This week’s episode is a reminder that science can make you feel tiny and powerful in the same breath. One minute we’re scanning the sky for signs of alien engineering, the next we’re staring at something that looks like a star but behaves like a black hole in a trench coat, and then we’re back on Earth asking the least fun question of all: should we be building machines that can decide who lives and who dies?
Alien Mega Structures
Let’s start with the crowd favourite: Dyson spheres. The idea is simple. An advanced civilisation wraps its star in a giant shell of solar collectors and basically turns a sun into a power station. You wouldn’t “see” the structure directly, but you might detect the heat it gives off, because even alien megaprojects can’t cheat physics.
That’s where Project Hephaistos comes in, hunting for unusual heat signatures that could hint at something artificial. And yes, Tabby’s Star has been through the alien-megastructure rumour mill before, only to end up with a much more boring explanation involving dust. Still, the search continues, because humans love two things: a mystery, and the possibility that someone else got their infrastructure sorted.
Black Hole Stars Refuse to Behave
Next up is a cosmic object that sounds like it was named by a teenager trying to win an argument: the black hole star. Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope point to something pumping out an absurd amount of energy, far beyond what you’d expect from normal nuclear fusion. It’s bright, massive, and basically doing the astrophysics equivalent of ignoring the rules and making it everyone else’s problem.
The leading idea is that this isn’t a standard star at all, but a strange hybrid where a black hole is involved in powering the whole thing. We’re used to black holes as the quiet, lurking monsters in the middle of galaxies. This is different. This is a black hole showing up in the group project and somehow becoming the main source of light.
Autonomous Drones and The Bit Where It Stops Being Fun
Then we come crashing back to Earth, where the tech is less “wow” and more “hang on, are we sure about this?” Autonomous drones are moving beyond being remotely piloted tools and into the territory of selecting and engaging targets without direct human control. That’s not just a technical upgrade, it’s a moral line in the sand. Because once a machine is making the call, the question isn’t only “does it work?” It’s “who’s responsible when it doesn’t?”
So that’s the week: hunting for alien megastructures, trying to understand a star that might be powered by a black hole, and grappling with the ethics of machines that can act without us. It’s the full spectrum of science, from awe to unease, and it all comes back to the same theme: just because we can push into new frontiers doesn’t mean we get to skip the hard conversations.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:42 Dyson Spheres Explained
02:08 Project Hephaistos Hunt
05:09 Apollo 11 Quarantine Story
07:16 Space Biosecurity Risks
09:30 Moon Stopover Containment Plan
11:01 We Already Contaminated Mars
11:47 Biosecurity Costs and Stakes
15:28 Black Hole Star Idea
18:25 AI Drones and War Crimes
20:48 Autonomous Targeting Fears
SOURCES:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-026-02428-5?ref=404media.co
https://www.sciencealert.com/oldest-known-maya-monument-could-be-a-map-of-the-universe
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-famous-golden-palace-in-spain-is-turning-purple-and-now-we-know-why
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/russia-fully-ai-controlled-drones-kill-ukrainians
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WILL: [00:00:00] It is time for a little bit of science. I'm will grant an associate professor in science communication at the Australian National University.
Rod: and I'm Rod Lambert. I'm a 30 year science communication veteran with a mind of a teenage boy.
WILL: and today. Well, we've been at the Beach Large Hadron Collider.
Rod: Yeah. Drinking in swimming cocktails. In fact, I'm still there. I dunno where you
WILL: are of, uh, isotopes and science and stuff like that. So rather than giving you our regular pile of science, we've
Rod: saved you something delicious. We've been scrolling away little snippets throughout the millennium and you're gonna get a bunch of those right now.
Rod: It's gonna be fab.
WILL: Enjoy.
Wil: One of my favourite, uh, science topics, of course, is, uh, alien mega structures. Um-
Rod: Well, do, do you never stop talking about
Wil: it? Do they or do they not? Like
Rod: at times it's annoying.
Wil: For, for many years, Tabby's Star was one of the- Mm ... chief candidates- Mm ... for alien mega structures. So the, the, the alien mega structure of interest is the Dyson sphere.
Rod: Mm.
Wil: [00:01:00] So basically a Dyson sphere is an argument by the vacuum cleaner guy or another guy named Dyson. Or
Rod: his, his brother.
Wil: His brother. But anyway, it is the idea that, you know, as a, a civilization- Uh-huh ... human or alien starts to achieve its big goals. Mm. What you do first is you, you might ex- exhaust all of the resources of a planet.
Wil: We- we're, we're, we're on that trajectory. We're getting
Rod: there, so we're evolving.
Wil: Then you might go, "All right, I've got to capture all of the energy of the neighbor- nearby sun." And so you wrap it in solar panels basically, and suck out all that energy, put a big cable down to earth, and you're, you're using big energy Some theories say, all right, wrap a whole fucking galaxy in your solar panels
Rod: and- I mean, come on
Wil: and, and just capture it all.
Rod: Don't you love... I mean, every time I hear about this sort of stuff, I just think it's just so yummy.
Wil: So, so the, the advantage of looking for alien mega structures over, you know, waiting for aliens to come and talk to us is theoretically, if a, a civilization was that advanced- Mm
Wil: they can, they can do this shit, then they're, they're not gonna be interested in talking to us 'cause we're like, [00:02:00] we're like ants.
Rod: Yeah.
Wil: And they could also probably hide themselves. But they couldn't hide their mega structure. So, you know-
Rod: Could they, could they not?
Wil: Well, our friends at what is called Project Hephaistos, their goal is to go, let's say, like look in, look in detail- Yes
Wil: for alien mega structures. Love it. So Tabby's Star has been pretty much ruled out as an alien mega structure planet. It looks like it's a cloud of dust or something and passing in front of the planet.
Rod: All the time, these headlines let me down. Look- Don't you do it.
Wil: No, no, I'm sorry, I'm gonna let you down.
Wil: Bastard. I'm sorry I'm gonna let you down. But the advantage we have now is a couple of things. Yeah. One is we have the James Webb Space Telescope- We
Rod: do ...
Wil: that can do so much more universe than previously available on the Hubble or previously available on, on ground-based telescopes. On
Rod: your... Yes, your, your standard National Geographic telescope.
Wil: And, and we also have machine learning algorithms and computational techniques that can allow us to look at so many more galaxies, so many more stars.
Rod: Yes.
Wil: Um, now, uh, I don't know if she's involved in the Project Hephaistos, uh, [00:03:00] but Olivia Curtis of Pennsylvania State University, the... What, what she's saying is, "You know, no matter what-
Rod: Mm
Wil: if you've got a Dyson sphere, they might be cloaking themselves, whatever, but there's, there's gonna be some waste heat signatures." Ah. Like you... What you're gonna do is you're gonna get heat from these Dyson spheres.
Rod: Surely it's gotta go somewhere.
Wil: And it's gotta go somewhere- Yeah ... even if there's no light.
Wil: All the light's being captured. But in Project Hephaistos, they're like, "Okay, well, let's scan and look through." They have searched through five million Milky Way stars.
Rod: Is that all?
Wil: Indeed. I mean, computers can do... It sounds like computers can- Try harder ... looking for that infrared excess. Now- Come on ... seven stars- Come on
Wil: seven stars survived the team's increasingly stringent tests. Oh. With two being like, "Oh, damn, something weird is going on here." Come on. Um, where they're like, "Okay, these, these could be having the heat signatures- Come on ... of alien mega structures."
Rod: I know you're letting me down, but I still have hope.
Wil: Nah, it's no good.
Rod: Fuck it.
Wil: No, they've got galaxies right behind them. So the star is sort of in front [00:04:00] of the galaxy, uh, to us, in that perspective.
Rod: And so for us, nine bajillion or right behind.
Wil: Yeah. And, and so the galaxy is so bright, they're like... It, it looks like the star is dark. Ah. And so it's like, oh, i- could this potentially be a Dyson sphere?
Wil: And they're like, "Nah." Do you...
Rod: This just- Nah. But- ... shows how easily, how, how fucking pedestrian, the basic our ability is to do anything like this at this scale. Oh my God. Yeah. It's just like, "Oh, no, there's something behind it." My God, he made his thumb light up. I know someone lit a match there just- ... a foot behind.
Rod: It's like, it's just, you get all these hopes up, and this is like, no, it's just something really obvious.
Wil: But I just wanted to, I just wanted to give a shout-out to the project. No, keep going. There, there, there are so many cool things in astronomy and astrophysics, but- Mm ... you know, there is a little bit of hunting for alien mega structures.
Wil: Like-
Rod: Why would we do anything else?
Wil: We're not visiting. We're not talking to these people. No. It's never gonna happen. I don't need aliens to visit. I don't need, you know- Yeah ... us to get the, the- I'll take that too ... Star Wars cantina. But in the realm of actual possibility is some [00:05:00] sort of detection like this.
Wil: So I just wanted- It's a
Rod: good start. It's a good start.
Wil: I just wanted to give that a bit of a shout-out.
Rod: Oh, really, come on. C- find one
Wil: When they came back from the moon-
Rod: Yeah ...
Wil: a, the Apollo 11, they landed on the moon, our heroes, Buzz Aldrin, uh-
Rod: Buzz Armstrong, Neil Aldrin-
Wil: Yeah, the other guys ... and
Rod: Lo- Lovell
Wil: Touched the moon. But touching the moon is the key part of this story. It
Rod: really
Wil: is. Um, because-
Rod: Yeah ...
Wil: you know, leave the moon. Mm-hmm. As we know, it takes a couple of days to, to rocket yourself back from moon to Earth.
Wil: Mm-hmm.
Rod: Mm-hmm.
Wil: And we're not actually any faster on that. The Artemis rockets the other day were not much faster than the Apollo. So they've got, they've got moon goo all over them, and, uh- ... sensibly, sensibly, when they landed back in Earth, they were thrown directly into a quarantine facility for 21 days. So while the world is like headline, headline, headline, astronauts are cool, look what they did, it's all awesome, one of the most famous photos from after they've come back to Earth- Yeah
Wil: is our, our three astronauts-
Rod: In a box ...
Wil: well, [00:06:00] not just a box, it's an Airstream, which is a- It
Rod: really
Wil: is ... it's, it's a great 19- Which is
Rod: the coolest caravan in the world.
Wil: I lived in an Airstream for a little while. Oh. It's the, it's the coolest aluminum caravan in the world. Oh. They are wild, and they're sort of poking their heads out and, and President Nixon at the time is, is greeting them from the outside.
Wil: And there's a, there's a- "
Rod: Did you know I'm not a crook?"
Wil: But it's kinda cute. Like, like these astronauts have been- It is ... cooped in one tin can, um, for ages up there Then the
Rod: photo's taken, they're both like, "Motherfucker"
Wil: And, and they get 21 days more quarantine. And I know-
Rod: Ooh ...
Wil: I know, you know, if, if the trade-off i- of walking on the moon for, let's say, 30-ish days of being in small spaces-
Rod: How, how long is too long for you then?
Rod: 'Cause I'd be keen. I'd be keen, but like if they said, "Okay, then it's two years in a small space" I'd be like, "Ooh" Hmm,
Wil: two years. Two, two years is a, oh, wow. Whoa.
Rod: But the rest of someone else's life, can I kill them? Yes. Then I'll do it.
Wil: Oh, that's, doesn't sound nice.
Rod: Well, it's an angle.
Wil: Um, you know, some people think, "Oh, f- calm down.
Wil: What's the problem?"
Rod: Yeah.
Wil: [00:07:00] But actually this is a pretty sensible choice here that, uh, we don't know what was on the moon. We didn't know back, what was on the moon back then. No. And, and we don't have perfect knowledge now. No. We do definitely assume that the moon is lifeless, but the possibility of contaminants is there.
Wil: Hmm. So it's been re-raised again.
Rod: It, it, it's your lunar tardigrades
Wil: Well, well, not nec- not necessarily. I'll come to that in a second.
Rod: Yeah.
Wil: I've spoken recently about the Mars sample return mission- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... which hasn't happened, but is, is just wild if it does.
Rod: Yeah.
Wil: May happen in the next few years.
Wil: Yeah. But, uh, Japanese space agency has gone onto a comet, Hayabusa. Yep. Uh, China's Tianwen-3 all plan to bring stuff back to Earth. Mm. And there's a bit of chance here that, uh-
Rod: We've all seen that movie. It always ends well
Wil: Well, there's a NASA mission where they were scooping up some solar winds, and that has landed back, crashed back into the Earth.
Wil: They deemed it a success. It crashed, so they could still get the-
Rod: A, a good crash ...
Wil: they could still get the solar wind particles back. But when you think about [00:08:00] biosecurity- Mm ... and you're like, "Okay-" Mm. "... so you're bringing particles back from space," and I assume solar wind, we probably get a bunch of that already.
Wil: But you are going into space, and you are bringing stuff into Earth. I
Rod: don't know if we ... Doesn't our magnetosphere make it not hit the-
Wil: Stop the solar winds? Yeah. Probably most of it, but with this, we're also taking stuff up into space deliberately and- Mm ... not deliberately.
Rod: Mm.
Wil: But, um, there's certainly, you know, the chance of bat contamination.
Wil: Oh. And this is interesting bat contamination- Yeah, yeah,
Rod: yeah ...
Wil: where, you know, we take ... accidentally take different ... accidentally or deliberately take different bacteria up into space.
Rod: Mm.
Wil: It's been shown to mutate in space, which is, again, we've all seen that movie. And we are bringing this back. So there's, there's evidence of this.
Wil: There's evidence as well- Ah ... of we know that different organisms, bacteria certainly, can infect places in really extreme, uh- Mm ... situations. Mm-hmm. So I think there's [00:09:00] one example of a pathogenic black yeast fungus was newly discovered infecting mussels around a deep sea hydrothermal vent, possibly having, uh, been introduced there by a submersible vehicle.
Wil: So-
Rod: Pathogenic black yeast fungus? Nothing about that sounds like, "Yeah, give me some of that."
Wil: No, it doesn't. Nothing. Nothing. It doesn't. Uh, so, so what they're saying is we're, we're moving stuff around by accident and deliberate on Earth- Mm-hmm ... and we are going to space. And so maybe- Oopsie ... maybe we should think about this more.
Wil: So- ... uh, some researchers, one from- Mm, yeah ... um, the Strategic Threat and Analysis Research Laboratories, and also McGill University, have proposed that we should go one better at- Yeah ... than the Apollo astronaut program. And
Rod: incinerate everyone who comes back.
Wil: Everything, everything in the fire
Rod: Welcome back. Did we not mention?
Wil: No, they said we should, uh, set up a biohazard containment facility on the moon
Rod: But they're still gonna come back
Wil: Yeah, they'd be on the moon for a bit. But the
Rod: [00:10:00] trend-
Wil: So what, what they're actually saying- Okay. Yeah ... is, is anything that's coming further afield, you're coming from Mars, you're coming from a comet- Ah
Wil: you're coming from something like that- Okay. Yeah, yeah ... that their proposal is it could be manned, but it would probably be better than ... It would probably be better to be robotic. But you, you get your samples, you, you land your, your thing back on the moon.
Rod: Oh, you stop over
Wil: You stop over, you have a little bit of honeymoon for biosecurity purposes.
Wil: The little robot dogs sniff you-
Rod: Yep ...
Wil: and maybe wait a few weeks, and then you can fire your journey back down to Earth. Wait, and hopefully you don't get recontaminated at that point. So-
Rod: Okay, look, I understand the premise. The reality is I'm not so sure
Wil: But here's the thing. Yeah Here's the thing. You know, we think about
Wil: There has absolutely been movies made about this. Mm. Like, of course- Mm ... the concept i- of both of these premises, of aliens piggybacking in, that is, that is many things, or us taking something into space, we hit the cosmic rays, and, and down it comes again, and it's mutated, and it's gonna do whatever on Earth Or
Rod: we landed on the, on the moons of T- the, the waters of Titan and go like, "Oh, [00:11:00] sorry we killed all of you"
Wil: Well, okay, we probably have introduced aliens to, um, Mars.
Wil: The robots that are on Mars are unlikely to be clean enough that there- Yeah ... were no microbes. And- Yeah, yeah ... and there's a lot of evidence of how well- Mm ... different things adapt. There is solidly a chance that we have introduced some forms of micro- microorganism- Yeah ... to Mars- Yeah ... and that there is a solid chance that they will find a way to live, and they will mutate, and they will become Martian.
Wil: But I just wonder- Yeah ... I think, I think the, the serious point, you know, that, that this is, is that, uh, this is one of those things where, yes, it would be probably tricky- Mm ... to set up a biohazard containment facility on the moon
Rod: I think, I think you're right
Wil: It would be harder if it's manned, easier if it's robots.
Wil: But still, but still- It's
Rod: not a terrible idea ...
Wil: it's one of those ones where you go, how much do we pay for biosecurity just in Australia, or just in New Zealand? Like- Oh, like $100,000 ... like in New Zealand it's their national sport. Like they think it's rugby, but it's not. It's, it's, it's- True.
Rod: Protecting ...
Wil: it's biosecurity.
Wil: But it's [00:12:00] really, like if you introduce something, it causes hundreds m- of millions of dollars- Yeah, yeah ... worth of damage. And there- In ways
Rod: you can't predict ...
Wil: there are examples in Australia that cause- Yeah ... that cause enormous amounts of damage. So bringing in a, an alien from, you know, you ... That is not evolved here, could cause catastrophic damage.
Wil: So I think- Or- ... this is actually an interesting idea, and I think it's probably something that we should start thinking about
Rod: Sure. We could also turn this on to superheroes
Wil: Yes. That's the other choice
Rod: So, you know
Wil: Swings and a round about. Yeah, good call You gotta go off and get your own cosmic rays, I think
Rod: I'll do
Wil: Do you want some space stuff?
Rod: Honestly, always and every day. I fucking love it. You know me, I, I've watched Jupiter Ascending 38 times.
Wil: Yeah, oh, it's a great movie. Uh, look-
Rod: Well, it looks pretty, not just 'cause of Mila Kunis, who also looks pretty
Wil: Well, actually, this is a story about things that look pretty that so- that some astronomers are like, "Hmm."
Rod: Is it nebulae? Hmm,
Wil: uh, n- uh, nebulish.
Rod: Nebulish.
Wil: This fits into a, a great category of research that is going on right now. Mm. It's James Webb Space Telescope- Ugh ... what the [00:13:00] hell have you found us this time?
Rod: Oh, I love that.
Wil: James Webb Space Telescope has taken off over the last, uh, year or so.
Rod: Yeah.
Wil: And it has allowed astronomers to do things that they literally couldn't do otherwise.
Wil: It's a revolution in, in what astronomers- Yeah ... are able to do to look back at the early universe.
Rod: Like, "Screw you, Grandpa Hubble, your garbage."
Wil: Yeah, this is, throw Hubble in the bin. I'm sorry, Hubble, you were wonderful, but the thing that, that James Webb can do-
Rod: Yeah ...
Wil: largely because it is able to see over such distances.
Wil: Mm. It can see things as far as light can come from really. A- and result- That's
Rod: the beginning of the universe
Wil: It's the beginning of the universe, or at least into the very, very early universe, and it's, it's kind of mind-blowing. Yeah. Wow, this is so cool. Uh, like, I mean, I love all of the find the, the, the darkest bit of the sky and zoom in to see what you can find.
Wil: This is awesome.
Rod: Oh my God, it's teeming with light.
Wil: Now, one of the things that they've been seeing over the last little while with James Webb is red dots. They're like-
Rod: Is that 'cause James Webb is having an
Wil: aneurysm? Obviously. [00:14:00] No, they're like, they're star-ish things, but they're not stars. Because-
Rod: Mm ...
Wil: these red dots are generally, and, and this one in particular that has been researched in a bit more detail.
Rod: Yeah.
Wil: I, you don't need the number, but I'll give you the number. Give me
Rod: the number.
Wil: Uh- I love a number ... where did I write it down?
Rod: I love numbers.
Wil: It is, um- I use
Rod: them
Wil: every
Rod: day ...
Wil: MOM-MH*--1, and I'll give you... That, that's actually meaningful in a second.
Rod: You know, if I ever have a child, that's what I'm gonna call him.
Wil: That's what Elon Musk called his first child. So the challenge with this extremely red dot thing-
Rod: Yeah ...
Wil: is the object resembles an enormous star It looks to be about the size of our solar system. So it's a- Oh
Rod: my God So- One star ...
Wil: so big-ass star. But it's also putting out 100 billion times more energy than any known star can, can physically produce.
Rod: Oh, for fuck's sake. Well, hey, hey, this is a star. How big is it? Size of the solar system. Okay, that's pretty big. It's also putting out colossal amounts [00:15:00] of energy that we haven't even imagined. It's like, well, it would, it's pretty big.
Wil: Yeah. The... Well, well, well, the thing is, it's not... Like, like, it's like if you had a star that big-
Rod: Yeah
Wil: and it was working on nuclear fusion processes, nup, wouldn't put out 100 billion times. It's, it's not- Oh,
Rod: so they've, they've kinda gone, "Well, if we-"
Wil: No, it's, it's, it's too much ... average it out. It's way too much. Nuclear fusion, like that's what stars do, fusion, can't do that much.
Rod: So what I'm hearing is aliens, Dyson spheres, but bigger.
Wil: Nah. Nah. It's, it's, it's not as alien as that. It's not as a- Damn it. No. What they reckon is the only thing that we have seen in the universe that can put out energy that much-
Rod: Yeah ...
Wil: is a black hole.
Rod: Jesus Christ, a black hole the size of a solar system.
Wil: Other way around. It's the black hole at the middle.
Wil: It's a mashup of a black hole and a star.
Rod: Okay.
Wil: A combination that has never been observed before.
Rod: So, like, what was it when Eminem and some other rappers called themselves B12 or something? It's like
Wil: that? A little bit like that. So I've g- I've got a drawing I'll show you in a bit, but BH*-1- BH ... is the black hole star number [00:16:00] one.
Wil: Like, there, there has been- It's our
Rod: first
Wil: It's our first black hole star. So this is, this is an artist's rendering of the black hole star. So
Rod: it's both a flower and a vagina.
Wil: So what it is is some sort of star-ish like baby nebula sort of thing that's, that's behaving star-ishness So that's a
Rod: nebulette
Wil: And it's, it's nebulette, yeah.
Wil: And then right in the middle is, is potentially a black hole that's putting out all of this energy
Rod: So wait, so given this, this flower-like arrangement, carnation-ish if you will- Yeah ... maybe with a bit of rose, is the black hole in the center the, the thing that's the size of the solar system or that whole entity?
Wil: The whole entity is the size of the solar system Ah,
Rod: okay, so the black hole-
Wil: The black hole-
Rod: Not that, not that impressive anymore. Whatever
Wil: Yeah, but it's a, it's a black hole star, man.
Rod: Whatever, man
Wil: Like a bit of combo. Like a bit of combo. So I just... Look, they, they, they reckon- Ah ... um, these red dots are all over the place in the James Webb telescope distance Of
Rod: course they
Wil: are.
Wil: Of course Um, but, but they disappear. Like they, they don't exist in the later universe. Uh-
Rod: Oh, of course, 'cause a gajillion are used in the past
Wil: Yes. Well, those ones are. A- and so [00:17:00] it may be that the universe has evolved in ways that those kinds of things don't exist. Ah. Either, either those nebulae peter out, the black hole still exists but they're, they're like isolated- Yeah
Wil: and not visible.
Rod: Yeah
Wil: Or they, the supernova around them changes or something like that, but they, they don't exist any, anymore in the modern universe. They only exist in the ancient universe
Rod: We're not built for this. Humanity is not built for those kinds of scales.
Wil: No.
Rod: No, God no Size, time, distance God no Just when you think, "Well, that's pretty big.
Rod: Can't get much bigger," they go-
Wil: No, we're
Rod: inf- ... "Ha, hold my
Wil: beer" We're infinitesimal
Rod: It just... I know it's trite, I know it's cliché, whatever you wanna call it, but-
Wil: I remember- Always ... years ago we had a good old chat with Matthew Colless from, uh- We
Rod: did ...
Wil: ANU's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Yeah.
Wil: Yeah And, and it's like the, the distances of the universe are so gobsmackingly big. You know, what is the fastest thing in the universe?
Rod: Is it you?
Wil: No, it's light. It's light Oh, light Nothing goes faster. That's what I mean It's super fast, and it's like how fast is light? Super fast. But, but light still takes four years.
Wil: Can you [00:18:00] imagine going on a four-year car trip to get to the nearest star? Yeah It is so big. So- Yeah, yeah But it does remind you, you know, we are never leaving the solar system. Like there is no- We're
Rod: barely leaving our planet Well- We got to the moon
Wil: We can send a robot to, to- Mars ... some other bits Yeah And maybe, maybe one day a little bit of human, but, uh...
Rod: Ah, we've go- we're missing something
Rod: So a little bit of AI progress. Not really. So it looks like the Russians are, A, deliberately targeting Ukrainian citizens, civilians in particular, which is, you know, not great.
Wil: That's a war crime.
Rod: It is. So A, they're doing it at all, and B, they're doing it with drones.
Wil: Yes.
Rod: So it's not cool Um, it's not like they're the only countries ever targeted civilians- Really?
Rod: in war. No, they're the second.
Wil: Oh.
Rod: The first, the country doesn't exist anymore. The
Wil: Hittites.
Rod: Yes, exactly. It was the Hittites. Um, so yeah, it's not cool, and as you say, it, it's actually, uh, against international humanitarian law to target civilians or civilian infrastructure, so it's, it's a no-no in war.
Wil: [00:19:00] Yeah.
Wil: And I- Don't bomb libraries, man.
Rod: You shouldn't, I agree, but I also am amused by the idea that they're war crimes, 'cause you're like, "War's pretty shit." But-
Wil: We have this thing called, you know, we've developed over the centuries rules of war-
Rod: Yes ...
Wil: that try to help keep war a little bit more, uh- I,
Rod: I agree with them.
Rod: I agree with them in principle, but the, in practice I just think, "Wow, the idea that, like, there's war but with civility, let's just make it computer games then and we can really be super civil," but we don't. Anyway, all the pesky details about that out of the way. We know it's naughty and, you know, people, the, the c- international, um, community frowns on it.
Rod: So there's some recent drone strikes that targeted civilians on the ground in southeastern Ukraine, a town, let's see if I can pronounce it, Zaporizhzhia. That's probably perfect. Actually, the, a specific example was it very precisely targeted propane tanks near a, a gas station, a petrol station- Okay ... like a public facility, which is of course not great.
Rod: But the cool thing is it gets worse.
Wil: Mm.
Rod: So forensic investigators got their hands on some of the drones, and they noticed a few things. One was the drones didn't have any antenna, [00:20:00] and they didn't emit any radio frequencies, so they weren't being remotely piloted is the gist of that. The, the implications of this, in itself it's not hugely revelatory because autopiloting systems- We've talked
Wil: about that
Wil: common tech,
Rod: yeah. Yeah, the autopilot. Yeah, yeah. But less commonly, they had onboard mini computers developed by NVIDIA- Mm-hmm ... which are used usually for AI.
Wil: Or for computer games.
Rod: And allows the drones to identify their own targets. So the drones were equipped with AI-guided camera systems to recognize possible targets, but the systems went further than the existing systems, which they call them, uh, last mile AI assisted drones.
Rod: Okay. So once the tech is homing in on its target, it, it gets better at it, but it's been pre-selected by a human first.
Wil: Okay.
Rod: So the, the... it sort of- Go for something
Wil: that looks like this-
Rod: Yeah, refines- ... when you're in the last mile ... yeah, refines it. Yeah. But, um, it turns out these guys, basically they've created AI-guided drones that can potentially self-select targets.
Wil: Mm.
Rod: So- Mm.
Wil: Right. So, so get... [00:21:00] So we're saying get within this square kilometer and find something that looks like a propane tank or-
Rod: That was the old tech ... or a human or- This is, this is beyond that. Oh. Potentially these can literally go break shit is the gist.
Wil: Well, I, propane tanks are breaking shit as well.
Rod: No, but what I mean is- But you're saying more ... they could say, "Choose something else." Like, that's the... the problem is that that-
Wil: A tree.
Rod: A tree, exactly. And
Wil: wheelie bin.
Rod: And I'm worried about the, both of those things. It doesn't have to necessarily be given a pre-target in theory. Oh,
Wil: just find the best thing you've got.
Rod: It could go beyond.
Wil: I think you need to be m- explicit here. I, I don't know what I, I don't know what I'm reacting to. So-
Rod: An- Antonio Guterre... What is it? Guterres, the head of the UN and the head of the, the Red Cross both said- We're basically dangerously close to crossing a moral red line, autonomous targeting of humans by machines.
Rod: So you could say to a machine, "Go and target enemy people," and then it makes the decisions itself. Not last mile targeting saying specifically people in that zone- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... but just, "Stuff that looks like this, go get some."
Wil: Yeah.
Rod: And that's the, that's the fun bit of that. And [00:22:00] I don't wanna be AI hysterical 'cause, you know, I, I vacillate between horrible
Wil: and horrible.
Wil: But I don't think this is AI hysterical. This is, this is choice hysterical. Yeah. That we would get to a place where war fighters would say, "Nah, this is legit. I can just throw a drone in that direction, kill some people."
Rod: Yeah, go and fuck them
Wil: up a bit. You know? That's a, that's a choice. We're just using AI to do a choice.
Wil: Yep. It's the human choice that is the problem here.
Rod: Abso- absolutely. No question.
Wil: To step up and just go, "Kill some people."
Rod: Yeah. See, stay within these parameters and just knock shit out. You choose. Sweet.
Wil: I don't like it.
Rod: No, I'm not a fan of it either. I
Wil: don't like it.
WILL: Well, that was your little bit of science for the week.
Rod: holiday edition. You're special by the pool wearing a bikini edition.
WILL: But because you're on holiday, you know that you still have the power to give us the rating that you need to give us. Yeah,
Rod: seven stars on every app. Even things that don't do podcasts.
Rod: Yeah.
WILL: Go out there and write it on like a recipe app
Rod: an Uber and Yelp. Is it Yelp still a thing?
WILL: I think so. I'm
Rod: I don't know. I'm at a restaurant where Don't ye
WILL: listener, if you've got [00:23:00] some topics that you want us to explore,
Rod: tell Will.
WILL: How would you tell Will his
Rod: number is? 0 4 0 5 oh. Uh, cheers. At a little bit of science Do com
WILL: au.
Rod: au
WILL: Do that. We want your stories.
Rod: we wanna hear from you.
WILL: Lovely listener. Enjoy the pina colada.
Rod: Oh and the
WILL: col. Pin colada.
Rod: Pini Kaia Pina Pia
WILL: Pina Kaia of
Rod: of the Clade
WILL: Penai. Cate.
