Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Jeffy's Corner: Ready for Robots w/ author & technology expert David Pogue

Episode Date: March 12, 2016

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David Poe, awesome. Live events, be columnist, podcaster, television show host, technology expert. I mean, you really are. You're the most interesting man in the world. I'm sure you're just listening to you. I mean, maybe that's why the Dosecchi's beer guy is retiring. Their most interesting man. I mean, he's been proven a fraud.

That's you. I've heard a couple of interviews from you. I thought, thank you for coming on the broadcast. I find you fascinating. And, you know, I'll get to know you a little bit. Since I know one of your life spaces is a tech expert. And, you know, I try to keep my audience abreast of some of the future stuff that's coming down the pike, especially if it's, you know, for our own safety and for our livelihoods.

in your travels, top one or two tech items that are going to change the way we live? Hmm, yeah, that is pretty much my beat. I'd say there's two huge, huge ways of technology they're going to change everything in the next couple of years. One is artificial intelligence and robotics. We've been hearing about that for decades. Yes, we have. But it's finally turning into real products. You know, self-driving cars are a huge example.

people think that self-driving cars are interesting and cool and provocative, but that's only the first half of the revolution. The other half is self-driving cars meets Uber. That is, you will not own a car. You will summon one every time you need a ride somewhere on your app. You'll just say, pick me up, and this robotic car will come and pick you up. And this is not just fantasy. General Motors first invested half.

half a billion dollars in Lyft, and then just today they bought a robotic car company. They are actively working on this, and Uber itself just bought the entire Carnegie Mellon Robotics Department to work on the same idea. I mean, there really is no reason for a wife. Thank you. Wow. I know. I know.

I know. Yeah, but you know what there won't be any need for is driver's ed, driver's license, speed limit, Hard rails, garages, drunk driving, you know, get as drunk as you want. You can sleep. It won't matter anymore. Yeah, I mean, anyone who's lived in any, you know, up and down the East Coast, the Northeast for sure, has, you know, has lived their life without an automobile for any, you know, length of time, for sure. Right.

And so, I mean, you get an idea of how it would, how life is like without an automobile. The driverless taxi idea will be biggest in. metropolitan areas. And I would say that because driverless cars have a safety record that's thousands of times better than humans, I would say it is not the problem of introducing driverless cars. The problem is going to be the humans still on the road. Right, exactly. That's what I mean. So the humans are, you know, you're not going to be able to put them together. I get that the driverless cars are going to have, you know, are having an idea between sooner or later being able to talk to themselves and not causing accidents and that kind of thing, but it's going to be the humans that

are screwing it up. So the only way to, you're not going to want them together. Well, I mean, right now Google's prototypes have driven 1.8 million miles on regular public roads intermixing with regular cars, and they've only been in a single accident, that a two-mile-an-hour vendor with a bus just last week. Right. And so I don't think. that's the idea. I don't think it'll need to be segregated. I think that the more people

switch to self-driving cars, the fewer the accidents there will be period. So I think it'll, but the artificial intelligence thing is just, I mean, that's just one example. You know, the drones coming out this year, for example, can now, you know, sense and avoid objects. They can't crash, basically. You can fly it directly toward a tree and it, it won't go. It'll refuse. Like trying to ride a horse into a telegraph. telephone poll. You know, you just can't do it. Nope.

No, I'm not going to hit that. That's right. That's great. And robot robots, like regular two-footed walking robots are suddenly appearing as useful, capable machines. And I went to a really cool event sponsored by DARPA, our government's coolest department, the Defense Advanced Research Project Administration. And they tried to, they had a contest, three and a half million dollars of prize.

to whoever could come up with a robot that could have gone into the Fukushima nuclear power plant and shut off the water valves and saved the day. And they had entries from 25 countries and they had to drive a car and open doors and climb over rubble and unplugged power cords. It was just absolutely amazing. It didn't exist four years ago. Didn't they have worth that? I mean, there were reports that they were using actually some robots to go into the new plant in Fukushima, and I don't know that they actually were able to come in and out of there.

Is that... Yeah, you're right. You're right. They sent in what was then the state of the art, which is little camera bots, you know, with treads. But they weren't able to do anything about the problem. They could peek at it, but they couldn't actually shut off the water. They couldn't, you know, cut a piece of sheetrock open to let a traps person out. They couldn't do anything.

These robots can. And it was breathtaking to see. So that's one. giant way. Where are we at with, you know, so many of the studies have shown that, you know, we as humans are, we love the robots as long as we know they're robots.

But we don't love robots if we, you know, if they're, if they look too much like us and we think they either looks like us and something's off or they look like us and they're, nothing is off and we're like, no, that's too freaky. Yeah. Uncanny Valley,

they call it. When a robot looks so much like a person that your brain is actually fooled for a minute. Very disorienting. I mean, there's a lot of people, there are a lot of people saying, let's put on the brakes with AI stuff. You know, we don't want the robot turning on us.

Right. Well, look, first, I mean, I think that we're, I think we will be able at least for, you know, a few years to make sure that they won't turn on us. And we can use them for, you know, to advance us, right? I mean, that's what they're for. Yeah, exactly. When I saw the, I got to interview the DARPA guy who ran that robot competition, and he said, I look at these and there's no doubt in my mind that when we're 90,

these things will be in our homes taking care of us. And I have to say, absolutely. I mean, they're coming along so fast. I'm actually all for that. I'm good with it. No problem. But what we have, so we're good with the robots. So where are we at with the human chipping, you know, the body chips? Yeah, I don't, I haven't seen anything leaping forward there.

Even, even putting things on your face, like Google Glass was kind of a bomb. I think people are missing the instinctive human distaste for that kind of thing. I think most people would rather not have circuitry inside the body. That's why I thought

you know, we have the what we saw in, you know, there's television shows, obviously, that aren't real. I know they're not real, Dave, it's okay. But we have, you know, say like the show Continuum, she has the eye computer. You know, so it's her microchip in her eye, and then she has the chip that she uploads and downloads

so that her eye is the computer screen, inside her eye is the computer screen. So what about, If we have, you know, everybody's putting on the glasses and everybody, no, everybody doesn't want to look, you know, goofy with the virtual reality glasses. And now we've got, you know, the Samsung sevens are, you know, you get the, they slide on for the virtual reality glasses. What about just wearing, just making, so the, our, we have a helmet. I mean, so the, you know, we just have the helmet. The helmet can have the, I mean, it's almost like a space helmet, right?

I mean, you have the, you have the microphone to make the calls. You have the screen to see. and you can go back and forth from real life. Yeah, I guess I'm not sold. I just, I don't see the screaming need for it. I mean, Google Glass bombed, 3D television bombed. Right. I mean, if you're going to scrap something onto your face,

it better be, you know, life-changing. And considering what you give up, you know, social interactions, awareness of your surroundings. I'm sure it's such an easy sell. Yeah, that's a really good point. Okay, so now we move on, you know, anything else that is going to change my life, going to make my life better? Oh, yeah. The second big thing I was going to say is that's really coming along nicely is wearable fitness monitors,

giving you insight into, you know, the status of your health that you've never had before. It's been invisible your whole life. And, you know, not just the fit bits that count your steps, but now they, you know, they give you a graph of your sleep and they track your exposure to light and to sound. They warn you when you're going to get a sunburn. They let you know when you're slouching. It's really turning into interesting stuff. And Google, yeah, speaking of wearables that you really have a do,

you really do have a reason to put on. Google is working on a contact lens for diabetics. There you go. Yeah, that will eliminate the need to stick themselves multiple times a day to check their insulin levels. This will just detect it from your teeth. send it to your phone to look at the levels, and it really works. That is amazing.

So amazing. That is great. And then the next step is there's research on collecting all the data, these terabytes of data that we're spewing out from our health monitors and our phones for the purposes of medical research. Of course. We could harvest all this data. Just for our safety and our health. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, you can find these amazing patterns of, oh, look, when this person goes to bed early, he's less likely to have an asthma attack the next day. I mean, you can draw these conclusions based on massive amounts of data that you can't do now. Still pretty frightening. You know, you're lucky if you get 50 people signed up in a year. Right. Well, it's still pretty frightening. I mean, people are still, you know, I mean, I got it.

It's great. It's one, you know, it's a good thing. And yes, if you are already diagnosed with diabetes, do I want you to have, do I want you to stick yourself 80 times a day? No. I'd rather have you, you know, just have it sent to your phone. Yeah, it's time for your insulin. But, I mean, there's just massive amounts of information that is time for you to sit down, Jeff. It just seems, you know, we're getting, all right, I don't care.

I'm ready for the body chip anyway. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me. I don't want to have to bring out my wallet. I don't want to have to bring out. I just boop, I'm done. I want to go through the crowd and be done with it. It's fine.

The old school of cash and everything else is, I mean, we're pretty close to cash list now. We're getting there. I'm surprised it hasn't caught on more than it has, you know, paying by phone. It really is kind of nice. But it's just, I know there's competing standards and the retail shops and restaurants need to upgrade their cash register

things which costs money which they don't want to do so that revolution is really sort of stalled as well that's too bad okay so author pog's basics to life i know you've got like a hundred and well how many books do you have now 80? yeah 40 about 80 yeah but my you know some of my favorite uh reading is the basics Pogue Basics life and just your basics and tips that, you know, get you through everyday life. And I love the whole idea of it. And I know that before we get to the basics of life, you're in the middle of doing a new book now, right? I am. That's right.

You're looking for tips? Yeah, that's right. So the first Pogue's basics book was all tech tips, you know, how to, you know, the little, little tips about your phones and computers that you think everybody knows, but they don't, because there's really no, like, driver's ed for technology. So that was a few years ago. And then this last Christmas, there was a sequel, Pog's Basics Life. And then now I'm working on a third one to come out this Christmas, which is Pogs Basics money.

And I'm extremely excited about that. There's just so many loopholes in life, little finance hacks that let you save and make money that people are just walking right over, walking right by and not realizing it. It's kind of amazing. What's one of the things that's going to be in your new book that you didn't know? Well, how about this? That when you go away on vacation, you can call your cable and internet companies and tell them you're going away and stop paying.

Why should you pay for cable for an empty house? I love that. You know, and it's so funny you say that. You think about, I remember my folks and my grandparents, parents would, you know, pause the newspapers, which, you know, who gets a newspaper anymore, certainly not myself. Same idea, yeah. But it's the same idea, right.

They would just, they would pause it. Then there's no reason. I'll call you when I get back, you can start delivering it again. And I love this one. Of course, we know that there are credit cards that let you, that give you cash back on everything. Right. So they're like 6% 5% back or 6% back. So there's some of these amazing hacks that they're.

people sent in where you use one of those credit cards to go into Costco and buy a gift card for yourself or Amazon or, you know, Best Buy or wherever you do shopping. And because Costco themselves marks down the gift cards, you're using your 6% discount on your credit card to buy a gift card that itself is marked down. You can basically do this credit card arbitrage and save. massive amounts of money. And speaking of... Better be worth it.

You still have to pay for the Costco card. That's right. But this I didn't realize, there are websites like gift card granny where you can sell gift cards that people gave you that you don't want. You trade them in for cash.

You get 92% of their value. That's not bad. And similarly, if you are going to some store, you can buy one of those cards for yourself at a discount. You know, you pay 92%. So if I want to use an iTunes card, I can go to one of these sites and buy it for,

buy $100 worth of iTunes stuff for $90, instantly 10% off everything. And if I buy that card with my 6% refunds, 16%. Now I'm getting 16% off of everything in the world. That is great. Well, all right, so that's coming this Christmas, right? Yeah, that's right. I'll definitely have to talk to you about that. So we'll go back to your basics in life.

What are a couple of your favorite life tips before I have to let you go today? Well, some of them are these things where designers did things for us and the word just never got out. Like on the fuel gauge of every car, there's a tiny picture of a gas tank with an arrow pointing either to the right or to the left. That's to tell you which side of the car has the gas tank. That's I actually I heard you say that in another interview and I went oh my gosh So when you're in a rental car you know you're spared that dance of driving around the gas pump No kidding and or or and this one's a life changer you should leave the butter out Don't refrigerate your butter butter doesn't spoil those many weeks and by leaving it out at room temperature

It's soft and spread so much easier to spread yeah my wife's been doing that she's She's had that argument forever. That's how they do it in Europe. Yeah, she's had that argument forever. I'm leaving the butter out, leave me alone. Yeah, exactly. And I think my favorite one, I don't know how old you are, Jeff, but sooner or later you will get to be over.

155. Okay, all right. So those of you who are over 40 know that your eyesight will start to go, and you will need glasses, maybe for reading, maybe for distance. But here's the thing. When you're caught without your glasses, this is the one lasting thing. this book that I use. I can't read that. I don't have my glasses. Yeah, exactly. You can still read using the pinhole camera effect. What you do is you curl your index finger tightly against your

thumb, making a tiny pinhole. Right. You hold your hand right up to your eyeball and look through that pinhole. Suddenly, you can read again without the glasses. That is fantastic. So when you're, you know, in a restaurant, reading a menu, or you know when it's useful when you're in a shower in the hotel and you can't read the labels on the little bottle. Now you can figure out which one is shampoo by holding your finger up to your eyes. I shouldn't just wash my hair with the skin softener? I shouldn't just do that? Exactly.

I've just saved you that shame. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. I appreciate. David Pogue. All right. So all this information they can get at your website, David Pogue.com, correct? Yep.

And are you still giving, I know you were asking for, I mean, tips for your book that's coming out this coming Christmas, are you still waiting for people to give you more tips? Yeah, I am. I'm looking for more sort of price hacks of that type. And if I use yours, I'll credit you in the book and send you an autographed copy. That's the deal. So just, you know, just email me, Pogue at me.com, P-O-G-U-E at me.com. And I'll acknowledge you one way or another.

and if I use your tip all well, then you got to be. That's great. David Polk, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you. Take care, sir. This is the Jeff Fisher Show on the Blaze Radio Network. The experts at web.com want to bill

your business a successful website for free. Plus, we'll promote it on all the major search engines. If after 30 days you're happy, we'll continue to provide promotion, hosting, support, and maintenance, all for one low monthly fee. If not, cancel and pay nothing. Call right now and you'll also get a free.com or dot net domain name for your new website, powered by Veracine, the world's leading domain name provider.

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