Weird Science: Space, Shatner And Skateboarding Robots

Richard Bradbury: What’s the problem?

Matt Armitage:

• No problem. I had a whole collection of fun little stories cued up for last week which were shot out of the water by Facebook.

• Which appear set on continuing its run of bad PR, seemingly not helped by the attempts of its executives to explain the issues away in media appearances.

• So, I have to continue that run of stories briefly to mention a new feature that Facebook PR head and former British Deputy-PM Nick Clegg.

• Announced over the weekend.

• Called Take a Break – the function is designed to advise teenage users to do just that: take a break from using the app.

• According to attempts by the Verge to get more detail on the function, it’s not in testing stage yet but will be soon.

• It’s a bit hard to say how this service will work, or what the additional parental controls he mentioned on CNN’s State of the Union show will be.

• However, from what has been reported, the idea is that if teens are looking at the same kind of content over and over.

• And if it’s content that as Clegg stated: may not be ‘conducive to their wellbeing’.

• Then presumably it will be linked to some kind of AI operation.

Richard Bradbury: If it is an algorithm based tool, doesn’t that open up more questions about how their recommendation engines work?

Matt Armitage:

• If you mean that if the algorithm is smart enough to know the content might be damaging,

• Why was it served up in your feed in the first place? Then yes.

• Like I said, until we have an idea of what this tool is and how it works, it’s hard to say.

• But it does seem to be that Facebook has become one of those companies that is so far removed from the people that it’s supposed to serve.

• That every fix it offers up actually makes things worse for itself.

• I warn everyone now – I will be doing another one of those shows where I argue that we should be paying for tech services with cold hard cash.

• And not put up with the kind of treatment and manipulation we experience.

Richard Bradbury: Bold words…

Matt Armitage:

• And an even bolder story.

• We talk about Star Trek a lot on this show.

• I use the references because A, I’m old and B, I lack the imagination to update my culture references.

• Despite the constant references to the show and its spin offs, they are, of course, fiction.

• None of the actors who bring the shows to life have ever been to space, or visited Vulcan or lived on a space station next to a stable wormhole

• This week, that changed.

• William Shatner, the original Captain Kirk, became the latest guest to make into space on a Blue Origin flight on Wednesday.

Richard Bradbury: Do you see this becoming a trend? Iconic actors getting their chance to escape to the stars?

Matt Armitage:

• It is something that Blue Origin repeatedly stresses – the opportunity for artists and poets to go into space.

• Presumably with the huge cost of those spots covered or offset by BO.

• As was the case with Wally Funk and William Shatner.

• It would be amazing to see some of the space opera stalwarts getting their own invitation.

• So many are already gone, just from my own generation’s touchpoints.

• Spock, Leonard Nimoy. Of course, Carrie Fisher is gone, as is James Earl Jones, the voice of Vader.

• I’d love to see George Takei get a chance. And for Mark Hamill to finally get a chance to walk the skies.

• Shatner became the oldest person to go into space.

• At 90, he makes Wally Funk, at only 82, seem like a whippersnapper.

• It was really moving watching Shatner talk about his experience afterwards.

• I watched the launch and flight live

• and then saw the in-cabin videos of the apogee moment of the flight the next morning:

• Shatner was glued to the window.

• He kept saying things like ‘Oh wow, I can’t believe this’, over and over again.

• On the ground after he said this amazing thing: “I hope I never recover from this.”

• I hope he doesn’t.

Richard Bradbury: Do you think this cements the position of those space startups, Blue Origin and Space X especially – where they make that transition from being the industry disruptors to becoming the backbone of the space industry?

Matt Armitage:

• That may be something we should look at on a show in the future –

• especially given some of the other tech and science we’re talking about today which could also be used for space exploration.

• I have to say though, part of me was hoping that there would be a minor technical fault on Bill Shatner’s flight,

• And that he would go into captain kirk mode to fix it.

• Back to your question - some of the more traditional and established space operators have been experiencing problems.

• Boeing’s ongoing technical issues with its Starliner projects look set to delay its next NASA test flight.

tunities in the first half of: 2022

• The Starliner has completed one uncrewed test flight, but software issues prevented it from reaching its destination, the ISS.

• A second test flight was delayed earlier this year when an issue was detected with the ship’s oxidizer isolation valve.

• That problem has still not been resolved.

• Both Boeing and SpaceX have been contracted to NASA to send and repatriate crews from the ISS.

• So, it looks like Elon Musk’s company currently remains in the lead: it successfully delivered replacement crew member to the ISS in April.

• Now, two astronauts who were to take the Starliner have been assigned to SpaceX instead.

• Cars, space, robots. It really does look like Elon is destined to take over the universe.

Richard Bradbury: Let’s move away from the idea of Galactic President Musk..

Matt Armitage:

• Alright. Here’s something else that billionaires hate as much as being trapped on a dying planet: ageing.

• This is from a recent story reported in NYT about metabolism about new breakthrough research into our metabolic function.

• It’s been accepted wisdom that as we get older our metabolisms slow down.

• And that women have slower metabolisms than men, which rate is further exacerbated by menopause.

• And it turns out – if this new research, as published in the journal science, proves correct – that many of these preconceptions are wrong.

• Before we talk about the results, there are other reasons that this is a landmark study.

• Metabolic research is slow and expensive. As a result, studies often contain a relatively small number of subjects.

• The study’s lead, Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University,

• Convinced researchers from half a dozen different institutions to pool their work.

• As a result, the study has over 80 co-authors, and combines research collected from 6,500 participants over more than 40 years.

Richard Bradbury: Are you planning to use this as the basis for your new book on a crisp based diet?

Matt Armitage:

• Would that I could, although I recently came across recipes for making mashed potato from potato chips.

• I’m not a fan of mash. Crisps are the dominant form of potato in my life.

• So, no. No sneaky science denying sleight of hand to make me money.

• Dr Pontzer’s research found that our metabolic rates differ quite widely across four stages of our lives.

• Those are infancy, from 1 to 20, 20 to 60. And beyond.

• We burn the most calories as infants.

• Because we have to get our bodies to catch up with our overly large and empty brains.

• Between 1 and 20 it seems that metabolic rates decline around 3% pa.

• And they’re actually steady from 20 to 60…

Richard Bradbury: Which means, in your case it is the crisps and not your metabolism?

Matt Armitage:

• That comment is worthy of a lesser man. I’ve been listening to the game of thrones books again this week and it’s turned my language flowery.

• But yes, it would seem that way.

• When you play the game of crisps, you win or die.

• And then when people reach around 60, that metabolic rate slows by around 2/3 of a percent per year.

• But the most interesting fact that – once body size and muscle mass was accounted for, there were no differences between men and women.

• And that menopause had no detectable effect.

• Shattering those age-old beliefs.

• One of the most surprising findings was that newborn babies – who you would expect to have the fastest rate of all,

• actually have roughly the same metabolic rate as their mother for the first month.

• And it soddenly accelerates, though from the current research, it’s not clear why.

Richard Bradbury: What kind of implications are we likely to see as a result of this study?

Matt Armitage:

• Scientists are going to be looking for a lot of new answers.

• Apparently, most people add about 2/3rd of a kilo in weight a year through adulthood.

• If the study is correct, We can no longer attribute that to a slowing metabolism.

• It may change the way we prescribe medicines and doses, because those assumptions about how quickly they’re metabolised may be wrong.

• So, it’s quite profound.

• A lot of what we thought we knew about diet and nutrition, public health policies, may have to be re-evaluated

• and, once that new research is conclusive, re-formulated.

• And it also opens up opportunities to look at why some people’s metabolism are higher or lower than the norm,

• and how factors like obesity affect it, rather than the other way around.

Richard Bradbury: Surely the most profound implications will be amongst those older age groups?

Matt Armitage:

• NYT quotes Dr Samuel Klein from Washington DC’s Center for Human Nutrition – who wasn’t involved in the study.

• So, yes, no matter how healthy someone appears to be, when they hit that 60 limit, then those metabolic slowdowns start to kick in.

• And that has an effect on how well our organs functions.

• He comments that this may be a reason that we tend to see so many more chronic diseases in older people.

• It’s almost like nature has built in a Carrousel switch – that’s a reference that only old people familiar with the movie Logan’s Run will get.

• So a better understanding of those metabolic switches, how and when they kick in, and what effects they have.

• May give us a better idea how to prevent, slow and manage those chronic conditions as we age.

When we come back: deepfake voices that can fool humans and machines.

BREAK

Richard Bradbury: We’re no strangers to deepfakes on this show. The term has come to mean AI manipulated video and audio that puts words in peoples mouths and can put faces on other people’s bodies. We’ve had our own deepfake human for much longer. But it’s not his intelligence that’s artificial.

Matt Armitage:

• I’d say thank you for the compliment if I hadn’t made you read that intro.

• We’ve talked about deepfakes in the context of misinformation and political trickery.

• We’ve also talked more recently about systems that can manipulate movie footage to make dubbed versions of movies look more realistic.

• By changing the character’s head and mouth movements to match the dialogue.

• More and more we’re using our voices to identify ourselves, pay for goods and services, control our homes, vehicles and automated assistants.

Richard Bradbury: In other words we see an increasing security risk posed by deepfake software and hardware as these systems spread?

Matt Armitage:

• We reached the point where this kind of software can fool people a few years ago.

• Back in: 2019

• To impersonate the company’s CEO and persuade an employee at the company’s UK subsidiary to pay out the money.

• The hope was that automated systems would do a better job of sniffing out the fakes.

• One algorithm recognizing another, that kind of thing.

• Researchers at the University of Chicago set out to test how freely available voice synthesizing software fared

• …against some of the market leaders in voice activated tech.

• They selected Microsoft Azure, WeChat and Of course, Amazon’s Alexa and tried to use deepfakes to unlock speaker recognition systems, according to NS.

• Of the three, Alexa allows users to authorize payment for some goods and services by voice.

• They tested two pieces of software, AutoVC and Sv2TTS, both of which can be downloaded from GitHub.

Richard Bradbury: Isn’t there a bar for this kind of scam, though? [ad lib: about what we did with descript last year]. These systems typically require quite a lot of audio to process before they can mimic a voice.

Matt Armitage:

• Sure. For the most part, where would someone get clean recordings of your voice?

• And get sufficient quantity and variation to create that fake.

• There would be quite a lot of time and effort required.

• More than might be justified to try and order some low value items on your Amazon account.

• So, the Chicago team deliberately chose software that meets that low bar.

• AutoVC requires about 5 minutes of speech. SV2TTS requires an incredible 5 seconds.

• You remember the old scam before chip cards where a fake reader might be installed at a till, stealing your card details.

• We now have the prospect of something similar but capturing your voice.

• And as we tend to use loyalty cards to identify us, scammers can match a transaction to a voice, too.

Richard Bradbury: But only if the deepfake gets past those voice security systems.

Matt Armitage:

• Incredibly, worryingly, it was the 5s software that performed most strongly in spoofing the speaker systems.

• SV2TTS spoofed the Microsoft Azure systems around 30% of the time.

• that probability rose to around 60% for persistent attacks where the hackers have control of the majority of keyphrases that trigger the system.

• For WeChat and Alexa, the SV2TTS software spoofed the systems around 60% of the time.

• All the tests were done in English.

• For reasons that the researchers are yet to understand, the spoofing was more accurate for women’s voices and for non-native English speakers.

• Or speakers with a strong accent.

Richard Bradbury: Were the same tests made with human respondents as well as machines?

Matt Armitage:

• The researchers tested the voices on around 200 people.

• Those subjects were fooled around half the time.

• Suggesting that at this point we actually have an edge over the machines.

• Now, this isn’t to say that the same software will have the same kind of effectiveness against more secure voice systems,

• Like those used by banks.

• The point of the research was to highlight how easy it would be for criminals to use these kinds of tools.

• And to point out, In a voice-controlled world,

• The types of security that any voice recognition system should employ to ensure it isn’t fooled.

Richard Bradbury: I can sense that we’re coming to the killer robot part of the proceedings…

Matt Armitage:

• We talked about various robots last week.

• Boston Dynamics and their Atlas machines, of course.

• Imagine if they had your voice, or that of a loved one.

• As they hunted you through the streets for your electricity making heart.

• I have to stop daydreaming out loud.

• A friend shared a post about another canine like robot dog that was exhibited at a defence show this week.

• The bot itself wasn’t new, but the remote operated rifle module it carried was.

• But we’re not going there.

• This week we have a flying, tightrope walking and skateboarding robot.

• Its name is Leonardo and it was created by researchers at Caltech and Boston’s Northeastern University.

• The team took birds as their starting point. In that birds move around with a combination of walking and flying.

• Which is a potential solution for robots trying to cross uneven and rocky terrain.

• Last week, we talked about Boston Dynamic’s Spot being tested in mining operations…

Richard Bradbury: …As a potential replacement for flying drones?

Matt Armitage:

• We’ve tended to look at robots as either or – flying or ground based.

• For good reason. Flying consumes a lot of energy, so it makes sense for the machines to be as small and light as is practical.

• Ground based machines can, in some instances, be larger and heavier allowing them accommodate bigger batteries

• To provide them with the range they need to be useful.

• That’s why I have those dreams about being chased by robots who want my power pumping heart.

• Leonardo tries to combine both.

• At 75cm tall and 2.6kg in weight, Leonardo stands upright and walks on regular legs with joints at the knees, hips and ankles.

• Mounted on its arms are drone like rotors.

• So, like a bird, it can walk along and leap into the air seamlessly.

Richard Bradbury: Presumably the flying isn’t designed for long distances?

Matt Armitage:

• No, it’s more for leaping over obstacles, like large rocks, or moving from level to level.

• But the rotors also provide stability and thrust.

• Allowing Leo to ride a skateboard by providing rotor thrust to propel it rather than using a foot like we have to.

• Or balance on a rope line. There’s a really strange, and what looks to be gravity-defying, photo of that.

• I imagine that’s another advantage of the machine.

• Leo can use its rotors to reduce its weight for surfaces that are fragile or compromised.

• I’m not sure what the future holds for bot – according to NS two of its researchers have already moved on to other projects.

• One to work with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and another to work on flying cars.

• Who knows, Leonardo’s descendants could be searching distant planets in the future.

Richard Bradbury: Which is something else we’ve talked about on the show. Exploration will need machines that have the ability to make themselves.

Matt Armitage:

• Our final story is about exactly this kind of machine.

• This kind of production is known as 4D printing.

• In that the original form is 3D printed but the machine is capable of transforming or changing its form or properties.

• It’s not a Transformer in the movie sense.

• It doesn’t mean a rover that becomes a giant mechazoid at the push of a button.

• It’s that there is a predictable change that occurs to its form

• When exposed to heat, water, electric current or a certain unit of time.

• This is a very simple prototype create by a team at Tianjin University in China.

• Strange how we use the word simple.

• It’s the form of the robot that’s simple, rather than its construction, development or purpose.

• The machine is a rectangular strip of liquid crystal elastomer which is 3D printed.

• When heated to more than 160C, the machine starts to form itself.

Richard Bradbury: [replies]

Matt Armitage:

• It sounds scary. When you watch the video it looks a bit more benign because it’s really just coiling up into a tube.

• NS describes it as being a bit like a piece of spiral pasta.

• I think it looks more like sellotape that’s all twisted up and round itself.

• It rolls in the direction of its spiral and can pull small loads and its shape allows it to negotiate small obstacles.

Richard Bradbury: So, it’s not a robot in the sense that it has batteries and electronics?

Matt Armitage:

• That’s one of the things that makes it freaky. It’s responding to the heat activating it.

• So it will even roll uphill, pulling its load.

• It’s autonomous in that it simply goes.

• The researchers note that they’ll have to install some sort of remote-control system in later versions so that its movements can be guided.

• But again, it may be something that can be used in our space exploration efforts.

• Or sent into hostile environments.

• Because it is so simple. There’s not much to go wrong. Plus, it’s just sheets of plastic, so you can keep a whole bunch of them handy.

• Much easier and cheaper than losing a gun-toting robo-dog in a cave.

• And the perfect thing to send into space with your favourite sci-fi cast.