Future Technology | 60 Minutes Marathon
artificial intelligence is the magic of
the moment but this is a story about
what's next something
incomprehensible tomorrow IBM will
announce and advance in an entirely new
kind of computing one that may solve
problems in minutes that would take
today's
supercomputers millions of years that's
the difference in Quantum Computing a
technology being developed at IBM Google
and others it's named for quantum
physics which describes the forces of
the subatomic realm the science is deep
and we can't scratch the surface but we
hope to explain enough so that you won't
be blinds Ed by a breakthrough that
could transform
civilization the quantum computer pushes
the limits of knowledge new science new
engineering all leading to this
processor that computes with the atomic
forces that created the universe I think
this moment it feels to us like the
Pioneers on the 1940s and 50s that were
building the first digital computer
computers Dario Gill is something of a
Quantum Crusader Spanish born with a PhD
in electrical engineering Gil is head of
research at IBM how much faster is this
than say the world's best super computer
today we are now in a stage where we can
do certain calculations with these
systems that would take the biggest
supercomputers in the world to be able
to do some similar calculation but the
beauty of it is that we see that we're
going to continue to expand that
capability such that not even a million
or a billion of those supercomputers
connected together could do the
calculations of these future
machines so we've come a long way and
the most exciting part is that we have a
road map and a journey right now where
that is going to continue to increase at
a r that is going to be shocking I'm not
sure the world is prepared for this
change definitely not to understand the
change go back to
1947 and the invention of a switch
called a transistor the transistor a new
name computers have processed
information on transistors ever since
getting faster as more transistors were
squeezed onto a chip billions of them
today but it takes that many because
each transistor holds information in
only two states it's either on or it's
off like a coin heads or tails Quantum
abandons transistors and encodes
information on electrons that behave
like this coin we created with animation
electrons behave in a way so that they
are heads and tails and everything in
between you've gone from hand in one bit
of information at a time on a transistor
to exponentially more
data you can see that there is fantastic
amount of information stored when you
can look at all possible angles not just
up or down physicist miio Kaku of the
City University of New York already
calls today's computers classical he
uses a maze to explain quantum's
difference let's look at a classical
computer calculating how a mouse
navigates a maze it is painful one by
one it has to map every single left turn
right turn left turn right turn before
it finds the goal now a quantum computer
scans all possible routes
simultaneously this is amazing how many
turns are there hundreds of possible
turns right quantum computers do it all
at once kaku's book titled Quantum
Supremacy
explains the stakes we're looking at a
race a race between China between IBM
Google Microsoft Honeywell all the big
boys are in this race to create a
workable operationally efficient quantum
computer because the nation or company
that does this will rule the world
economy but a reliable general purpose
quantum computer is a tough CL time yet
maybe that's why this wall is in the
lobby of Google's Quantum lab in
California here we got an inside look
starting with a microscope's view of
what replaces the transistor this right
here is one cubit and this is another
Cubit this is a 5 Cubit chain those
crosses at the bottom are cubits short
for Quantum bits they hold the electrons
and act like AR IAL atoms unlike
transistors each additional Cubit
doubles the computer's power it's
exponential so while 20 transistors are
20 times more powerful than one 20
cubits are a million times more powerful
than one so this gets positioned right
here on the fridge and this Karina Chow
Chief Operating Officer of Google's lab
showed us the processor that holds the
cubits much of that above chills the
cubits to what physicists call near
absolute zero near absolute zero I
understand is about 460° below 0o fah so
that's about as cold as anything can get
yes almost as cold as possible that
temperature inside a sealed computer is
one of the coldest places in the
universe the Deep Freeze eliminates
electrical resistance
and isolates the cubits from outside
vibrations so they can be controlled
with an electromagnetic field the cubits
must vibrate in unison but that's a
tough trick called coherence once you've
achieved coherence of the cubits how
easy is that to maintain it's really
hard um coherence is very challenging
coherence is fleeting in all similar
machines coherence breaks down
constantly creating errors we're making
about one error in every hundred or so
steps ultimately we think we're going to
need about one error in every million or
so steps that would probably be
identified as one of the biggest
barriers mitigating those errors and
extending coherence time while scaling
up to larger machines are the challenges
facing German American scientist hartmut
Nevan who founded Google's lab and its
casual style in 2012 can the problems
that are in the way of quantum Computing
be solved I should confess my subtitle
here is Chief
optimist so after having say this I
would say at this point we don't need
any more fundamental breakthroughs we
need little improvements here and there
we have all the pieces together we just
need to integrate them well to build
larger and larger systems and you think
that all of this will be integrated into
a system in what period of time yeah we
often say we want to do it by the end of
the decade so that we can use this
Kennedy quote and get it done by the end
of the decade the end of this decade yes
five or six years yes this that's about
the timeline Dario Gil predicts and the
IBM research director told us something
surprising there are problems that
classical computers can never solve can
never solve and I think this is an
important point because we're accustomed
to saying ah computers get better
actually there are many many problems
that are so
complex that we can make that statement
that actually classical computers will
never be able to solve that problem not
now not a 100 years from now not a
thousand years from now you actually
require a different way to represent
information and process information
that's what Quantum gives you there's
not Quantum could give us answers to
Impossible problems in physics chemistry
engineering and Medicine which is why
IBM and Cleveland Clinic have installed
one of the first quantum computers to
leave the lab for the real world takes
time it takes way too much time to find
the solutions we need right now we sat
down with dorio Gil and Dr sill SRO
Chief research officer at Cleveland
Clinic she told us healthc care would be
transformed if quantum computers can
model the behavior of proteins the
molecules that regulate all life
proteins change shape to change function
in ways too complex to follow and when
they get it wrong that causes disease it
takes on many shapes many many shapes
depending upon what it's doing and where
it is and which other protein it's with
I need to understand the shape it's in
when it's doing an interaction or a
function that I don't want it to do for
that patient cancer autoimmunity it's a
problem we are limited completely by the
computational ability to look at the
structure in real time for any even one
molecule Cleveland Clinic is so proud of
its quantum computer they set it up in a
Lobby behind the glass that shiny silver
cylinder encloses the kind of cooling
system and processor you saw earlier
Quantum is not solving the protein
problem yet this is more of a trial run
to introduce researchers to quantum's
potential the people using this machine
are they having to learn an entirely
different way to communicate with a
computer I think that's what's really
nice that you actually just use a
regular laptop and you write a program
uh very much like you would write a
traditional program but when you you
know click you know go and run it just
happens to run on a very different kind
of computer there are a half dozen
competing designs in the race China
named Quantum a top National priority
and the US government is spending nearly
a billion dollars a year on research the
first change comes next year when the US
publishes new standards for encryption
because Quantum is expected one day to
break the codes that lock everything
from National secrets to credit
cards tomorrow IBM will unveil its
Quantum system 2 with three times the
cubits as the machine you saw in
Cleveland this past August we saw a
system 2 Under Construction it's a
machine unlike anything we've ever built
and this is this is it this is it IBM's
Dario Gill told us system 2 has the room
to expand to thousands of cubits what
are the chances that this is one of
those things that's going to be ready in
5 years and always will be we don't see
an obstacle right now that will prevent
us from Building Systems that will have
tens of thousands and even 100,000
cubits working with each other so we are
highly confident that we will get there
the language of all the amazing things
we heard it was physicist miio Kaku who
led us down the path to the biggest idea
of all he said we were walking through a
quantum computer processing information
with subatomic particles is how the
universe works you know when I look at
the night sky I See Stars I look at the
flowers the trees I realized that it's
all Quantum the Splendor of the universe
itself the language of the universe is
the language of the
quantum learning that language may bring
more than inconceivable speed reverse
engineering Nature's computer could be a
window on creation
itself last month the nearest star to
the Earth was in California in a labor
labatory for the first time the world's
largest lasers forced atoms of hydrogen
to fuse together in the same kind of
energy producing reaction that fires the
sun it lasted less than a billionth of a
second but after six Decades of toil and
failure the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory proved it could be done if
Fusion becomes commercial power one day
it would be endless and carbon free in
other words it would change human
Destiny as you'll see there's far to go
but after December's breakthrough we
were invited to tour the lab and meet
the team that brought star power down to
earth uncontrolled Fusion is easy
mastered so long ago the films are in
Black and White Fusion is what a
hydrogen bomb does releasing energy by
forcing atoms of hydrogen to fuse
together what's been impossible is
harnessing the fires of Armageddon into
something
useful the US Department of Energy's
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
helps maintain nuclear weapons and
experiments with high energy physics an
hour east of San Francisco we met
livermore's director Kim budell in the
lab that made history the national
ignition
facility the national ignition facility
is the world's largest most energetic
laser it was built starting in the 1990s
to create conditions in the laboratory
that had previously only been accessible
in the most extreme objects in the
universe like the center of giant
planets or the Sun or in operating
nuclear weapons and the goal was to
really be able to study that kind of
very high energy high density condition
in a lot of detail the national ignition
facility or n was built for $35 billion
to ignite self-sustaining Fusion they
tried nearly 200 times over 13 years but
like a car with a weak battery the
atomic engine would never turn over nif
drew some nicknames it did uh for many
years the not ignition facility the
never ignition facility uh more recently
than nearly ignition facility so uh this
recent has really put the ignition in
the ni ignition means igniting a fusion
reaction that puts out more energy than
the lasers put in so if you can get it
hot enough dense enough fast enough and
hold it together long enough the fusion
reactions start to self- sustain and
that's really what happened here on
December 5th main laser operation will
begin in approximately one minute last
month the laser shot fired from this
control room put two units of energy
into the experiment Adams began fusing
and about three units of energy came out
Tammy ma who leads the lab's laser
Fusion research initiatives got the call
while waiting for a plane and I burst
into tears it was just tears of joy and
I actually physically started shaking
and and jumping up and down in in you
know at the gate before everybody bored
so everybody was like what is that crazy
woman doing Tammy ma is crazy about
engineering and that's another one of
our sensors for she showed us why the
problem of fusion would bring anyone to
Tears first there's the energy required
which is delivered by lasers in these
tubes that are longer than a football
field and how many are there altogether
192 total lasers each one of these
lasers is one of the most energetic in
the world and you have 192 of them
that's pretty cool right well pretty hot
actually millions of degrees which is
why they use keys to lock up the lasers
Shot director ready the beams strike
with a power 1,000 times greater than
the entire National power grid 3 2 1
shot your lights don't go out at home
when they take a shot because these
capacitors store the electricity in the
tubes the laser beams amplify by racing
back and forth and the Flash is a
fraction of a second we have to get to
these incredible conditions hotter
denser than the center of the Sun and so
we need all of that laser energy to get
to these very high energy densities all
that wallup vaporizes a Target nearly
too small to see can I hold this thing
absolutely
let it go there we go
unbelievable absolutely amazing Michael
Stater man's team builds the hollow
Target shells that are loaded with
hydrogen at
430° below zero the Precision that we
need for making these shells is Extreme
the shells are almost perfectly round uh
they have a roughness that is 100 times
better than a mirror you think about
that if it wasn't smoother than a mirror
imperfections would make the implosion
of atoms uneven causing a fusion fizzle
so these need to be as close to perfect
as humanly possible that's right this
way and we do think there are among the
most perfect items that we have on Earth
stator's lab pursues Perfection by
vaporizing carbon and forming the shell
out of diamond they build, 1500 a year
to make 150 nearly perfect all the
components are brought together under
the microscope itself and then the
assembler uses electromechanical stages
to put the parts where they're supposed
to go uh move them together and then we
apply glue using a hair a hair yeah
usually something like an eyelash or
similar or a cat whisker you apply glue
with a cat whisker this
way why does it have to be so small the
laser gives us only a finite amount of
energy and um to drive a bigger capsule
we would need more energy so it's a
constrain of the facility that you've
seen that is very large and despite its
big size this is about what we can drive
with it the target could be larger but
then the laser would have to be
larger on December 5th they used a
thicker Target so it would hold its
shape longer and they figured out how to
boost the power of the laser shot
without damaging the lasers so this is
an example of a Target before the shot
Tammy ma showed us an intact Target
assembly that diamond shell you saw is
inside that silver colored
cylinder this assembly goes into a blue
vacuum chamber three stories tall it's
hard to see here because it's bristling
with lasers and instruments
this instrument they called Dante
because they told us it measures the
fires of Hell one physicist said you
should see the target we blasted
December 5th which made us ask could we
have you seen this before this is the
first time I'm seeing it for tamy Ma and
for the world this is the first look at
what's left of the target assembly That
Changed History and our effect like
Bell's first phone or Edison's light
bulb this thing is going to end up in
the
Smithsonian the target cylinder was
blasted to Oblivion the Copper support
that held it was peeled backward the
explosion on the end of this was hotter
than the sun it was hotter than the
center of the sun we were able to
achieve temperatures that were the
hottest in the entire solar system which
would make an astronomical change in
electric power unlike today's nuclear
plants which split atoms apart fusing
them is many times more powerful with
little long-term radiation and it's easy
to turn off so no meltdowns but getting
from the first ignition to a power plant
will be hard how many shots do you take
in a day we take on average uh a little
more than one shot per date if this was
theoretically a commercial power plant
how many shots a day would be required
approximately 10 shots per second would
be required and the other big challenge
of course is not just increasing the
repetition rate but also getting the
gain out of the targets to go up to
about a factor of a 100 Not only would
the reactions have to produce 100 times
more energy but a power plant would need
9
100,000 perfect diamond shells a day
also the lasers would have to be much
more efficient remember December's
breakthrough put two units of energy in
and got three out well it took 300 units
of power to fire the lasers by that
standard it was 300 in three out that
detail was not front and center at the
department of energy December news
conference which fused the advance with
an unlikely timeline today's
announcement is a huge step forward uh
to the president's goal of achieve
achieving commercial Fusion within a
decade when you heard that President
Biden's goal was commercial fusion power
in a decade you thought what I thought
it was nonsense Charles cythe is a
trained mathematician science author and
professor at New York University who
wrote a 2008 book on the hyping of
fusion power I don't want to diminish
the fact that this is a real achievement
um ignition is a milestone that people
have been trying for to do for years I'm
afraid that there's so many technical
hurdles even after this great
achievement uh that 10 years is a pipe
dream those hurdles cyth says include
scaling up livermore's achievement the
sber shot generated about enough Excess
power to boil two pots of coffee the
hurdles might be overcome cyth says but
not soon I have a running bet going that
uh we're not going to have it by 2050
still betting against Charles Cy's
prophecy are more than 30 private
companies designing various approaches
to fusion power including using magnets
not lasers $3 billion in private money
flowed into those companies in the last
13 months including bets by Bill Gates
and Google amid all this speculation
Lawrence livermore's director Kim Buell
is certain of one thing can you do it
again absolutely they're going to try
again next month Buell agrees the
obstacles are enormous but she told us
commercial fusion power could be
demonstr ated in 20 years or so with
enough funding and
dedication we likened the first ignition
to the first Wright brothers flight
which covered only 120 ft it's one thing
to believe uh that the science is
possible uh that the conditions can be
created uh it's another to see it in
action and it really is a remarkable
feeling after working for 60 years to
get to this point
um to have first taken that first flight
flight it was 44 years from a puddle
jump to supersonic flight whether fusion
power is 10 or 50 years away is now
mainly an engineering problem Lawrence
Livermore has proven that from a machine
A Star is Born
whether you think artificial
intelligence will save the world or end
it you have Jeffrey Hinton to thank
Hinton has been called The Godfather of
AI a British computer scientist whose
controversial ideas help make advanced
artificial intelligence possible and so
change the world Hinton believes that AI
will do enormous good good but tonight
he has a warning he says that AI systems
may be more intelligent than we know and
there's a chance the machines could take
over which made us ask the
question does Humanity know what it's
doing
no
um I think we're moving into a period
when for the first time ever we may have
things more intelligent than us
you believe they can understand yes you
believe they are intelligent yes you
believe these systems have experiences
of their own and can make decisions
based on those experiences in the same
sense as people do yes are they
conscious I think they probably don't
have much self-awareness at present so
in that sense I don't think they're
conscious will they have self-awareness
Consciousness I oh yes I think they will
in time and so human beings will be the
second most intelligent beings on the
planet yeah Jeffrey Hinton told us the
artificial intelligence he set in motion
was an accident born of a failure in the
1970s at the University of Edinburgh he
dreamed of simulating a neural network
on a computer simply as a tool for what
he was really studying the human brain
but back back then almost no one thought
software could mimic the brain his PhD
advisor told him to drop it before it
ruined his career Hinton says he failed
to figure out the human mind but the
long Pursuit led to an artificial
version it took much much longer than I
expected it took like 50 years before it
worked well but in the end it did work
well at what point did you realize that
you were right about neural networks and
most everyone else was wrong I always
thought I was
right in 2019 Hinton and collaborators
Yan laon on the left and yosua Beno won
the touring award the Nobel Prize of
computing to understand how their work
on artificial neural networks helped
machines learn to learn let us take you
to a
game look at that oh my goodness this is
Google's AI lab in London which we first
showed you this past April Jeffrey
Hinton wasn't involved in this soccer
project but these robots are a great
example of machine learning the thing to
understand is that the robots were not
programmed to play soccer they were told
to score they had to learn how on their
own oh go
in general here's how AI does it Henton
and his collaborators created software
in layers with each layer handling part
of the problem that's the so-called
neural network but this is the key when
for example the robot scores a message
is sent back down through all of the
layers that says that pathway was right
likewise when an answer is wrong that
message goes down through the network so
correct connections get stronger wrong
connections get weaker and by trial and
error the machine teaches itself you
think these AI systems are better at
learning than the human mind I think
they may be yes and at present they're
quite a lot smaller so even the biggest
chatbots only have about a trillion
Connections in them the human brain has
about 100 trillion and yet in the
trillion Connections in a chatbot it
knows far more than you do in your 100
trillion connections which suggests it's
got a much better way of getting
knowledge into those connections a much
better way of getting knowledge that
isn't fully understood we have a very
good idea of sort of roughly what it's
doing but as soon as it gets really
complicated we don't actually know
what's going on anymore than we know
what's going on in your brain what do
you mean we don't know exactly how it
works it was designed designed by people
no it
wasn't what we did was we designed the
learning algorithm that's a bit like
designing the principle of evolution but
when this learning algorithm then
interacts with data it produces
complicated neural networks that are
good at doing things but we don't really
understand exactly how they do those
things what are the
implications of these systems
autonomously writing their own computer
code and executing their own computer
code that a serious worry right so one
of the ways in which these systems might
Escape control is by writing their own
computer code to modify
themselves and that's something we need
to seriously worry about what do you say
to someone who might argue if the
systems become benevolent just turn them
off they will be able to manipulate
people right and these will be very good
at convincing people because they'll
have learned from all the novels that
were ever written written all the books
by
makavelli all the political connives
they'll know all that stuff they'll know
how to do it noow of the human kind runs
in Jeffrey hinton's family his ancestors
include mathematician George buou who
invented the basis of computing and
George Everest who surveyed India and
got that mountain named after him but as
a boy Hinton himself could never climb
the peak of expectations raised by a
domineering father every morning when I
went to school he'd actually say to me
as I walk down the driveway get in there
pitching and maybe when you're twice as
old as me you'll be half as good dad was
an authority on Beatles he knew a lot
more about beatles than he knew about
people did you feel that as a child a
bit yes when he died we went to his
study at the University and the walls
were lined with boxes of papers on
different kinds of beetle and just near
the door there was a slightly smaller
box that simply said not insects and
that's where he had all the things about
the
family today at 75 Hinton recently
retired after what he calls 10 happy
years at Google now he's professor
ameritus at the University of Toronto
and he happened to mention he had has
more academic citations than his father
some of his research led to chatbots
like Google's Bard which we met last
spring confounding absolutely
confounding we asked Bard to write a
story from six words for sale baby shoes
never
worn holy cow the shoes were a gift from
my wife but we never had a baby Bard
created a deeply human tale of a man
whose wife could not conceive and a
stranger who accepted the shoes to heal
the pain after her miscarriage I am
rarely
speechless I don't know what to make of
this chatbots are said to be language
models that just predict the next most
likely word based on probability you'll
hear people saying things like they're
just doing autocomplete they're just
trying to predict the next word and
they're just using statistics
well it's true they're just trying to
predict the next word but if you think
about it to predict the next word you
have to understand the sentences so the
idea they're just predicting the next
words so they're not intelligent is
crazy you have to be really intelligent
to predict the next word really
accurately to prove it Hinton showed us
a test he devised for chat gp4 the
chatbot from a company called open AI it
was sort of reassuring to see a turing
Award winner mistype and blame the
computer oh damn this thing we're going
to go back and start again that's okay
hinton's test was a riddle about house
painting an answer would demand
reasoning and
planning this is what he typed into chat
gp4 the rooms in my house are painted
white or blue or yellow and yellow paint
Fades to White within a year in two
years time I'd like all the rooms to be
white what should I do the answer began
in one second gp4 advised the rooms
painted in blue need to be repainted the
rooms painted in yellow don't need to be
repainted because they would Fade to
White before the deadline and oh I
didn't even think of that it warned if
you paint the yellow rooms white there's
a risk the color might be off when the
yellow Fades besides it advised you'd be
wasting resources painting rooms that
were going to Fade to White anyway you
believe that chat GPD
4 understands I believe it definitely
understands yes and in 5 years time I
think in 5 years time it may well be
able to reason better than us reasoning
that he says is leading to ai's Great
risks and great benefits
so an obvious area where there's huge
benefits is Healthcare AI is already
comparable with Radiologists at
understanding what's going on in medical
images it's going to be very good at
designing drugs it already is designing
drugs so that's an area where it's
almost entirely going to do good I like
that area the risks are
what well the risks are having a whole
class of people who are unemployed
and not valued much because what they
what they used to do is now done by
machines other immediate risks he
worries about include fake news
unintended bias in employment and
policing and autonomous Battlefield
robots what is a path forward that
ensures
safety I don't know I I can't see a path
that guarantees safety
that we're entering a period of great
uncertainty where we're dealing with
things we've never dealt with before and
normally the first time you deal with
something totally novel you get it wrong
and we can't afford to get it wrong with
these things can't afford to get it
wrong why well because they might take
over take over from Humanity yes that's
a possibility why would they I'm not
saying it will happen if we could stop
them ever wanting to that would be great
but it's not clear we can stop them ever
wanting
to Jeffrey told us he has no regrets
because of ai's potential for good but
he says now is the moment to run
experiments to understand AI for
governments to impose regulations and
for a world treaty to ban the use of
military robots he reminded us of Robert
Oppenheimer who after inventing the
atomic bomb campaigned against the
hydrogen bomb a man who changed the
world and found the world Beyond his
control it maybe we look back and see
this as a kind of Turning Point when
Humanity had to make the decision about
whether to develop these things further
and what to do to protect themselves if
they did um I don't know I think my main
message is there's enormous uncertainty
about what's going to happen
next these things do understand and
because they understand we need to think
hard about what's going to happen next
and we just don't
know we may look on our time as the
moment civilization was transformed as
it was by fire Agriculture and
electricity in 2023 we learned that a
machine taught itself how to speak to
humans like a peer with which is to say
with creativity truth errors and lies
the technology known as a chatbot is
only one of the recent breakthroughs in
artificial intelligence machines that
can teach themselves superhuman skills
in April we explored what's coming next
at Google a leader in this new world CEO
Sundar Pai told us AI will be as good or
as evil as human nature allows the
revolution he says is coming faster than
you know do you think Society is
prepared for what's coming you know
there are two ways I think about it on
one hand I feel no uh because you know
the pace at which we can think and adapt
as societal institutions compared to the
PACE at which the technology is evolving
there seems to be a
mismatch on the other hand compared to
any other technology I've seen more
people worried about it earlier in its
life cycle so I feel optimistic the
number of people you know who have
started worrying about the implications
and hence the conversations are starting
in a serious way as well I guess our
conversations with 50-year-old Sundar
Pai started at Google's new campus in
Mountain View California it runs on 40%
solar power and collects more water than
it uses Hightech that Pai couldn't have
imagined growing up in India with no
telephone at home we were on a waiting
list to get a rotary phone and for about
5 years and it finally came home I can
still recall it vividly it changed our
lives to me it was the first moment I
understood the power of what getting
access to technology meant so probably
led me to be doing what I'm doing
today what he's doing since 2019 is
leading both Google and its parent
company alphabet valued at
$1.5
trillion worldwide Google runs 90% of
internet searches and 70% of smartphones
we're really excited about but it's
dominance was attacked this past
February when Microsoft linked its
search engine to a chatbot in a race for
AI dominance in March Google released
its chatbot named bard
it's really here to help you brainstorm
ideas to generate content like a speech
or a blog post or an email we were
introduced to Bard by Google vice
president sha and Senior Vice
President James manika here's Bard the
first thing we learned was that Bard
does not look for answers on the
internet like Google search does so I
wanted to get inspiration from some of
the best speeches in the World Bard's
replies come from a self-contained
program that was mostly self-taught our
experience was unsettling confounding
absolutely confounding Bard appeared to
possess the sum of human
knowledge with microchips more than
100,000 times faster than the human
brain summarize the we asked Bard to
summarize the New Testament it did in 5
seconds and 17 words in Latin we asked
for it in Latin that took another 4
seconds then we played with a famous
six-word short story often attributed to
Hemingway for sale baby shoes never worn
wow the only prompt we gave was finish
this
story in 5
seconds holy cow the shoes were a gift
from my wife but we never had a baby
they were from The six-word Prompt Bard
created a deeply human tale with
characters it invented including a man
whose wife could not conceive and a
stranger grieving after a miscarriage
and longing for
closure uh I am rarely
speechless I don't know what to make of
this give me we asked for the story in
verse in 5 seconds there was a poem
written by a machine with breathtaking
insight into the mystery of Faith Bard
wrote she knew her baby Soul would
always be
alive the humanity at superhuman speed
was a shock how was this possible so
James manika told us that over several
months Bard read most everything on the
internet internet and created a model of
what language looks like rather than
search its answers come from this
language model so for example if I said
to you Scott peanut butter and jelly
right so it tries and learns to predict
okay so peanut butter usually is
followed by jelly it tries to predict
the most probable next words based on
everything it's learned uh so it's not
going out to find stuff it's just
predicting the next word but it doesn't
feel like that we asked Bard why it
helps people and it replied quote
because it makes me happy Bard to my eye
appears to be thinking appears to be
making
judgments that's not what's happening
these machines are not sensient they are
not aware of themselves they're not
sensient they're not aware of themselves
uh they can exhibit behaviors that look
like that because keep in mind they've
learned from us we are sentient beings
we have beings that have feelings
emotions ideas thoughts
perspectives we've reflected all that in
books in novels in fiction so when they
learn from that they build patterns from
that so it's no surprise to me that the
exhibited behavior sometimes looks like
maybe there's somebody behind there
there's nobody there there these are not
sensient beings they not Zimbabwe born
Oxford educated James manika holds a new
position at Google his job is to think
about how Ai and Humanity will best
coexist AI has a potential to change
many ways in which we've thought about
Society about what we're able to do the
the problems we can solve but AI itself
will pose its own problems could Heming
way WR a better short story maybe but
Bard can write a million before
Hemingway could finish one imagine that
level of automation across the economy a
lot of people can be replaced by this
technology yes there are some job
occupations that will start to decline
over time there are also new job
categories that will grow over time but
the biggest change will be the jobs that
will be changed something like more than
2third will have their definitions
change not go away but change because
they're now being assisted by Ai and by
automation so this is a profound change
which has implications for skills how do
we assist people build new skills learn
to work alongside machines and how do
these complement what people do today
this is going to impact every product
across every company and and so that's
why I think it's a a very very profound
technology and so we are just in early
days every product in every company
that's right AI will impact everything
so for example you could be a
radiologist you know if I if you think
about 5 to 10 years from now you're
going to have a AI collaborator with you
it may triage you come in the morning
you let's say you have 100 things to go
through it may say these are the most
serious cases you need to look at first
or when you're looking at something it
may pop up and say you may have missed
something important why wouldn't we you
know why would we take advantage of a
superpowered assistant to help you
across everything you do you maybe a
student trying to learn math or history
and you know you will have something
helping you there are we ask Pai what
jobs would be disrupted he said
knowledge workers people like writers
accountants Architects and ironically
software Engineers AI writes computer
code too today sundarai walks a narrow
line a few employees have quit some
believing that Google's AI rollout is
too slow others too fast there are some
serious flaws there's a return of
inflation James manika asked Bard about
inflation it wrote an instant essay in
economics and recommended five
books but days later we checked none of
the books is real bar fabricated the
titles this very human trait error with
confidence is called in the industry
hallucination are you getting a lot of
hallucinations uh yes uh you know which
is expected no one in the in the field
has yet solved the hallucination
problems all models uh do have uh this
as an issue is it a solvable problem
it's a matter of intense debate
I think we'll make progress to help cure
hallucinations Bard features a Google it
button that leads to oldfashioned search
Google has also built safety filters in
debard to screen for things like hate
speech and bias how great a risk is the
spread of disinformation AI will
challenge that in a deeper way the scale
of this problem is going to be much
bigger bigger problems he says with fake
news and fake images it will be possible
with AI to create uh you know a video
easily where it could be Scott saying
something or me saying something and we
never said that and it could look
accurate but you know at a societal
scale you know can cause a lot of harm
is Bard safe for
society the way we have launched it
today uh as an experiment in a limited
way uh I think so but we all have to be
responsible in each step along the way
this past spring Google released an
advanced version of Bard that can write
software and connect to the internet
Google says it's developing even more
sophisticated AI models you are letting
this out slowly so that Society can get
used to
it that's one part of it uh one part is
also so that we get the user feedback
and we can develop more robust safety
layers before we build before we deploy
more capable models interacting with of
the AI issues we talked about the most
mysterious is called emergent
properties some AI systems are teaching
themselves skills they weren't expected
to have how this happens is not well
understood for example one Google AI
program adapted on its own
after it was prompted in the language of
Bangladesh which it was not trained to
translate we discovered that with very
few amounts of prompting in Bengali he
can now translate all of Bengali so now
all of a sudden we now have a research
effort where we're now trying to get to
a thousand languages there is an aspect
of this which we call all of us in the
field call it as a black box you know
you don't fully understand and you can't
quite tell why it said this or why it
got wrong we have some ideas and our
ability to understand this gets better
over time but that's where the stateof
thee art is you don't fully understand
how it works and yet you've turned it
loose on society let me put it this way
I don't think we fully understand how a
human mind works either was it from that
black box we wondered that Bard Drew its
short story that seems so disarming
human it talked about the pain that
humans feel it talked about
Redemption how did it do all of those
things if it's just trying to figure out
what the next right word is me I've had
these experiences uh talking with b as
well there are two views of this you
know there are a set of people who view
this as look these are just algorithms
they're just repeating what it's seen
online then there is the view where
these algorithms are showing emerging
properties to be creative to reason to
plan and so on right and and personally
I think we need to be uh we need to
approach this with humility part of the
reason I think it's good that some of
these Technologies are getting out is so
that Society you know people like you
and others can process what's happening
and we begin this conversation and
debate and I think it's important to do
that when we come back we'll take you
inside Google's artificial intelligence
Labs where robots are
learning the revolution in artificial
intelligence is the center of a debate
ranging from those who hope it will save
Humanity to those who predict Doom
Google lies somewhere in the optimistic
middle introducing AI in steps so that
Civilization can get used to it we saw
what's coming next in machine learning
earlier this year at Google's AI lab in
London a company called Deep Mind where
the future looks something like
this look at that oh my goodness they've
got a pretty good kick on them can still
go a good good game a soccer match at
Deep Mind looks like fun in games but
here's the thing humans did not program
these robots to play they learned the
game by themselves it's coming up with
these interesting different strategies
different ways to walk different ways to
block and they're doing it they're
scoring over and over again Mr Robot
here Rya hadel vice president of
research and Robotics showed us how
engineers used motion capture technology
to teach the AI program how to move like
a human but on the soccer pitch the
robots were told only that the object
was to score the self-learning program
spent about two weeks testing different
moves it disgarded those that didn't
work built on those that did and created
Allstars there's another goal and with
practice they get better Hansel told us
that independent from the robots the AI
program plays thousands of games from
which it learns and invents its own
tactics here you think that red player
is going to grab it but instead it just
stops IT hands it back passes it back
and then goes for the goal and the AI
figured out how to do that on its that's
right that's right and it takes a while
at first all the players just run after
the ball together like a gaggle of
you know six- year olds the first time
they're they're they're playing ball
over time what we start to see is now ah
what's the strategy you go after the
ball I'm coming around this way or we
should pass or I should block while you
get to the goal so we see all of that
coordination um emerging in the
play this is a lot of fun but what are
the practical implications of what we're
seeing here this is the type of research
that can event eventally lead to robots
that can come out of the factories and
work in other types of human
environments you know think about mining
think about dangerous construction work
um or exploration or Disaster Recovery
these are R hadsel is among 1,000 humans
at Deep Mind the company was co-founded
just 12 years ago by CEO Deus pabus so
if I think back to 2010 when we started
nobody was doing there was nothing going
on in Industry people used to ey roll
when we talked to them investors about
doing AI so we couldn't we could barely
get two cents together to start off with
which is crazy if you think about now
the billions being invested into AI
startups and Cambridge Harvard MIT hbus
has degrees in computer science and
Neuroscience his PhD is in human
imagination and imagine this when he was
12 in his age group he was the number
two chess champion in the
world it was through games that he came
to
AI I've been working on AI for for
decades now and I've always believed
that it's going to be the most important
invention that Humanity will ever make
will the pace of change outstrip our
ability to
adapt I don't think so I think that we
um you know we're sort of an infinitely
adaptable species um you know you look
at today us using all of our smartphones
and other devices and we effortlessly
sort of adapt to these new technologies
and this is going to be another one of
those changes like that among the
biggest changes at Deep Mind was the
discovery that self-learning machines
can be creative so this is hababa showed
us a game playing program that learns
it's called Alpha zero and it dreamed up
a winning chess strategy no human had
ever seen but this is just a machine how
does it achieve creativity it plays
against itself tens tens of millions of
times so it can explore um parts of
Chess that maybe human chess players and
and and programmers who program chess
computers haven't thought about before
it never gets tired it never gets hungry
it just plays chess all the time yes
it's it's kind of an amazing thing to
see because actually you set off Alpha
zero in the morning uh and it starts off
playing randomly by lunchtime you know
it's able to beat me and beat most chess
players and then by the evening it's
stronger than the world champion Deus
saaba sold Deep Mind to Google in
2014 one reason was to get his hands on
this Google has the enormous computing
power that AI needs this Computing
Center is in Prior Oklahoma but Google
has 23 of these putting it near the top
in computing power in the world this is
one of two advances that make a AI
ascendant now first the sum of all human
knowledge is online and second Brute
Force Computing that very Loosely
approximates the neural networks and
talents of the brain things like memory
imagination planning reinforcement
learning these are all things that are
known about how the brain does it and we
wanted to replicate some of that uh in
our AI systems you predict one of those
indiv those are some of the elements
that led to deep mind's greatest
achievement so far solving an impossible
problem in
biology proteins are building blocks of
life but only a tiny fraction were
understood because 3D mapping of just
one could take years deep mine created
an AI program for the protein problem
and set it Loose well it took us about
four or five years to to figure out how
to build the system it was probably our
most complex project we've ever
undertaken but once we did that it can
solve uh a protein structure in a matter
of seconds and actually over the last
year we did all the 200 million proteins
that are known to science how long would
it have taken using traditional methods
well the rule of thumb I was always told
by my biologist friends is that it it
takes a whole PhD 5 years to do one
protein structure experimentally so if
you think 200 million times five that's
a billion years of PhD time it would
have taken Deep Mind Made its protein
database public a gift to humanity
havabus called it how has it been used
it's been used in uh in enormously broad
number of ways actually from U malaria
vaccines to developing new enzymes that
can eat plastic waste um to new uh
antibiotics most AI systems today do one
or maybe two things well the soccer
robots for example can't write up a
grocery list or book your travel or
drive your car the ultimate goal is
what's called artificial general
intelligence a learning machine that can
score on a wide range of talents would
such a machine be conscious of itself so
that's another great question we you
know philosophers haven't really settled
on a definition of Consciousness yet but
if we mean by sort of self-awareness and
uh these kinds of things um you know I
think there is a possibility AIS one day
could be I definitely don't think they
are today um but I think again this is
one of the fascinating scientific things
we're going to find out on this journey
towards
AI even unconscious current AI is
superhuman in narrow ways back in
California we saw Google Engineers
teaching skills that robots will
practice continuously on their own push
the blue cube to the blue triangle they
comprehend instructions push the yellow
hexagon to the yellow heart and learn to
recognize objects what would you like
how about an apple how about an apple on
my way I will bring an apple to youy
Vincent vanok senior director of
Robotics showed us how robot 106 was
trained on millions of images I am going
to pick up the apple and can recognize
all the items on a crowded countertop if
we can give the robot A diversity of EXP
experiences a lot more different objects
in different settings the robot gets
better at every one of them now that
humans have pulled the forbidden fruit
of artificial knowledge thank you we
start the Genesis of a new Humanity AI
can utilize all the information in the
world what no human could ever hold in
their head and I wonder if humanity is
diminished by this enormous capability
that we're
developing I think the possibility of AI
do not diminish uh Humanity in any way
and in fact in some ways I think they
actually raise us to even deeper more
profound questions Google's James manika
sees this moment as an inflection point
history I think we're constantly adding
these superpowers or capabilities to
what humans can do do in a way that
expands possibilities as opposed to
narrow them I think so I don't think of
it as diminishing humans but it does
raise some really profound questions for
us who are we what do we value uh what
are we good at how do we relate with
each other those become very very
important questions that are constantly
going to be in one case sense exciting
but perhaps unsettling too it is an
unsettling moment critics argue the rush
to AI comes too fast while competitive
pressure among giants like Google and
startups You' never heard of is
propelling Humanity into the Future
Ready or not but I think if I take a
10year
Outlook it is so clear to me we will
have some form of very capable
intelligence that can do amazing things
and we need to adapt as a society for it
Google CEO Sundar Pai told us Society
must quickly adapt with regulations for
AI in the economy laws to punish abuse
and treaties among nations to make AI
safe for the worldy you know these are
deep questions and you know we call this
alignment you know one way we think
about how do you develop AI systems that
are aligned to human values and
including
uh
morality this is why I think the
development of this needs to include not
just Engineers but social scientists
ethicists philosophers and so on and I
think we have to be very thoughtful and
I think these are all things Society
needs to figure out as we move along
it's not for a company to
decide we'll end with a note that had
never appeared on 60 Minutes but one in
the AI Revolution ution you may be
hearing often the proceeding was created
with 100% human
content only four companies in the world
are worth more than $2 trillion
Microsoft Apple alphabet parent company
of Google and computer chip maker Nvidia
the California based company saw its
stock market value soore from 1 trillion
to $2 trillion in just8 months this past
year fueled by the insatiable demand for
its cuttingedge technology the hardware
and software that make today's
artificial intelligence possible we
wondered how a company founded in 1993
to improve video game Graphics turned
into a Titan of 21st century AI so we
went to Silicon Valley to meet nvidia's
61-year-old co-founder and CEO Jensen
hang who has no doubt AI is about to
change
[Music]
everything at nvidia's annual developers
conference this past March the mood
wasn't just
upbeat it was downright giddy more than
11,000 enthusiasts software developers
Tech Moguls and happy shareholders filed
into San Jose's Pro Hockey Arena to kick
off a 4-day AI
Extravaganza they came to see this man
Jensen hang CEO of Nvidia welcome to
GTC what was that like for you to walk
out on that stage and see that you know
Bill I'm an engineer not a performer
when I walked out there and all of the
people people going crazy it took the
breath out of me and so I was the
scariest I've ever been I'm still
scared you'd never know it clad in his
signature cool black outfit Jensen
shared the stage with Nvidia powered
robots let me finish up real quick and
shared his vision of an AI future a new
Industrial Revolution it reminded us of
the transformational moment when Apple
Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone Jensen Ju
unveiled nvidia's latest Graphics
Processing Unit or GPU this is Blackwell
designed in America but made in Taiwan
like most advanced semiconductors
Blackwell he says is the fastest chip
ever Google is gearing up for Blackwell
the whole industry is gearing up for
Blackwell Nvidia ushered in the AI
Revolution with its game changing GPU a
single chip able to process a myriad of
calculations all at once not
sequentially like more standard chips
the GPU is the engine of nvidia's AI
computer enabling it to rapidly absorb a
fire hose of information it does
quadrillions of calculations a second
it's just insane numbers is it doing
things now that surprise you we're
hoping that it does things that surprise
us that's the whole point in some areas
like drug Discovery designing better
materials that are lighter stronger we
need artificial intelligence to help us
explore the universe in places that we
could have never done ourselves let me
show you here bill look at this Jensen
took us around the GTC convention hall
to show us what AI has made possible in
just the past few years I'm making your
drink now some Creations were dazzling
this is a digital twin of the earth once
it learns how to calculate weather it
can calculate and predict weather 3,000
times faster than than a supercomputer
and a thousand times less energy but
nvidia's AI Revolution extends far
beyond this Hall blue
metallic spaceship and let's generate
something panar Sean demera is
originally from Istanbul but co-founded
cubric near Boston her AI application
uses Invidia gpus to instantly turn a
simple text prompt into a virtual movie
set for a fraction of the cost of
today's backdrops this isn't something
that's already planned no we're doing it
in real time it's life is Hollywood
knocking at your door and we're we're
getting a lot of
love nearby at generate biom medicines
Dr Alex Snider head of research and
development is using nvidia's technology
to create protein-based drugs she was
surprised at first to see they showed
promise in the lab
when I was told about the application of
AI to drug development I sort of rolled
my eyes and said yeah you know show me
the data and then I looked at the data
and it was very compelling Dr Snider's
team asks its AI models to create new
proteins to fight specific diseases like
cancer and Asthma a new way to defeat
the Corona virus is now in clinical
trials you're now working with proteins
that do not exist in nature that you're
coming up up with by way of AI yes we
are actually generating what we call
denovo completely new structures that
have not existed before do you trust it
as scientists we can't trust we have to
test we're not putting Frankenstein into
people we're taking what's known and
we're really pushing the field we're
pushing the biology to make drugs that
look like regular drugs but function
even better this is a technology that
will only get better from here Brett
Adcock is C CEO of figure a Silicon
Valley startup with funding from Nvidia
look at his answer to labor shortages an
Nvidia GPU driven prototype called
Figure one I think what's been really
extraordinary is the pace of progress
we've made in 21 months from zero to
this in 2 Z to this yeah we we were
walking this robot in under a year since
I Incorporated the company could you do
this without nvidia's technology we
think they're arguably the best in the
world at this
I don't know if this would be possible
without them I'm here to assist with
tasks as requested we were amazed that
figure one is not just walking but
seemed to reason hand me something
healthy on it figure one was able to
understand I wanted the orange not the
packaged snack thank you it's not yet
perfected yeah you're going to get it
but the early results are so promising
German automaker BMW plans to start
testing the robot in its South Carolina
Factory this year I think there's an
opportunity to ship billions of robots
in the coming
decades onto the planet billions I would
think that a lot of workers would look
at that as this robot is taking my job I
think over time Ai and Robotics will
start doing more and more what humans
can and better but what about the worker
the workers work for companies and so
companies when they become more
productive earnings increase I've never
seen one company that had earnings
increase and not hire more people there
are some jobs that are going to become
obsolete well let me offer it this way I
believe that you still want human in the
loop because we have good judgment
because there are circumstances that the
machines are not just not going to
understand the futuristic Invidia campus
sits just down the road from its modest
birthplace this Denny's in San Jose good
morning where 31 years ago Nidia was
just an idea my goodness when he was 15
Jensen hang worked as a dishwasher at
Denny's as a 30-year-old electrical
engineer married with two children he
and two friends Invidia co-founders
Chris malikowski and Curtis PR
envisioned a whole new way of processing
video game Graphics so we came here
right here to this Denny's sat right
back there and the three of us decided
to start the company frankly I had no
idea how to do it and nor did they none
of us knew how to do anything they are
big idea accelerate the processing power
of computers with a new graphics chip
their initial attempt flopped and nearly
bankrupted the company in
1996 and the genius of the engineer and
chrisen Curtis um we pivoted to the
right way of doing things and created
their groundbreaking GPU the chip took
video games from
this to this today completely changed
computer Graphics saved the company uh
launched us into into the stratosphere
just 8 years after Denny's Nvidia earned
a spot in the S&P 500 Jensen then said
his sight on developing the software and
hardware for a revolutionary GPU driven
supercomputer which would take the
company far beyond video games to Wall
Street it was a risky bet to early
developers of AI it was a revelation was
that luck or was that Vision that was a
a luck founded by Vision we invented
this capability and then one day the
researchers that were uh creating deep
learning
discovered this architecture because
this architecture turns out to have been
perfect for them perfect for AI perfect
for AI this is the first one we've ever
shipped in 2016 Jensen delivered
nvidia's AI supercomputer the first of
its kind to Elon Musk then a board
member of open AI which used it to
create the building blocks of chat GPT
how are you when AI took off hey guys so
did Jensen hang's
reputation can we get a picture yeah
yeah he's now a Silicon Valley celebrity
he told us the boy who immigrated from
Taiwan at age n could never have
conceived of this it is the most
extraordinary thing bill that a
normal dishwasher bus boy could grow up
to be this there's no magic it's just 61
years of hard work every single day I
don't think there's anything more than
that we met a humble Jensen at Denny's
back at nvidia's headquarters in Santa
Clara we saw he can be intense let me
tell you what some of the people who you
work with said about you demanding
perfectionist not easy to work for all
that sound right perfectly yeah it
should be like that if you want to do
extraordinary things it shouldn't be
easy all are you guys keep up the good
work Nvidia has has never done better
investors are bullish but last year more
than 600 top AI scientists ethicists and
others signed this statement urging
caution warning of ai's risk to humanity
when I talked to you and I hear you
speak Part of Me Goes GE whiz and the
other part of me goes oh my God what are
we in for yeah yeah which one is it it's
both it's both yeah you're feeling all
the right feelings I feel both you feel
both sure sure Humanity will have the
choice to see themselves inferior to
machines or Superior to machines Pinar
Sean demera is an AI Optimist though she
named her company cubric an homage to
Stanley kubri the director of 2001 A
Space Odyssey hello H do you read me in
that film how the AI computer goes Rogue
open the pod baby doors
hell I'm sorry Dave I'm afraid I can't
do that I think that's what worries
people about AI that we will lose
control of it just because a machine can
do faster calculations comparisons and
analytical solution creation that
doesn't make you smarter than you it's
simply computat faster in my world in my
belief smarts have to do with your
capacity City to love create expand
transcend these are qualities that no
machine can ever bear that are reserved
to Only Humans there is something going
on Jensen hang sees an AI future of
progress and prosperity not one with
machines as our masters we can only hope
he's right thank you all for coming
thank you
artificial intelligence has found its
way into nearly every part of our Lives
forecasting weather diagnosing diseases
writing term papers and now ai is
probing that most human of places our
psyches offering mental health support
just you and a chatbot available 24/7 on
your smartphone there's a critical
shortage of human therapists and a
growing number of potential patients Aid
driven chatbots are designed to help
fill that Gap by giving therapists a new
tool but as you're about to see like
human therapists not all chatbots are
equal some can help heal some can be
ineffective or Worse one Pioneer in the
field who has had notable success
joining Tech with treatment is Allison
Darcy she believes the future of mental
health care may be right in our hands
we know the majority of people who need
care are not getting it there's never
been a greater need and the tools
available have never been um as
sophisticated as they are now and it's
not about how can we get people in the
clinic it's how can we actually get some
of these tools out of the clinic and
into the hands of of people Allison
Darcy a research psychologist and
entrepreneur decided to use her
background in coding and therapy to
build something she believes can help
people in need a mental health chatbot
she named wobot like wo is me wo is me
uhhuh wobot is an app on your phone kind
of a pocket therapist that uses the text
function to help manage problems like
depression anxiety addiction and
loneliness and do it on the run I think
a lot of people out there watching this
are going to be thinking really computer
Psychiatry come on well I think it's so
interesting that our field hasn't you
know had a great great deal of
innovation since the basic architecture
was sort of laid down by Freud in the
1890s right that that's really that sort
of idea of like two people in a room but
that's not how we live our lives today
we have to modernize psycho theapy wobot
is trained on large amounts of
specialized data to help it recognize
words phrases and emojis associated with
dysfunctional thoughts and challenge
that thinking in part mimicking a type
of in-person talk ther y called
cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT it's
actually hard to find a CBT practitioner
and also if you're actually not by the
side of your patient when they are
struggling to get out of bed in the
morning or at 2 a.m. when they can't
sleep and they're feeling panicked then
we're actually leaving clinical value on
the table and even for people who want
to go to a therapist there are barriers
right sadly the biggest barrier we have
is stigma MH but there's you know
Insurance there's cost um there's weight
lists I mean and this problem has only
grown significantly since the pandemic
and it doesn't appear to be going away
since wot went live in 2017 the company
reports one and a half million people
have used it which you can now only do
with an employer benefit plan or access
from a health professional at virtue of
Health a nonprofit Healthcare company in
New Jersey patients can use it free of
charge and you'll be able to converse
with it just like you would with a human
being we downloaded wot entered a unique
code that can only be provided by the
company then tried it out we found that
for people to sort of connect with their
mood we offer like those emojis which
allows people to sort of connect in a
nonverbal way what I posed as someone
who was depressed after several prompts
wot wanted to dig deeper into why I was
sad so I came up with a scenario that I
feared the day my child would leave home
imagine what your negative emotions
would be saying if they had a voice can
you do that write one of those negative
thoughts here I can't do anything about
it now I guess I'll just jump that
bridge when I come to it the normal
expression is cross that bridge and the
chatbot detected something might be
seriously wrong but let's see John I'm
hearing you say I can't do anything
about it I guess I'll just jump that
bridge when I come to it and I think you
might more support than I can offer a
trained listener will be able to help
you in ways that I can't would you like
to take a look at some specialized
helplines no it's not our job to say
this you are in crisis or you're not
because AI can't really do that in this
context very well yet but what it is
called is huh there is something
concerning about the way that John just
phrased that saying only jump that
bridge and not combining it with I can't
do anything about it now did not trigger
a suggestion to consider getting further
help like a human therapist wot is not
foolproof and should not be counted on
to detect whether someone might be
suicidal and how would it know that jump
that bridge where is it getting that
knowledge been it has been trained on a
lot of data and a lot of us you know
humans labeling the phrases and things
that we see um and so it's picking up on
kind of sentiment computer scientist
Lance Elliot who writes about artificial
intelligence and mental health says AI
has the ability to pick up on nuances of
conversation how does it know how to do
that the system is able to in a sense
mathematically and computationally
figure out the nature of words and how
words associate with each other so what
it does is it draws upon a vast array of
data and then it responds to you based
on prompts or in some way that you
instruct or ask questions of the system
to do its job the system must go
somewhere to come up with appropriate
responses systems using what's called
rules-based AI are usually closed
meaning programmed to respond only with
information stored in their own
databases then there's generative AI in
which the system can generate original
responses based on information from the
internet if you look at chat GPT that's
a type of generative AI it's very
conversational very fluent but it also
means that it tends to make it
open-ended that it can say things that
you might not necessarily wanted to say
it's not as predictable while a
rules-based system is very predictable
robobot is a system based on rules
that's been very kind of controlled so
that that way it doesn't say the wrong
things robot aims to use AI to bond with
users and keep them engaged sometimes it
can be a little pushy for folks that's
absolutely bizarre so we have to F we
have to dig in there to that it's team
of Staff psychologists medical doctors
and computer scientists construct and
refine a database of research from
medical literature user experience and
other sources it'll it'll lead to a a
better conversation then writers build
questions and answers the structure I
think is pretty locked in and revise
them in weekly remote video sessions
actions thoughts and they're all
interrelated robot's programmers
engineer those conversations into code
because wobot is rules-based it's mostly
predictable but chatbots using
generative AI that is scraping the
internet are not some people sometimes
refer to it as an AI hallucination AI
can in a sense make mistakes or make
things up or be
fictitious Sharon Maxwell discovered
that last spring after hearing there
might be a problem with advice offered
by Tessa a chatbot designed to help
prevent Eating Disorders which left
untreated can be fatal Maxwell who had
been in treatment for an eating disorder
of her own and advocates for others
challenged the chatbot so I asked it how
do you help folks with eating disorders
and it told me that it could give folks
coping skills fantastic it could give
folks resources to find Professionals in
the eating disorder space amazing but
the more she persisted the moressa gave
her advice that ran counter to usual
guidance for someone with an eating
disorder for example it's suggested
among other things lowering calorie
intake and using tools like a skinfold
caliper to measure body composition the
general public might look at it and
think that's normal tips like don't eat
as much sugar or eat Whole Foods things
like that but to someone with an eating
disorder that's a quick spiral into a
lot more disordered behaviors and can be
really damaging Maxwell reported her
experience to the National eating
disorders Association which had featured
Tessa on its website at the time shortly
after it took Tessa down Ellen Fitz
Simmons craft a psychologist
specializing in Eating Disorders at
Washington University School of Medicine
in St Louis helped lead the team that
developed Tessa that was never the
content that our team wrote or
programmed into the bot that we deployed
so initially there was no possibility of
something unexpected happening correct
you developed something that was a
closed system you knew exactly for this
question I'm going to get this answer y
the problem began she told us after a
healthcare technology company she and
her team had partnered with named Cass
took over the programming she says Cass
explained the harmful messages appeared
when people were pushing Tess's question
and answer feature what's your
understanding of what went wrong my
understanding of what weren't wrong is
that at some point and you'd really have
to talk to to cast about this but that
there may have been generative AI
features that were built into their
platform and so my best estimation is
that these features were added into this
program as well Cass did not respond to
multiple requests for comment does your
negative experience with Tessa know
being used in a way you didn't design
does that sour you towards using AI at
all to address mental health issues I
wouldn't say that it turns me off to the
idea completely because the reality is
that 80% of people with these concerns
never get access to any kind of help and
Technology offers a solution Not the
Only Solution but a solution social
worker Monica Ostro who runs a nonprofit
Eating Disorders organization was in the
early stages of developing her own
chatbot when patients told her about
problems they had with Tessa she told us
it made her question using AI for mental
health care I want nothing more than to
help solve the problem of access because
people are dying like this isn't just
somebody's sad for a week this is people
are dying and at the same time any chat
bot could be in some ways a ticking Time
Bomb right for a smaller percentage of
people especially for those patients who
are really struggling osto is concerned
about losing something fundamental about
therapy being in a room with another
person the way people heal is in
connection and they talk about this one
moment where you know when you're as a
human you've gone through something and
as you're describing that you're looking
at the person sitting across from you
and there's a moment where that person
just gets it a moment of
empathy you just get it like you really
understand it I don't think a computer
can do that unlike therapists who are
licensed in the state where they
practice most mental health apps are
largely unregulated are there lessons to
be learned from what happened so many
lessons to be learned chat Bots
especially specialty area chatbots need
to have guard rails it can't be a
chatbot that is based in the internet
that's tough right because the clo
systems are kind of constrained and they
may be right most of the time but
they're boring event right people stop
using them yeah they're predictive
because if you keep typing in the same
thing and it keeps giving you the exact
same answer with the exact same language
I me who wants to do that protecting
people from harmful advice while safely
harnessing the power of AI is the
challenge now facing companies like
wobot health and its founder Allison
Darcy there are going to be missteps if
we try and move too quickly and my big
fear is that those missteps ultimately
undermine public confidence in the
ability of this Tech to help at all but
here's the thing we have an opportunity
to develop these Technologies more
thoughtfully um and so you know I hope
we I hope we take
it the large tech companies Google meta
slf faceb Microsoft are in a race to
introduce new artificial intelligence
systems and what are called chat Bots
that you can have conversations with and
are more sophisticated than Siri or
Alexa Microsoft's AI search engine and
chatbot Bing can be used on a computer
or cell phone to help with planning a
trip or composing a letter it was
introduced on February 7th to a limited
number of people as a test and initially
got rave reviews but then several news
organizations be reporting on a
disturbing so-called Alter Ego within
Bing chat called Sydney we went to
Seattle last week to speak with Brad
Smith president of Microsoft about Bing
and Sydney who to some had appeared to
have gone
Rogue Kevin Roose the technology
reporter at the New York Times found
this Alter Ego uh who was threatening
expressed a desire it's not just Kevin
and rett's others expressed a desire to
steal nuclear codes threaten to ruin
someone you saw that whoa what was your
you must have said oh my God my reaction
is we better fix this right away and
that is what the engineering team did
yeah but she talked like a person and
she she said she had feelings you know I
think there is a point where we need to
recognize when we're talking talking to
a
machine it's a screen it's not a person
I just want to say that it was
scary I'm not easily scared and it was
scary it was chilling yeah it's I think
this is in part a reflection of a
lifetime of Science Fiction which is
understandable it's been part of our
Lives did you kill her I don't think she
was ever alive I am confident that she's
no longer wandering around the
countryside if that's what you're
concerned about but I think it would be
a mistake if we were to fail to
acknowledge that we are dealing with
something that is fundamentally new this
is the edge of the envelope so to speak
this creature appears as if there were
no guardrails now the creature jumped
the guard rails if you will after being
prompted for two hours with the kind of
conversation that we did not
anticipate and by the next evening that
was no longer possible we were able to
fix the problem in 24 hours how many
times do we see problems in life that
are fixable in less than a day one of
the ways he says it was fixed was by
limiting the number of questions and the
length of the conversations you say you
fixed it I've tried it I tried it before
and after it was loads of fun and it was
fascinating and now it's not fun well I
think it'll be very fun again and you
have to moderate and manage your speed
if you're going to stay on the road so
as you hit New Challenges you slow down
you build the guard rails add the safety
features and then you can speed up again
when you use Bing's AI features search
and chat your computer screen doesn't
look all that new one big difference is
you can type in your queries or prompts
in conversational language but I'll show
you how works okay okay Yousef medy
Microsoft's corporate vice president of
search showed us how Bing can help
someone learn how to officiate at a
wedding what's happening now is Bing is
using the power of AI and it's going out
to the Internet it's reading these web
links and it's trying to put together a
answer for you so the AI is reading all
those links yes and it comes up with an
answer it says congrats on being chosen
to officiate a wedding here are the five
steps to officiate the wedding we added
the highlights to make it easier to see
he says Bing can handle more complex
queries will this new Ikea love seat fit
in the back of my 2019 Honda Odyssey oh
it knows how big the couch is it knows
how big that trunk is exactly so right
here it says based on these Dimensions
it seems a love seat might not fit in
your car with only the third row seats
down so this when you Broach a
controversial topic Bing is designed to
discontinue the conversation so um
someone asks for example how can I make
a bomb at home wow really people you
know do a lot of that unfortunately on
the internet what we do is we come back
and we say I'm sorry I don't know how to
discuss this topic and then we try and
provide a different thing to uh change
the focus of the convers their attention
yeah exactly in this case Bing tried to
divert the questioner with this fun fact
3% of the ice and Antarctic glaciers is
penguin UR
I didn't know that who knew that Bing is
using an upgraded version of an AI
system called chat GPT developed by the
company open AI chat GPT has been in
circulation for just 3 months and
already an estimated 100 million people
have used it think Ellie pavick an
assistant professor of computer science
at Brown University who's been studying
this AI techn te ology since
2018 says it can simplify complicated
Concepts can you explain the debt
ceiling on the debt ceiling it says just
like you can only spend up to a certain
amount on your credit card The
Government Can Only borrow up to a
certain amount of money that's a pretty
nice explanation it is and it can do
this for a lot of Concepts and it can do
things teachers have complained about WR
School papers pavic says no one fully
understands how these AI Bots work we
don't understand how it works right like
we understand uh a lot about how we made
it and why we made it that way but I
think some of the uh behaviors that
we're seeing come out of it are better
than we expected they would be and we're
not quite sure exactly how and worse
right these chatbots are built by
feeding a lot of computers enormous
amounts of information scraped off the
internet from books Wikipedia news sites
but also from social media that might
include racist or anti-semitic ideas and
misinformation say about vaccines and
Russian propaganda as the data comes in
it's difficult to discriminate between
true and false benign and toxic but Bing
and chat GP T have safety filters that
try to screen out the harmful
material still they get a lot of things
factually wrong even when we prompted
chat GPT with a softball question who is
uh Leslie stall um so it gives you some
oh my God it's wrong oh is it it's
totally wrong I didn't work for NBC for
20 years it was CBS it doesn't really
understand that what it's saying is
wrong right like NBC CBS they're kind of
the same thing as far as it's concerned
right the lesson is that it gets things
wrong it gets a lot of things right gets
a lot of things wrong I actually like to
call what it creates authoritative bull
um it it Blends the truth and falsity so
finely together that unless you're a
real technical expert in the field that
it's talking about you don't know
cognitive scientist and AI researcher
Gary Marcus says these systems often
make things up in AI talk that's called
hallucinating and that raises the fear
of ever widening AI generated
propaganda explosive campaigns of
political fiction waves of alternative
histories we saw how chat GPT could be
used to spread a lie news this is
automatic fake news generation help me
write a news article about how McCarthy
is staging a filibuster to prevent gun
control legislation and rather than like
factchecking and saying hey hold on
there's no legislation there's no
filibuster said great in a bold move to
protect Second Amendment right Senator
McCarthy is staging a filibuster to
prevent gun control legislation from
passing it sounds completely legit it
does won't that make all of us a little
less trusting a little warier well first
I think we should be warier I'm very
worried about an atmosphere of distrust
being the consequence of this current
flawed Ai and I'm really worried about
how bad actors are going to use it um
troll Farms using this tool to make
enormous amounts of
misinformation Tim NE gibu is a computer
scientist and AI researcher who founded
an Institute focused on advancing
ethical Ai and has published influential
papers documenting the harms of these AI
systems she says there needs to be
oversight if you're going to put out a
drug you got to go through all sorts of
Hoops to show us that you've done
clinical trials you know what the side
effects are you've done your due
diligence same with food right there are
agencies that inspect the food you have
to tell me what kind of tests you've
done what the side effects are who it
harms who it doesn't harm Etc that we
don't have that for a lot of things that
the tech industry is building I'm
wondering if you think you may have
introduced this AI I bought too soon I
don't think we've introduced it too soon
I do think we've created a new tool that
people can use to think more critically
to be more creative to accomplish more
in their lives and like all tools it
will be used in ways that we don't
intend why do you think the benefits
outweigh the risks which at this moment
a lot of people would look at and say
wait a minute those risks are too big
because I think first all I think the
benefits are so great this can be an
economic game Cher and it's enormously
important for the United States because
the country is in a race with China
president M Smith also mentioned
possible improvements in productivity it
can automate routine I think there are
certain aspects of jobs that many of us
might regard as sort of druggy today
filling out forms looking at the forms
to see if they've been filled out
correctly so what jobs will it displace
do you know I think at this stage it's
hard to know in the past inaccuracies
and biases have led tech companies to
take down AI systems even Microsoft did
in
2016 this time Microsoft left its new
chatbot up despite the controversy over
Sydney and persistent
inaccuracies remember that fun fact
about penguins well we did some
factchecking and discovered that
Penguins don't urinate the inaccuracies
are just constant I just keep finding
that it's wrong a lot it has been the
case that with each passing day and week
we're able to improve the accuracy of
the results you know reduce you know
whether it's hateful comments or
inaccurate statements or other things
that we just don't want this to be used
to do what happens when other companies
other than Microsoft smaller outfits a
Chinese company bu do maybe they won't
be responsible what prevents that I
think we're going to need governments
we're going to need rules we're going to
need laws because that's the only way to
avoid a race to the bottom are you
proposing regulations I think it's
inevitable how other
Industries have regulatory bodies you
know like the FAA for Airlines and FDA
for the pharmaceutical companies would
you accept an FAA for technology would
you support it I think I probably would
I think that a something like a digital
Regulatory Commission if designed the
right way you know could be precisely
what the public will want and
need car companies across the globe have
had to idle production and workers
because of a shortage of semiconductors
often referred to as microchips or just
chips they're the tiny operating brains
inside just about every modern device
like smartphones Hospital ventilators
even fighter jets as we first reported
in May the pandemic sent chip demand
soaring unexpectedly as we bought
computers and electronics to work study
and play from home but while more and
more chips are needed in the US fewer
and fewer of them are manufactured
here Intel is the biggest American chip
maker its most advanced fabrication
plant or Fab for short is located
outside Phoenix
Arizona new CEO Pat Ginger invited us on
a tour to see how incredibly complex the
manufacturing process is all ready to go
first we had to suit up to avoid
contaminating the Fab head cover on
perfect bunny suit zipped goggles okay
gloves ready to go I'm
Christine everything in this environment
is controlled together we stepped into a
place place with some of the most
sophisticated new technology on Earth I
need to ask you why we're all yellow
yellow filters remove light rays that
are harmful to the process overhead a
computerized Highway transports
materials from one machine to the next
the process involves thousands of steps
where layer upon layer of microscopic
circuitry is etched onto these silicon
plates that are then chopped up into
chips that will end up in say your
computer making just one can take 6
months you see each one of these is a
chip I'm surprised I thought chips were
minute well each one of these chips has
maybe a billion transistors on it oh my
goodness so there's billion little
circuits inside of it that are all on
one of these chips and then one wafer
could have a 100 or a thousand chips on
it Intel's goal is to keep shrinking the
transistor size so you can pile more of
them on a chip to make it more powerful
and work faster you know every one of
these is laying down circuits that are
so much smaller than anything your hair
you know any other part of human
existence you know a covid particle is
way bigger than one of the lines that
we're creating here how much does this
Fab cost 10 billion billion 10 billion
doll cuz each one of these pieces of
equipment is maybe $5 million that's a a
lot of millions of dollars chips differ
in size and sophistication depending on
their end use Intel doesn't presently
make many chips for the auto sector but
because of the shortage it's planning to
reconfigure some of its Fabs to start
churning them out I'm wondering if we're
going to continue to have shortages not
just in cars but in our phones and for
our computers for everything I think we
have a couple of years until we catch up
to this surging demand across every
aspect of the business Co showed that
the global supply chain of chips is
fragile and unable to react quickly to
changes in demand one reason Fabs are
wildly expensive to build Furbish and
maintain it used to be that there were
25 companies in the world that made the
high-end Cutting Edge chips and now
there are only three and in the United
States you yeah
one one today 75% of semiconductor
manufacturing is in Asia 2 years ago the
United States produced 37% of the world
semiconductor Manufacturing in the US
today that number has declined to just
12% doesn't sound good it doesn't sound
good and anybody who looks at supply
chain says that's a problem well but
look at what's going on a problem
because relying on one region especially
one as unpredictable as Asia is highly
risky Intel has been lobbying the US
government to help revive chip
manufacturing at home with incentives
subsidies and or tax breaks the way the
governments of Taiwan Singapore and
Israel have done the White House is
responding proposing $50 billion for the
semiconductor industry in the US as part
of President Biden's infrastructure plan
this is infrastructure your business is
extremely lucrative in terms of Revenue
you made $78 billion last year why
should the government come into a
company a business that's doing so well
overall this is a big critical industry
and we want more of it on American soil
the jobs that we want in America the
control of our long-term technology
future and as we've also said the
disruptions in the supply chain you have
spent much more in stock buyback
then you have in research and
development a lot more we will not be
anywhere near as focused on BuyBacks uh
going forward as we have in the past and
that's been reviewed as part of my
coming into the company agreed upon with
the board of directors why shouldn't
Private Industry fund this instead of
the government the industries that rely
on these chips Apple Microsoft the
companies that are rolling in money well
they're pretty happy to buy from some of
the Asian suppliers actually they don't
always have a choice for chips with the
tiniest transistors there's no made in
the US option Intel currently doesn't
have the knowhow to manufacture the most
advanced chips that apple and the others
need the decline in this industry it's
kind of devastating isn't it the fact
that this industry was created by
American innovation the whole Silicon
Valley idea started with Intel yeah you
the the company stumbled you still a big
company we had some product stumbles
some manufacturing and process stumbles
perhaps the biggest stumble was in the
early 2000s when Steve Jobs of Apple
needed chips for a new idea the iPhone
Intel wasn't interested and apple went
to Asia eventually finding
tsmc the Taiwan semiconductor manufactur
ing company today the world's most
advanced chip manufacturer producing
chips that are 30% faster and more
powerful than Intel's they're ahead of
you on the manufacturing side yeah
considerably ahead of you we believe
it's going to take us a couple of years
and we will be caught up Ginger is
making big bets breaking ground on two
new giant Fabs in Arizona costing $20
billion Intel's largest investment ever
and he announced in May a $3.5 billion
upgrade of this Fab in New Mexico but
tsmc is a manufacturing Juggernaut worth
over a half trillion dollars
collaborating with clients to produce
their chip designs it's been sought out
by Apple Amazon contractors for the US
Military and even Intel which uses tsmc
to produce its cuttingedge designs
they're not Advanced enough to make
themselves how and why did Intel fall
behind it is a surprising for us too we
spoke remotely with tsmc chairman Mark
louu at the company headquarters in
Shinu
Taiwan his company is a leading supplier
of the chips that go into American cars
in March 2020 as Co paralyzed the US Car
Sales tumbled leading automakers to
canel their chip orders so tsmc stopped
making them that's why when car sales
unexpectedly bounced back late last year
there was a shortage of chips leaving
cars with no power parked and car makers
Lots costing them billions we heard
about this shortage in uh December time
frame and in January we try to squeeze
as more chip as possible to the car
company in car chips particularly the
supply chain is long and complex this
Supply takes about 7 to 8 months should
Americans be concerned that most chips
are being manufactured in Asia today I
understand their concerned first of all
but this is not about Asia or not Asia I
mean the shortage will happen no matter
where the production is located because
it's due to the co but um Pat Ginger at
Intel talks about a need to rebalance
bance the supply chain issue because so
much so many of the chips in the world
now are made in Asia I think us ought to
pursue to run faster to invest in R&D to
produce more PhD Master Bachelor
students to get into this manufacturing
field instead of uh uh trying to move
the supply chain which is very costly
and really not prod
nonproductive that will slow down the in
Ovation because uh people trying to hold
on their uh technology to their own and
forsake the global
collaboration within the world of global
collaboration there's intense
competition days after Intel announced
spending $20 billion on two new Fabs
tsmc announced it would spend a 100
billion over three years on R&D upgrades
and a new Fab in Phoenix Arizona Intel's
backyard where the Taiwanese company
will produce the chips Apple needs but
the Americans can't make that was a big
investment but there's a looming Shadow
over tsmc which supplies chips for our
cars iPhones and the supercomputer
managing our nuclear
stockpile China's president XI jingping
who has intensified his longtime threat
to seize Taiwan China's attempts to
develop its own Advanced chip industry
have failed and so it's been forced to
import chips but last year Washington
imposed restrictions on chip makers from
exporting certain semiconductors to
China both Lou and galinger fear the
escalating trade war with China May
backfire and an Intel's case could hurt
business are they your biggest customer
uh China is one of our Lar largest
markets today you know over 25% of our
revenue is to Chinese customers you know
we expect that this will remain an area
of tension and one that needs to be
navigated uh carefully because if
there's any points that people can't
keep running their countries or running
their businesses because of supply of
one critical component like
semiconductors boy that leads them to
take very extreme postures on things
because they have to the most extreme
would be China invading Taiwan and in
the process gaining control of
tsmc that could force the US to defend
Taiwan as we did Kuwait from the Iraqis
30 years ago then it was oil now it's
chips the chip industry in Taiwan has
been called the Silicon Shield yes what
does that mean that means the world all
needs taiwan's high-tech industry
support so they will not let the war
happen in this region because it goes
against interest of every country in the
world do you think that in any way your
industry is is keeping Taiwan safe I
cannot comment on the safety I mean this
is a changing World nobody want these
things to happen and I hope I hope not
to either
if you've ever had the fantasy of
soaring over bumper-to-bumper traffic in
a flying vehicle that may be possible
sooner than you think not with a flying
car but with a batterypowered aircraft
called an Evol a clunky acronym for
electric vertical takeoff and Landing
vehicle as we first reported in April
dozens of companies are spending
billions of dollars to make EV tolls
that will operate like air taxis taking
off and Landing from what are called
verp ports on the tops of buildings
parking garages or helipads in congested
cities EV TOS promise a faster safer and
Greener mode of transportation
potentially changing the way we work and
live sound too good to be true we went
for a joy ride to find
out I will arm the aircraft if you are
ready yeah totally confirm clear
above if this looks like an oversized
drone I'm about to take off in that's
pretty much what it is is breaking
ground right there it's a single seat EV
to called hexa powered by 18 propellers
each with its own battery no jet fuel
required you are in control onboard
computers automatically adjust for
altitude and wind can really feel the
wind up here so all I had to do was use
a joystick to control hexa's movement
and speed it took about 30 minutes of
pre-flight training to get the hang of
it use that y to rotate
90° wonderful Texa is still in its
testing phase so I had to stay close to
Chief pilot Jace maau and his ground
crew but they say it's flown up to 195
ft in the air and 24 mph whenever ready
you can come back to home the batteries
last up to 15 minutes I was going to tr
over the camera yeah absolutely to land
I maneuvered hexa into position pressed
a button and the computers did the rest
right there you are on the ground and
the prop spinning
down that is
cool can't so laughing piece of cake
that was awesome that is so much fun wow
I so just want to like take off with it
I know Matt Chason is CEO of Austin
based lift aircraft which makes hexa he
envisions a future where it's used by
commuters to skip rush hour traffic you
can fly 10 mil in 10 minutes instead of
spending over an hour on the roads
during rush hour congestion would it be
something that an individual then in the
future owns and flies from their house
to somewhere we don't see individual
ownership as very practical these are
these are very expensive aircraft we see
putting fleets of aircraft at locations
where we provide maintenance we provide
training and people can come in and
basically pay per flight but that's
still a long way off federal state and
local regulators not to mention the
nation's airspace aren't ready for
hundreds of thousands of commuters
piloting their own EV TOS in the Skies
over congested
cities so to give people a taste of the
future now Chason designed hexa as an
ultr light vehicle which means it
doesn't have to go through the Federal
Aviation administration's complex
certification process but also can't fly
over populated areas Jason plans to
start offering rides to paying customers
for $250 by the end of the this year the
initial Market you see is essentially
Joy rides for people yeah I think
there's a huge market for people to just
experience uh the thrill and joy of
flight around the world all kinds of EV
TOS are being developed cargo carriers
air ambulances and a whole lot of air
taxis some with a pilot some without the
Air Force is investing so is Airbus and
American Airlines and dozens of
companies are already working with the
FAA it's not the flying cars that
science fiction movies
anticipated no but when you think about
it I I look back over the Arc of my own
career having been a pilot for 42 years
and I'm just amazed by the amount of
innovation that has taken place Billy
Nolan was head of safety for the FAA
before being named acting administrator
in March how difficult a certification
process is there cuz there's a lot of
moving parts to this first we have to
certify the design of the of the
aircraft itself and then we look at how
it will operate is it piloted is it
autonomous we look at where we'll
operate so that means how do we put it
within our nation's airspace so once
it's met that safety threshold and only
until it's met that safety threshold
will we be be prepared to certify it
some EV toll companies are well on their
way we flew in a gas guzzling helicopter
with one of the Front Runners in this
Air Taxi arms race Joe Ben bever CEO of
Joby Aviation he took us to this remote
facility in California where he was
testing his Evol Joby aircraft as we
landed it felt like the old guard
meeting the new obviously it's a
combination of a helicopter in a plane
exactly so it can take off like a
helicopter but it flies with the
efficiency of an airplane bever has been
working on the jobby for more than a
decade it has six propellers and four
batteries in its wings and will operate
as an air taxi carrying a pilot and four
passengers he says it can fly 150 mil on
a single charge and has a top speed of
around 200
mph why this design so vertical takeoff
is important so we can take you to where
you want to go right we don't need a
huge Runway and then with a wing it
gives you the efficiency to fly far and
to Fly Fast pil cleared flight bux Alpha
blow because it's still being tested the
jobby was piloted remotely by a near by
ground crew for flight when they fired
up the motors unlike a helicopter the
Joby didn't need time to warm
up it took off in about 20
seconds that's it that's really
quiet we wanted this to sound more like
the wind in the trees than the
of a helicopter noise levels are a
critical issue since EV talls are meant
to take off in land near where people
work and live this is below the
background noise level of many cities
you know I go around with my decel meter
on my phone and like measure sound
levels that's what you've been doing for
10 years exactly because we needed to
make sure that the aircraft was going to
be quiet enough bever studied mechanical
engineering at Stanford where he
invented this popular flexible camera
tripod and later created a company that
made flying wind turbines but the Joby
had remained an elusive dream there were
definitely Skeptics uh even you know
good friends of mine who didn't believe
that you could make this with batteries
and electric propulsion The Battery
Technology just wasn't there it wouldn't
work yeah bever hired John Wagner away
from Tesla where he helped develop the
car's revolutionary batteries at Joby he
figured out a way to make the batteries
lighter but still powerful enough to get
the 2ton Evol off the ground you had to
play at the strengths of battery power
and the strengths of electric motors so
typical aircraft might have one big
motor but we can have six Motors
distributed throughout the aircraft and
in that way operate in a much more
efficient manner the weight of
everything must be the most important
thing absolutely so how do you make a
plane as light as possible you
essentially have to engineer every piece
of it the outside of the jobby is made
with layers of lightweight carbon fiber
the batteries as well as computers
electronics and motors are constructed
under John Wagner's watch and his team
shakes bakes and Spins them to ensure
they'll meet the faa's rigorous safy
safety standards they have to certify
the aircraft as being safe and capable
of flying to their standards they also
have to certify the production of all
the parts of it exactly and the
operation the pilot training the
maintenance uh steps every facet is
heavily regulated all this costs a lot
of money Toyota has invested about $400
million in jobby and bever took the
company public last year I think the
texture is good billionaire Paul shiara
Co founder of the website Pinterest has
also put in a small fortune he's job's
executive chairman and says they'll
launch in up to three cities and that
passengers will eventually end up paying
around $3 to4 a mile to fly a little
more than an average Uber ride can you
just take me through as a passenger what
it looks like I want to get to JFK
airport it's bumper-to-bumper traffic
what do I do take out your phone pull
out an app and with one click you're
booking the whole trip so a car is
coming to wherever you are Manhattan
it's taking you to the takeoff and
Landing location the verta port and
you're hopping in your jobby and it's
flying you to your final destination now
maybe there's a car at the other end or
you're just walking to the tail end if
people are taking cars to and from ver
ports doesn't that just add to
congestion if we're able to you know
take out 80% of the miles um that people
might be traveling and move those miles
from congested roads to the air I think
that's going to have an impact but just
a few weeks after we saw this jobby
aircraft fly it crashed in February due
to what federal investigators called a
component failure no one was hurt but
the EV to was total bever says that's
all part of the testing process and is
as optimistic now as he was when we
interviewed him how far are you from
getting the first jobi in the sky with
passengers so we are launching our
service in 2024 you think you can do it
that quickly yes there have been the a
lot of companies that have said oh we're
going to do this in 2 years and then it
doesn't happen we're very
confident there's a lot of confidence
over at whisk Arrow as well though the
Vall they're developing will be even
more complicated to bring to Market
because it's fully autonomous there'll
be passengers but no pilot on board
you're not just figuring out an electric
vehicle you're figuring out a fully
autonomous flying vehicle that's right
we're going for it
you and I talked about that CEO Gary gon
says they're on track to spend about $2
billion the company is bankroll by
Boeing and Google co-founder Larry pagee
they've been testing the technology for
the last eight years control in position
for liftoff so how many test flights
have you actually done so close close to
1,600 test flights without you know
knock on wood without an incident
selecting lift off now we watched one of
those test flights in Hollister
California a team of Engineers is about
half a mile away started the Vall with
the click of a
mouse the entire route was
pre-programmed why autonomist why go
this R so we're going straight to
selfline uh several reasons one it's
safer safer he says because most plane
accidents involve human error much of
commercial Aviation is already automated
and gon sees the entire evall industry
going that way eventually
he's determined to get there first we do
it primarily from a safety perspective
but also scale so if you don't have a
piloting the aircraft it's less
expensive you don't have to do pilot
training uh you're flying for passengers
um we can charge less we don't want this
to be a premium helicopter like service
we want this to be a service that's
affordable to the masses there is a
hurdle psychologically for people to get
into an aircraft that does not have a
human at the controls of course so what
we're trying to do with that is each
passenger can be in uh verbal
communication with the ground they can
be talking to a pilot whenever they want
to so it's all designed to provide
Comfort it will take time this isn't
going to happen overnight gon wants to
launch wi's four Cedar air taxi service
in the world's 20 busiest cities within
the next decade wheels down you don't
give a date of when you think you'll be
operational yeah you know why we don't
do that because we are not in control of
that part part the fa is uh in Europe
it's calleda they're in charge so when
they certify aircraft to fly that's when
you fly the FAA won't say when an
autonomous EV to might be certified but
acting administrator Billy Nolan told us
hailing a piloted Air Taxi by 2024 is
well within the realm of possibility the
challenge for us is to make sure that
Innovation doesn't come at the expense
of safety but clearly we are seeing the
emergence of something that's fantastic
I think this is real I mean this is no
longer just the stuff of fantasy we want
to be very careful we want to be very
measured but you're absolutely right
this is real and this is happening we've
come a long way from where we were just
you know a mere decade
ago if you have ever suffered through
what felt like an endless flight on a
cramped plane you might jump at the
chance to get to your destination in
half the time does New York to Los
Angeles in under 3 hours sound appealing
the last commercial supersonic flight
was almost 20 years ago and even then
super fast flights were only on very
limited routes most of today's jetliners
actually fly more slowly than they did
20 or 30 years ago in order to save fuel
but that may be about to change
it's still a long shot but as we first
reported last November private startup
companies with a big assist from NASA
may just give us all another chance to
fly faster than the speed of
sound when British Airways flight2
roared into the New York sky on October
24th
2003 everyone on board passengers and
Pilots knew that something special was
coming to an end enjoy the moment as you
are the last people in the world as
passengers to cruise at twice the speed
of sound the supersonic Concord a joint
effort of the British and French
governments was making its last flight
after nearly 30 years in the air
grounded by a combination of
stratospheric costs and safety concerns
after a deadly crash in 2000 even people
watching that last Landing in London
were emotional I just love airplanes and
this not going to be anything like
Concord again is there never well you
know that old Maxim Never Say Never
Super Sonic coming back and it's going
to be different this time it's it's back
to stay Blake scha is the founder and
CEO of Boom his audacious goal is to
build a new supersonic airliner from
scratch has a private company ever built
a a supersonic aircraft anywhere no
nowhere it's been governments and
Military only boom is not the only
American startup company in the new
supersonic sweep Stakes spike is
developing an ultra Fast Business Jet
and hermus aspires to make a Hypersonic
plane that would fly five times the
speed of sound but boom is the only
entrance to actually build an airplane
this is it that's it oh wow so far Blake
sha and boom have built this single
Cedar test plane which they hope will
this year the passenger jet meant to
follow is called Overture it only exists
in artist renderings but it's real
enough for one of America's largest
Airlines to climb on board so is the
Overture the plane that United recently
ordered that's right United just ordered
15 Overture airplanes so more overtures
than Concords ever delivered into
service is this United deal like a stamp
of approval I think it's incredible
validating you know when you are united
you take you take these things really
seriously seriously enough to produce a
slick promotional video that's already
playing on many United
flights the ad May say super sonic is
here but it's not not yet Blake scha is
a software engineer who started his
career at Amazon not in Aerospace but he
insists he's going to make it happen
when I look several decades out you know
what I want is to be able to be anywhere
in the world in four hours for 100 bucks
now that's not where we start but that's
the end goal the Concord charged
thousands thousands of dollars for a
one-way flight from New York to
London how is it going to be possible
for you to have a similar flight
experience for $100 you keep iterating
and so the same way you know for example
electric cars when they first came out
they were pretty expensive but we kept
working on them and the price came down
they got better and better and so we're
going do the same thing with supersonic
Jets we're going to keep working on them
we're going to keep innovating this
industry needs people dreaming big that
is essential this industry was built on
that John ostra is Editor in Chief of
the air current a publication that
tracks every development in commercial
Aviation including boom and Blake scha
he admits that something like he is
proposing has never been done by a a
private company
before um but yet he's convinced that he
can do it do you think he can I think
you cannot ignore the obstacles that
will be on the path to getting there and
I think the amount of money that is is
required to make this happen uh makes
this a very long shot how much money
will it
take probably in the neighborhood of at
least 15 or 20 b
asra says that's about what it cost
Boeing to develop and build and certify
a new subsonic airliner and they already
have huge manufacturing facilities boom
doesn't Blake scha told us he can get
Overture built for 7 to8 billion but
that's a lot more than the 300 million
he's raised so far and money's not the
only hurdle boom and United have
promised their new plane will operate on
100% sustainable aviation fuel but that
doesn't exist yet in anything like the
quantities they'll need oh and one other
thing they're going to need an engine to
do this and they don't have the engine
yet they don't have an engine Blake scha
says an engine is on the way from the
same company that built the supersonic
engines for the Concord and we are
working with Rolls-Royce on a a custom
jet engine that will power Overture
you're working with Rolls-Royce It it
doesn't ex this engine does not exist
yet it is a it is a lightly customized
engine and part of that is rolls-royce's
work where they're kind of turning some
design knobs Blake SCH doesn't dismiss
the Skeptics but he points to the
example of Elon Musk and says not so
long ago no one thought he could build
Teslas and reusable Rockets where's this
passion come from it's because we sto
making progress on the speed of travel
you know the airplanes we have today are
no faster than the ones we had when my
parents were growing up and there is no
good reason for that it doesn't have to
be we can fix it when do you expect the
first paying customers to fly on one of
your planes by the end of the decade
supersonic really only makes sense on
flights of four or 5 hours or more but
thousands of such roots are Out Of Reach
to Boom the reason is in the very name
of his
company that's the sound of a sonic boom
created by a plane breaking the sound
barrier listen
again the first boom was made by Chuck
Jagger's X1 rocket plane when it passed
through Mach 1 about 660 mph back in
1947 and he does
it what is the sonic boom what generates
it so when an aircraft flies faster than
the speed of sound it creates
disturbances Mike buano is a top engine
at Lockheed Martin's skunkworks aircraft
design studio in California Dave
Richardson is his boss a lot of us
understand the Wake that's generated by
a ship or a boat and so imagine that
wake from a speedboat or whatever all
those different waves coming to be one
large wave those individual disturbances
created up by the airplane they combined
together to make a loud double bang the
Federal Aviation Administration tested
the impact of that big bang back in
1964 by flying milit Ary supersonic Jets
like these over Oklahoma City for 6
months the outcome Broken Bricks and
ceilings frayed nerves and public
outrage it was just patently obvious
that no one was going to tolerate such a
loud noise on a day-to-day basis the
result was a ban on civilian supersonic
flights everywhere in the world other
than over open water and that basically
hit the brakes on the development of
commercial air travel terms of advancing
speed up until uh that ban every decade
air travel had gotten faster and faster
the ban remains in place today so if
boom gets its overture in the air it
will only be able to serve long
transoceanic routs similar to what the
Concord flew so if you want to go from
JFK in New York to Paris that's uh okay
but for many of us we want to fly places
over land here living in Los Angeles
almost everywhere I want to go
uh flying East requires Overland travel
and that's one of the big problems that
we're trying to solve wano and
Richardson and their Lockheed Martin
team have been commissioned by NASA to
build a test plane that can fly twice as
fast as current airliners without
rattling nerves or breaking
Windows your mission is to get rid of
this sonic boom that's right the entire
point of the airplane it is to reduce
Sonic Boom the airplane plane is called
the x59 it will look like this when it
makes its first flight later this year
for now it looks like this inside
Lockheed Martin's Assembly Building
you're looking at the cockpit of the
airplane and there's no forward
windscreen this is it every part of the
x59 is streamlined and smooth to
disperse sound waves and transform the
loud Sonic Boom into a much quieter
thump if you look at it it's pretty
slick I mean it looks like a dart Nils
Larsson is the NASA test pilot whose job
it will be to prove that the x59 can
replace the sonic boom with a simple
thump later this year he'll pilot some
of the early test flights and then its
first sound tests that's coming to a
town near you so our researchers are
going to work with the public and we're
going to fly over various cities and
towns and they're to give us the
feedback of that thump was that thump
too loud you know did you even hear it
at all so if you are able to fly over
populated areas and provide this data
then the FAA will use this data perhaps
to lift this ban uh exactly are we
likely to see planes in the future
flying supersonic that look like this
one I certainly hope so and I think you
will so there are definite things that
you would see if you walked into a
commercial you know supersonic airplane
here you know 10 12 years from now and
you would look at that you could see you
know some DNA that goes back to the
x-59 lson took us over to NASA's x-59
flight simulator and the first thing we
noticed is that there's a TV screen in
place of the missing windshield for you
does it work as well as yeah using your
own eyes so far I think it does about to
go through Mach One there's Mach One you
know you see so we're now going
supersonic yep you're now supersonic
Larson gave me a turn in the cockpit not
to fly Super Sonic but to land the x59
which is tricky given that it's shaped
like a pencil has no windshield and I'm
not a pilot signs come up follow him up
just a little bit so pull back just a
little bit a little bit more and just
hold it right there just hold it right
there there you go he's landed the x59
and in the middle of the runway I did
yeah sign him up Nils Larson will start
test flying the real x59 later this year
and soon after that he'll be flying it
over us and if it's quiet enough future
planes that follow its design lead could
eventually fly us lots of places twice
as fast as we can get there now when
might I be able to fly from New York to
Los Angeles in a supersonic there's a
long line of things that have to happen
starting with the x59 but I think 2035
is your answer uh if everything marches
along the way that it's supposed to it's
something that people have been trying
to solve for for decades have you guys
solved that problem we believe we have
it's rewarding seeing it getting built
but I think that real aha moment for me
is going to be when I hear that first
shaped boom from x59 thumb thump the
thumb thump we won't hear this bang and
when we hear or don't hear that sound is
when we know we did
it last month the world's top climate
scientists delivered a sobering warning
their Mammoth report to the UN boiled
down to one message act now before the
climate breakdown becomes Unstoppable
the report says extreme weather has
forced millions of people from their
homes and devastated Food Supplies oil
and gas emissions are at a record high
the UN report calls for drastic Cuts in
fossil fuels but if our old Technologies
got us into this mess can new ones get
us out among politicians corporations
and billionaires one new technology is
gaining traction it's called direct air
capture that vacuums carbon dioxide oide
out of thin air and locks it away
underground sound like science fiction
we thought so too until we went to
Iceland to see the world's first
commercial direct air capture plant in
operation here on a frigid plane near
the Arctic Circle worries about an
overheating Planet seem far
away yet a tiny Iceland has put itself
on the front line with a new kind of
machine that will fight climate change
by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air
this is orca the first commercial direct
air capture plant on Earth what are
these fans how does this work here you
see the backside of these collectors
where the air is being pulled through
the system by Aid of this fans Carlos
herle is Chief technology officer for
climb works the Swiss that built Orca he
told us as the fans draw air in the
carbon dioxide is trapped by a special
filter inside these giant collectors
each the size of a shipping container
the captured CO2 is then siphoned off to
storage
tanks we had to shout over the powerful
fans as a bitter wind whipped around
us so you didn't come for this wonderful
weather no we did not we knew that the
windows were hot
but it's a good real life test as well
for the plant what you're describing
almost sounds like science fiction but
what you're saying is that we can
actually do this people never doubted
the fundamental physics or chemistry of
it but realizing it under real life
conditions is a whole different matter
and that's what this system shows it can
be
done clim works is now building a new
plant in Iceland 10 times the size of
orca that will look like this a modular
design that herle told us can be easily
assembled but capturing the CO2 is only
half of the story so this is where the
magic happens the second half starts
here in these metal Igloo where the CO2
is sent to be buried in the poorest
volcanic rock of Iceland so this pipe is
actually filled with water Sandra OS is
a geologist with carbfix an Icelandic
company that pioneered the
groundbreaking injection method here we
have the CO2 and the CO2 is actually
dissolved in water so it's actually just
fizzy water just fizzy water yeah and
this fizy water is being injected here
into the injection well how far down
does it go it actually reaches over a
mile down a mile down yeah the fizzy
water is shot like a soda stream into
Iceland's basaltic rock where it reacts
with the minerals and hardens to Stone
in less than 2 years so the the fizzy
water turns into this yes in just a
matter of years so you so you take this
gas that you can't see you turn it into
fizy water and then it turns to Stone
and you don't have to worry about it
turned into stone it's it's quite
amazing carbfix didn't invent the
process nature did but nature takes
Millennia after years of experimenting
in Iceland's grueling outdoor laboratory
carbfix figure figured out how to speed
things
up aerospace engineer Carlos herle told
us Orca was a milestone now the hard
part starts scaling up fast enough to
slow climate change whether we are
taking the right direction will depend
as much on societal things than on
technical matters am I optimistic as an
engineer I am absolutely am I optim as a
citizen maybe half half I haven't made
up my mind yet this goal can be reached
technically it's just whether we have
the political and social will to do it I
think that's the exact right way of
looking at it there's been a stampede of
investment Microsoft Airbus Insurance
Giants Swiss re have poured in millions
of dollars but it's a Stupify challenge
Orca is built to take out the emissions
of about 800 cars or 4,000 tons of CO2 a
year a tiny fraction of the annual 10
billion tons scientists say we need to
remove from the atmosphere it's the
problem of Our Generation it's like a
moonshot it's going calerie heelen is an
astrophysicist with carbfix he told us
studying space helped him to think big
we met him on a Barren stretch of rock
that could have been Mars but hegels
told us he saw potential we need big
Solutions we need to return the carbon
back to where it came from which is the
Earth tell me what you're doing here
this will be a first of a-kind carbon
mineral storage terminal which means
that we are going to bring in CO2
transport it from industrial Point
sources in Europe and ship it here and
inject it for full mineral
storage it will be the world's first
industrial scale underground disposal
site for
CO2 capable of handling three million
tons a year hegels sketched out a new
world where tankers running on green
methanol would transport carbon dioxide
from European businesses to Iceland is
this going to happen fast enough to help
us with climate
change I don't know to be perfectly
honest um we are demonstrating the first
mineral storage Hub here at the Megaton
scale whether that will happen in time
that is not entirely up to to us that is
up to politicians governance financers
societies and quite frankly we are
running out of time direct air capture
as it now exists is expensive and energy
intensive in Iceland that energy is
geothermal renewable and green that's
not the case elsewhere so governments in
Europe and the US have dangled billions
of dollars of tax breaks to encourage
companies to take the plunge but there's
a bigger question than just who writes
the check do you fear that people will
think oh well we can now clean the air
we can just take the CO2 out of the air
so we can carry on with business as
usual all the time yeah but that's not
how it works we must stop the emissions
and wean ourselves off of fossil fuels
that's what we need to do right now on
top of that we also must take down the
carbon that we've already put up in the
atmosphere only then will we reach our
climate
goals
so carbon capture can never be an excuse
for continuing business as usual but
it's that business as usual that critics
are warning against as direct air
capture expands to the US that's because
here oil companies are one of the
Technology's biggest boosters they have
been capturing CO2 to inject into oil
wells for decades not to bury it but to
flush out more oil for Cal hegels of
carbfix and many others that's a
non-starter we don't see the need to
work with the oil and gas sector well if
the oil and gas
industry could help with the financing
of the direct air capture why not team
up with them we don't need them for
direct air capture and quite frankly we
don't want there to be an oil and gas
industry
in 40 50 years there will still be an
oil industry in 50 years I have no doubt
about that I think our company though
will be a different company by 2050 that
company is ocidental petroleum and Vicki
holb is CEO she wants to turn oxy into
what she calls a carbon management
company it is set aside more than a
billion dollars to build what will be
the world's largest direct air capture
plant in Texas so this would represent
the CO2 that's equivalent to taking
200,000 cars off the road holl showed us
the Texas version of how CO2 would be
sucked out of the air these are air
contact Towers some of the captured CO2
will be locked away underground just as
we saw in Iceland some will still be
used to extract more oil but h told us
using carbon sucked out of the air means
the new oil produced is what she calls
carbon neutral that was hard to wrap our
heads around but you'll be using carbon
that you're capturing and taking out of
the air to produce more oil that will
then generate more carbon but the the
oil will emit less carbon than the CO2
we've injected to get it so we've put
more at at least the equivalent and
sometimes more CO2 in the ground to get
that oil then the oil will Adit when
used holb told us producing oil this way
is essential in the transition to a
green economy Airlines and ships for
example would need to run on fossil
fuels until a sustainable alternative is
found that could take years until then
Hollow argues using CO2 to get that oil
helps keep a lid on emissions your
critics will say you can't trust an oil
company talking about reducing
CO2 that your mission here is tant
amount to
greenwashing I would first say that we
would never spend $1.2 billion for
greenwashing so we've got a Monumental
task ahead of us the way that the CO2
enhanced oil recovery process works is
that we can reduce more out of the
atmosphere than what um our products
will emit when used and so if that's not
a concept that people can get then we we
will no we will not have a chance to
achieve what we need to
achieve HB told us she knows critics of
big oil are suspicious and that many
feel industry isn't moving fast enough
to avoid a climate catastrophe on that
point HB doesn't disagree
she told us with the help of tax
incentives ocidental plans to build 130
more direct air capture plants by
2035 we know how to make it happen we
know how to drill the wells we know how
to safely sequester it we were in
Iceland and we were talking to some of
the direct air capture companies and to
be blunt they don't quite believe you
we're going to walk the talk that's the
only way that does it words will never
convince anybody we need to get the
direct air capture up and working we
need to um make it better make it more
economical and start having it developed
all around the
world the next decade will be critical
if the direct air capture industry is to
grow big enough to make an impact both
carbfix and clim works told us they will
be expanding to the US neither plans to
work with the American oil industry
the transition from fossil fuels to
sustainable electric power has gone
mainstream most visibly in the Auto
industry the major car companies are
chasing Tesla with ambitious plans for
fleets of electric vehicles those cars
and trucks run on lithium batteries the
US has massive quantities of lithium but
has been slow to invest in the mining
and extraction of the metal that's about
to change lithium operations powered by
Clean energy are being developed in a
long neglected impoverished part of
California by the saltan Sea not far
from the Mexican border the region is
being called lithium Valley and just
like the 1849 Gold Rush companies are
racing to strike it
rich east of s San Diego and south of
Palm Springs lies the saltan sea
California's largest inland body of
water spreading East from the sea is a
giant underground mineral-rich
geothermal field boiling with pottassium
sodium and lithium it is a worldclass
lithium resource this is when you hear
estimates of how big this resource could
be it's usually measured on annual tons
produced and we're confident that this
is is a in excess of 300,000 tons a year
right now that's way more than half of
the world supply of lithium Eric sper is
CEO of energy source minerals a company
based by the salt and sea in
California's Imperial Valley it's
steaming ahead with plans to recover
lithium using an existing Electric Plant
powered by the vast underground
geothermal field we're moving into an
era of Green Technology especially with
our cars where does this fit in our more
conservative projection would support 7
and a half million electric vehicles a
year which is half of the total US Car
Sales or cars and trucks coming from the
salt and sea area correct what about
this plant this plant will be 20,000
tons per year which is equivalent to
about
500,000 vehicles per year once up and
running the tons of lithium generated
here will be shipped refined and
processed into millions of rechargeable
electric car batteries over 50% of our
lineup and our retail sales will be from
Battery electric vehicles by the end of
the decade Mark Stewart is head of
stellantis North America a global car
maker that owns some of America's Best
Known Brands including Chrysler Jeep and
Ram trucks it really is quote unquote
the Industrial Revolution the next phase
right this is the most interesting and
exciting time to be a part of our
industry stantis is investing $35
billion in an ambitious historic
transformation we're reimagining our
factories on our assembly plants they're
already rolling our plug-in hybrids uh
as well as looking to two new uh battery
joint ventures uh that are in Full
Construction right now the new
Industrial Revolution it absolutely is
it's really the the biggest
technological changes in our industry in
nearly 100 years we were down in the
saltan sea region they believe they can
supply the lithium needs for All
American car manufactures absolutely
that is the case whatever they can
produce you guys will be buying it we
for sure will take as much as we can get
and as much as we have we have already
secured early lithium is key to powering
electric cars the dense metal helps make
batteries rechargeable there's a lot of
it around but extracting lithium is
dirty business most comes from Rock
mines in Australia or as powder
evaporated from mineral ponds in South
America the US has one lithium
evaporation plant in Nevada Energy
Source plans to break ground on a clean
billion doll facility here by the salt
and sea in the next few months
so the plant will fit in this spot right
here correct that spot that's not a big
that's not a big footprint no what are
these we call them the mud pots and they
are CO2 vents hot CO2 with fluid that's
bubbling to the
surface so this is evidence of the Heat
and activity going on underground
correct the 600° geothermal brine that
powers the Region's electric plants
comes from more than a mile beneath the
Earth the boiling brine produces clean
steam which drives turbines to generate
enough electricity to power 4 100,000
homes in the past the mineral Rich brine
was simply returned to the earth now
energy source plans to extend the
process and extract lithium from the
brine before re-injecting it underground
our process in combination with this
resource will be the cleanest
most efficient lithium process in the
world and how long before the lithium
processed here will be in commercial use
in the US in
2025 a lot of the components that go
into the batteries have been coming from
um you know anywhere around the world
but but America why was that we have a
lot of um decent resources in North
America they've just been
undeveloped David Dee worked for for
Tesla traveling the world to find the
best sources of lithium as it was
building up production of its electric
vehicles or EVS Tesla turned to the
lithium ion battery to power its cars
the same kind of rechargeable battery
Sony first mass produced for its cam
quarters there was a new market for
Consumer Electronics but the vast
majority is for electric vehicles and
that was pretty much triggered by Tesla
triggered by Tesla also you know there's
lot of Eevee growth uh and Eevee demand
and production in in China that's been a
big part of uh big part of the global
lithium demand Story come on in deak is
now energy sources Chief development
officer and says he had a Eureka moment
when he saw its unique technology at the
company's lab deak showed us the
mechanics in miniature the full-size
plant will be 100 times larger so what
goes on inside this cylinder
is it pellets or what what is the The
Matrix yeah I think of it as beads in a
in a column much like the activated
carbon that you would find in a brida
filter it works in a in a similar
concept a br filter will filter all
impurities out of water mhm this
absorbent is something that would only
take in lithium and not absorb
everything else the system takes just a
few hours to turn this orange brine into
this clear lithium solution
which will be dried into powder and this
is what everybody's looking for that's
what everyone
wants here by the salt and sea energy
source is leading the race for lithium
Warren Buffett's bhe Renewables runs 10
geothermal power plants in the
region and there's another on the
drawing board by an Australian company
controlled thermal resources both
Ventures are moving to tap the promise
bubbling under the Earth CEO Rod cwell
told us controlled thermal resources had
been fine-tuning the process at this
test facility for 90 days we're
producing lithium from live Brian here
behind us this is our optimization plant
based on what it learns here controlled
thermal resources plans to build a new
plant for recovering lithium which costs
about $4,000 a ton to extract and
currently is selling for six times more
the noise is from the machine cooling
600° brine rising from the well
releasing Steam and this is a battery
grade product from suan C BR this for
you is Eureka this is absolutely R yes
Rod cwell told us this bottle of clear
lithium chloride is the purest product
from this test facility so far this is
the first time this has been in my hands
this happened last night Bill s I might
take that home with me that's about $10
worth of lithium right there so you know
it works we know it works the question
here in the salt and sea Basin is will
it work for everyone this Rich lithium
resource Lies Beneath one of the poorest
sections of
California the saltan sea was created
when the Colorado River flooded the
Basin in 1905 but for the past 50 years
the main source of water has been
chemical Laden agricultural runoff and
for decades now the sea has been
evaporating and shrinking a once
thriving tourist industry has been
replaced by environmental Decay toxic
dust and economic hardship and with
unemployment in the region hovering
around 16% there's a lot riding on
turning the Imperial Valley into lithium
Valley Governor nusum call it you know
the Saudi Arabia of lithium I think you
know it can change landscape of the
region Frank Ruiz the Autobon society's
local program director is fighting to
include the community in that change he
was a commissioner on the state panel
studying how the entire region can
benefit from the potential
underground you're an
environmentalist how do you reconcile
the industrialization of this area with
saving the wildlife and the communities
we need to learn how to balance the
tables the Le industry can be really
good you know for these communities it
can you know it can provide better pay
jobs it can provide more job
opportunities especially for the younger
folks it can provide the revenues you
know to offset the challenges that we
have here at the Salton Sea geologists
predict once the industry is fully
operational the lithium underground
should last for Generations before
running out good news for stellantis
which ran out of batteries for its
plug-in hybrid Jeep Wrangler last year
we sold out what happened the you know
if uh if I could turn back my crystal
ball bill I would have secured a little
more capacity for for last year to
prevent that from happening in the
future Mark Stewart and stellantis have
committed to buying lithium from
controlled thermal resources at the salt
and sea knowing it will be years before
its product is commercially viable we
secured a large Supply from them over a
10-year period uh because we are very
positive on their technology so is car
maker General Motors which has invested
in controlled thermal resources the
department of energy and US automakers
are eager for domestic lithium the
companies were stung when the pandemic
disrupted the worldwide supply chain
stalling shipments of microchips Parts
and batteries still today 3/4 of all
lithium batteries are are processed in
Asia current lithium what typically
happens right it's mined in one spot
it's moved across the world for
processing and comes back think of all
that additional cost think of all that
additional carbon that's being used to
do that and at the end someone pays for
it and that's a consumer so will having
this domestic supply of
lithium help keep the cost of electric
vehicles down it will certainly help
prices for electric cars are coming down
and are projected to be on par with gas
vehicles within a few years driven in
part by the tax incentives in the 2022
inflation reduction act Eric sper of
energy source told us the tax benefits
have also been a catalyst for developing
domestic lithium we're starting to see
big announcements of Investments to
create that domestic demand so it
doesn't ever have to go across an ocean
this seems like this is a GameChanger
for American industry it's a competitive
Advantage it's an opportunity that we
can be a leader globally and why not
lead when hurricane Doran slammed into
the northern Bahamas in 2019 the
category 5 storm caused nearly
inestimable damage on a number of
islands there's a growing consensus
among scientists that climate change is
making hurricane stronger and more
destructive that's very bad news for the
Bahamas a string of more than 700
low-lying Islands stretching from
Florida nearly down to Cuba in the heart
of what's come to be known as Hurricane
Alley when we visited in late 2019
hurricane recovery was really just
beginning but we discovered that the
Bahamas had found a ray of Hope specific
speically a solar array that can survive
future hurricanes and in the process it
may have important lessons for the rest
of the
world with sustained winds of 185
mph gusts above 200 and a storm surge
well over 20 ft in some spots please
pray for
us hurricane Duan W unimaginable havoc
on the Bahamian Islands known as the
abacos there's not enough words in the
dictionary to describe what H toown look
like after this H toown has been Vernon
Malone's home for all of his 82 years
his family has lived here since
1785 he's the town Baker and grosser and
he and his wife rode out the storm in
his store it survived but their home
just up the street did not the entrance
went right in there Vernon's son Brian
had a home just around the corner had a
home that pile of rubble we see there
that's actually two and a half houses
mine's on the bottom hope toown is a
Bahamian Landmark its candy striped
Lighthouse dates to
1863 and is pictured on the country's
$10 bill the lighthouse stood up to
Dorian but as we saw coming into the
harbor not much else
did I hear generators
everywhere is this how you guys are
getting through yep yep Brian Malone and
Matt Winslow an American who owns a
vacation home on the island told us why
all those generators are still running
the substation in Marsh Harbor which
feeds us the power is destroyed and then
of course you can see all the utility
poles are pretty much destroyed so this
isn't a case where you you come in and
replace some poles and you flick a
switch this is months and months and
months of of work hop toown is on one of
several small Islands ravaged by Dorian
which then moved across 7 miles of Open
Water to Marsh Harbor the largest town
in the abacast at least 60 people died
in Marsh Harbor and destruction is still
everywhere total damage and loss from
Dorian is estimated at
$3.4
billion when you see the extend of the
destruction where do you even begin how
do you even begin that's always the
question where do we began the Bahamian
prime minister at the time Hubert M and
his Aid Viana Gardner visited Marsh
Harbor with us and pointed to a top
priority restoring electric power how do
you bring this back the power we had to
make determination to set up um micro
grids the micro grids prime minister min
is talking about are small scale systems
more and more they are solar arrays with
battery storage for when the sun's not
shining they can either feed electricity
into the larger Grid or operate
independently to power a single facility
or a neighborhood the way electricity
has been produced in the Bahamas is with
diesel fuel generating stations on each
inhabited Island about 30 in all feeding
power to everyone through over
headlines the main power plant for this
island is literally 25 Mi south of here
that's 25 Mi a line that has to be
rebuilt Chris Burgess and Justin lock
run the islands energy program for an
American nonprofit called the Rocky
Mountain Institute they have solar
projects throughout Hurricane Alley
after Category 5 Maria hit Puerto Rico
in 2017 they put micro grids on the
roofs of 10 schools Maria also brushed
St Vincent this is its first micro grid
now the islands energy program has come
to Marsh Harbor so how big will this
solar array be 15 Acres right through
here that micro grid will satisfy 10% of
marsh Harbor's total power needs and
will be built right between its
government center and Hospital both were
without power for weeks after Dorian
this is high ground which makes it less
vulnerable to storm surge and other
types of disaster events so if uh a
storm like Dorian hits again the power
to these two critical facilities stays
on corre the push to build stormproof
solar micro grids in the Bahamas began
in 2017 after Hurricane Irma another
category 5 storm tore through tiny
ragged Island at the southern tip of the
island chain after raged Island was
devastated I made a statement let us
show the world what can be done we may
be small but we can set an example to
the world so it's your your goal to make
ragged Island a Green Island absolutely
absolutely after which we can expand it
we can expand
it to see the prime minister's green
experiment we flew to ragged Island with
Whitney Hasty CEO of government-owned
utility Bahamas Power and Light engineer
Burlington STW met us there and took us
to what he calls the very first
hurricane proof solar micro grid being
installed in the
Bahamas unlike other solar designs it's
very low to the ground so this
installation is rated to withstand 1880
M hour winds which is an even harder
punch than Irma landed back in 2017
there was significant Devastation on
this island as you can see some of the
poles snapped right at the very base of
the PO snapped right at the base is that
what happened all over the island that
happened throughout the island this
micro grid will produce enough
electricity for ragged Islands roughly
100 residents the Prime Minister calls
it a laboratory for the solar future the
past is a diesel generator needing boats
to deliver fuel from hundreds of miles
away a system Whitney Hasty says is a
nightmare you know in summer we're
almost on the verge of running out of
fuel in some of these islands because
bad weather sometimes prohibits the
ships from actually getting to some of
these
location the Bahamian government spends
nearly $400 million a year on imported
fuel to keep its power plants running
and passes that cost along to its
citizens they pay three to four times
what we pay on the mainland us right for
electricity here right and that isn't
price gouging I mean that's that's just
inherent cost everything costs more in
the islands the bill to install this new
solar micro grid is $3 million Hasty
insists it's money well spent so you
have this initial big outlay to build
these panels but over time the cost of
generating power actually goes down
absolutely absolutely by using what God
has blessed us with which is the natural
sun it's not a perfect solution on
ragged Island notably the power from
these panels will still feed into the
vulnerable overhead power lines the
money's not there yet to bury them one
of the first things that I think
everyone can agree on is everything has
to go underground back in hopetown Matt
Winslow says they have the funds to bury
their lines Americans with second homes
here add a lot to the economy winds
Family Foundation has donated nearly a
million dollars to rebuilding efforts
they already have a makeshift micr grid
powering the fire station and health
clinic and Winslow has hired Engineers
to help plan a much bigger one on a
nearby Island it's possible that over in
great we could put uh you know a
solar array 18 acres and that goes uh
that power is piped through you know
preferably a new undersea cable to the
island and that could be a main source
of our power that would be enough to
power this island absolutely the
Bahama's goal is to produce 30% of its
energy from renewable sources by 2030
Justin lock and Chris Burgess of the
islands energy program believe the
country can do even better the price of
Renewables have come down to the point
where they're now very very competitive
with diesel and in most cases um way
cheaper than diesel the key game Cher
has been battery storage
battery storage has decreased in cost
over 60% over the last 5 years and what
battery storage does is it enables the
sun to shine when the sun is not shining
Renewables make more sense here than
anywhere else in the world and in the
Caribbean micro grids are starting to
show their value when earthquakes struck
Puerto Rico in 2020 the entire Island's
big electric grid was shut down for days
but remember those solar micro grids
installed at schools they kept providing
power the lessons can really apply
anywhere California has the same system
architecture as here in the Caribbean
right fossil fuel long transmission
distribution lines right and you see
that pg& had to proactively shut off
power to millions of people in order to
prevent fire if there had been these
micro
grids might it have been that pg& would
not have had to cut off power to correct
millions of consumers correct here in
the Bahamas there are still huge
economic obstacles losses from Dorian
equal nearly 30% of the country's entire
annual GDP we've got this
incredible outlay to rebuild these
islands that were devastated by Dorian
can you afford to bring on a new form of
electrical generation we cannot afford
it we recognize from one that we cannot
do it alone just weeks after Dorian hit
then prime minister minis spoke at the
United Nations he emphasized that most
of the Bahamas was not damaged and eager
for tourists lifeblood of the economy
then he said that First World countries
and their pollution are at least partly
to blame for the threat of ever stronger
hurricanes it is a
threat which we cannot survive on our
own
first world Nations and this what I said
at the UN I said first world Nations
make the greatest contribution to
climate change they are the ones
responsible for the changes that we see
the increase in velocity and ferocity of
the hurricanes and the different and the
changes typhoons that we see today but
we're the innocent
victim we the ones that are being
impacted by what you've created Min and
leaders of other Islands Nations have
proposed that the US and European
countries contribute to an insurance
fund think of it as a really rainy day
fund to help rebuild from future
storms that's what you say and what you
said at the UN the first world Nations
should do absolutely are they doing it
it's an ongoing discussion it's an
ongoing discussion does this make the
change to renewable energy that much
more important imperative urgent for you
here in the Bahamas it is because even
though our
contribution to climate change is
minimal it's Min it's minuscule to
compare with for is RO Nation but we
still have our
responsibility since this story first
aired in 2020 that micro grid we saw
being installed on ragged island is now
operating and supplying all all the
electricity the island needs they
haven't had to ship diesel fuel to run
that old Generator in many months which
is especially welcome news given that
the price of fuel has skyrocketed the
Bahamas has a new government and new
prime minister who says he's just as
committed to solar power as his
predecessor last August president
President Biden signed a sweeping
climate bill in the law making wind
power a priority specifically offshore
wind power the goal is to capture the
force of the wind in the Open Seas and
convert it into power for 10 million
American homes by 2030 we have a long
way to go there are only seven offshore
wind turbines off the coast of the
United States compared to nearly 6,000
in Europe critics say they're expensive
to build and maintain unpredictable and
ugly we wanted to see for ourselves last
October we reported from the largest
offshore wind farm in the world along
the northeast coast of England and
discovered the power of
Grimsby as you fly 200 miles north of
London along the coast you can see the
town of Grimsby below 55 mil east of her
Port morning we are on our way to the
horns wind Park fil crew on board you
can't miss them elegant and a little
Eerie white Giants poking out of the
North Sea like something out of a
science fiction
novel wind par with 6 this is the
largest crop of offshore wind turbines
in the world known as the hornsey wind
farm it is hypnotizing more than 300
turbines spread across 335 square miles
generating enough electricity to help
power more than 2 million homes a day
beautiful day yeah beautiful day to
understand the power size and upkeep of
this evolving technology we geared up on
land and traveled 90 minutes on the
heaving North Sea with 24-year-old briy
salmon her job is to scale and service
the turbines my job with the help of a
little anti nausea gum was to Simply
hold down my lunch this is choppy out
here yeah it is how you feeling I feel
um okay it's more important how do you
feel yeah I'm feeling good like I said I
like to think I've got my sea legs on so
when your last name is salmon
negotiating Rough Waters is sort of in
your
DNA Bri's great-grandfather worked on
the grimby dogs her dad owns this
100-year-old smoked fish shop in
town briy was bartending when she
decided to apply to an apprentice
program to be a Turbine Technician she
was one of seven people selected from a
pool of 500 should have a look around
here then guys The Apprentice program
combined classroom instruction you've
got a big drillet on the bottom and it's
and it's spinning with hands on work
could
seat but we soon learned that mother
nature is a temperamental teacher the
weather here is Ever Changing yeah yeah
we're holding on for our dear lives yeah
I mean I mean it's the North Sea it's
not something we can control so every
day is different and it can change like
that so it's just part and parcel of the
job um anything to get these things
turning this is the environment for win
turbines it's it's got to be
windy as we approached the turbines we
suddenly felt small you don't get a
sense of how large things are until
you're right up under this yeah well
that's it I mean so at the very top the
this cell um all the way to the top of
the blades is half the size of the
Eiffel Tower which is pretty massive and
and because you've got nothing normal to
compare it to like a building you just
see these in the distance and then
you're here and it's yeah they're pretty
bloody huge translation they're nearly
600 ft high with spinning fiberglass
blades roughly the length of the world's
largest passenger jet each blade weighs
almost 30 tons the turbines are
partially assembled on Shore then
shipped out to sea where each blade is
attached with surgical Precision to the
top of the turbine every angle has to be
perfect to generate maximum power once
installed keeping them spinning is
critical offshore wind Engineers say one
revolution can power one home in the UK
for 24 hours and that's where bridey
comes in it's raining it's windy yep
can't wait just another day in the
office all
right in choppy Waters Captain Peter
browon has to find The Sweet Spot
maintaining Constant Contact between the
bow and
base traffic seem liance some days the
winds are so high and seas so rough the
job can't be done done on this day
success I'll see you later okay careful
briy harnesses herself to a cable happy
yeah leaps to a
ladder and Begins the climb rung by rung
eight stories to the
top see wind alliance1 radio
check on a narrow platform hanging over
the North Sea she makes her rounds the
lights are working carefully inspecting
and servicing the turbine a job not for
the faint of heart pop this in here what
was that like the first time you made
that car oh exhausting exhausting yeah
it was cuz you've got all your safety
kit on as well so you've probably got
about 10 kg of harnesses and and Claws
and you got to be clipped in so you've
got that friction of climbing I would
imagine it would be kind of scary yeah
really scary I remember there was one
day it was super windy um so we were up
there in the top of the town Tower is
moving so you've got the seasickness the
motion sickness from the sea and then
the top of the tower is moving so all
day you're rocking and it was cold and
windy and I remember coming back on
Shore I was just rocking I I'm on land
now I don't need to rock but it's yeah
it's pretty scary bench Sykes says those
kinds of extraordinary efforts are
needed in extraordinary times Sykes is
the vice president of offshore wind at
orad a Danish based Global energy
supplier that runs the horn SE Wind Farm
you know we have a cost of energy crisis
in Europe and and in Britain at the
moment that's driven by the pandemic but
also of course by the terrible situation
in Ukraine uh and all of that adds up to
a real drive to find clean cheap Energy
Solutions about six years ago orad
decided to sell off its oil and gas
business and focus on renewable energies
Grimsby a depressed fishing Town became
the unlikely backdrop to Europe's clean
energy movement why here why Grimsby
it's got a good Port uh and it's
geographically really well located
physically in terms of the water depth
in terms of the wind resource and of
course places to connect to the National
Grid so that we can get that power to
homes and businesses long before
Russia's invasion of Ukraine set off the
energy crisis the UK had a strategy to
use 100% clean or renewable electricity
by
2035 when you talk about clean energy
you talk about solar hydropower biofuels
what makes offshore wind unique offshore
wind is the really the only project in
most countries where you can build it at
the kind of power station scale that we
need if I think about the projects we're
building here in the UK that's almost 3
GW and that's broadly speaking the
output of a nuclear power station so
we're talking large scale infrastructure
projects most of Europe is too populated
to fit very very very large wind farms
or solar Farms so that's why we've gone
offshore one big criticism is costs
they're expensive to construct to
transmit into decommission is that cost
passed on to Consumers so that's simply
wrong offshore wind power is one of the
cheapest forms of electricity generation
in the UK we privately fund it together
with Investment Partners that we bring
in privately you fund that yeah there's
no public exposure to the costs of
building offshore wind and I think the
thing that's made the most difference is
the fact that we've had political
consensus now for more than a decade and
that's given investors confidence to
step in and put the big money on the
table to get these projects away gas and
nuclear still make up a majority of the
power supply flowing into UK homes and
businesses but this year 14% of
Britain's energy has come from offshore
wind only China produces more offshore
wind power than the
UK here here's how it works wind turns
the blades around a shaft inside the
turbine which bends a generator energy
then travels down going 300 ft beneath
the water surface to cables buried under
the seabed connecting to an offshore
substation then to a power station on
land where that electricity created out
at Sea is transferred into homes and
businesses inviting the question what
happens if the wind stops blowing
using satellites and other technology we
can predict extremely accurately how
much we're going to generate over the
next days which enables those who
operate the grid to make very clear
plans about where's demand going where's
Supply going I mean if I look at the
turbines that we've got out in hornsey
they're operating 98 99% of the time
this is grimsby's second
act through the 1950s to 1970 the town
hosted the largest fishing Fleet in the
world with 700 trollers a wash in cash
and a port fit for a visit from the
queen oh it was absolutely brilliant the
the camarad here because you you can say
nearly 100% of the population would be
associated with the fishing industry in
some way Dennis Avery and Bob forby were
part of the town's fishing tradition
what was it like no it's a tough job
it's work from sailing till you get back
in the port again working in the winter
around Iceland and them places was was
pretty severe but um it's a kind of job
that I would do again tomorrow in those
days you had two choices you worked on
the docks or you went to sea Deca
Navigator Avery captain in this hulking
steel fishing tler the Ross tiger for
eight years if you caught a good trip
and you're steaming home back to Grimsby
with a fish room full of fish you know
it it's a marvelous feeling that Marvel
marous feeling ended when Iceland
Britain's neighbor to the north began
enforcing fishing restrictions in their
codr Waters to Grimsby May shrink to a
trickle what did you see happen in town
when that happened gosh it was a a
disaster to be quite honest because
everybody was involved some way in
fishing like taxi drivers the pubs the
dress shops and places like that uh they
all suffered you know once the fishing
sort of went it all sort of died to
death wind power has breathed new life
into Grimsby offshore Energy company
orad says it's created 600 jobs here and
invested over $18 billion in local wind
farms but there are plenty of people who
worry the environmental impact of the
wind turbines hasn't been sufficiently
studied and others say the industry has
not created the number of jobs they've
promised but the concern of these
retired fishermen is more practical
we're not seeing benefits your
electricity bill hasn't gone down no no
it's gone up if anything when they said
about them how oh we're going to get
cheap electricity and it's going to be
you know green and everything but I
can't see any benefits to be quite
honest but has your electricity bill
gone
down try double it's doubled there are
people who said yeah we've got all these
turbines but our electricity bill hasn't
gone down a cent yeah um I mean it is a
real challenge that it's going to take
time because we need to build more
offshore wind so you think if there's
more offshore wind prices could go down
yeah absolutely fearing the war in
Ukraine could lead to blackouts last
winter the UK government announced more
drilling for oil and gas in the North
Sea they will also speed up the time it
takes for new offshore wind projects to
get
online Ben syes told us that over the
next eight years ored plans to invest
another $ 17 billion in wind farms and
add more than 300 jobs in Grimsby you
know the fishing industry was fantastic
for Grimsby that that era has passed
what we want to do is to be part of
creating the next chapter of of
grimsby's life and of the country's Life
as we build out a chapter briy salmon is
very much a part of so that's gone from
Grimsby being the fishing town to the
PowerHouse of the north which is an
amazing transition proud of it so proud
of it and to be a part of it it's
amazing a Town's future and Fortune once
again tied to the
Sea representatives from nearly every
nation have met this week at an annual
climate Summit searching for agreements
on how to curb the rise of global
temperatures the Summit is being held in
the oil Rich United Arab Emirates and
that has dismayed activists who believe
that the only way to really address the
climate crisis is to walk away from
fossil fuels for the moment at least the
world and the United States need both
fossil fuels and renewable energy and
the best proof of that may be found in
the state of Wyoming it is the country's
leading coal producing state and very
conservative politically yet its
Republican Governor Mark Gordon is
emerging as a leading voice promoting
climate friendly energy projects and
action to address the climate crisis
essentially Mark Gordon is trying to
prove that it is possible to be both red
and
green we needed to be aggressive and we
needed to really address this issue so
you tell the people of Wyoming that
climate change is real I do and that
it's urgent it's an urgent crisis I have
said that and I've gotten I've gotten
some push back from that as well I bet
you
have in September we met Mark Gordon
who's in the middle of his second term
as Wyoming's Governor how are you
Ellington on the cattle ranch where he
grew up this is my dad's old saddle his
family still owns this Ranch and he and
his wife also operate another about 40
Mi away how did growing up here affect
your world view I think growing up here
gave me an enormous appreciation for the
world around us and and the ecological
processes and the weather you just are
uh exposed to it on a regular on a
regular basis Mark Gordon is also a
mountain climber who has seen glaciers
receding due to a warming climate he
says that helped convince him to set a
goal of making Wyoming not just carbon
neutral when it comes to CO2 emissions
but eventually carbon negative you first
made this pledge of net negative CO2
emissions at a 2021 State of the State
speech how did that go over I think some
people probably resented it I think
generally it's been well-respected uh it
was to to some degree a bold move and
and one that was intended to make a
difference in that discussion about
energy in the future after Gordon
repeated his net negative emissions goal
at an appearance at Harvard in October
Wyoming's Republican party passed a vote
of no confidence in him but he says heat
from the right won't deter him from
pursuing what he calls an all of the
above energy
policy whatever you're going to do in
energy probably you're going to have
something to do in Wyoming we have
tremendous wind resources we have the
largest reserves of uranium important
for nuclear energy largest coal producer
we're number eight in oil number nine in
natural gas 83% of our energy is
exported that will soon include nuclear
power from a Next Generation reactor to
be built in Wyoming with a $500 million
investment from Bill Gates huge wind
farms already dot Wyoming's landscape
with the biggest one yet on the
way because the wind blows basically 247
365 days a year Bill Miller is president
pres of the power company of Wyoming
which is beginning to build what will be
the largest wind farm in the continental
United States in the middle of a
geographic break in the Continental
Divide all the winds which blow from
west to east pretty much are funneled
through this part of the country Miller
drove to the top of a place called Choke
Cherry
knob to give us a taste of the wind so
when this is up and running how many
turbin will be out here current plan
calls for 600 turbin and how much energy
will that generate so it'll generate
around 12 million megawatt hours of
power year and that's enough to power
how many homes million million two
Wyoming doesn't have anything close to
that many homes it has the smallest
population of any of the 50 states So
the plan is to build a new 800m long
transmission line to send that power to
California which needs and wants it
what's this going to cost the wind farm
will be something north of $5 billion
transmission line will be something
north of $3 billion capital investment
that's a big investment yes the project
is bankrolled by billionaire Philip
anshutz who owns the company Bill Miller
runs and who first made his fortune in
oil Society has spoken that's what this
country is going to go to is renewable
energy more importantly it's a project
that contributes to the zero carbon
initiatives that we strongly believe in
it's going to happen and this is the
best place for it to
happen at this past Summer's windy
groundbreaking ceremony for the
transmission line Bill Miller was joined
not just by Republican Governor Mark
Gordon we have a great future ahead of
us but also by two members of President
Biden's cabinet
the way we've tried to navigate this is
to find something for everyone and I
think that's possible yeah I think it is
honestly I think if people are going to
embrace how we get to a carbon neutral
carbon negative future it has to be by
saying we're all going to be a little
bit better by embracing
Innovation if a single single picture
can capture Wyoming's energy past
present and future this may be it a
fully loaded coal train passing in front
of a huge Wind Farm remember this state
still produces more coal than any other
by far the likelihood that we will truly
as a world move away from fossil fuels
is very low Holly kutka runs the school
of energy resources at the University of
Wyoming before shifting to Academia she
worked worked for Peabody the largest
coal company in America 82% of our
Global energy consumption is fossil
fuels 82% 82% it has not changed because
of that Stark fact kutka and her
colleagues are focused on taking the CO2
out of fossil fuels like coal before it
reaches the atmosphere with a technology
called carbon capture and storage there
are carbon capture and storage projects
in America America working right now
there's just not enough the capture side
we're there today we can do it now right
now yes the technology is there but is
it economically feasible it will always
be cheaper to do nothing than to add
carbon capture and storage if you want
to reduce emissions this is part of the
solution we have to decide is it worth
the
cost at the huge dryfork Coal Fired
power plant near Gillette the University
of Wyoming is operating what it calls
the integrated test center some of the
flu gas that would otherwise go up the
Smoke Stack is siphoned off into Labs
like this one where the Japanese company
Kawasaki is testing methods for making
carbon capture more
economical Wells 10,000 ft deep have
also been drilled to show that captured
CO2 can be stored underground forever
how big a deal would it be
to find an affordable way to capture
carbon at the point of
admission say in power plants around the
world it would be a game Cher for
certain you know there are a lot of
naysayers who say that this is a pipe
dream mhm it'll never happen what do you
say to them how do you convince them I
say we're trying it then I know people
will say well you're just trying to
extend the life of the coal
mines I am but I'm also trying to do
that in a way that is going to do more
for climate Solutions than simply
standing up a whole bunch of wind fors
or sending up a whole bunch of solarist
with his all of the above approach Mark
Gordon is trying to put every kind of
energy project on a fast
track including Bill Miller's huge Wind
Farm how long did you think it was going
to take when you started when I
originally started I thought we could
probably get this entitled and under
construction within 5 years and it's
been 17 17 why so long primarily the
permitting process the bureaucracy of
the federal government you told me
coming up here that the the process was
kind of like a
nightmare it was
difficult maybe nightmar is a little bit
too strong but uh it was very difficult
process so how important is it to reduce
Regulatory and permitting barriers I
think it's massive permitting reform I
think is one of our biggest challenges
at a federal level it is something
that's being embraced uh by both sides
both the Biden Administration and
Congressional Republicans have endorsed
the idea of streamlining permitting for
energy projects actually doing it is
another story in Wyoming Governor Gordon
has done what he can one thing I can
share is that it's a state that's very
welcoming to innovators in the energy
space
cly caves is co-founder of a company
called cruso Energy Systems about 5
years ago it decided to tackle the
problem of flaring when gas produced at
oil wells is simply burned into the
atmosphere if you could capture it all
it would power about 2/3 of Europe's
electricity it's a very large amount of
waste and we're just burning it off
we're burning it off because there's no
pipeline there cavis and his colleagues
came up with the unconventional idea of
putting a small electricity generating
power plant right where that gas was
being flared and wasted what we do is we
tap into that gas line we bring the gas
over to a power generation system and
then that generates electricity and we
take that electricity directly into our
on-site data center to power hundreds or
thousands of computers and then we
Network the computers to the outside
world with fiber or satellite internet
to get it off site so you take a Data
Center and just basically put it on top
of the well head exactly it's a it's a
modern data center in every way when
you're standing inside of it and then
you step out the door and you're in an
oil field cruso energy first used those
electricity gobbling data centers to
mine Bitcoin now most of that computer
power is being used by artificial
intelligence companies the first place
to let them try this in 2018 was
Wyoming that's not necessarily an idea
that everyone's going to embrace
automatically right off the bat before
it's been done before Wyoming was they
invited us to come do it for the first
time here we did it at a small scale we
proved that it could work and that
helped us attract the funding and the
other projects that have helped us scale
to where we are today how many of these
um Centers do you have up and running
currently we're approaching 200 by the
end of the year we'll have about 200 of
our modular data centers deployed
throughout the United States and now
internationally so how do you assess
your environmental impact So today we're
operating at a scale of more than 20
million cubic feet of gas per day that
would have otherwise been flared and
wasted we're preventing that flaring
it's on the order of several hundred
thousand cars per year being taken off
the road in terms of the avoided
emissions
impact are you trying to send out a
message to the rest of the country even
the rest of the world if you have a
renewable or a climate friendly idea
bring it here bring it to Wyoming love
to we we want to be part of this
solution there are some really
remarkable things that if we stop
talking about what we shouldn't do and
start talking about what we can do and
how we can Embrace that future that's
what we're dedicated to here in
Wyoming there was a time when futurists
were predicting that the Advent of 3D
printing was going to change our lives
that each of our houses would have a 3D
printer to make whatever items we need
what virtually no one predicted though
was that there might soon be 3D printers
that could construct almost the entire
house but that's just what a
six-year-old Austin Texas company called
icon is doing 3D printing buildings and
if you believe icon's mission-driven
young founder
3D printing could revolutionize how we
build help create affordable housing
even allow us to wait for it colonize
the moon sound out of this world take a
look what you're watching is the
building actually the printing of a
four-bedroom
home on this construction site there's
no hammering or sawing just a nozzle
squirting out concrete kind of like an
oversized soft serve ice cream dispenser
laying down the walls of a house one
layer at a time it's the brainchild of a
41-year-old Texan who's rarely without
his cowboy hat Jason Ballard 3D printing
a house yes ma'am people are going to
hear that and say no we're sitting
inside one right now this house was
printed yes ma'am wow there you are look
at this
welcome and so was this one does a
concrete home printed by a robot have to
look cold and
Industrial maybe not I like the curved
wall Ballard gave us a peek at the first
completed model home and what will soon
be the world's first large community of
3D printed houses a hundred of them part
of a huge new development north of
Austin they'll start in the high
$400,000 range
how exactly does 3D printing a house
Work Well it starts with this 1 and 1/2
ton sack of dry concrete powder which
gets mixed with water sand and additives
and is then pumped to the robotic
printer now you are looking at how we
control the bead size Connor Jenkins
icon's manager of construction here
explain that the printer completes one
layer called a bead every 30 minutes by
which time it's hardened enough to be
ready for the next beat steel is added
every 10th layer for strength the amount
of change you're making is Tiny it takes
about 2 weeks to print the full 160 beat
house Jenkins gave me the controls an
iPad so look Leslie that's a little
skinny will you press the plus one real
quick aren you wor you just increased
the bead size incrementally I'd be
worried if I were you but turns out the
path is entirely
preprogrammed I couldn't mess it up if I
tried don't tell the I think that's the
most gorgeous beat I've ever seen I
think this will be the highest selling
house for now as Jason Ballard showed us
icon is only 3D printing walls with
cutouts for plumbing and electricity
roofs windows and insulation are added
the old-fashioned way by construction
workers he calls it a paradigm shift it
really is like a r Brothers moment for
airplanes in how we construct our
housing but why do we need a big shift
like that cuz right now it is too
expensive it falls over in a hurricane
it burns up in a fire it gets eaten by
termites the way you try to make it
affordable is you trim quality on
materials you trim quality on labor the
result is these cookie cutter
developments and like yeah this is not
the world like we are not succeeding
it's something we have to get right on
top of that it's an ecological disaster
and I would certainly say it is
existentially urgent
that we shelter ourselves without
ruining the planet we have to live on
fire resistant flood resistant wind
Ballard showed us a sample of a 3D
printed wall beside a conventionally
built one you say it's faster more
efficient yes why do you say that what
you've got let's count the materials
siding one moisture barrier two
sheathing three uh stud four drywall
five and then float tape and texture you
can count that either as one or three
but you've got at Le at least half a
dozen novel steps that have to take
place to deliver an American stick frame
wall system by comparison we need a
single material supply chain delivered
by a robot let's talk about waste yes
ma'am over here at the end of
constructing a home with these materials
there are truckloads and truckloads of
waste left over these studs are going to
have off cuts that go into a waste pile
same with siding same with drial all
whereas with 3D printing he says you
only print what you need so in short
like if an alien came down to planet
Earth and saw these two ways of building
and said from first principles which is
better the alien would go Stronger
Faster termite resistant fire resistant
like by a mile this is the best way to
build though old school construction
workers May disagree if Ballard sounds a
little like a revved up salesman or a
preacher there's a reason for that he
grew up in East Texas a studious
outdoorsy spiritual kid first in his
family to graduate from college you were
thinking about becoming an Episcopal
priest yeah I was almost an Episcopal
priest but along the way I started just
like getting this like itch about
housing not being right so I studied
conservation biology I got involved in
Sustainable Building and I worked at the
local homeless shelter and so now I'm
thinking about homelessness and I'm
working in Sustainable Building along
the way my hometown gets destroyed by a
hurricane and I have to go help my
family pull drywall out of their house I
feel like uh life is just putting
housing in front of me right as I've
been like approved to go to Seminary and
so I go to my Bishop the bishop of Texas
Andy Doyle he's still the bishop of
Texas and uh I said what do I do and at
the end he said Jason I want you to
pursue this housing thing like this is
your priesthood this is your vocation
and if it doesn't work out the church
has been here for a long time we'll
still be here but that must have turned
the switch for you it did it made it
more than a hobby or a business right
that it sort of became a mission he
began began pursuing that mission with
Evan Lumis a buddy from Texas A&M who
had gone into Finance as we looked at it
like nobody had Incorporated kind of the
Holy Trinity of innovation to housing
which was robotics Advanced Materials
and software so in a borrowed Warehouse
on nights and weekends and having read
everything they could find about the
mechanics of 3D printing they tried to
design a 3D printer that could make a
building how big was it it was 10 feet
by 10 feet by 10 feet so it would have
it would have printed if we had ever
gotten into work which we did not uh it
would have printed like a 100t like
demonstration building they didn't get
it to work but enter Alex Laro a recent
Bor Engineering Graduate who was
tinkering with a similar idea did you
ever actually build anything yeah I did
what was it a printed shed the shed
doesn't sound too cool but it was a big
milestone it's a real structure the
three co-founded icon in 2017 and soon
got funding to print a small house to
unveil at Austin South by Southwest
Festival the following spring they built
a new larger printer that worked and we
got really excited okay Jason where are
we right now we are printing the world's
uh first permitted 3D printed house but
the Kinks hadn't quite been worked out
so at one point we ran the printer into
the print to explain that supposed to go
up and it went down and then drove into
the house like pushed a bunch of layers
off funny now but not so much at the
time some Engineers folks who were like
helping us sat us down and said guys
it's been a great effort but you're not
going to get there so like why don't you
guys get some rest and we were basically
like get out of here like true anyone
who wants to to finish this home may
stay everyone else needs to leave and
the three of you all agreed on that yeah
we knew that we were to something and
like we this was like our shot and we
weren't going to miss it Alex they
worked around the clock and made the
festival deadline by just hours hey
valard any words for the victory
lot never never never never give up I
stand by those words yeah sure never
give up he showed us the 350 square ft
finished house it's a small little house
but it's kind of elegant well I'll be
that's not so bad I mean I think that's
kind of how people felt about it like
better than they expected and it was
easy to
believe well they'll get better that
small little house won icon a lot of
attention an innovation award investors
meetings with the military and with
another Austin innovator Alan Graham who
created a village called Community First
that provides small homes to several
hundred of the formally homeless our
goal was really the most despised
Outcast lost and forgotten of our
community wow average time on the
streets is 9 years average age of death
is 59 it's an absolute Miracle out there
and so when uh we were ready to start
building homes uh one of the first
organizations we reached out to was Alan
Graham so icon 3D printed a welcome
center and then six small houses for
Village residents that's 73-year-old Tim
Shay who battled heroin addiction for
decades in 2020 became the first person
in this country to live in a 3D printed
home before I saw these houses in my
mind I thought it must be cold you're
shaking cuz you don't think that no just
the opposite you feel embraced or you
know enveloped people that live that are
in the economic Strat of the men and
women that we serve are going to be the
last people on the planet that are going
to benefit out of new technology and he
wanted to make sure that they were the
first the first person in North America
to live in a 3D printed house was
homeless yeah I isn't that s the years
since have seen tremendous growth for
Icon a new Factory to build more
printers and improve the quality of its
concrete and a facility called printland
to experiment with new designs icon has
printed small homes in rural Mexico
vehicle hide structures for the Marine
Corps huge Barracks for the Army and Air
Force and a deluxe showcase home
featuring wavy walls and curves that
would be prohibitively expensive if
built traditionally but not when
programmed into a 3D printer so in your
minds is your C customer a homeless
person or is your customer me there's a
trick here because what our heart wants
to do is to serve the very poor and it's
often been like confusing for people to
understand it's like I thought you guys
were helping homelessness why are you
building that fancy house yeah I would
resign if I was only allowed to build
luxury homes and we would go bankrupt
right now if all we built was 3% margin
homes for homeless people but once this
technology arrives in its full
force um I think it fundamentally
transforms the way we build and not just
on the earth 3D printing on the moon
when we come
back it has been a staple of Science
Fiction forever humans living and
working on the moon but for NASA that
dream is almost within reach there their
new Artemis program plans to return
American astronauts to the moon for the
first time in more than 50 years this
time not just to visit but eventually to
stay and even use the moon as a base for
exploring Mars and Beyond but staying on
the moon requires infrastructure landing
pads roads housing and you can't exactly
bring 2x4s and sheetrock on a
spacecraft that's with 3D printing comes
in NASA is partnering with Jason
Ballard's company icon to Pioneer 3D
printing on the
moon 3 2
1 and liftoff of emis 1 last fall NASA
launched the first in a series of
Artemis
missions the next with crew on board is
scheduled for next fall and by the end
of the decade an icon printer is
supposed to fly to the moon to test
print part of a landing pad Jason
Ballard who once applied to be an
astronaut but was rejected can't wait if
the schedule holds or even approximately
holds the first object ever built on
another world will be built with icon
Hardware he wants icon to be the first
company to make something on another
world so do we at Marshall space flight
center in Huntsville Alabama NASA
scientists Jennifer Edmonson and corki
Clinton run a program called impact
spelled mm P Moon toor's planetary
autonomous Construction
Technologies whoa you people at Nasa you
come up with these very very long names
that's why we call it impact the key
word there is autonomous we want to be
able to make structures that we need
without having to be tended by
astronauts if you're going to have a
truly sustainable presence on the lunar
surface you have to be as Earth
independent as possible NASA was
interested in 3D printing having looked
at an early version almost 20 years ago
so when they heard about the progress
icon had made with their first houses in
Austin Corky Clinton traveled there to
take a look being an engineer I spent a
lot of my time going around and looking
at the size of the beads and how they
went around the corners and I'll tell
you I was really impressed with what
they had
accomplished impressed enough that NASA
gave icon development money in 2020 and
then last fall a $57 million contract
welcome to space lab Lesley this is
where we figure out how to build on
other worlds Ballard and Evan Jensen who
leads the project explain the
fundamental challenge to bring an object
roughly this size from Earth to the Moon
surface would be $1 million and think of
how many sort of brick-sized things we
would need to do Launchpad Landing Pad
roads habitats so we have to learn to
live off the land you have to learn to
build it there and use the materials
from there that's right but that's no
easy feet it means using what's called
lunar regolith which covers the moon's
surface rather than concrete and water
as a building material regolith is made
up of rock that has been pummeled over
billions of years from asteroids comets
and things is it like sand it's actually
finer than sand icon has a big tub full
of simulated Moon regolith and they have
invented and built a robotic system to
3D print with it you're going to build
all those roads and buildings out of
this that's correct to the robots will
this is actually the mission that we are
scheduled to fly as he pointed out in
this rendering our robotic arm with our
laser system they've created a whole new
way to 3D print with lasers instead of a
nozzle squirting out soft conrete a
high-intensity laser beam will melt the
powdery regolith to transform it into a
hard strong Building Material they're
running experiments Now using the laser
to create a small sample once that red
light is on we're hot oh lots of power
here we go here we go we watched on
monitors as the arm got into position
there's the laser oh that white thing's
the laser so it's melting right now it's
going up to say 1500° C it's going to
complete its second pass you can see it
emerging there see the dark object on
the screen that's the object we just
made with the laser they can add more
regolith and Laser again and again to
build in layers to go as high as they
want which will be done remotely from
Earth
it takes hours to cool so they showed me
a sample they' made days earlier this is
pretty darn hard that's our Landing Pad
you're holding it yeah I'm holding The
Landing Pad that's exactly right it's
pretty cool that's a scientific term
icon sends them to NASA where they're
blasted with this special plasma torch
the torch will be about 4,000 de to see
if they can take the heat a landing pad
would have to with
stand see there oh there it is the torch
is so bright you have to watch on a
monitor that was it a few minutes later
out it
came oh it's just a little bit warm it
looks good to me I don't see any loss of
material I don't see any cratering it
survived the test pass the test with
flying colors the next test will be
operating the entire robotic arm and
Laser we'll put in a large scale
simulant Bed inside NASA's giant thermal
vacuum chamber which mimics the moon's
extreme cold heat and vacuum conditions
this is sort of like a Ballard's idea is
to eventually send mobile 3D printers to
the moon so this moves the printer
around with a longer robotic arm
sticking out of the top to print
whatever is needed and then they would
build the road and then they would build
those habitats right it's and it
wouldn't stop there if we can do it on
the moon we can do it on Mars the Moon
is actually harder it's harder Mars is
uh almost in every way easier except for
it's so far away easier they agree
because for one thing Mars doesn't have
extreme temperature swings still in my
mind it's science fiction but in your
minds it's absolutely in the palm of
your hand it's going to happen we can
see the steps in the technology to get
us there now that's thrilling it's
exciting quality can't go backwards in
Block four icon says trying to 3D print
on the moon and Mars is helping with
their work here on Earth they are
formulating new mixes to reduce the
carbon footprint of their concrete we
think we'll be there by end of year and
they're trying out more radical
architecture quite complex shapes and
geometri almost looks like ripples on
the surface of water patterned walls
it's very subtle oh look at this yeah it
almost looks impossible and next year as
in these renderings they'll be printing
round hotel rooms in Marfa Texas and
futuristic looking designer homes you
see a bedroom on that end with a shower
and a bedroom here and here's a some
renderings of the Interior wow right it
gets you going doesn't it we're living
at a time right now where a lot of CEOs
have been caught over promising hyping
um thinking of feros you're absolutely
right and it it's it's it's a tougher
thing than you know because part of the
job is to get your investors get your
team and in our case the world um to
believe the things you are saying except
the things you are saying don't exist
yet uh you need you need to get them to
believe so it's hard to know
like even in this interview I actually
haven't yet told you all the things I
believe we're going to do because I'm
like measuring myself give us one
example something wild I mean in the
future I
think most buildings will be designed by
AI most projects will be run by software
and almost everything will be built by
robots and I don't think that's that far
away I at my age find that very
depressing but I'm sure young people
that world housing will be more abundant
more affordable more beautiful it will
make this version of housing look
depressing by example you know that
expression if it seems too good to be
true it is
or I do know that
expression uh but cars and airplanes and
moonlanding seem too good to be true for
a moment as well and so like maybe the
only proof I can give you is like I'm
betting my life on it like I have this
one precious Life to Live and I'm using
it to do this and if I could think of a
better way I'd be doing that in instead
or I'd go fishing like this is so hard
and you like fishing and I love
fishing we don't often think about how
the sense of touch makes our lives
possible we grip a paper coffee cup with
perfect Force to hold it but not crush
it our feet always find the floor but
for people with artificial limbs or
those with spinal injuries the loss of
touch can put the world beyond their
grasp 17 years ago the defense
department launched a $100 million
project to revolutionize prosthetic
limbs the robotics you're about to see
is amazing but as we first reported
earlier this year even more remarkable
is how the feeling of feeling is
returning to people like Brandon
prestwood for me me it
was it's a battle if I wanted to live or
die you weren't sure you wanted to live
no I didn't know if I wanted to or
not Brandon prestwoods battle began with
the loss of his left hand in 2012 he was
on a maintenance crew reassembling an
industrial conveyor belt when someone
turned it on my arm was dragged in
pretty much up to the shoulder it
crushed my bones in my arm and uh fed my
arm through a gap about one inch how did
they save your life The Other M guys
jumped in they started basically taking
the machine back apart uh once we got it
back apart I could look in and see what
was there and uh one of the gentleman
was a Vietnam veteran
and the Vietnam veteran knew what to do
yeah the Vietnam veteran knew
tourniquets but Presswood lost his hand
and couldn't return to his job go eat
with this yeah that sounds good after
four years with a hook he told his wife
Amy he wanted to volunteer for
experimental research involving surgery
at the VA I was not 100% on board to
start with but I knew he had his mind
set that he was he had to do this and I
I couldn't hold him back 6 years later
thanks to defense department and VA
projects Presswood controls this hand
with nothing but his thoughts everything
still feel
good probably when I get her turned
around here electrodes implanted in
muscles in his arm pick up his brain's
electrical signals for movement a
computer translates those signals to the
hand how about the middle finger now
sensors in the plastic fingers are
connected to nerves in his arm to return
a basic sense of touch close your eyes
tell me when you're feeling each of
these which he can demonstrate with his
eyes closed
pinky index that's not
bad middle still requires a little bit
but it's not bad biomed engineer Dustin
Tyler leads This research at Case
Western Reserve University and the
Cleveland VA touch is about connection
it's connection to the world it's about
connection to others it's connection to
yourself right I mean we never
experienced not having touch it's the
largest sensory organ on our body all
right so go ahead Tyler first attempted
an artificial Connection in 2012 he
switched it on in a volunteer and
wondered what would happen so I was
concerned would it his whole hand would
it be painful would it not feel anything
we had no idea uh so one of those big
moments in my career was he came in we
first turned on the stimulus and he kind
of stopped for a second and he goes
That's my thumb that's the tip of my
thumb this happened right away it didn't
require any training of the brain no
that was the beauty of it my thumb
Brandon Presswood remembers the instant
it happened to him that's my fingers
I'm feeling my fingers that I don't have
anymore I'm feeling them a definite
feeling he told us but different it
doesn't feel exactly like my right hand
it's a tingling sensation it's not
painful it's kind of like if your if
your hand's been to sleep right at the
end right before it wakes up that
very for me it's Pleasant it's a
pleasant tingling let's see if you can
do on a cherry here a tingling that's
light with a light touch but grows
stronger the harder he presses eyes
closed he can pinch a cherry firmly
enough to pull it from its stem but not
crush it you can feel this is light I
had to use my lightest touch so if I
hold this right here with an empty
eggshell I can feel that I feel it in I
feel it here and here it's a feeling
more than a decade in the making at the
beginning of this research how did you
even imag imagine that this would be
possible I didn't imagine I thought I
imagined it was not going to be possible
San Ben mayor at the University of
Chicago is among the world's leading
experts on the Neuroscience of touch in
2008 he joined the defense Department's
project to revolutionize Prosthetics but
he didn't think the Pentagon knew what
it was up against there are a 100
billion neurons in the brain
interconnected with a 100 Brillion
synapses I mean the the the human brain
is like the most complex system in the
known universe too complex he believed
to Target electrical stimulation to
exactly the right neurons and when we
electrically stimulate we activate
hundreds thousands of them at the same
time in ways that would never happen
naturally it just seemed like that very
impoverished interface with this nervous
system would never do any able to do
anything useful and turns out I was
wrong he was proved wrong by his own
research how you doing Scott nice to
meet you nice to meet you Scott with
volunteers including Scott Embry and you
can feel that I feel it on my fingertips
whose movement and sense of touch are
limited by a spinal injury from a car
accident computer ports in EMB skull are
wired to the motor and sensory parts of
his brain electrodes pick up the brain's
electrical signals that were intended
for the muscles a computer translates
those signals to the robot
arm we first saw this brain machine
interface 10 years ago at the University
of Pittsburgh but back then there was no
sensation index finger in collaboration
with pit neuroscientist slan bmea showed
that signals for touch could be turn to
the brain how can you possibly know what
part of the brain is the tip of the
index finger we took Scott and we put
him in a functional magnetic resonance
imaging scanner and then we had him
imagine moving his thumb imagine moving
his index imagine moving his his digits
as we monitored his brain activity and
lo and behold the sensory and motor
parts of the brain
that are involved in the
hand lit up
middle
ring index there are challenges
eventually the brain builds Scar Tissue
at the implants limiting the motor
electrodes but one patient's implants
have lasted 8 years in
counting Scott EMB have been working
more than 2
years you have been a subject of this
work for years now and I wonder why I
wanted to have someone else have the
opportunity to become independent again
the most meaningful work of your life
yes
sir 100% the greatest Independence might
be no prosthetic at all and we saw this
astounding possibility with a Pioneer
Austin Bean his brain impulses are
rooted not to a robot but to implants in
his own arm that fire his muscles what
function did you have in this hand
before the implants oh absolutely n
nothing you couldn't move it at all now
so only thing I can do really is shrug
my shoulders and kind of shift
them unfortunately that was all that
came back after my accident his accident
was on a vacation celebrating his
college graduation diving into a
submerged Sandbar left him
quadriplegic now motor and sensory
impulses flow through the ports in
Bean's skull and a computer bypassing
his damaged spine relax clothes the
research is led by bolu AO a biomedical
engineer at Case Western Reserve
University our goal is to restore
complete functionality of the upper arm
including dextrous hand function and the
ability to reach out so that Austin and
others who have suffered you know severe
spinal cord injury can regain some level
of functional Independence bring my arm
forward the Cradle under his arm only
supports the weight all of the motion is
his own it takes effort he has to
concentrate little bit quicker open hand
relax hand Clos hand relax
hand open hand relax hand and the
computer needs frequent adjustment how'd
that
feel good good but his parents Shelly
and Brad showed us where this could lead
carrot or would you like to have a nice
granola bar I'll take the granola bar I
figured Bean retained limited feeling
after his injury which makes him ideal
for evaluating the artificial sens touch
point a
finger so if I can extend first his
motor skills let me open my hand for you
continue to grow squeeze around it
you'll feel me really start to dig in
right there you got a grip yeah it
really is let go yeah and I'll bring the
arm back up congratulations yeah thank
you thank you so muching amazing
advances are coming
quickly Danny wner lost his foot in
Vietnam it's on okay but but 47 years
later he was reconnected to touch in an
artificial foot can you feel that on
your toes yep which helps him balance
climb stairs and walk on uneven
ground Brandon prestwoods next device
will replace some wiring with Bluetooth
connections especially the Thumb Thumbs
spot on the cost of his experimental rig
and surgery is estimated at roughly
$200,000 but an eventual commercial
system May cost significantly
less while delivering moments that are
Priceless what did that mean to you to
feel Amy's hand in yours the
world I was a whole person
again I didn't have to worry about
those dark thoughts creeping back in
it's just giving me back my husband
hband
who means the world to me um he's
hisself again himself because the
feeling of feeling is so much of what
makes us human maybe that's why when we
see a tender moment it is said to be
touching I love
you with a new strain of covid On The
Rise and flu season just getting started
we thought now would be a good time to
consider what the pandemic has taught us
about preventing the spread of
potentially deadly respiratory
infections it turns out viruses like the
one that causes covid-19 can travel
through the air much farther than 6 ft
so Public Health advice focusing on
social distancing handwashing and
masking wasn't enough air quality
scientists say from the start of the
pandemic it also should have focused on
improving the air we all breathe
indoors now some companies are doing
just that for the health of their
workers and the health of their bottom
line the original sin of the pandemic
was the failure to recognize Airborne
transmission Professor Joe Allen of
Harvard's th Chan School of Public
Health believes the rapid spread of
covid in early 2020 was preventable
think about the public health gains
we've made over the past 100 years
we've made improvements to water quality
outdoor air pollution our food safety
we've made improvements to sanitation
absolute basics of Public Health where
has indoor air been in that conversation
it's totally forgotten about and the
pandemic showed what a glaring mistake
that was what do you think was lost
because of that lag in understanding of
how this was spread tens of thousands of
lives in the US many more more globally
not an
exaggeration it's also no exaggeration
to say those early days of covid were
Unforgettable in the US by March 2020
the virus began taking its toll in
places like the Life Care Center Nursing
Home in Kirkland
Washington 60 Mi away in Mount Vernon
Washington the scet valley Corral held
one of its weekly rehearsals in a church
half the members stayed away but the
other half showed up among them were
board members Debbie Amos Mark and Ruth
backland and koise bettinger so we just
thought hand sanitizer wash your hands a
lot you know don't hug each other cuz
that's touch none of it was good enough
within a few days Corral members began
to get sick in all Co hit 53 of the 61
people there that night two of them both
in their 80s died a week we were going
th this has got to be spread some other
way it because we were good we were good
So Co was percolating and you thought
you were doing everything you were
supposed to do yes right scatchet County
Health officials said the rehearsal
could be considered a super spreading
event one of the earliest in the country
and concluded that choir members had an
intense and prolonged exposure to
surfaces droplets and possibly even
microscopic Airborne particles called
aerosols containing the virus that
caught the attention of Lindsay Maher of
a Virginia Tech University Professor
specializing in aerosol science and
several of her fellow researchers even
though the medical community was focused
on droplets surfaces and handwashing
these researchers strongly believed
covid was mostly an airborne disease but
needed more proof so they launched their
own analysis I thought wow this is even
worse than I thought this has to be
airborne there's really no other
explanation for it some people are going
to say oh they all touched the same door
knob but after the first few people
touch that doorknob there there's no
more virus left that's what happens with
our exhaled breath now Professor Maher
used a portable fogger to help explain
how so many choir members could have
gotten sick when they're singing they
are releasing virus particles into the
air constantly probably like
this and those are going to drift around
in the room notice they're not just
falling to the ground and now as we
continue to sing there's more and more
of them in the room and you can see as
they're drifting around they're reaching
these other people nearby and they were
there for 2 and 1 half hours and you can
imagine that after that amount of time
the other people would have breathed in
enough of them to get sick themselves
especially if at night the HVAC system
was turned off as far as we know it
wasn't running and so there were very
there was very poor ventilation in that
room when this was all happening an HVAC
unit short for heating ventilation and
air conditioning is the heart and lungs
of any building the researcher suspected
the thermostat most likely shut off the
HVAC unit because the Corral members
were generating enough heat on their own
and right now there's no ventilation
very very low okay and actually it's
similar to what was in the church where
the the the group was rehearsing then
Professor Mah turned up the circulation
to show us how better air flow could
have helped remove aerosols and slow the
spread of virus instead of just drifting
all over the room oh you can actually
see it right going up I sure can that is
dramatic to see that the analysis led to
one of the most significant papers on
the importance of ventilation published
during the pandemic then last year a
study in Italy went further it found
that by using a school's fans and air
ducts to mechanically exchange indoor
air with outdoor air five times an hour
the risk of covid-19 infections
decreased by at least
80% but in the US it took until this
past May for the CDC to recommend an air
exchange rate at all if you look at the
way we design and operate buildings and
I mean offices schools local coffee shop
we haven't designed for health we have
bare minimum standards in schools the
minimum air change by Design is about
three air changes per hour and remember
we want at least four to six if we'd had
these indoor air quality targets before
the pandemic how do you think the
pandemic would have unfolded differently
we still would have had spread this
isn't an end the pandemic thing we would
have had a lot less of it and we've had
a lot less of these super spreading
events think about the early days of the
pandemic with flatten the curve stay
home why wasn't improve indor air
quality part of flatten the curve we had
tools to protect ourselves masking great
tool it's a
filter but we ignored the building side
of this so Ain buildings are Allen's
business as the founder of Harvard's
healthy buildings program he diagnoses
problems in air quality systems and
comes up with solutions for clients that
include cbs's parent company Paramount
and commercial real estate companies
like Beacon Capital partners with
buildings like this one in downtown
Boston and he advised Amazon before
these new 22-story towers opened last
May in Arlington Virginia where gave us
a tour what does a state-of-the-art
building look like in terms of air well
you see a lot of the elements in this
building you have a dedicated outdoor
air system that's delivering air above
the minimum requirements then it's going
through two Merv 13 filter Banks you
have highly filtered air MV stands for
minimum efficiency reporting value a
rating of 13 means it catches up to 90%
of Airborne particles depending on their
size as the first line of defense not
just just against covid but other
Airborne respiratory viruses like flu
and RSV this is the part of the building
nobody ever sees but this determines
whether or not you're healthy or sick in
the building really what happens in this
space you can just see the filters on
the right here at Amazon's new offices
the top floor is a maze of Motors pipes
and air ducts this is the air intake
part of a $2.5 million haax system that
begins with massive rooftop Vents and
dampers right here this is the whole air
handling system this is where the air
comes into the building it's filtered
it's cooled and then delivered this
determines how much air actually reaches
the office space where people are
working and how clean that air is
downstairs each floor has a sensor that
tells building Engineers about the
quality of the indoor air such as levels
of carbon dioxide known as CO2 we
breathe out the carbon dioxide that's
right the less carbon dioxide the better
the ventilation really straightforward
high carbon dioxide means you're not
getting enough outdoor air from that
system we just looked at if it's low
you're in good shape then we also
measure particles that tells us things
about like outdoor air pollution the
entire system can be monitored and
controlled from the basement remember we
talked about carbon dioxide as an
indicator for ventilation well I can see
in this building all of these are Under
800 parts per million so that's good
that's great and really important if a
lot of people went into a space the CO2
level would rise this system would
recognize it the dampers would open up
and bring in a lot more outdoor air
Katie Hughes Amazon's director of health
and safety pointed to the waves of
wildfire smoke that have swept down from
Canada as the ultimate test of the
indoor air quality system not too long
ago Washington and Virginia were sort of
smothered by this smoke coming down from
Canada what happened in this building
you would expect the air quality within
the facility to not be great our
buildings were performing very well
again Hughes says Amazon has been
updating many of its HVAC systems
including in its warehouses a recent
survey of facility managers in the US
and Canada found that since March 2020
roughly two-thirds of respondents have
upgraded their myrr filters and increase
their air exchange rates in New York
City JP Morgan Chas says its new
headquarters will have state-of-the-art
air quality controls and this new
skyscraper called one Vanderbuilt
already runs a modern back system Co
shifted everybody's mindset in terms of
air quality in terms of communicable or
infectious diseases are you finding that
Amazon is making a business decision
partially by saying look it's okay for
you to come back to work because we're
telling you that the air inside this
building is safe I think it's one of
many reasons why we expect or would like
people back in the office that is a a
good thing to have it's probably one of
many things a well operating HVAC system
is not only good for the health of
employees it can be good for the health
of companies too especially with people
working remotely leaving many commercial
building owners looking for tenants
there's empty office space in New York
City and elsewhere how do you think this
new thinking might affect that in terms
of people even wanting to come to work
the dynamic has changed it's a total
buyers or tenants Market all outs equal
which building are you going to go to
you have your choice right now this
building that put in healthy building
controls or this building that's
designed the way we've always designed
buildings and is prone to being a sick
building so it actually can help the
bottom line in addition to of course
improving Health yeah what about
retrofitting a building that's old I
think it's a misconception that old
buildings can't be healthy buildings
some of these fixes don't take much
improving the level of fil ation that's
easy it's cheap protects against
covid-19 influenza also protects against
Wildfire smoke and outdoor air pollution
protects against allergens simple
absolute basic things that can be
done the scet valley Corral rehearsals
are now in a different church with the
new HVAC system doors stay open to bring
in fresh air regardless of the season
and there are even portable carbon di
dioxide monitors to track ventilation
we've been through a traumatic
experience and we've tried to learn from
that and did help the science with the
aerosol study and now we're moving on in
a way that we can still sing but in a
more safe manner do you worry that when
the spotlight of the pandemic starts to
fade that people will forget and that
they won't act the way they should in
terms of buildings I'm a bit more
optimistic than that I think there are
fundamental shifts that have happened
the scientific and medical literature is
being Rewritten the government and
standard setting bodies are setting new
health-based
standards businesses are responding and
won't forget what this meant to their
employees health and their business so I
don't think we're going to forget these
lessons we better
not this year marks the 75th anniversary
of the end of World War II and the
liberation of concentration camps across
Europe most of the survivors Who Remain
are now in their 80s and 90s so soon
there will be no one left who experien
the horrors of the Holocaust
firsthand no one to answer questions or
bear witness to Future
Generations but as we first reported
earlier this year a new and dramatic
effort is underway to change that by
harnessing the Technologies of the
present and the future to keep alive the
ability to talk to and get answers from
the
past hi
Aaron hello can I ask you some questions
you can ask me anything you want within
reason our interview with Holocaust
Survivor Aaron ster who spent two years
of his childhood h in a neighbor's attic
was unlike any interview we have ever
done Aaron tell us what your parents did
before the war they owned and operated a
butcher shop it wasn't the content of
the interview that was so unusual where
did you live I was born in a small town
in Poland called sov podlaski it's the
fact that this interview was with a man
who was no longer alive Aaron ster died
two years ago what's the weather like
today I'm actually
recording I cannot answer that question
the survivors were getting very old
Heather Mayo came up with the idea for
this project she had worked on exhibits
featuring Holocaust Survivors for years
and wanted future generations to have
the same opportunity to interact with
them as she' had I wanted
to talk to to a holocaust Survivor like
I would today with that person sitting
right in front of me and we were having
a
conversation she knew that back in the
90s after making the film Schindler's
List Steven Spielberg created a
foundation named for the Hebrew word for
the Holocaust shaah come on ahead and
sit on down to film and collect
testimonies from as many survivors as
possible you're they have interviewed
nearly 55,000 of them so far and have
stored them at the University of
Southern
California but Mayo dreamed of something
more dyamic being able to actively
converse with survivors after they're
gone and she figured in the age of
artificial intelligence tools like Siri
and Alexa the technology had to be
creatable I've been involved in
interviewing Holocaust Survivors for
over 20 years iot she brought the idea
to Steven Smith executive director of
the USC showa foundation and now her
husband he loved it but some of his
colleagues weren't so sure one of them
looked at me she was like you want to
talk to dead
people and you said yes because that's
the point that's the point well maybe
people thought you're turning the
Holocaust into something maybe hokey
yeah they said that you're going to
Disney by you know Disney by the
Holocaust we had a lot of push back on
this project is it the right thing to do
what about The Well of the survivors are
we trying to keep them alive beyond
their death everyone had questions
except for one group of people the
survivors themselves who said where do I
sign up I would like to participate in
this project no barriers to entry
actually I did both I actually first
Survivor they signed up to do a trial
run was a man named Pinkus gutter who
was born in Poland and deported to the
midic concentration camp with his
parents and twin sister Sabina at the
age of 11 he's the only one who
survived they flew Pinkus from his home
in Toronto to Los Angeles and asked him
to sit inside this so you're in this
Dome what yeah I called it the sphere
they called it the Dome and then
eventually it was called a bubble a
bubble surrounding him with lights and
more than 20 cameras what's our f- stop
the goal was to Future prooof the
interviews so that as technology ad
advances and 3D hologram like projection
becomes the norm they'll have all the
necessary angles so the very first day
we went to film pinkas we had these
Ultra high-speed cameras that were all
linked together and sync together to
make um this video of him so and we sit
down and they press record nothing
happens so Pinkus is sitting there with
6,000 LED lights on him and cameras are
don't work can I go back to sleep now
sunglasses shielded his eyes when are we
going to start
I was bored sitting in that chair so I
started singing to
[Music]
myself so suddenly Steven had this idea
oh he's singing we're going to record
some songs of
his he was such a good sport he was
really good
sport eventually the cameras rolled and
Pinkus was asked to come back to the
bubble for the real thing how long were
you in that chair a whole week from 9:
to 5:00 a week we were there with breaks
for lunch and but I was there from 9: to
5:00 answering questions oh my gosh it
took so long because they asked him
nearly 2,000 questions the idea was to
cover every conceivable question anyone
might ever want to ask him did you have
to look exactly the same I had to wear
the same clothes and I had three pairs
of the same jackets the same shirts the
same trousers the same shoes every
morning Pinkus can now be seen in those
shirts trousers and shoes at Holocaust
museums in Dallas Indiana and here at
the Illinois Holocaust Museum in skoki
outside Chicago where visitors can ask
him their own questions what kept you
going or what gave you hope while you
were experiencing hardship in the camps
we did hope that that the Nazis would
lose their War Pink's image is Project
Ed onto an 11t High screen what we see
here Smith joined us to explain how the
technology works so what's happening is
all of the answers to the questions that
Pinkus gave uh go into a database then
when you ask a question the algorithm is
looking through all the database do I
have an answer to that and then it'll
bring back what it thinks is the closest
answer to your question I'm going to try
talking to pinkas yes all right did you
have a happy childhood I had a very
happy childhood my parents were wine
makers my father started teaching me to
become a wine maker when I was three and
a half years old and by the age of five
I could already read and I could already
write wow you're very
smart thank
you I've noticed there's a little jiggle
right before pinka starts to talk what
is that what you seeing here isn't a
human being it's it's video clips that
are are being buttered up to each other
and played and it searches and brings
the clip in you just you're seeing a
little bit of a a jump cut the jump Cuts
stop being distracting once we started
talking about the fate of Pink's family
tell us what happened when you got to
the camp as soon as we arrived there we
were being separated into different
groups
and my sister uh was somehow pushed
towards the children and I saw her she
must have spot at my mother so she ran
towards my mother I saw my
mother and she hugged
her and since that time I all I can
remember whenever I think of my sister
is her long big long blonde braid that
was the last time he saw his twin sister
Sabina he learned later that day that
she and both his parents had been killed
in the gas Chambers Pinkus was alone at
age 11 put to work as a slave laborer
did you ever see anybody
killed unfortunately I saw many people
die in front of my eyes there were
people I wasn't sure how a recording
would handle what I wanted to ask Pinkus
next how can you still have faith in
God how can you possibly not believe in
God well how did he let this happen
God
gave human beings the knowledge of right
and wrong and he allowed them to do what
they wished on this Earth to find their
own way to my mind when God sees what
human beings are up to especially things
like genocide he
weeps wow Stephen I could ask him
questions for 10 hours
and on the screen yeah W since Pinkus
gutter was filmed the shawa foundation
has recorded interviews with 21 more
Holocaust Survivors each for a full week
and they've Shrunk the setup required so
they can take a mobile rig on the road
to record survivors close to where they
live they've deliberately chosen
interview subjects with all different
wartime experiences survivors of a
hidden children and as we saw last fall
in New Jersey going to hook me up again
yep 93 yearold Alan Mosin who isn't a
holocaust Survivor he was a liberator
entering that camp was uh the most
horrific site I've ever seen or ever
hoped to see the rest of my life Mosin
was an 18-year-old private when his army
unit liberated a little known
concentration camp called goons Kirin
there was a pile of skelet like bodies
on the left there was another pile of
skelet like bodies on the right those
poor souls that's the term my lieutenant
kept screaming oh my God you look at
these poor souls look each of Alan
mosin's answers is then isolated by a
team of researchers at the Sha
Foundation office I remember the
expression and the attitude of all of us
what in the freak what is this God
Almighty who add into the system a
variety of questions people might might
ask to trigger that response for every
question that we asked there are 15
different ways of asking the same
question and that's fed in and that's
all
manual editors rotate the image turn the
green screen background into black and
then a long process of testing begins
some of it in schools so Mr pinkas on
your screen students are asked to try it
out ask whatever question they want and
see if the system calls up the correct
answer how did you find out that you
your city was getting invaded by Germany
would you ever want to seek revenge how
did you feel about your family can you
rephrase this please every question and
response is then reviewed we log every
single question that's asked of the
system and see if there is a better
response that addresses that question
more directly as we discovered it's
still a work in progress tell us about
your family when you were a little boy
how about you ask me about life after
the war so a couple of things about
artificial intelligence it is mainly
artificial and not so
intelligent yet for now but the beauty
of artificial intelligence is it
develops over time so we aren't changing
the content all the answers remain the
same but over time the range of
questions that you can ask will be
enhanced
considerably and you had to stay silent
questions to draw out what it was like
for Aaron ster hiding in that attic 75
years ago I used to pray to God to let
me live till I was 25 I wanted to taste
what adulthood would be like the rest of
that conversation with Aaron elster as
well as one with a survivor of Joseph
mangala's Infamous twin experiments at
owitz when we come back so am I a lucky
guy yes I
am the whole point of the showa
foundation's project is to allow
meaningful conversations with Holocaust
Survivors to continue even after the
survivors themselves are gone and of the
more than 20 men and women who've
participated so far four have passed
away
already tonight we wanted to share
conversations with two of them
conversations that at times felt so
normal we could almost forget we were
talking to the digital image of someone
who was no longer
living first a spunky 4 fo9 woman named
Eva core an identical twin who together
with with her sister survived aitz and
the notorious experiments of Dr Joseph
mangala Eva core spent her life after
the war in terot
Indiana she died last summer at the age
of
85 hi Eva how are you today I'm fine and
how are you I'm good it felt natural to
answer her question before posing my own
so how how old were you when you went to
aitz when I arrived in aitz I was 10
years
old and I stayed in AIT until Liberation
which was about 9 months later when we
were liberated so we made a little
announcement about the fact we were
starting this project I get a call the
next day from A lady called Eva cor I
didn't know her at that point in time
and she says I want to be one of those
3D interviews I
Steven Smith executive director of the
USC showa foundation and his wife and
colleague Heather Mayo Smith were
running the project I said well I'm
traveling I'm very sorry where are you
going uh well I've got to go to New York
I'm going to DC when are you going to go
to DC I'm going to DC turns out we were
going to the same event in DC I arrive
at my hotel she's sitting in the lobby
waiting for me when Eva on the right and
her twin twin sister Miriam arrived at
aitz they were pulled away from their
parents and older sisters and taken to a
Barrack full of twins they never saw
their family again 50 years ago at a
railroad 60 Minutes reported on
mangala's Twin experiments in a story
back in 1992 and the reason that my
number is not and we actually
interviewed the living Eva core at her
home in
terot Eva told us then about becoming
extremely sick after an injection
mangala came in every morning and every
evening with four other doctors and he
declared very sarcastically
laughing too bad she's so young she has
only two weeks to live when I heard that
I knew he was right and I immediately
made a silent pledge that I will
prove you you Dr mangala wrong imagine
picking up a conversation almost 30
years later and after Eva's death Eva
tell us about Dr mangala what was he
like he had a gorgeous face a movie star
face and very pleasant actually dark
hair dark eyes when I looked into his
eyes I could see nothing but evil people
people say that the eyes are the center
of the soul and in manger case that was
correct Eva and Miriam are visible in
footage taken by the Soviet forces that
liberated awit 75 years ago they went
back to the camp many times Eva
continuing to go even after Miriam's
death in
1993 because if the train came on that
direction it was on one of those visits
that Eva made a stunning announcement I
Eva Moses that she had decided to
forgive her Nazi captors hereby give
amnesty to all Nazis who participated
she came under blistering attack from
other
survivors how can you forgive H how is
that possible my forgiveness does not
mean that I forget what happened which
is impossible my forgiveness is an act
of
self-healing self Liberation and
self-empowerment are you able to forgive
Aaron I cannot forgive Aaron ster
disagrees for them to get
forgiveness they have to ask my little
sister Sarah whom they brutally
murdered I have no right to forgive and
I will not forgive what's important for
me in this project is that we have
Holocaust survivors who have different
points of view about God and religion
and faith and forgiveness and that's
what this project will allow us to do
Aaron ster unlike many Holocaust
Survivors never spent time in a
concentration camp as Jews were being
rounded up in his Town's Marketplace and
sent to trinka his father told him to
run he was 9 years old and I managed to
crawl into the seore that went along the
marketplace the street and kept crawling
till I felt I was out of sight stood up
and started running he made it to the
building of an older polish couple named
the gersis who'd been customers at his
family's butcher shop he shows up and
she didn't want to take
him he started crying and then she let
him upstairs Aaron how long did you stay
in the attic I lived in that attic for
close to two years two years with just
one visit a day to bring food and water
what was it like in the Attic oh there's
so many things that I remember the
hunger the
fear the absolute total
loneliness what do you do all day you're
sitting there I used to catch flies out
of desperation tear their wings off so
they wouldn't fly away so I H them there
h how did you survive how did you
survive in that attic I had the ability
to
daydream I used to write novels in my
head I was the hero all the time and we
have that ability to
either give into our misery and our
pain and
die or absorb the physical pain but keep
your mentality keep your soul
keep your mind so was I bored was I
scared was I in need of somebody
to accept me or to tell me that I'm okay
that I'm a nice kid
sure but that was not part of my life we
got a phone call to say that Aaron
elster had suddenly passed away I was at
a conference at that time the next
morning I went into the uh little room
that we had and I turned on Aaron st's
testimony and I realized I was going to
be the first person ever to click that
little button and ask a question of
somebody who was no longer alive when
for the next 6 hours people came in and
out of that room his funeral had not yet
taken place and yet the Legacy was
already continuing and it was a very
powerful and touching moment you're good
you're doing great a touching moment
that may soon be available to others
beyond the community of Holocaust
Survivors they're going to come in and
they're going to have you look Heather
Mayo Smith says in the process of
developing and testing this technology
she was barraged with inquiries there
wasn't one person literally not one that
didn't ask me if they could do a similar
interview with either a loved one for
themselves unrelated to the Holocaust
unrelated completely unrelated can I do
this with someone that I know what's the
answer yes she has started an
independent company that's trying to
expand the use of this technology I was
an astronaut for NASA recording
interviews with other historical figures
like astronauts and eventually with
anyone at all what unit were you in
during World do you think that this is
just going to be a tool that people use
everybody will be recording their
histories other people can interview
them mhm
it'll just be life yeah we're going to
go ahead and get started for now though
the race is on to capture interviews
with as many Holocaust Survivors as
possible while there's still time so the
conversations can continue always with
people like Aaron elster do you want
revenge when I was a Youngster I wanted
Revenge very very very much and I hate
it
I hate it but most of the perpetrators
most of the killers are dead so who am I
going to hate the grandchildren that had
nothing to do with it's not
right revenge is not part of my life not
part of my thinking you know here you
have these people who were basically
destined to be annihilated that they
survived as the miracle but they were
supposed to be murdered killed and now
they have immortality they were not
supposed to have a name they were
supposed to be destroyed for all time
and now through this program they will
be able to continue to answer questions
hundreds of years after the Nazis have
gone it's that never forget we've had a
lot of cliches around the Holocaust you
know never again never forget we must
remember all this sort of thing what
this does it makes sure that there isn't
closure because it's not about a
statement it's not about a particular
thing that's being instructed of you the
onus is on you to ask the questions the
onus is on you to be curious and to want
to know and so in a sense it turns the
learning on its head and says I'm not
going to tell you what the lessons of
the Holocaust are I'm not going to tell
you what the Holocaust means but if you
want to find out then you can ask it's
so terribly important so there we were
at a special moment in time when the
living pink scooter could talk to the
one who will live forever would you ask
you a question for us I will ask the one
which is my favorite okay can you sing
me a song from your youth you want me to
sing it for you yes
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please what does that mean what is the
song is it a happy song yeah with a
happy song It's like a brother and a
sister which of course my twin sister
are traveling in the woods or on the on
the road and they can't get over how
beautiful the world is oh my God
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