 This is State Tech Hawaii, Community Matters Here. Aloha and good morning ladies and gentlemen. I'm Pauline Schachmach, Jr. host for We Like the 1%. We Like the 1% is about individuals and entrepreneurs, and where most people fear to tread, entrepreneurs only see vast opportunities. This is especially the case with the coming robot revolution. Today we'll be discussing the pros and cons associated with the fast approaching rise of the machines. My guest today is Michael Collatt, senior associate at Booz Allen Hamilton and regional director of First Robotics. Aloha and good morning Michael. Aloha Pauline, thank you very much for having me. No, it's my pleasure. This is one of my favorite subjects. So I'm glad you're able to be with us here this morning. Now speaking of first robots and first robotics, last year in 2017, 500 years ago in 1517, was the 500th anniversary of the first ever actual robot. And this was an invention, a creation by Leonardo da Vinci. And this is the mechanical lion he had created as a present as a gift to Francis I. So we've come a long way since then, sort of a silent period in those 500 years from da Vinci to now. But this is something exciting. It's something a lot of people are talking about because many people fear the coming of the robots. They fear for their jobs. But then on the bright side, it creates more jobs. So there's going to be more demand for different skills and those people can learn new skills and upgrade their skills. And so it's not that much of a threat really. So we're going to discuss this back and forth, this sort of Andy Puzder versus Elon Musk debate. But before we get into the integrity of that kind of debate, could you please tell us a little bit about the consultancy firm Booz Allen Hamilton? Certainly. Well, I'm privileged to work for Booz Allen as a consulting firm of over about 25,000 people worldwide. It's a global firm. It's been a presence in Hawaii actually for over 20 years. So that's been helping clients solve some of their toughest problems locally, regionally and globally for a long time. Booz Allen actually is over 100 years old and invented the management consulting business, surprisingly enough. And so now as we're in our second century, we are taking that legacy and building on it by adding additional capabilities and technological innovations along the lines of cyber and digital analytics, digital solutions and systems engineering to take some of those solutions and help our clients solve their problems. Because at the end of the day, we are more just in the business of pointing out where the dysfunction is in the clients. It doesn't help to be a consulting firm to tell people what they're doing wrong, but to actually help them solve their problem and bring them those solutions. And your role there, your title is Senior Associate. So what does your job primarily entail at Booz Allen Hamilton? So my area of focus is I actually run the Air Force account in the Pacific. So we have contracts and staff from Alaska, Hawaii, Korea and Japan across the Pacific Rim. And is it my understanding that primarily most of the employees at Booz Allen Hamilton are from the Pacific and ex-military? Is that the main composition of the firm? There are a variety of skill sets and we bring a lot of diversity to that. Certainly a large number of our clients are federal government and specifically the Department of Defense. So having folks with the background that understand those clients is very important. But we layer that with a lot of functional capabilities along the lines that I just mentioned, cyber data analytics and so on. So we try and layer that through our collaborative culture. You know, take that knowledge of the clients functional expertise and layer that together for those kinds of solutions. And what percentage, what amount of the consultancy work out of Booz Allen Hamilton is related to robotics? I don't know of a particular percentage of that but certainly I think it's very technical in nature a lot of times. And robotics I think spans, robotics itself spans the technological spectrum from the kinetic things to but there's the programming and the analytics and the sensing and the algorithms and all those things. So I think that a lot of what Booz Allen does is directly applicable to the field of robotics. In particular I know that we've done some work through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, working with robotics and prosthetics and so on and we've taken some of that work which has been very helpful with applying to the military and the world of force protection and then applying that through our community foundation to actually work and help improve folks and bring those similar solutions to other applications such as folks that suffer from ALS or other things that need the help of those prosthetics. That's wonderful work. And now Booz Allen Hamilton is a strategic partner with First Robotics, is that correct? Correct. So you have this competition that you're primarily involved in and that's with what grade of children does that... Yeah, so the First Robotics competition is actually the high school level. There's a family of programs across First Robotics that starts with actually preschool and kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade. And so Booz Allen, because we recognize that that's a very valuable thing for the community and for developing our future workforce as well too to have these...cultivate these next generation of innovators and problem solvers. So we're heavily invested in First Robotics. And so yes, that's sort of an intersection of my two interests which overlap actually again because of Booz Allen as well too. So here in Hawaii I serve as the regional director for the high school level program for First Robotics and we help to host the big competition that's starting here in March. The season just kicked off. So they had a big kickoff in January when the game is revealed. It's really remarkable because the kids don't even know what the rules of the game are. They change every year. I was just about to ask you about that because is it necessarily a physical looking robot? Is it a robotic car? So you pick a different kind of robotic entity. Exactly. They have a lot of similar design elements to them but the challenge is different every year. So therefore the design has to be different every year. They can't use last year's robot to do the same thing. They're rather specialized. So the game and the way you get your points and the challenges that have to be accomplished changes every year. So they get revealed globally on January 4th this year all at the same time and then the kids have six weeks to strategize, to design, to build, to test, to rebuild because they're probably going to fail the first three times and go through a whole cycle and then have to stop building six weeks and then the competition season starts. So it's a global competition and how many countries participated this year? So there's actually over, first it's in over 85 countries. There's about a, actually yeah, there's a lot of, it's a pretty big program. So it's very large. How many years has this competition been occurring? Well in Hawaii this is the 11th year. So first has been going on for a number of years but it came to Hawaii about 11 years ago. So we're very proud that this is the 11th year for this particular competition. This will happen at the UH Stan Sheriff's Center here towards the end of March. And who are the judges? Who decides who made the best robot? So there's a number of awards that the judges do and there's all kinds of awards for the best design, the most innovation, there's a whole number of flavor of awards. The competition itself, it plays out like a game and is a sport. So there's points are scored and they have a whole round of playoffs and a round of competitions and games that then lead into a playoffs situation. So the second day, the afternoon is all the playoffs. So there is eventually an actual winner crowned like a Super Bowl through a series of head-to-head competitions. And what's the prize? Is there a prize? Sort of, yeah. One of the big prizes that comes out of this regional competition is the ability to go to the national competition and compete with all the international teams. And the ultimate prize among the international? The ultimate prize, I think, is a lot of bragging rights and a lot of pride, yes, exactly. No free robo-made or anything? No, I don't think that they... No, none of that. We're not at that point yet. Not yet, not yet. A free robotic car and they'll turn on this vehicle. Maybe we get the sponsor like the NFL is and maybe at some point, you'll have all kinds of prizes. So for all the high school students that are watching, how can they maybe participate or get their school to participate in this competition if they haven't already done so? Is there a website people can go to? Certainly, certainly. So the website is firstinspires.org and there's lots of links into that. You drill down to that and there's ways to link in and say I'm interested in starting a team or interested in finding a team and the website will link you up. Do you know approximately how many high school students from Hawaii have participated thus far in the past 11 years? Well, there's thousands. Thousands of students, yeah. There's about 28 teams altogether for this particular competition and this league across the state of Hawaii. But there's one of many programs. Again, FIRST has many flavors and then there's besides FIRST there's other robotics programs. Surprisingly, it might be counterintuitive that Hawaii actually has one of the highest penetration rates of robotics programs for schools in the country. So it's actually leading forward despite what some people have for our reputation that schools are leaning forward in our world leader. And is the primary objective of the creation of this competition to get younger people the next generation involved in robotics-related occupations so they don't get left behind? Because one of the concerns of the vast majority of the population is that FIRST it was 60 percent but now it's more like the reality is going to be 70 to 90 percent of jobs are going to be overtaken by robots and robots it doesn't necessarily mean a human figure a humanoid figure. The first one is going to be the run of autonomous vehicles that are going to be deployed by 2020. So this will put a lot of truck drivers out of business, cab drivers any Uber driver, Lyft driver the autonomous vehicles are coming and an autonomous vehicle is effectively a robotic car. So those are the first strain of robots. So is it mainly I don't know the themes of the past 11 competitions but have they been focused largely on a vehicle type entity that kind of a robot? So the robots themselves are on a chassis with wheels and they move around a playing field and they will either try to throw a ball into an object or through a hoop or in one year it was tossing a frisbee which is a little different so there's a variety of challenges that are out there. That's your favorite one isn't it? That's probably one of my favorite ones because they were flying everywhere and the action was crazy that year. And among the high school students is it roughly a mix of male and female or is it more the boys or does it matter or is there a certain does it have to be you have to have a certain mix on the team There's not a requirement for a mix but there are a mix of teams and there's teams such as Sacred Hearts which is all female team and so there's there's great representation across that and it's really wonderful to see you know across both public and private schools and across genders and it's really wonderful to see and I think one of the really fun parts about it is to see the cooperation that happens across teams. In fact they coin a phrase there called a cooperation. So it's competition but there's also a lot of cooperation and there's an opportunity to practice one of the first main values which is gracious professionalism and so they all think while they are competing they also have an obligation to help each other out and to share and so you'll see a lot of teams say oh I need this tool and make an announcement and someone from another team will run over and lend them their tools today. It's like the pit stop in the Grand Prix and you have to work as a team. And that's exactly what they call the area where they work on their robot is called the pits. Okay. Sounds like that's a derogatory connotation. The pits. It's the pits in terms of like the pit spot for the cars. Exactly. And is your perception upon watching or observing these competitions is that is it the case that older generations of individuals are more frightened because it's a major change whereas the younger the next generation is more excited about robots. They're less frightened of them. Do you see any fear among younger people? No I don't. I don't see the fear. Because they're used to it. I do. I think that's true probably of just about everything. In general younger people embrace change because everything is new to them. I think we've become ingrained instead of our ways as the years go on so I think in general that's a fair assessment. This is exactly what my first guest mentioned. When the sewing machine was invented everybody screamed and said oh my gosh they're going to take over the machines they're going to take over our jobs. It just created a whole new industry and it made things move more efficiently it created new brand new jobs more people could become fashion designers so it opened up a whole new area so in your opinion where do you think this fear comes from is it just change or is it the fact is it this kind of mental laziness that oh my gosh we're going to have a different job later on when this becomes a reality or is it a combination of both factors? I would guess I would hazard a guess that it would probably be the former I think it's just fear of change in general which is an innate human reaction to things and I think Some people love change I like new things Exactly I think that's something that has to be overcome though and learned I think it's almost learned behavior to some degree I think that though the second part where you think where they're intellectualizing and trying to understand the ramifications of it I think that's probably less likely because I think if they would intellectualize it to come to that conclusion they would probably be coming to a different conclusion if they put that much thought into it That's just my sense I'm just I don't know for sure but that would be my sense of things Okay very good So we're going to get over the fear now and we're just going to take a break and we'll come back with the positives about robotics Fear not We will be back Aloha Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii where community matters to think about all things energy We talk about energy for the grid energy for vehicles energy and transportation energy and maritime energy and aviation we have all kinds of things on our show but we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii because it's my favorite thing that's what I like to do but we talk about things that make a difference here in Hawaii things that should be a big changer for Hawaii and we hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Stan Energyman and take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii Aloha Aloha I'm Winston Welch and every other Monday at 3pm you can join me at Out and About a show where we explore a variety of topics organizations events and the people who fuel them in our city state country and world so please join us every other Monday at 3 and we'll see you then Aloha Everyone welcome back we're here with that talking about robots so Michael now we're going to get into the pros and cons of robotics now there is a businessman a gentleman named Andrew Puzder and he's well known for his comments about how he much he loves a robotic workforce I personally can't wait for the robotic workforce to be deployed probably realistically in about 10 years so one of the comments he made is that robots are always robotic and for anybody who's run a business or have been in charge managing employees there are bad employees so there are a lot of good employees out there but the bad ones really cause problems for an organization and it's very difficult to fire people especially nowadays with all the regulations and then you have these unions and things like that so I'm actually really grateful robots are coming because it makes an entrepreneurs life a lot easier there are less mistakes one has to deal with as Puzder said they don't take they don't need holidays they never get sick they do break down you're going to have a job created where a robot repairman will have to exist but then again maybe there is this kind of a replicant robot that will repair the other robots so maybe you don't even need that so the problems fix themselves so what is your what are some of the benefits of having robots in a workforce you think in tenure so we can get over this fear factor first and I'll bring the fear back to everybody later when we talk about Musk's comments sure well I think that I think you've hit upon some of them already and that is the fact that yeah some things will change right I've heard it said that robots will they may not take your job but they will definitely change your job and I think we've seen that already and that's true of robots as it is of any other technology I'm sure there were people who were perhaps porters many many years ago when the wheel was invented they said now I don't now there will not be a need for me to carry things I'll be out of a job exactly but I think that for the most part I think that there are so many things and we've already seen it right and whether you're doing work on a word processor I'm sure everybody does that and if anybody's old enough to have worked on a typewriter and now has a word processor they appreciate how much better their quality of work life is now because of that it makes everything run more efficiently it can yes okay so people will have more free time exactly but it'll introduce complexities and it'll introduce challenges as well too so now when your computer breaks now you're actually completely out of luck a lot of times whereas before not so much so there's a up and a downside to everything now most of the robotic jobs is 70 to 90 percent is sort of a manual labor that humans have had to troll through for centuries and I'm just curious what you think would happen to unions because a lot of unions are based on that manual labor that has something to do with physical labor so would it kind of do away with unions and things like that that's a really interesting notion I think it will depend upon how people adapt so I see the need of unions playing a role in serving as not just as a way of linking manual labor people together but as a way of helping as a balance of power between labor and management that's really where they came about and I think that need will still exist so whether it exists in its current construct centered around manual labor practitioners or whether it involves into something different that's what we'll see I'm going to have a couple of guests from Oceanit next month to discuss coding and one of the gentlemen who will be my guest mentioned that coding is going to be the blue-collar job of the future you'll probably see the union it already is so the unions will just change shape themselves maybe I don't know how easy it is to strike then if the train can drive itself then you don't have to worry about all that now Michael what kind of jobs for people who want to feel that they need to upgrade their skills to prepare themselves for this in about a decade what kind of jobs will be the most prominent in terms of training oneself in the robotics field what kind of jobs will be available for people to get into and they should start training from now I think probably the most important skill to prepare for the future is the ability to cultivate critical thinking skills I think that's foundational to everything and that's the foundation for adaptability so as we've seen jobs that require wrote recitation or wrote execution of a particular set of physical actions those are right for outsourcing and those are right for automation and those are the kind of things that training in that kind of thing is probably not the best investment the ability to then adapt and apply things in new ways that's what humans are good at that's what robots are bad at so the ability to do that and the ability to understand and leverage technology in new and different ways is probably I think the best thing you can do to prepare for the future economy now let's go back to the dark side to the dark side now as a counter to puzzlers optimistic comments about the robotic workforce being deployed there are some consequences we should think about so Elon Musk was one of the main individuals to bring this argument up in the sense that we won't really think about the consequences of robots walking around until a robot kills two humans in the street so what do you think are the downsides to this ubiquitous robotic workforce walking amongst humans well whether or not as you say walking you alluded to it before is that it's not just kinetic it's not just a physical presence of robots there is the any kind of form of artificial intelligence or automation that happens behind the scenes is also a form of robotics and we're already seeing that today one of the dangerous things as I mentioned the first kind of robotic entity is the autonomous vehicle and I saw this beautiful presentation by Kaspersky Labs one of the top cybersecurity companies and they it was a lovely presentation this slide show that this Russian gentleman was showing to us and it was about the attack points on an autonomous vehicle how an autonomous vehicle because it runs on sensors and the cloud and all this sort of thing how it can be attacked at 25 different points and they've already done the crash test what would happen if a hacker were to intrude upon the system of an autonomous vehicle and somebody's riding in it and it's pretty gruesome actually we're just going to bring all the fear back to you we're going to come full circle so it's quite scary in that respect because eventually there are going to be driverless cars everywhere you don't need to worry about parking but you might have to get worried about being hacked and crashing into a wall by whoever's hacking the vehicle so it could be a source of different kind of terrorism certainly and I think that you've highlighted that point that you mentioned it before too is that every opportunity then also creates vulnerability so you have to be on guard for that and you have to think about and that's part of thinking ahead in rolling out the technologies considering these kinds of things and developing safeguards for that I think that's probably though not always been the strong suit as a society there's a rush to get things out there and certainly businesses are incentivized to get things out there and generating revenue quickly and we'll worry about the downsides later and so I think maybe to Elon Musk's point maybe that's what it takes whether it's a version of for instance Pearl Harbor for instance that's always used as the digital Pearl Harbor is used as an example in the cyber world as we already are connected and this Uber connected world we're in and so reliant on power grids and other things and that many people have said it will take a digital Pearl Harbor before we are as a nation are alert to the and motivated to respond to the vulnerabilities that we have introduced by our over and over but our Uber connectedness is a lovely word now just to end on the bright side on this topic a lot of great innovation came from a dark place originally I mean I believe Google started off by people wanting to exchange pornographic images over the internet and it's turned into this vast library that everybody can use they can educate themselves now MIT and Harvard have free courses you can take online so a lot of these things come from a dark place but then they become great and then they can be abused but the abuse is probably less than 1% of the population will know how to do it in the first place and then actually go through with it so also cryptocurrencies you know this kind of Bitcoin a lot of these things like Silk Road they were dark entities but then it can be used for other purposes so discussing this balance are you more optimistic the good benefits that come from the robotic revolution or are you more on the downside yourself personally personally I'm optimistic I think that as we've seen throughout the march of history is that technology has improved our standard of living and our quality of life as a society and as human being so it's certainly there's downside certainly the technology gets employed for bad purposes I think but overall I think the trend is pretty pretty unmistakable and that our quality and standard of living has improved just steadily now one of the unfortunate things is that yes most people can help themselves they pick themselves up and they deal with the change a lot of people maybe can't at the equal pace of the average person so one of my concerns is in 10 years time you know every decade or two there's always a fashionable disease you know at one point it was AIDS now it's sort of a cancer in 10 years it's predicted by a lot of people in the health professions that depression is actually going to overtake cancer because there's there are going to be a lot of developments in cancer research that will either cure cancers or prevent them at a higher rate so that's going to no longer be so much of a problem but they said depression is and I'm just wondering if one of the reasons for that is that because people's jobs will be taken away from them this is more the case for people who can't keep up who can't upgrade their skill will those people fall into depression I'm wondering if those are the ones susceptible to depression and if there's some interconnectedness with the robot revolution in your opinion well that's an interesting and compelling thought I think that that's certainly a possibility although I would say that looking at it from a technological perspective I think that your point about robots and technology helping to eradicate some of the diseases that have been more prevalent is probably a good a fair point and that may in fact actually downgrade some of the commonness of it whereas the mental health issues I think are a little bit harder to deal with much more complex and as our understanding of the brain is required I think those defy the the solutions that I think deal with more things like cancer although there are robots involved with that as well too as they have a little worm like robots now that are working on delivering medicines internally so there's a convergence there certainly and we started with DaVinci and we're going to close with DaVinci because the name of the robotic surgeon is called DaVinci exactly we've come full circle again and thank you so much for being on the show Michael I love this subject and I hope it's brought a bit of a balance to the discussion people have about the topic and thank you for everyone for tuning in and I'll see you next Thursday at 11am for We Like the 1% Aloha