPS, so they basically launch it with a giant slingshot, has a kind of a wire recovery system that snatches out of the air. It's amazing in terms of its operation.

So Connor, I would expect to see those come in. First.

Am I hearing a dog or you're having stomach issues? Do we need to stop?

Okay? If I've heard some kind of that's the last time you hear before the drone comes in. And you know, well, you know what I'm worried about. Distract liability, distracted droning. You know what I mean? Like you got you've.

Got gamers who are now coordinating these drones, and once they give him more than one, they've got like find that they got to do, and it guys talking on his phone playing whatever it is he got distracted droning going on, and liability.

Did you just coin this phrase distracted drowning? Is that a phrase that exists? Or does that? Does that exist? Distracted running?

It's an interesting question. I think what we're actually saying much automation now.

That it's uh, it's it's really the algorithm that's that's the problem, more so than the human operator.

In a lot of these.

Cases, you're worried, so your fears are over. Nothing to worry about it automation. There's no distracting drone. There's no kid with a game.

Automation always works, it's always good, always, you know, always, Automation cannot reply.

We'll have this conversation that.

He is an example of how it doesn't work. Because this was a story I read in researching for this. So there was an Amazon primere apparently is a you know, Amazon's putting quite a bit of money into developing this technology, so they've flown ten of these, you know, test deliveries. Well, first of all, according to this, the FAA says the drone cannot fly over a road. Can't fly over a

Right.

But in the ten that they've flown, five of them have crashed in a four month period, and one of them the crash started a fire that burned twenty five acres.

I'm lucky. Run just that is that all?

Bad?

Run? Yeah? Bad run? Oh?

But Amazon Amazons have been trying to get this off the ground for a while and they've had issues, right, but that doesn't mean they're going to bag it.

Yeah, And the issue with the spotter on the road was caused because they're that particular aircraft was operating above the threshold of fifty five pounds, which is kind of where the FAA has capped with a consider you know, essentially a safe drone for this kind of initial phase of operations. So once you go above fifty five pounds, the FA is looking at as an entirely more intensive experimental category.

Thankfully, So if you kidding, the FAA is on it because I know if a fifty three pound package falls on the perfect fifty five that's an alley.

It can do.

A package under fifty five pounds, or a third grader who's late for school, it can kind of do that.

I just well, look, it's fascinating to me because I look at it.

And I go, I can't ever imagine that. I don't know how they're going to regulate whatever. But again, every major company is doing it.

So before you go, I got to ask who's I got.

I have houn insurance, car insurance, fire insurance, earthquake insurance, and flood insurance. Do we not have to have drone crashing insurance because it's my car. They're not responsible, I'm responsible, and we got to start wearing a hard hat to work.

Yeah, it's a it's a huge question, absolutely a fair question.

You're supposed to have to answer the expert.

All we do all day is come up with good questions. I heard about this because we ask good questions.

We need you, the expert, mister drum drune fans, to answer the question.

I guess we didn't ask a vertical question. We a horizontaled a little bit assa rather than you.

So liability hasn't been figured out yet obviously.

Again for you, Yes, yeah, and I think it's obviously there's going to be a huge risk. I think if this starts with, you know, delivering coffees and burrios and that sort of thing, I suspect what you're going to see is more supply chain oriented delivery, where you know you have a factory complex and uh, you know different components or different parts of the factory are separated by some distance, and you know within that compound you can move things by.

Your routine roots between between So business to business more so than business to consumer.

And it's also I would say fairly certain and when we do start to see a broader application that it's going to be limited in terms of where it's traversing. So are these things going to be following public right aways? For instance, They're probably not going to be traversing across people's neighborhoods to get from A to B.

You know, for the most part, we'll have to see how that develops.

But certainly, in terms of this liability question, I think you're going to see a pretty measured and careful approach because of that very issue.

But to that effect, can't these things be hacked? Did somebody hack into them and redirect them?

Cybersecurity is a huge concern with this, There's no doubt about that.

So or of course, a kid with a rock, Yeah, hear it, you can steal yourself. I mean, then it's vulnerable. You can shoot it down, you can whatever. Yeah, a lot of ways to take it down. It's a fascinating world. I just read that you know about the Chinese grown that swims and flies? Yeah, what is that?

Hello? Really? Yep?

And I you know there's even some I've seen in this country that you know are fully aquatic that you know you it'll take off from the bottom of a swimming pool.

Oh my god, Can I ask a question? With all this technology, I'm sixty three years old. Back in nineteen sixty six, I believe I saw a man on television with a pack on his back fly through the air and soar around. It is twenty twenty three. Where's my jetpack? What are we falling around with these drones? Give me the package, Give me the jetpack. I got nothing else to do. I'll get it where it needs to go.

If you have the money, you can do it today.

But they're not.

But I know you can because I've seen videos of people doing it. But there we haven't really extended the range of these things, right, I mean, like a three minute flight is a big deal, and maybe it's a mile or two or three. But we're not really they're not becoming more viable than that, are they?

At this moment? They are?

There is the upscale version of these smaller drones are whether called e VETEL or electric vertical Takeoff and Landing in verticle. This is an entirely different aspect of the market. Right In twenty seventeen, Uber announced this huge effort to attempt to create autonomous four person, four passenger air taxis that was going to be the board, and some of

Now.

When they do get certified, it's pretty certain that they're going to have a human pilot on board instead of an autopilot running it. So it's going to be essentially a variant on a helicopter when they actually come into being, but they'll be electric and essentially upscale drones.

And what's amazing is prepping for you. I read it in the forties they promised people that they have personal helicopters. This has always been a thing, correct.

Oh yeah, if you back to the eighteen nineties and there's this vision of what has been called urban air mobility.

What this boils down to a lot of times for our show is should we invest? That's what it comes down to, where we putting money into this thing.

Or not invest carefully? It would be my advice.

Really, Yes, still a long way. It's still a long way. It's an air taxi.

I'm nervous about getting into a ground taxi at this point.

In air taxi. Well, thank you for look, thank you for coming on. You've got a breath and death and knowledge for this and the Air and Space Museum. We did a live show there. What a wonderful place are you? Is that where your offices? Yeah, we're under the soyer, We're into the spot. Make are you onto Apollo War above? It is amazing. By the way, we did a show there. I was starting to tell you before we went on.

Usually those stores are just the fire exits.

Yeah, sure they are sure they are just fire Yeah yeah, yeah, Well thank you doctor Roger Connor the National Air and Space Museum.

Even though he says it's a while in the future, it's hard to predict that this could really happen, But I got to go with the big guys. They're all Walmart, Amazon, They're all in on this. My take, though, is that autonomous the AI could I started really thinking about it and gave it very serious thought. A. I would have never come up with marshamallow fluff because there's no need for it. Would have never made marshamallow fluff, would have

What else? Greeting cards, tie die spanks.

A I would have never come up with that stuff because it wouldn't have known to sheep adoodle. It would have never said, you know what, combine that dog with that dog because I'm thinking you need that.

You don't need it. So A I would have never come up with that.

Serious several unnatural sexual positions it would have never come up with. Also, A I can't hold a grudge right, so it's not human and it can't I can't write somebody out of a will A lot of stuff.

AI think. Can I just ask you a question I give a lot of thought to that. I can tell that you did.

Thank you.

Now here's my question but talking about drones that are going to deliver items to people and need people not in need people. You you veered off, you did a vertical lift. If I may into AI and things AI can because what.

Do you think AI? What do you think is dry? Hello? What does that? What do you do with a drone? Do you want to explain it? Now?

Perhaps a drone will one day be piloted by an ailing an AI. Drone to go from point A to point B and carry a box has nothing to do with crossing the dog breeds to make a sheep of doodle on a marshmallow fluff.

David, where did David? David Google? Could you? Could you alern from me?

David to me and don't be thrown by his celebrity or or adjacency to celebrity.

To me, he just got a delivery of me? He is off the rang you have? Do you have toys? Here you go? They're all the time? Autonomous? Is AI? J the word autonomous? That's how the go ahead, David. No, AI is artificial intelligence. It's not autonomous intelligence.

I hate the word intelligence coming out of your mouth, but go ahead, David.

Most drones and certainly the drones that we're talking about in this situation are not one hundred driven by people. But there are algorithms and whatnot keep the drones stable and flying and without crashing and dissan.

So there's a lot of algorithms. And let me ask you, David, let.

Me ask you regular is in your research and the whole internet lays before you has a drone created through any kind of artificial or automated intelligence ever tried to make fluff a nutter? How did we go from we're talking about a machine that picks a thing up and puts it somewhere else. And he gives me a list of things that that machine that was designed for that.

And that alone man couldn't make. You know what, you can't make a marshmallow floor. Here's here's the point, mister connection. This is why you're not working in the lab. Or what I'm trying to say is AI can't replace us. So there's a lot of decisions.

Again, it can replace you today.

Today, i'd have a better time I'll do to that little stuffed Bobby dobbin.

I'll go over there fault to be my grandmother. All right? Why do I even try? Why do I want do what you want to do he's doing.

When Jason loses, it's always the you know what, do what you want, what you want to do, which means that is.

If you fail, I told you so, right, if it wins, I.

Didn't say that's.

Right, that's this whole show. So google time what happened during this segment. I don't want to know. My take on the will not anymore.

I really could give her, honestly, if the show is gonna be honest, I could give her crap.

It's really really I don't really know. Go ahead, out of courtesy, go thank you out of Curticy alone. Aren't you magnet? This is magic.

Let's give us another list of things that you're not going to any gift.

This year for your birthday? Oh like last year Head's spectacular. Oh it was actually pretty good.

Take it back off, So go ahead, I want let's hear your Taken't wait, here's what I'm going to say.

This is going to be brilliant here.

I do believe this technology is going to come in, it's going to pervade.

And that some way technology grow.

I don't think it is going to further split a very divided economy. I think that the people who have invested in it and developed it and run companies like Amazon and all these things. They're going to see great profitability from being able to have these delivery systems. However, I think is going to be devastating to the human economy. These are hundreds of thousands of jobs that are going

Oh, I know, wait herefwith I can give you the time when that happened. Really, I'll tell you a year, I'll tell you who was president. But it's nobody can wait for anything. I actually think this notion of.

Medicine, I understand, you know, vital organs, I understand, But this notion that I can't wait a day to get my delivery from action at home thirty.

Minutes I ordered a mic for this. I think it's still not here.

I think you're right partial credit, but I do think and This is a little serious for the show. But I know in other countries they're preparing the next generation for the jobs that are going to be happening. In this way right, let me figure where we're in this country. We're not necessarily preparing kids for the jobs that are going to be happening.

You can't them, you can't keep you one. I'm the one that loves America. But what do you Oh my Josh, I'm not honestly.

I mean, you know, technical jobs, technical jobs, but warehousing is going to change, Manufacturing is going to change and be more automated. This is going to be more automated. So we have to move education to how do you fix? How do you program?

How do you do?

That's the future. You can't just say, oh my god, stop the future. It's going to be horrible for mankind. It's it's marching on. So if we know what the technology involves, train the kids.

By the way, the dumb, dumb that I am, dumb that I am.

I told my kids don't play video games, and I've shown pilot makes anywhere from seventy grand up and now they have weight, they have video videoed and you guys know this in the other room.

Race.

Have you seen the video racing which witham I haven't seen this. These drones, it's a bird's eye view. David can talk to this. There's gambling. These guys are racing drones through real courses at eighty to one hundred miles an hour and it looks like Star X wing fighterser. It's a POV. If you're listening, go check it out. I think it's DSL racing. Imagine it. Imagine it's going really fast and it's really cool.

But you know, your premises is that we are going to train the next generations to prepare for these jobs. But our kids are roughly the same age. They're grown men, right, they grew up in the age of oh, computer science, computer technology. It's coming, it's coming, it's coming. We're going to train the next generation for computer jobs. My kids are barely more literate on the computer than I am, and I'm illiterate. So you know, we don't do such a great job at preparing the next generation.

Saying I'm that's what I'm saying when you went to die Love America. We need to prepare them for the next job. Google, I'm talk about racing for.

People who want to just check it out for themselves instead of having us describe. I'm at four minutes the Drone Racing League dot com. They can check it out for themselves. But the Drone Racing League or DRL is a fully functioning racing league like like motorsports or basketball or NFL or whatever it is, where it's six to twelve pilots are racing these drones up to ninety miles an hour during the.

Is the coolest looking thing.

I am addicted their neon lit They have lights on them to follow them as they're dipping and diving and going through squares and triangles.

And they do they take a storre courses they do. Twenty five million people want sure and gambling now big time gambling.

Let me ask you a questions. Cut to the chase. Five million followers on TikTok. Yeah, what's the first place? Perse hunderground? I saw hundred grand Because if it's a hundred grand, I'm going to run out right now. And I'm in the idiot who said to my kids, don't play for your labor. Here for two years with this craziness they make a dollar. Yeah, you're gonna be a drumming, Well, why can't I act like have your kids trained?

You know why you can't be a drone vilet? And this is the end of the show. We are youre ending right now? Tell me I've seen your hand on coordination and we're out. Oh, come on, go and try and smack me.

Right we guys?

Did you?

Guys didn't get a big error though? Yeah, what's that? You said that?

And this could be something that the drones could fix us. Domino's no longer offers the third day.

I got get it or less. I didn't know how a company could do that anyway.

In the city like Los Angeles, you can't get I can't get to my den in thirty minutes or less.

In LA you can't get out. When did they stop doing that?

Then after a nineteen ninety three lawsuit, they dropped it because a woman won seventy eight million dollars against the company, and it is alleged that there are twenty fatalities related to that.

Oh sure, I got to kick up or some of the delivery drivers pizza.

Now, that's when I was under four hundred dollars that Laurie's giving us the wrap up figure starting here in your talk Queen christ Is, it's Queen critique. She hates that name, Lauri, he called you Queen Critiqua. You hate that name. Oh you're gonna pay for that next episode.

Really Yeah now, Really Really No Really. Thank you for being with us on another episode of Really No Really. Next one coming to you by Drone. If you liked it half as much as we liked doing it, we liked.

It twice twice as much as you like listening, which is not man whatever to see you bye.

Thank you again, doctor Roger Connor for helping us out today with our drone inquiries. You can find us online at reallynoreally dot com or we're on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and threads at Really No Really.

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