 Peter Warren singer is a strategist and senior fellow at New America and one of the nation's leading futurists. I would say futurist slash strategists. He's been named one of the nations 100 leaning leading innovators. He's been named by Defense News as one of the 100 most influential people in defense issues by foreign policy, also has been on the 100 global thinkers list and I love this particular decision. He is named as an official mad scientist for the US Army's training and doctrine command. And he's written multiple award winning and bestselling books. In crime August Cole is an author exploring the future of conflict through fiction and other forms of storytelling we think of this as the beyond the white paper project. He's a non resident senior fellow at the scope Brent Scowcroft Center for on strategy and security at the Atlantic Council, and a non resident fellow at the brute Brutee crew lack center for innovation and creativity at the Marine Corps University. He works also on creative futures at spark cognition, which is an artificial intelligence company and we'll be talking a lot more about AI. So Peter and August have collaborated before their last novel which was called ghost fleet, a novel of the next world war was a bestselling page turner and I can say that personally having devoured it it is now on virtually every commander's list in the US military and read around the world. So we're delighted to have Peter and August join us before we jump in. I want to thank our event partner slate and also tell you that you can purchase your own copy of the book, burn in from our bookselling partners solid state books. So with that, let us talk about burn in a novel of the real robotic revolution. We originally just titled this event of novel discussion of the book, but over the weekend and particularly after yesterday, we've retitled it dystopia in America, because many of us feel like we're living. We're not in a novel but in a piece of dystopian fiction that dystopia is unlike a utopia is a fictionalized version of a nightmare world where things that shouldn't be possible are possible and honestly watching the president last night, push aside and disrupt a peaceful march across Lafayette Park to a church where he wanted where he said to the nation he stood with peaceful protesters was like watching something out of 1984. So many of us really do feel like we're living in a dystopia and I want to start by, by asking you, and August I'll start with you. What's the value of describing this kind of a world in fictional form. Thank you, and Marie for hosting us and my heart goes out to the protesters last night and other communities who are trying to make sense of the not just last 24 hours before last week. We are at this point in which the things that we often, and I say this as an optimist who stares into the abyss the things that we want to not see come true, are coming true with too much regularity, and the value of exploring those kinds of dystopian alternatives to this day set in the future, I think, require us to confront those very scenarios we want to avoid, and importantly from a character driven perspective. You know if you can do that, you have a chance at creating more empathy and connection and understanding and perhaps and ultimately avoiding the kinds of scenarios that many of us, you know, lie awake at night trying to to make sense of. You know, looking at how we often consider the future it's often binary in terms of being utopian or dystopian but the reality is in fact it can be great. There's a in between and though there are acute moments of abhorrent either behavior or things that we see the the really interesting aspect I think to trying to figure out the sorts of tomorrow's that lie ahead. I often go back to a quote that William Gibson the science fiction writer had said which is that the future is here it's just not evenly distributed. And that's particularly true with technology in the way that it is changing our daily world or discourse, but also real world actions and so as we try to to plot our way ahead here after the past week. We're going to have to squarely confront the idea that tomorrow is not better than today and out of that though hopefully be able to connect with one another and coming up with some better alternative so that we can at least avoid those sorts of dystopian tomorrow's that right now feel like like the present. I like that point that that you know that tomorrow may not be but that only by really facing honestly a worse future, we possibly avoid it just to we I often talk about the critical importance of radical honesty and facing the past so that right now when we are grappling with the horrific murder of George Floyd. We also see that as part of a much larger pattern and not just a pattern of police brutality, but also as part of a past and systemic racism which we're also seeing play out in the disparity and the number of deaths from African Americans, Latinx Americans are dying at much much greater numbers so we often do talk about radical honesty and facing the past to be able to imagine and create a better future but here we also need to look at alternate futures in the same way so Peter let me turn to you to ask you to reflect on that. You're muted Peter. It's really difficult to reflect I think like so many others right now I'm filled with the sort of turning turmoil of emotions. There's, as August said there's appreciation to you, New America, everyone who supported this project it's a multi year project, and to see it finally come out and be able to talk about it is, you know, appreciation right but like so many others right now I'm filled with a mix of sadness and anger. And it's anger and sadness is what we see our nation suffering what we see our sisters and brothers suffering, and then it even comes down to the personal level. The church that that took place at St. John's. It's, you know, literally down the street from New America, but it's also a church that I have family members that are members of I've gone to multiple weddings and and on the other side funerals at it. And as one of them said to me last night, what they saw was quote, the height of hypocrisy using the church as a photo op. And that you know is what we see right now is filled with all that and So, and as August said, that's not going to go away. The crises that we face are combined a health crisis, there is an economic crisis and there's also a political crisis and they're not going away. Now there's an irony that at the moment when we feel sort of dystopia coming true. That's actually when dystopian fiction can be most useful and it's actually when people strangely, but it makes sense turn to it the most. They've seen, you know, a bookstore owners and online vendors talk about they've seen a surge in sales of both dystopian classics. You know, we've been in a couple of weeks of a pandemic, you know, 100 years of solitude. It's sales are spiking right now. There's also been newer projects as well. You know, not just ours, but you think Lawrence rights project on a pandemic. There's a history behind this. Actually, during World War two in Great Britain, during you know actual rationing as opposed to what we have right now. Book sales actually doubled. In fact, the book society, which was, you know, Britain's version of like Oprah's book list back in the day said that books power to take people other places meant they were quote more necessary than gas mass. But as August said, it's, it's not just the escapism. It's also the idea that dystopian fiction can be educational that it can serve a purpose. It might be warning as Sinclair Lewis did in 1935. It can't happen here. Maybe it could. And that's also a book whose sales is surged to think of, you know, Margaret Atwood's work and how it's a handmade relevant. And one of the things that that, you know, August is put really well is that all dystopian writers are secret optimists. That's why we do it. We do it because we want to educate warn of what might come if things go too far. And so the idea is that it's not just an act of prediction, but of prevention. And that's what we've, you know, been feeling swirling around us we hope this book can be escapist for people but also that it can serve a purpose it can be useful fiction. Whether it's in depicting certain train trends that we're seeing play out right now. You know, the, there's a moment in the book where it talks about the security perimeter of the White House being pushed past where it had been previously. It took one week for the book to be out for that to happen. But I guess, you know, so our hope is that it can serve that dual purpose of entertainment, but also education, and in a way that hits harder than an op ed or a PowerPoint because narrative is the oldest technology for communication. So that's a great moment to turn to the technological dimensions of this dystopia and I'll say there again, living through COVID and people have been writing that we're we're living through a combination of 1918, 1933 and 1968 all rolled into one terrifying ball. But when we think about the impact of COVID. One of the things we've seen very clearly is the technological divide. Again, largely tracking a race and economic divide where the disease itself is affecting black and brown Americans who are much more likely still to have to be on the front lines in essential work or they have to take public transportation they don't have the same health care health care and health insurance, who are the same ability to insulate themselves from the virus, but equally importantly once schools moved online and work moved online. Many of us as we are now participating in a zoom webinar simply went virtual, but so many other Americans can't go virtual they can't access the high quality broadband and to do a zoom you you really need the fast quality broadband, which means now that that they cannot even participate in school in elementary school much less less higher education. So there's been a clear technological dimension there. And at the same time, when through these, the riots that we've seen the, the, just the agony of recognizing the murder of George Floyd and others. I keep thinking as I look at like riot lines and other things I keep thinking where's the humanity here where how do we how do we grab on to the humanity. And your book actually gets it both of those things right it it looks at humanity and technology and coming together. So I want to turn to talking about it I have to ask you first of all, whichever is true, which of you came up with the title. August he gets credit for that. Okay. All right, so then I get to ask August so August burn in what is it. We are right now at the precipice of a transformational moment with artificial intelligence and robotics, and that's not just in the way that it's usually talked about in terms of, you know, creating new markets, or processes, rather all of society is about to undergo and as as we've seen I think right now in the midst of beginning, an experiment of sorts, and the phrase burn in is used often in the engineering or software communities to describe the initial experience of being an experimentation that goes with let's say the servos on our robot that you're trying to kind of work them until they break. And it felt like in looking at some of the trends we were seeing that technologically as you mentioned that will exacerbate inequality, whether it's the rise of gig work, whether it is the virtualization of real world privilege in society, whether it is the rise of extremism at the highest levels of politics that we are in effect in the midst of a burn in with these transformational events, difficult as someone who likes to see the possibility of great transformation for good the technology can be used in that way, but I can't help but acknowledge and and really dive into the risks that we're courting as we blindly embrace these futures because we don't realistically envision the sorts of narratives that are more likely I think to to come true. And there's some perspective I think from from ghostly in our experience which was to look at the discussion and discourse around and looking at data and policy and other trends that to us indicated a much more frank and concerning assessment of the nation states ambitions in Asia Pacific and globally, and and looking even at what the assumptions were in the part of the US economy but also within China, for example, the end of the Communist Party, the over alliance on technological systems in the US defense community were too big. You kind of cornerstones of that world that we built so with burn in we're trying to also unpack similar trends that we feel don't get enough attention and in terms of the economic and social vulnerability that's excellent today, made worse by the pandemic will be made in the summer as the unemployment that we see as bad as the Great Depression isn't going to be alleviated by any sort of federal programs that I can see is doing anything significant. Those jobs aren't going to come back in the same way and in fact the uptick and uptake of technologies that allow virtualization may mean some of them never do, and yet we're not ready as a society to have a debate about what it means to be an American or work isn't easily accessible where it may not even define you socially, and where it is not the sort of tomorrow that people actually look forward to. And I think about this as I sat last night watching the news with my children trying to explain what what is ahead for them. And it's a very difficult conversation to have to both keep them feeling like they have agency and choice in their future, but also not to induce a sort of helplessness that I fear a to dystopian outlook world view can can can promote because we do have a choice we have we have to act and take responsibilities with it wherever they present, but the future is ours if we if we can so choose. If I can jump in, you know so August is the front title I get the subtitle and that's also a deliberate choice that answers some of your question. So the subtitle is a novel of the real robotic revolution and the real aspect is because we are on the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the word robot itself. It was in a 1920 play that was early science fiction and ever since that word and how it's depicted carries through in sci fi so it's the idea of a mechanical servant who rises up and then rises up, you know and you get the kill all humans in this moment and that runs through all of sci fi but it's also captured the popular imagination, as well as even how we think about it in the policy world. You think about everything from the discourse around killer robots, which has been talked about everywhere from the United, the floor of the United Nations to Pentagon policy. You think about the literal $5 billion that was spent on investment on existential threats from AI and robots to you think about the Secretary of the Treasury saying you know this stuff with AI and automation. It's not going to be an issue for quote 50 to 100 years it's way off in the future. And yet what's happening is rather it's not a robot revolt. We're living through a robotics revolution we're living through an industrial revolution we're living through AI robotics all these advanced technologies internet of things rewiring our economy and everything that flows out from it our society our politics. Security national security down to cyber security in your home, even your family life and as you know Gibson put it you have this this uneven distribution. And some of that might be the way he was framing it of some technologies here some's not, but you also have the uneven distribution of who gets the fruits and the cost of it. Revolutions have winners and they have losers and their play out again at the individual level certain jobs certain professions doing better other not so much. Certain communities having access to it others not so you know we depict what Washington DC will be like 15 years from now and you know you have some areas where there's lots of internet accessibility advanced AI mass surveillance and you have other kind of dead zones where it's people have been left behind electronically. It also means that you have regional differences we see this in the economy right now who's thriving from the new economy or not. And that of course plays out in new political and legal questions. And that's what we wanted to do with the book is, you know, explore this and in a way that's different from most of the fiction, but using real world research to carry it through. What's baked into the story is 300 explanations and predictions of this world this technology, but backed up with 27 pages of footnote to document how that's not what you know singer and cold dreamed up. Here's what the research shows you here if you want to go, you know, learn more about it you can extend it. And it goes back to that idea of hopefully people be entertained, but also educated one of the biggest things we learned from ghost fleet is that. You know the bottom line is people are more likely to read a fun summer novel than and recommend it to someone else than you know a PowerPoint or a white paper. Doesn't mean there's not a utility of nonfiction that's why we've woven it in, but that you can also you know communicate in other ways and achieve that goal of policy influence and public understanding. That's so Peter, thank you because I was actually going to ask you about the concept of a novel with footnotes, which, which I do think is a very powerful way of conveying this information. We have seen a major move toward narrative nonfiction so people who used to write nonfiction wrote books that were maybe slightly more popular versions of academic books but they didn't tell stories they were full of analysis and now New America supports 15 fellows every year. And they write mostly nonfiction books but their books full of stories the way journalists will hook you in with a story and this is the flip of it and it is very powerful because you live with those characters I'm only about a third of the way through I'm actually reading it. Every night and I already find for instance that early on there's a scene with one of the main characters in August I'm about to ask you about how you come up with these characters but Keegan the woman who's a marine, former marine FBI agent, the one of the central characters is at Union Station. And she is getting all this data coming through with sort of the, the version that you all footnote is a version of what you might think of as Google Glass and stuff coming in. And so much is coming in that she actually has to shut it off to be able to do what she needs to do in that situation I won't any spoilers. That is so much more alive to me than any number of things I've written, including by you, Peter, I mean, you know, and other lots of people in the defense community and the security community writing about the kinds of data will be able to get in some some cars already have this kind of data coming on their windshields, but you're like living it and realizing what it would be. But let me let me then turn to sort of the novelist craft and the analyst craft because the two of you put them together. And August, how did you how do you start talk about the process had you come up with these characters, because, you know, like any good fiction writer you have to have a character who's believable, and that you can live, live with for 300 pages. And that's a great point I mean you have to get to the end of the book. You know that's a first order challenge for any for any writer and this character driven aspect of stories that can also be a form of useful fiction, I think is elemental. And if we're going to relate or identify with some aspect, even our villains, then we're not necessarily going to connect with the larger themes and underlying, you know, currents in a narrative like especially one as long as a novel but it's also true for for short stories. So in turn in each character is representative in many ways of either multiple or discrete trends that we identify today is being determinant in shaping parts of society and an example would be our special agent Laura Keegan who as you said, has a very utilitarian approach to technology to stop of her experience as a as a combat Marine who worked with small robots on different deployments and does not have this sort of utopian view of technology but she's neither dystopian per se either but she knows the limits in life or death situations which I think is a great way to try to understand when we're in this world of literally limitless data when machine learning and other forms of AI are essentially processing and helping us make sense of it, but that too can be too much and sometimes that gut instinct which is something that people law enforcement typically often do rely on as they do in other fields it's something that we wanted to kind of keep at front and center with her that there's a human dimension to how she understands and make sense of her world. The interesting aspect to that though is that technology in Berlin as he was describing is not evenly distributed in Washington in that scene, where they're rushing to prevent a crime from happening. Each federal agency and local law enforcement are essentially working with different, you know, species of AI and similar systems. The utopian notion of, you know, fused networks and, you know, seamless movement of data back and forth has been, you know, the sort of, I mean, that's truly science fiction. And we just haven't seen that in our in our, you know, acquisitions at the government level for the last 30 years of trying. And Keegan's husband is a really interesting character to because he represents the rise of the gig economy and the inability due to algorithmic outsourcing at very high levels are very fields that require high levels of education like let's say law. So he worked at a white shoe law firm in DC and had his position replaced by an algorithm. So somebody who went to the right schools who did what they thought were quote unquote all the right things is now in a position where they have no economic freedom or choice. You know, they're essentially forced to take gig work just to, if anything, go through the act of working and in fact doing something that could be automated itself. But there's small premium paid for human contact and the sort of service that he does virtually. And that to me is a really profound factor, you know, element of the book where, you know, the discourse on automation and job replacement is often talked about happening to other people than those who write these reports. But yet when you look at many of the breakthroughs that are happening with with neural network computing and AI for example where you can replace somebody like me who writes fiction right with a kind of synthetic, you know, personality if you will that can create content that could be as gripping as something that I can I can imagine. And so, you know, seeing how already you're looking at Wall Street, looking at the legal profession, have these technological forces kind of course through and replace people with algorithms. I think you're seeing a real underappreciated dynamic in the political system to because somebody who feels like they have been essentially betrayed by a system that they've given everything to is going to be very angry. And it's made to rise a populism and other forms of politics that that can be very dangerous, even even beyond where we are today with those same threats. So that was a really interesting manifestation of a significant trend in the form of a character who's central to the story. I have to say as a former law professor who I taught law for 12 years and I taught lots and lots of students who really looked like that character and I could I really could imagine. You go through the law school you take on the debt you go to a firm you think you've done it all right and there he is on the couch. And indeed, in one of the books I wrote on women men work and family have a chapter that's titled is managing kids harder than managing money. Well, even in 2015, people said oh that's ridiculous of course managing money is harder, but that's clearly not going to be true I don't even think it's true now because you manage money with algorithms and that's going to continue. Whereas, thus far anyway managing kids is plenty hard and technology is a downside. And Peter that leads me to you because one of the things that is very powerful in the book is that you are paying a lot of attention to the this couples internal dynamic. And they have a daughter and he's lost his law firm job she's really the primary breadwinner. So you are your two men. You've written about a main character as a woman, and then her relationship and you're flipping the dynamic of many relationships although you're definitely tapping into the kind of bumps. And in many of our relationships. How did you think about that how did that that can did you talk to women did you. So, how did you figure that out. So it, the great thing about these projects and you pulling in from both fiction and nonfiction influences and ones weaving across to the other. For us, the main character of Keegan, as we thought about the character more and more and the world that they were in. And I'm going to steal the phrase from August here, essentially, her face was the one looking back at us more and more, as we thought it through. And then also in turn, the spouses character, his face was the one that came back. But the, you know, the origin of actually his character was from this nonfiction report side, you know, we built a, we pulled every single job automation report we could find you know from the think tanks from McKinsey and Pricewaterhouse Coopers to World Bank to Oxford University. There's actually a spreadsheet that was built that has over 1300 of these different projections out there. And you know so in there and you know everything from you know one groups is a 35 page report and others is a 200 page report. And all together and you could see the sort of the estimates of what it would do to different professions, you know, so Oxford University looked at 702 different professions and found that 47% of unemployment's at risk. But the way it goes back to your earlier question, the way it became real to us was not the data point of 47%. It was making this character, someone in a profession that most people don't think will be automated. It was a contract law and then exploring what does that do to their marriage, what does that do to their parenting, what does that do to their self identity and the politics of it that makes it real in a certain way. But also, you know, the, what makes I think Keegan real is that she's like the rest of us and then again, this comes from, you know, our own lives from interviewing people, she's juggling identities. So there's the moment she comes home very early on and she you know has that sort of I've got to get out of work mode, and I got to get in parenting mode. And she's have her marriage is falling apart and she's doesn't know whether it's going to be one of those nights or not. You know that balancing act is something that we all go through. And I think it makes her certainly feel more realized than frankly the depiction that you see typically of female characters and techno thrillers. And so hopefully that resonates and so you get those kind of influences and you know, sometimes it's from interviews. It's the same thing when you think about the, you know, not small moments but but big scenes. Sometimes interviews sometimes are incredibly revealing. You know, I don't want to plot spoil too much but someone who worked on the water systems of Washington DC revealed to us, actually how to recreate portions of the 1936 flood for people want to see imagery online of what that would look like that came from interviews so that's you know, oh wow that's an inspirational scene as opposed to how do we want to communicate it. And then different from the nonfiction side is that all writers are readers too. And so we're, we're influenced by what we read what we love what we enjoy. And sometimes it might be like I said, readers novels books that we enjoy characters that we enjoy. It might be even movies. There's a scene in the book that literally came from August I talking about what we particularly appreciated about Tarantino movies and it was the small there you know everyone doesn't remember the big scenes they remember the, the small moment where you know a character sort of tells a story. And even if that character only appeared in that one scene that sticks with you and so we you know we try and capture that in the storytelling as well. So you know sometimes you're pulling from Excel spreadsheet sometimes interviews, sometimes, you know, people or interactions or moments or even what we observe around this. And you're really weaving it all together I was actually struck by thinking about the movie her all of us are watching lots of movies in in my household my husband prefers things that are in Japanese or German or that are black and white with atonal can qualify as high art I on the other hand often want to completely decompress. We compromised on her and I won't plot spoil but that's another really great way of living the future and and a very different narrative again than the robots rise and then they take over, you know, it also shows something that in fiction, just like with pictures sometimes you can tell more with you know a couple of sentences that you could with an entire white paper. So there's a moment in our book where Keegan first meets her, the new system that she's doing a burn in on Tams, which is a robotic system, and it speaks to her in a female voice. And Tams is basically Siri or Alexa move forward, combined with you know Boston Dynamics, you know robots that you see YouTube have moved forward. But so it speaks to her with a female voice. And she's like, no, no, no reprogram we're not doing that and it and it that moment tells you everything about her, but it also makes you reflect on, you know, the strange ways that we genderize our robots and everything that sort of packed into that so. And we don't need a whole, you know, essay on it. It's just a little moment that tells you something about your character, and also about an issue that we've got to figure out. Exactly. So August that tell us about being the ghost in the machine, because so Tams, you can talk about what Tams stands for Tams is another central character. This is a book about AI visual eyes. Tams is Tams is AI visual eyes, but you, you're writing a book about a machine who is a character so when I said you're the ghost of the machine you have to get inside the machine and and basically make it human enough that we can identify but we can also still see ourselves interacting with something that is not human so just talk about that and talk about the character. You know, the human robot relationship has has been so expertly written about and done in films like like Spike Jonze's her like you said, that you know part of the challenge is how to how to create something that would feel different but but authentic still to the world that we built. I think this is also an aspect of being a collaborator and having a co writer, where you can avoid some of the blind spots or pitfalls that you might fall into in trying to build an authentic relationship between a human and a machine. So in the in the machine that is Tams as Pete said, it's not the sort of, you know, Titanic, you know, enormous Terminator type robot that you know walks down the street and everybody runs the other way. It's quite diminutive. In fact, reflects a lot of our thinking and exploration of what military robotics may more likely be like which are smaller far smaller than that are often depicted in popular narratives and particularly given given Keegan's work that was a I think critical part of her understanding of what it would be like to relate to a robot. And there's this aspect of trust that you have to I think make central to any human machine relationship. And you know this is of course you know core to the current, you know thinking in the Defense Department with human on the loop and in the loop these dynamics that are really really difficult to unpack in different situations depending on how the technology is used. But for us we had a relationship and a story that allowed us to I think in a pretty obvious way show the evolution of a relationship because any novel or really any story, whether we tell it or whether we write it has to have you know change in our characters and what's interesting about a mechanical one that has software as its, you know, soul if you will, is that it has none of the elements really that make us, you know, human in the pure sense but yet we can relate to its quirks to the ways that its programming gives it almost personality because of the ways that, in fact, much of the that is out there today that is going to shape how we relate to robotics will of course reflect what its creators believe think the biases they have. And that also becomes an issue I think from the educational part of burning that we don't want people to be aware of is that, you know, technology is not omnipotent and nor is it perfect just because it works flawlessly. So if we put into it the programming parameters, etc, are going to influence the, the ultimate sort of utility and whether something is, you know, quote unquote good or bad. And so that the human, you know, robot relationship between Laura Keegan and Tams this, you know, tactical economist mobility system. I was what it was classical autonomous mobility system okay. Originally, can I say this people the robot was called August and we had a whole acronym for that but we decided for obvious reasons we couldn't do that. This is about Pete's opinion of me but you know just leave that out there for everyone to decide but but I'll let Pete kind of finish maybe describing the thinking in the kind of layering approach we took to developing that relationship. Terrific. Well, one of the other things is important is not just to get on the nonfiction side but but every fiction has a larger theme a larger message you know so Moby Dick is not really a story about a hunt for a whale right. And the two. Not. Yeah, I know. I will spoil what happens in the end. But that there's two particular themes that we were exploring in both the fictional side but important themes on the non fictional side. The first is this notion of trust, and that trust has two different meanings. There's the way we normally think about trust our interpersonal relationships I trust you, I find you trustworthy, but there's the way that engineers think about trust, which is that it works as predicted. So for example, I can trust that someone is a pathological liar and know that they will always lie and then operate in an effective manner in a world that has that understanding right. So what we see in the book is this exploration of. First, what is it like to be in America, where both of these ideals of trust are under siege by both natural and deliberate forces. And then again we can feel swirling around us. What does that also look like in the relationship in the family but also between human and machine. And then the second theme coming out of this is this notion of as Keegan says at one point you know you can't fight the future. What you can figure out is what is your role in it. And so there's this exploration of what they call human machine teaming. And, you know, rather than again help sci fi depicts it of one singular type of robot. There's lots of different forms of robotics out there AI that are out there there's lots of different ways of thinking about the teaming. It might be tasking the robot out it might be the robots like equivalent of the police dog it might be the robots like what's been called the robot wingman program by the Pentagon it might be the robot is a advisor a concierge like system they call him decision aids, but one you have all these different forms we need to understand what it's all about is figuring out what's the best role for the human. What's the best role for the machine, but also within that relationship. How is the human reshaping the machine because they're not just a regular technology they're always learning. And so you have sort of mass scale surveillance learning and then you have the what every parent feels you know that the kid is watching you and so when it has these quirks. It's because you know that was the way it was program. Or it observe, but then you also have the notion of how is the human how is the machine changing the way the human acts, both towards other humans but also towards machines themselves. And you know again this is it is right for exploration and sci fi a different kind of discussion, but it's also, you know if we want to talk about the future of jobs in America. That idea of you know what's the role for the human versus machine you want to talk about the role of robotics and policing or in military same questions play out and so we need to understand and we have a good vocabulary for them. That is really fascinating we're going to turn to audience questions because we've got a lot of great ones but any parent has had the experience of driving and having a young child in the back. And suddenly you know you break and the child says something about the other driver that is not repeatable and you realize you know they are learning from you, you are looking in a mirror and it forces you to really examine what you're teaching them right and they don't know what other things you want to be here and things they don't but it is and in in that sense this adaptive software is that process but but much more focus where they really the only way they're going to learn is from interacting with you because they're not surrounded by lots of other things so it does bring that dimension to the four in an extraordinary way. I have a bunch of great questions I'm going to ask one of you to take each one so we can get through many and the first one way from Allen Buck is, can you talk about the development of the related playlist. It really added to the experience and setting of each scene and I did not realize there was an associated playlist so talk about it. That's on me I've actually done that for most of my books. And it's the idea that there are either scenes that are influenced by a certain song or capture the moment. And so you know what we should be clear these are not favorite songs they're just scenes sometimes they're they're songs that actually play in the in the in the book itself. There's a creepy scene that has appropriate enough nine inch nails playing in it. There's another scene where it's a Sesame Street song that gets recast in a way that's I think kind of heartbreaking. And so we have the page numbers there that you can play them, or it might be a scene where there's just a line a lyric that's like wow that really captures what that character is saying or doing I think it's fun I think it adds something more. And you know hopefully people and enjoy it. That's great. So that's really a multi media creator Peter. I mean, I don't know if it's 1984 or Brave New World that talks about surround sound but you're clearly thinking in terms of surround sound. It's one of those. So the next question August maybe you want to take this one is with hundreds of real world predictions in the book, which do you think is the coolest, or the scariest. I think I'll start with the scariest since we're talking about dystopias and probably all feeling a bit dystopian today, you know I really do worry about this exacerbated socio economic condition of the country that is not going to improve with the implementation of AI and robotics. I feel like as a society we have a lot of healing and work to be doing, whether it comes to race, whether it comes to economic injustice, and that process is going to be very, very challenging to do with the sorts of stressors that that we can unleash if we are unwise about how we start to do the sorts of automation that as Pete said feels almost inevitable and as Keegan our character is trying to figure out what is what is her role within all that. As far as the exciting technologies, that's a really interesting question because there is a duality of course to every invention. There are parts of me that think it would be great to walk into a coffee shop and have my coffee ready for me because the machine learning algorithm and the shop recognized me and knows what I like to order and maybe based on my mood could detect that. I'm also horrified by that loss of agency to pick a cappuccino versus whatever regular coffee on a given day. And there are some very pedestrian examples in the book that I think can be really important and having people understand the ways that that we have this this dual edged aspect to the kinds of innovations that are going to be presented to us whether we're ready or not, and I think there's a lot of social conversations, the sidle conversations, I guess I should say that need to happen about the rightness or the timeliness, because this could versus should conversation hasn't been had enough in the technology community and I believe that it's imperative that we start having it in a very acute way because of the impacts that are rising in the political realm like right now, but also economically to because of the because of the pandemic when those two collide. I'm extremely worried that we may be passed a point and overturn and create a situation that's very hard to unwind. And that is one that all of us in national security also think about because, you know, chemical weapons were only outlawed after, you know, hundreds of thousands of people millions of people died of give being gassed in World War one, and nuclear weapons were only outlawed after we dropped to in World War two, and we really don't want to have to have that demonstration of the catastrophe that awaits before we decide maybe we shouldn't. So the question that I think is perfect for you. It says burn in highlights the importance of embedding technologists in the policy process. Can you speak to existing initiatives that are lack of tackling that issue head on and I will say that I loved the shout out to public interest technology in as I've gotten that far in the book. Public interest technology is a program into America that is trying to do what we've seen play out in fields like medicine, or law, where if you go back in law at one point you have people that either worked in the private sector. Or they work for government and then, you know, starting about a generation back you started to see lawyers being able to take a third path which would be to work in civil society for, you know, a nonprofit and a group or whatever it is. There's an idea of trying to create forms of this both for civil society for technology knowledge is to aid civil society, but also to create different kinds of pathways into government. There's been a couple of little startup initiatives like that there was one in the Obama era that you know started with the healthcare.com, you know, not good roll out but then brought in tech talent to aid them and said okay can we make this a little bit more permanent. There's another program within the Pentagon to start up a nugget of that for AI, the joint AI Center is an example. What I hope is that we get truly creative about it you know so one idea. For instance, is that you have an entry point into the military, not bottom up but from the side for doctors for lawyers for chaplains. And they are assigned to be supportive to different units and they move across those units. So a chaplain might aid an engineering unit or it might aid a infantry unit or a Navy ship. So what I think about data scientists is that and that may be something to think about bringing new folks in, having to be creative to catch up to the new job skills that are needed. Yeah. Sorry that one of the characters in the book is an example of that where it's someone who specializes in human machine working together and that is clearly going to be a need whether it's a government agency, or it's a private company. Yeah. And I'll also add that New America hosts tech Congress which puts puts technologists in Congress, and we certainly have seen what lack of knowledge of technology for good or and for ill has done in the lawmaking process you know where you have senators asking Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook makes its money. That is, that is not the kind of you know what we want to see where we need to regulate a lot of this technology and indeed there's now the beginnings of a US digital service in Congress, because it's really all branches of government. I remember when Larry Lessig was a clerk on the Supreme Court for Justice Scalia several decades ago and he was one of the first people to kind of get the Supreme Court on the internet. So we need we need a lot more of that work. So we have a question here that I will put to both of you. And then it says since we can assume that all policymakers will be buying and reading a burn in with the same enthusiasm that they've read ghost fleet. What would you like the ultimate takeaway to be to to consider for people to consider as they look at new strategy development in the next decade and August I'll let you start I assume you probably different things. I think I would like somebody who reads this who's in a position of leadership, whether it's in government or the technology sector or other other parts of society to in effect feel like we're not ready for the future. And that we have a lot of work to do at many different levels that there is an appreciation of course for their great potential for artificial intelligence robotics. But how we implement them is as important as whether we do or not, you know you can look at the surveys of, for example, CEOs who are, you know, extremely interested in implementing a technology like this but when you start to ascertain what what they actually understand about the percentage is quite low. And so to me, you know this aspect of education and offering some familiarity with these concepts with these use cases with these pitfalls that that go with them not in the discrete technological sense but in a much more holistic like societal way, then we're for warned I think and forearm for avoiding some of the dystopian aspects of this the story that we wrote. Peter. So for me it's two things and it's again very different than the approach of, you know, even you and Marie were sort of you know try not to give away too much and you know it was a nonfiction we would have you know the bottom line up front and then at the end of the book we would have the PowerPoint, you know bullet points of here's what you can do. This is not that and I think you know for me there's there's two core takeaways one is to put the numbers behind what August was mentioning, you know survey among leaders found that 91% think AI is the key technology to the future we see it woven into everything from the US National Defense Strategy to pretty much every Fortune 500 company says this is the key to our future and yet only 17% self report that they have a passing familiarity with it, let alone its applications, etc. So I hope we give people the vocabulary to understand the key issues and concepts, only then can you have an effective debate about it to use that parallel of you can have a debate about the role of social media if you don't even understand how Facebook works you may not agree on the sides of the debate but you got to have the basic vocabulary. So hopefully we give people in a, you know, I've joked that we're parents so we're sneaking fruit and veggies into the smoothie. Hopefully we're giving people that vocabulary of applications terms that they get not by, you know, they're not going to go read an academic paper on it and again it might be AI it might be algorithm advice you name it. The second thing is the narrative. If there is some moment in it that scared you that you didn't like. Maybe it's a little tiny point maybe it's a large scene whatever that nightmare scenario is. And here's the footnote to show, hey, it actually could be real, but to it is still set in the future, you have agency to change it to keep that nightmare scenario from coming true so if it's keeping you up at night, you can solve that problem. Again, I think this is where this form is so effective because you can read about an apocalypse as a prediction, or you can live it, which again science fiction and various ways novels literature. There are ways of exploring our world that makes them deeply vivid and memorable to us, and it is so vital in an area of technology that is arcane for so many of us. So the last there's one last question, and I'm going to roll it together with another so the question is, what is the next issue that the two of you are planning to tackle what is the next book topic. And in particular, there's a question from Jeffrey Wilson that says, has the COVID crisis inspired you to write anything on viruses or biological warfare. So, again, August, I'll start with you and and with Peter. We're, we're always talking about next ideas and concepts and the important thing is we came out of this collaboration, like good friends still and also really enjoying working working together that that's a good first order test. So, so we can continue to collaborate in the future, and more is on the way. You know, on the, on the buyout side it's an incredibly important area, and I look at some of the work out there on the nonfiction side and fictional side, you know one of my friends Jamie Metzl has done some excellent work on that. You know, my, my belief is that is that you know the world in burn in is a fusion of a lot of different technologies together, and whether it's elements like climate change and global warming that are present in the book is part of the authentic world building for, you know, 10 to 15 to 20 years out you have to start considering that as being a really powerful force, just as we're talking about AI and robotics. So there's a lot of work to be done on that for sure. And that's something I would be incredibly interested in pursuing. Great. Peter, last word. On the, what are we writing next the great thing of the spaces, unlike the US military August and I have op security. So, we don't have to share everything but I will say what that person put their, their finger on it something notable. There is a, and it's referenced. It was referenced in the original project that the proposal for this book. It was a US national intelligence community report, looking at the world of the 2030s and it said there were three key trends that were going to be different than what we've seen before. One was great power rivalry with a true political and economic and technological competitor in China. And you see the world of goes fleet. The second was they described these domestic forces of disarray division and described it as equivalent to sitting on a volcano and burn in explores that a little bit. And the third was all of the incredible breakthroughs that we've seen in biosciences and genomics. And so that question or put their finger on trends that have fascinated us certainly and but are very complex trends that again we think require new ways of communicating real research on them. Right. So it is one o'clock. I want to thank both of you. I want to remind everybody that the novel is called burn in a novel of the real robotic revolution and you can get it at our book partner solid state books and also at other independent bookstores and anywhere you buy books. And I want to thank also our fabulous events team. Angela Speedolette and McKinley Lutz, both of whom have made this possible behind the scenes. You don't see them or hear them are Jason Stewart and Shannon Lynch. So with thanks to everybody at New America who made this possible. Thanks to all of those to all of you in the audience. Your questions were terrific. We could have gone on for another half hour easily, but I am going to release you to your day with thanks and really I can't wait to finish the book.