0:00

Washington Post Live's futurist summit, The

0:03

New Age of Tech, is presented

0:05

by Mozilla. You're

0:07

listening to a podcast from Washington Post

0:10

Live, bringing the newsroom to you

0:12

live. Good morning

0:14

and thank you for joining us at

0:16

Washington Post. I am Ela Hezadi, a

0:18

media reporter and the co-host of the

0:20

Post Reports podcast. And I'm

0:23

thrilled to be here, joined with my

0:25

colleagues. We're joined on stage

0:27

by Sarah Ellison, to my left,

0:29

a national enterprise reporter. Pranshu

0:32

Verma, he is an innovations reporter,

0:34

and Kat Sierkreski, who is a

0:36

national technology policy reporter. Thank

0:38

you three for joining us. Thank

0:41

you. As we saw, this

0:43

is a very important year. And Kat, I

0:45

wanted to start with you. Maybe

0:47

it's easy for those of us in the United States to think

0:49

about 2024 being a pivotal year. Actually,

0:52

this is a year in which nearly

0:55

half of the global population will be

0:57

going to the polls. And actually, just

0:59

on Monday, Secretary of State Blinken warned

1:02

of a, quote, flood of

1:04

falsehoods that could suffocate serious

1:06

civil debate during this pivotal

1:08

year. So I wanted to first

1:10

start and ask you to dig in a little

1:12

deeper into what makes this year so different

1:14

than prior election years. Not

1:16

just the fact so many people are going to the

1:19

polls, but what is the landscape that

1:21

people are going to the polls within? Well,

1:23

so I think there's three things that

1:25

make this year really different. The first

1:28

is scale. The tech companies have cut

1:30

their trust and safety teams that are

1:32

responsible for combating disinformation. But at the

1:34

same time, they're dealing with more elections

1:36

around the world than ever before. And

1:39

so that creates a real tension within the

1:41

companies about where do you place

1:43

your resources in order to protect

1:45

democracies. The second is

1:48

conservative backlash. We've seen a series

1:50

of lawsuits from Republicans who are

1:52

concerned that efforts to fight misinformation

1:54

within the government amount to censorship

1:56

of their views. And that

1:58

has really had a... chilling effect on

2:01

a number of government and

2:03

civil society efforts to

2:06

address misinformation. And

2:08

the third I would say is the tech.

2:10

We've been talking all day about artificial intelligence.

2:13

And that creates a host of new challenges.

2:15

Yeah, it's like the tech is evolving so

2:17

quickly at the same time that

2:19

all these other social and political dynamics are

2:22

taking place. And you mentioned misinformation and disinformation.

2:24

And Pranshu, I wanted to ask you about

2:27

the idea that misinformation during election

2:29

years, that's not new. I mean, that's something we

2:31

saw in 2016, 2020. And

2:35

I'm curious what makes it distinct this

2:37

year. And also disinformation,

2:39

which is, I don't know if you would call it

2:41

this, like I think of it like a cousin to

2:44

misinformation. It's not the same. So

2:46

what examples have you seen lately of this?

2:49

Yeah, I think we're still figuring

2:51

out what the broad scale impact

2:53

is. For example, artificial intelligence,

2:55

like Kat mentioned. But

2:58

we are already seeing some very clear

3:00

examples that, yes, AI is better. And

3:02

it's better able to clone your voice,

3:04

your image, your entire likeness. But

3:07

what's happening is that there are really

3:09

cheap and really easy tools that

3:11

anyone can now create a deep fake. And

3:14

so we're seeing specific examples like we

3:16

just talked about. There was the robocall

3:19

of President Biden urging voters not to vote

3:21

ahead of the New Hampshire primary. And

3:24

then if you look abroad, there were

3:26

examples in Moldova. There

3:28

was a liberal party politician.

3:31

And she was deep faked to say that

3:34

she supports a pro-Putin party ahead of an

3:36

election. Now if you go to

3:38

Bangladesh, a conservative Muslim country, there was an

3:40

opposition lawmaker that was deep faked to be

3:42

in a bikini, right? Obviously

3:45

trying to get at some cultural issues there.

3:48

And then of course in Slovakia, right?

3:50

There were people that were on a

3:52

fake audio, a politician, talking about raising

3:54

the price of beer, right? Raising the

3:56

price of beer. Clearly something that voters

3:58

would give a lot. Yeah, very controversial. Yeah,

4:00

well, if you want to take somebody out of a career, tell

4:02

them they're going to raise the

4:05

price of beer. Oh, it's a wrap. That's

4:07

freaking really genius. But none

4:09

of these are like, this isn't some

4:11

massive campaign that is orchestrated that we

4:13

know of by some nation state actor

4:15

to sow discord, where it could be.

4:18

Oftentimes it's a lone political operative. It

4:21

could be a rogue individual or we're

4:24

not sure, it could be a teenager that's just

4:26

bored and then can post this stuff. And

4:28

if it's savvy enough and it's timed well

4:30

enough, we can see that actually it's hard

4:33

to fact check it in the moment where

4:35

systems are not built to fact check it in the moment.

4:38

And are the companies able to hold

4:40

to their promises and stop the

4:42

ability for political propaganda to be

4:44

made through the tools that they

4:46

create? Yeah, and I want to

4:48

get back to that point of whether the tech

4:50

companies are equipped this year to deal with this.

4:54

But as you were talking, it made me

4:56

think, and Sarah, I wanted to ask you

4:58

this, it made me think about the promise

5:00

of social media and a lot of this

5:02

technology was to democratize information and actually help

5:05

democracies around the world. And I mean, we

5:07

can talk about the Arab Spring and how

5:09

lasting that effect that was, but it

5:12

feels like the promise of social media was

5:14

to be in support of democracy and create

5:17

democracies. And I know that you and

5:19

our colleague, Naomi Nix, reported recently about

5:22

how big tech is actually surrendering to

5:24

disinformation. So it raises this question of

5:27

what impact actually these companies and these

5:29

platforms are having to undermine democracy. And

5:32

can you explain how we got there

5:34

from the promise that was there to

5:36

the current conversation we're having

5:38

today? Sure. I

5:40

mean, Kat touched on two big points, which was that

5:43

there were these mass layoffs earlier

5:45

where people really gutted their trust and safety

5:47

teams. And so the people whose job it

5:49

was not to accumulate

5:51

new users, I mean, there are lots of these

5:53

are big companies and there are lots of different

5:56

teams. The people who were responsible for policing this

5:58

kind of thing were really elitible. eliminated from

6:00

the company. And then

6:02

there was this massive pressure campaign where

6:05

people, where right wing

6:07

and conservative politicians were saying, this

6:11

isn't misinformation, this is my belief.

6:13

This is something that I legitimately

6:15

believe, so why is it that

6:17

you're, like stifling

6:19

that. Why is it you're censoring me? And

6:22

then the last thing that we really found in

6:24

the peg for our story was actually when Elon

6:26

Musk bought Twitter, he sort of opened the Overton

6:28

window in social media to

6:31

say we're going to allow all

6:33

these things that had been previously

6:35

disallowed, come back in, you can,

6:37

I mean, specifically, you can misgender

6:39

people, you can do all of

6:41

these things that previously would have gotten you suspended

6:43

from the platform. And

6:45

what that just means is that at this

6:47

point, these social media companies all decided to

6:50

kind of retreat from this effort because they didn't

6:52

want to be the quote unquote arbiters of truth.

6:54

That was sort of a famous quote from Mark

6:57

Zuckerberg. So now what we have is

7:00

the idea that misinformation isn't new, it's really

7:02

in the bloodstream, people really believe certain things,

7:05

and so as a social media company, they

7:07

don't want to be in the position of

7:09

policing those beliefs. And they've really backed away

7:11

from some of these efforts

7:15

that will in fact let democracy

7:17

can thrive on social media and

7:19

anti-democracy can thrive on social media.

7:21

Right, right. That

7:24

makes me wonder about Kat, I'm

7:26

wondering about the incentives too for

7:28

these tech companies to tamp down

7:30

on misinformation and disinformation. If

7:33

the incentive is to have a profitable business or

7:36

what incentives are in place to

7:39

make sure that these sorts of

7:41

pieces of data content aren't spreading,

7:44

like the deepfakes that Pranshu was

7:46

mentioning, and if actually the incentives

7:48

are misaligned there. There

7:50

have been many criticisms that the

7:53

incentives are horribly misaligned with social

7:55

media and misinformation because these types

7:58

of videos that go viral. role

8:00

on the platform that might be false can

8:02

cause people to spend more time looking

8:05

at Facebook, looking at TikTok, and at the

8:07

end of the day they are trying to

8:09

get that type of engagement in order to

8:11

boost their own profits. One of

8:14

the interesting things to watch as we head

8:16

into this election season is what role advertisers

8:18

might play in putting pressure on the companies.

8:20

We have seen in the past at heated

8:22

moments, if you think back to the 2020

8:24

election or when Elon

8:27

Musk bought Twitter, where the advertiser

8:29

said, hey we don't want our

8:31

ad to appear next to these lies

8:33

about the election or hateful content and

8:35

so I'm closely watching this year what

8:37

role they might play again. That's interesting

8:40

because in some ways reflects some of

8:42

the things we've seen in traditional media

8:44

and especially broadcast media in the wake

8:46

of the 2020 election of advertisers

8:49

pulling back but that's a totally different

8:51

business model because they rely on fees

8:54

from cable companies and that sort of thing. Pranshu,

8:57

going back to and picking

9:00

up on this conversation around deepfakes and

9:02

AI generated fake

9:04

content, it's

9:07

creating this environment in which politicians

9:10

are more easily able to dismiss something

9:12

that's real as fake. It's sort of

9:14

altering our perception of reality. This has

9:16

come up with former President Donald Trump.

9:18

I believe there was a recent example

9:21

of that with him. So have

9:24

you seen other politicians around the world take

9:26

that similar approach? Is this the same sort

9:28

of, you know, the fake news 2.0 of

9:30

being able to dismiss things that are actually

9:33

true like a politician going up and giving

9:35

speech and saying this has been manipulated

9:37

and fake? Yeah, this is kind of like

9:39

my favorite rabbit hole to go down and Drew

9:42

Harwell, a wonderful tech reporter told me

9:44

the term is called the Liars Dividend.

9:46

The Liars Dividend. I love it. As

9:50

a concept, but like you mentioned, I do not

9:52

love it in actuality. But as a concept, it's

9:54

really fascinating because you

10:00

mentioned former President Trump, there was

10:02

an ad generated of him by the LinkedIn

10:04

Project of real gaffes that he had made

10:06

on the campaign trail. And the LinkedIn Project

10:09

is an anti-Trump organization. Exactly.

10:11

And these were real events that happened.

10:13

Reporters were there covering it. This got

10:15

mainstream coverage. And his response was, this

10:18

is AI generated. So imagine

10:21

in 2020, the Access Hollywood

10:24

tape breaks, Trump's grabbing a woman

10:26

by a general's, and

10:28

he has the excuse to say, that wasn't real.

10:30

That was AI generated. And so

10:32

what happens is it offers a

10:35

very potentially potent excuse

10:37

to dismiss away real damning information

10:39

that comes out about you. Because

10:41

like we were saying, you used

10:44

to be able to trust that you could hear something

10:46

or you could see something and that something happened. But

10:49

now with AI getting better, there's this kind of convenient

10:52

and cozy excuse here. And

10:54

we've seen it abroad too. In Taiwan, ahead of

10:56

their elections, there was an opposition

10:58

party lawmaker that was seen

11:01

to be depicted going into a hotel with a

11:03

woman that wasn't his wife. And

11:05

so the opposition lawmakers kind of rallied around him to

11:07

say, no, that's an AI deep fake. That actually wasn't.

11:10

We don't know if it's true. We don't know if

11:12

it's an AI deep fake. But what we know now

11:14

is that there's a question about the truth of it.

11:18

And then same thing in India happened

11:20

where there was an audio deep fake,

11:22

potentially of a

11:24

politician of the ruling party saying that there was

11:26

a billion dollar scam that he was a part

11:28

of. Again, the

11:30

excuse was, well, no, that's an AI generated piece

11:32

of audio. And yet none of that,

11:35

it dismisses away the

11:37

scrutiny enough that you're

11:40

now finding a repetition

11:42

of this type of excuse coming through. And

11:44

so it kind of gets to that point

11:46

of like muddying the waters of reality and

11:48

kind of dismissing and easily allowing you to

11:50

kind of play with the concept of truth.

11:52

And I think that that's actually probably going to

11:54

be in this election cycle, one of the biggest

11:58

one of the biggest things that doesn't really. I mean, yes,

12:00

it's going to matter how good the deepfakes are. Once

12:03

people start to believe or

12:05

not believe what they're seeing, or

12:08

just to create the doubt. Say, well, we don't know

12:10

if it's true or it's not true. People

12:12

can throw up their hands and say, well, they're

12:14

all lying. Or there's this sense of the way

12:16

people are

12:19

going to receive this is just to

12:21

kind of zone out and say, you

12:23

can't believe anything. Right. It almost mirrors

12:25

the way that the traditional press or

12:27

the more mainstream press was villainized in

12:29

previous election cycles as well. That

12:31

you can just sort of throw your hands

12:33

up or like, well, I don't know what to

12:35

believe. Or I certainly don't believe these reputable

12:37

people, because they're disreputable now. And I've been told

12:39

not to believe them. And so if

12:42

you're looking for a touchstone as a voter, it's

12:45

much harder to find one. Well, it's

12:47

interesting because in the introduction,

12:49

we saw Metas,

12:52

Nick Clay, Googles, Sundar, Pichai, and OpenAI,

12:54

Sam Altman. They were all saying that

12:56

they want to be part of the

12:58

solution, not part of the problem, when

13:00

it becomes to election deepfakes specifically. But

13:02

given what we were talking about, a

13:04

lot of these tech companies have gutted

13:06

these teams that dealt with a lot

13:08

of the misinformation and making

13:10

sure that at least what's on their platform

13:12

isn't totally false. That

13:14

those safety rails aren't there the way they were before.

13:18

And it's now the technology is advancing so

13:20

fast. So is the cat almost out of

13:23

the bag? Where can these tech companies do

13:25

anything to control this problem at this point?

13:28

I mean, I would be interested to what you guys

13:30

think. But it seems like

13:32

theoretically, the technology

13:34

would be there to identify,

13:36

in most cases,

13:38

a deep fake. But the

13:41

will to do that, also what exactly

13:43

constitutes a deep fake that needs to

13:45

be policed. That's like

13:47

a philosophical conversation. Yeah, and these

13:49

companies have lots of different priorities.

13:53

If you want to show a deep

13:56

fake of Joe Biden drooling or of Donald Trump,

13:58

I mean, some of that You could say

14:00

that's political satire. We're just, it's like a cartoon.

14:03

And then you have a whole debate about whether

14:05

or not that's an appropriate use of AI. And

14:09

you would have, I'm sure that Meta and all

14:11

those companies would be debating that at the policy

14:13

level. And we've seen them sort of fall down

14:15

and be really susceptible to political

14:17

pressure when it comes to those questions. They are

14:20

companies. They want to make a profit. And they

14:22

want to stay out of controversy. Yeah. There's

14:24

one other company we haven't talked about,

14:27

or platform, and that's TikTok. Yeah.

14:30

And I want to ask you this, Kat, that

14:32

there are roughly, give

14:34

or take, 150 million Americans on TikTok.

14:36

It's a huge number. Maybe you're not

14:38

on it. Maybe your mom is on

14:40

it. My mom is on

14:42

it. I think moms and teenagers are on TikTok.

14:46

Big populations of people are on TikTok.

14:48

And then, you know, Congress, the House

14:51

of Representatives, just passed a bill that

14:53

could lead to a ban on TikTok.

14:55

And I'm curious about the power of

14:57

TikTok within politics to shape our politics,

15:00

because there's also been reporting

15:02

that Trump's allies

15:04

have told him and have counseled him

15:06

that going against TikTok would hurt him

15:08

politically. Meanwhile, we do have the White

15:11

House and President Biden backing this effort.

15:13

So what is the power of TikTok

15:15

right now in our politics? So TikTok's

15:17

power has only grown in our politics

15:19

with every election cycle. It's become more

15:22

and more popular. And as you just

15:24

mentioned, this initially was looked at as

15:26

an app that was just for teen

15:28

dance crazes. But now, you have moms.

15:31

You have significant voting blocs that are

15:33

spending time on TikTok. So that makes

15:35

it more important for campaigns. And I

15:37

think it's putting politicians in a really

15:39

tricky spot. We're seeing this with the

15:42

Biden administration right now. President

15:44

Biden's campaign has joined TikTok. And

15:46

they've made videos there. They've also

15:49

developed partnerships with TikTok influencers in

15:51

order to promote their policies. But

15:54

at the same time, we see

15:56

this growing concern about the app's

15:58

ties to trade. China and

16:00

politically a need to show we're tough on

16:03

China, we're going to take a stand against

16:05

this app. And so you see these politicians

16:07

kind of weighing both sides of

16:09

that coin. Yeah,

16:12

it's interesting because at the same time, I

16:14

don't know if you were

16:16

tracking this, but when this bill was

16:18

being debated in Congress, the app had

16:20

these pop-up messages where users were being

16:23

told to contact their representatives and members

16:25

of Congress, their offices were being flooded

16:27

with all these calls. And it's also

16:29

putting them in this, I wonder if

16:31

this is a year where that more

16:34

than meta, more than X

16:36

is going to be the topic of conversation

16:38

among politicians and to be put on the

16:40

spot of where they stand. I don't know,

16:42

Kat, if you're already seeing indications of how

16:44

this is going to play out. We are

16:46

seeing that. I mean, I was talking to

16:49

congressional aides that day that the pop-ups were

16:51

going out, and they were saying, we have

16:53

to shut down our phone lines because we're

16:55

getting so many calls about TikTok. And so

16:57

we know that this is an issue that

16:59

motivates young voters. I think even

17:01

dating back to more than a year ago

17:04

when the House of Representatives was having hearings

17:06

on this, the Secretary of Commerce came out

17:08

and said, this is a sure way to

17:10

lose voters under the age of 35 if

17:13

we support this legislation. And so I

17:15

think the Trump campaign is realizing that, and

17:18

that's why we've seen them back away from

17:20

some of the rhetoric we had in 2020.

17:23

Right. Pranshu, I wanted

17:25

to also bring up a piece of

17:27

reporting that you've done as well, a

17:29

series called Rising India Toxic Tech. And

17:32

that detailed the vast campaign

17:34

online, the digital campaign by

17:36

Hindu nationalists to stoke conversation

17:39

and discourse in India. If

17:41

you were to sum up what your big takeaway is

17:43

walking away from that reporting and what you found,

17:46

and also given the Indian

17:48

election is upon us as well, how

17:50

do you expect AI to be involved

17:52

in that country's Yeah,

17:55

the Rising India series, which was led by

17:57

our beer chief Jerry and Joe Mann and.

18:00

and Karishma Marhotra, Anand Gupta, and

18:02

Smurfs, it was a pretty

18:04

broad scale finding that the

18:08

Bharti Jantapati, which is the ruling party in

18:10

India, which Modi heads, is uniquely

18:13

adept at using social media

18:15

and artificial intelligence to sow

18:18

discord. There is

18:20

content that is hateful. There is content

18:22

that targets minorities. There is content that

18:25

blatantly lies in propaganda. It

18:27

comes in vast amounts, and there's an orchestration

18:29

within the government to spread this on

18:32

various platforms. But the

18:34

market of India itself is so lucrative

18:37

to tech companies that you often

18:39

find the policing of this content

18:43

is either turning. There's a blind

18:45

eye that's turned. It's willful ignorance.

18:47

Or there are actually demands that

18:49

some tech companies have made, or

18:51

the Indian government has made of tech companies that they

18:53

cat-tat, too. And so you see

18:56

India kind of charting this course of when

18:58

you are a powerful market with hundreds of

19:00

millions of users for social media tools, how

19:03

to use that to get your way to stifle

19:05

some sorts of messaging but let others kind of

19:08

grow is kind of the

19:10

big takeaway. And whether it's WhatsApp messages

19:12

or whether it's the type of Bollywood

19:14

movies that get made by Netflix and

19:16

Amazon, if they're Bollywood movies that are

19:18

critical of the Modi administration, we've found

19:20

that those scripts just kind of go away. So

19:23

it's in various elements. But

19:26

now you said April 9 to I think April 19 to June 1, we

19:30

have the Indian elections coming up. And

19:32

it's a very interesting hotbed for AI

19:35

because India has many languages. And

19:39

so you're seeing AI audio kind

19:41

of allow Modi's voice to be translated into

19:43

multiple languages that he doesn't speak. So that's

19:45

a utility that they've acknowledged. You're

19:47

also finding that there's a full scale

19:49

acceptance of AI amongst some political parties

19:52

to create memes, to create really crazy

19:54

and outrageous memes that maybe might

19:56

not be created, but it's a way to cut

19:58

through the political messaging. Old school. means don't work,

20:00

but these AI generated means kind of do.

20:02

And so you're seeing now, you're going to

20:04

see a flood of content, I think, that

20:06

shows like the full born acceptance of it.

20:09

And then some of these other things that we might

20:11

see, these rapid deep fakes that come up and how

20:14

are these things in the moment fact checked, is it

20:16

even possible? Yeah. So

20:18

before we leave, because we only have a couple

20:20

of minutes left and thinking about, you know, coming

20:22

up these few months that I'm imagining is something

20:24

you're going to be monitoring Pranshu. And I wanted

20:26

to ask Kat and Sarah as well, looking into

20:29

the coming months and in this coming year, what

20:31

is one big unanswered question that you have or

20:33

something that you're going to be paying very close

20:35

attention to in this space? Kat, I'm wondering if

20:37

you can start. I would say

20:39

the Supreme Court. One thing we're

20:42

seeing right now is there is

20:44

this litigation challenging the communication that

20:46

governments have with the social media companies.

20:49

And that could really disrupt a lot

20:51

of the work and planning we've seen

20:53

around elections and past cycles. And so

20:55

I'm watching to see where the Supreme

20:58

Court draws a line to see if

21:00

those types of efforts to fight misinformation

21:02

can continue. Yeah, Sarah. I

21:06

think it's proper that we're all talking

21:08

about the supply of misinformation and disinformation

21:10

and how it gets made, who's making

21:12

money off of it. But I've been

21:14

thinking a lot about the demand for

21:16

misinformation, why it hits and who, why

21:20

people are susceptible to it and

21:22

why they want to consume it. And

21:24

I think that it's not just because people

21:26

are fully disaffected and sitting in diners in

21:28

middle America, which is sort of with our

21:30

2016 answer to that kind of

21:32

question. I think that there's something that we can

21:34

really think about, like what really

21:37

gets people to believe a piece

21:40

of misinformation. And you and I worked together

21:42

for a long time in the media group

21:44

looking at traditional media. And I've

21:46

been talking to misinformation researchers that

21:48

social media is clearly very important.

21:51

But the way that the messages that

21:53

surface on social media get translated and

21:56

amplified and used in traditional

21:58

media is in. some ways

22:01

as if not more important. And so I'm

22:03

really also looking at the way these two

22:05

different worlds kind of communicate with one another.

22:07

Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, Sarah, Pranshu, and Kat,

22:10

thank you so much. We'll have to leave

22:12

it there, but thanks for joining us today.

22:23

Good afternoon. I'm Jonathan Capehart, Associate

22:25

Editor here at the Washington Post

22:28

and here with me Adam Brie,

22:30

CEO of, we're gonna talk about

22:32

this in a minute, of

22:34

Skydio, the leading joint manufacturer

22:36

in the United States. Adam, welcome to the

22:39

Washington Post. Thank you, great to be here.

22:41

So I sort of giggled in saying the

22:43

company name because I asked you how do

22:45

you pronounce it? So how do you pronounce

22:47

the company name? Skydio. Skydio. I

22:49

speak Italian, so when I saw it I said, oh, Skydio.

22:53

And in Italian, Dio means God. So

22:55

they're, oh, how clever. Sky God.

22:58

Was that on purpose? That was

23:00

unintentional. So Skydio comes from Sky

23:02

Studio. We were thinking

23:04

Sky Studio and you Google Sky Studio and you get a

23:06

million hits and when we were a three-person startup there was

23:08

no way we were gonna be at the top of that.

23:10

But Skydio was more unique and we found

23:13

out three months later that it also meant Sky God.

23:16

And so are you in the

23:18

Italian market? Not yet. Take

23:21

it from me. If you go to the Italian market,

23:24

Skydio. Yeah, we already, we know what our launch campaign

23:26

is gonna be there. So you co-founded

23:29

Skydio ten years ago, first producing

23:32

consumer drones and then designing

23:34

drones for military and corporate use. Talk briefly

23:36

about this evolution and how quickly was that

23:39

evolution? So the big bet that we made

23:41

when we started the company was that drones

23:43

can be useful for a really wide range

23:45

of tasks but a fundamental

23:48

limiter at the time and largely still

23:50

today is needing to have an expert pilot there

23:52

flying the drone. So when we

23:54

started we went all in on computer vision

23:56

and AI and this was in 2014 before

23:59

most people we thought these things were cool. We thought they were

24:01

cool. We thought that was gonna be a really big deal. So

24:03

the big bet that we made is make the thing

24:05

smart enough to fly itself, build in the skills of

24:08

an expert pilot, which just makes it more useful to

24:10

more people in more ways. And

24:12

we felt like the consumer market was probably gonna

24:14

develop first. That turned out

24:16

to be true. So our first products were consumer

24:18

oriented, but we always felt like the Consumer Product

24:21

Foundation was kind of the right

24:23

starting point for other kinds of applications. The

24:25

fundamental thing that our products do is put

24:28

sensors in important places to capture

24:30

useful information. You can think of it like a flying

24:32

camera. So the consumer platform did

24:34

in fact turn out to be a really useful starting

24:36

point for all the things that we do now across

24:38

a really wide range of industries. Construction,

24:41

public safety, energy utilities, all

24:44

the way up to national security and defense

24:46

and having soldiers use these things on the

24:48

battlefield. So since we have this here, so

24:52

this is a Skydio drone. Yeah. And

24:55

this is the closest I've ever come to actually

24:57

being near a drone. Is it heavy? Pick

24:59

it up. It's about four and a half

25:02

pound. Huh. And

25:04

how many different types of drones do

25:06

you have? So we have a

25:08

few different models, but this is our flagship drone. This

25:11

is the Skydio X10. We launched this at

25:13

the end of last year. And

25:16

this brings together a lot of really amazing

25:18

stuff. I sometimes say that drones are like

25:20

the Mount Everest of technology, but they have

25:22

every piece of wireless cameras,

25:25

optics, vibration, thermals, aerodynamics. And

25:28

then for our drones, a bunch of artificial intelligence

25:30

and machine learning built in as well. So

25:32

DJI, a Chinese company, it controls

25:35

more than 70% of

25:37

the global market, drone market, but in 2021, the

25:40

US government put the company on

25:42

an investment blacklist. How

25:44

has that impacted Skydio's growth? So

25:46

I would say that there's two big themes

25:48

in the market that we think are really

25:50

important. The first is the transition to AI

25:53

and autonomy. And with a lot of organizations,

25:55

drones have reached a point where they've proven

25:57

that they can be really valuable. Energy.

26:00

utility might have set up a drone program. They've

26:02

got somebody who's an expert drone pilot who started

26:04

bringing their drone to work. They're proving that they

26:06

can capture useful data. But then the question is,

26:08

how do you scale that? And

26:11

training everybody to be an expert pilot or

26:13

hiring expert pilots is very difficult. And so

26:15

AI and autonomy makes these things more useful

26:17

to more people. The other big

26:19

trend, I think, is cyber and national security.

26:22

And most of the drones in the market today are

26:24

made by Chinese

26:27

companies. And I think it's just become clear over

26:30

time that that's fundamentally

26:32

untenable for a lot of critical

26:34

industry applications to have drones that,

26:37

at the end of the day, are going to be

26:39

beholden to Chinese national security policy, which is mostly

26:42

in opposition to our national security. And

26:46

so there's a very strong

26:48

need in the market for secure

26:50

alternatives. And that

26:52

benefits us. But

26:55

I would say more than that, we

26:57

feel a responsibility to deliver because

27:00

it's important for our customers.

27:02

And I think it's important for our country. So

27:05

right now, your drones are being

27:07

used in real world situations. In

27:09

fact, there are hundreds of your

27:11

drones in Ukraine right now. And

27:14

we have some photos that were taken from a

27:16

Skydio drone in Ukraine.

27:19

I don't know which monitor, right behind

27:21

us. Can you explain

27:23

what we're looking at? So this

27:25

is work that we've done

27:28

with USAID in collaboration with

27:30

Ukraine's Office of Prosecutor General. And

27:33

it turns out, over the last few months,

27:35

Skydio drones have really become a critical tool

27:37

for documenting Russian war crimes. So we have

27:40

a product called 3DScan, where you

27:42

basically just tell the drone, here's the thing that I

27:44

want to create a digital copy of. And it will go

27:46

off and do it. And

27:48

at this point, they've scanned over 100 civilian structures

27:50

that have been attacked by the Russians.

27:52

And they're using it to basically gather

27:54

evidence and make a case. And

27:57

within the last couple of weeks, they've gotten a couple of

28:00

individuals. indictments in the International Criminal Court based

28:03

on evidence collected with our drones. So

28:05

this is just one application, but I think that I

28:08

was actually in Ukraine two weeks ago. It's

28:12

really a window into the future when it

28:15

comes to drone use. And

28:18

I think it's very clearly the

28:20

future of conflict and war, but I

28:22

think that it's also the future for

28:24

other industries because the stakes are so

28:26

high there, they have to use drones.

28:29

I mean, on the front lines, they don't do anything without putting

28:31

a drone in the air. They're using them to find targets. They're

28:33

using them to keep their own troops safe. They're

28:35

using them at just massive, massive scale, consuming 10,000

28:38

plus drones a month. So

28:42

as we were showing the pictures there, you

28:44

notice, everyone noticed that we stopped on this

28:46

one particular picture. And this one looks very

28:48

different from all the other ones. Can you

28:50

explain what we're looking at here? Yeah,

28:53

I mean, so this was a civilian structure that

28:55

was attacked by the Russians. And

28:57

basically, they're using... This is a 3D

28:59

model that was created. So the drone

29:01

went out and captured hundreds

29:03

of photos of the structure. And

29:06

then there's a software process called photogrammetry where

29:08

those photos are stitched together to create a

29:11

metric 3D model that you can use to

29:13

take measurements, you can use to capture different

29:15

angles. And so in their

29:17

case, they're using it to figure out what

29:19

kind of munitions were used, which angle those

29:21

munitions came in from as part of

29:23

building a case. And it's actually worth noting that

29:25

this kind of thing is a major use case

29:28

for public safety agencies in the US. They use

29:30

these things for crime and accident scene documentation. This

29:33

is just a very, very high stakes and really

29:35

tragic example. So as you just mentioned a moment

29:37

ago, you were in Ukraine. What's

29:40

your takeaway after having seen the front

29:43

lines and how your drones are being used in

29:45

person? So as

29:47

I said, I think it's really a

29:50

window into the future. And I think

29:52

it unfortunately highlights this tension

29:55

and the necessity of having secure

29:58

alternatives to Chinese. drones. So the

30:00

Ukrainians are still heavily dependent on

30:03

Chinese drones they're using and Chinese drone

30:05

technology. They're still using them at massive

30:07

massive scale but it's a super fragile

30:10

dependency because these drones and the companies

30:12

that make them are ultimately hostile to

30:15

their interests. So you

30:17

know China has put in place export controls to

30:19

try to make it harder for the Ukrainians to

30:21

get these drones. The companies themselves

30:23

have put in place firmware things that make them

30:25

less useful to the Ukrainians so they constantly have

30:27

to hack the firmware to get them to do

30:29

what they need and

30:31

I you know

30:33

I see this as just a significant

30:36

challenge to us and the rest of

30:38

the US industry to

30:40

step up our game and

30:43

deliver products that are useful

30:45

for them and you know the impact isn't

30:47

zero today but it's not

30:49

as much as it should be and this

30:51

is becoming a major major focus for myself

30:55

and Scott you know we've delivered thousands

30:57

of our drones to the US and

30:59

Western allies but where it matters

31:01

most on the battlefield in Ukraine I

31:03

think that that's you know that's the proving ground and

31:06

and that's really what we need to be focused on

31:09

both for their sake but I think ultimately for ours as

31:11

well. So this drone here

31:13

and the drones are being used in

31:15

Ukraine are as you mentioned before being

31:17

used to in addition to

31:19

all the other things you talked about document war

31:21

crimes but there are also there are other drones

31:24

that are being used as weapons of

31:27

war and America has a storied history

31:29

with the use of armed drones to

31:31

kill enemies in foreign countries how do

31:33

you reconcile the products you're developing with

31:36

the moral and ethical concerns of drone

31:39

warfare? Yeah it's a great question and something that

31:41

we think a lot about so the

31:44

Ukrainians are using all different kinds of

31:46

drones I mean they have like wing

31:48

drones, quadcopter drones, multirotor drones, surveillance drones,

31:50

decoy drones and then

31:52

they also have a category of they

31:55

call them FPV kamikaze drones so FPV means

31:57

first-person view it means you fly the drone

31:59

by wearing goggles that show you what

32:01

the drone sees. And this

32:03

is one of the primary methods that they're using

32:05

to deliver strikes now, where you fly an FPV

32:08

drone, you put a munition on it, and

32:10

you use it to go and find a target. So

32:12

that is not something that we make. We are very

32:14

focused on surveillance

32:17

drones. So this is in the military, they

32:19

call it ISR, intelligence surveillance reconnaissance. So our

32:21

drones are really designed to make it really

32:23

easy to see what's happening, get better information,

32:26

and make better decisions. And

32:28

I fundamentally believe

32:31

in the mission of the US military and

32:33

our allies, they have very difficult jobs to

32:35

do. And I think that giving them tools

32:37

that give them better information to

32:39

make better decisions is really important, good work.

32:42

I think there are tricky

32:44

questions as you start getting more and

32:46

more automated systems that

32:49

can deliver strikes, lethal strikes.

32:52

And this is something that the world is going

32:54

to have to grapple with. It's

32:57

not something that we're focused

33:00

on, because we're focused on the information gathering drones.

33:02

But that is still part of the kill chain.

33:04

I mean, that's part of the equation of having these

33:06

automated systems. And it's something that

33:08

we're getting increasingly thoughtful about as a company. But we're

33:11

not alone in it. The US military thinks about this

33:13

stuff a lot. And

33:15

they're increasingly refining their policies around

33:17

weapon systems and weapon systems with

33:19

AI. And I think it's

33:22

going to be a project for the world,

33:24

really, to grapple with. So Adam, let's talk

33:26

about police departments. You work

33:28

with police departments across the United States.

33:30

Explain how drones are being used in

33:32

those departments. So they're used for all

33:35

kinds of things. I

33:37

mentioned crime and accident scene documentation. If

33:40

you have a crash on a highway, it could

33:42

take three or four hours using

33:44

conventional methods for somebody on the ground to walk

33:46

around and perform all the measurements that they need

33:49

to gather the evidence that they care about. With

33:52

a drone, you can do that in 20 minutes.

33:55

You can clear the crash scene faster. It's just

33:57

a phenomenal thing for everybody. They're used for search

33:59

and rescue missions. I think we're seeing a search

34:02

and rescue mission sort of training exercise

34:04

here with Oklahoma City PD using

34:06

one of our drones. Hold on. Are

34:08

those voices coming from the video or is

34:11

something happening? Okay, it's coming from the video. We

34:13

could probably turn off the audio on the video.

34:16

Go ahead. Sorry, Adam. But

34:20

they're also used in the highest stakes

34:22

scenario. You might have a

34:24

situation where you have an armed suspect loose

34:26

in a neighborhood and conventionally

34:28

you'd have officers on an

34:30

eight hour manhunt going door to door, guns

34:33

drawn, looking for something that somebody that could

34:35

be dangerous. And we have

34:37

examples in our customer base increasingly on a daily basis

34:39

where you put a drone in the air. You

34:42

can find the person. You can see if they're armed or

34:44

not. You can guide the officers in. And

34:47

I think that's fundamentally better for everybody involved. You

34:49

know, it keeps the officer safer. It keeps the

34:52

community safer. It even keeps the suspect safer because

34:54

the officers don't have to guess about

34:57

what they're walking into. So

34:59

the notion of drones in policing and especially

35:02

AI enabled drones in policing, I think, can

35:05

get folks rightfully concerned because there's

35:07

certainly potential for misuse,

35:10

abuse, privacy invasion. You

35:13

know, what I would say having worked with a

35:15

lot of agencies over the last few years is

35:17

that our most sophisticated best

35:19

customers take transparency incredibly seriously.

35:21

You know, a lot of them release

35:23

the footage from their drone flights quickly

35:26

after them. And

35:29

in a lot of ways, drones are like

35:31

a flying body camera. Like it creates this

35:33

sort of objective picture of whatever happened. But

35:37

you know, body camera typically can only document

35:39

what happened. Drones can actually affect the outcome

35:41

because you can put a drone into a

35:43

dangerous situation that you wouldn't want to put

35:45

a person to get that information proactively rather

35:47

than reactively and make better decisions. Hmm.

35:53

Yeah, let's talk about it.

35:55

Well, we only have

35:57

four minutes and 30 seconds, so I can't even

35:59

go to... down the rabbit hole I wanted to

36:01

go down. But what do you say to critics

36:04

who believe drones enable police departments to behave like

36:06

big brother? So I don't

36:09

want to live in a world where we have drones

36:11

randomly flying overhead surveilling in our houses. I don't want

36:13

to live in that world. I don't

36:15

want to build that world. And

36:17

we have been very proactive on

36:19

this front. We've engaged

36:21

with public safety community organizations to release

36:24

a set of principles that

36:26

we think lead to the best outcomes

36:28

for their communities, things like

36:31

transparency, protecting privacy. And

36:34

there's a lot of things you can do from a

36:36

technology perspective to help with this. I mean, the

36:38

drone knows where it is. It knows what it's filming.

36:41

It can not point its camera at things that it

36:43

shouldn't be pointing its camera at. It can focus on

36:45

whatever task the officer cares

36:48

about. And

36:50

so I think

36:52

there's some technology things that can be done. I

36:55

think there's practices and best

36:58

practices within public safety

37:00

agencies that can be set up

37:02

and followed. And ultimately,

37:04

these agencies are accountable to

37:06

the communities that they serve.

37:09

There's always some democratic chain up

37:12

through that. And I think

37:14

that that's a really important mechanism.

37:16

And the

37:20

best agencies, I think, really lean into the transparency

37:22

element of it, which I think is really the

37:24

best answer. And what we've seen is that the

37:26

more that a community understands what their officers are

37:28

doing with drones, in general, the more

37:30

supportive of it they become because they can see the

37:32

impact on community safety. When

37:34

you say democratic chain, you mean small

37:36

d, democratic change, meaning people have a

37:38

say. Yeah, I mean like the sheriff.

37:42

We sell to a lot of sheriffs, county sheriffs,

37:44

who are elected directly. So

37:47

you lengthened it earlier to sort of

37:51

like a body cam. And we've seen

37:53

instances where we thought body cams were

37:56

going to be the thing that solved

37:58

everything until we got there. We had

38:00

police involved shootings where, oh my

38:02

god, the body cam wasn't working,

38:04

or the body cam wasn't turned

38:06

on. So in the end,

38:09

who controls the footage that

38:12

the drone picks up? And

38:14

is there any possible way

38:16

that we could see

38:18

the, oh, the drone wasn't recording

38:20

in a high profile situation? So

38:24

this is a newer product, but

38:26

I think it's going to become the

38:28

dominant operating paradigm. We have a capability

38:30

with X10 called Remote Flight Deck, where

38:32

the drone has a LTE modem in

38:34

it. It can be flown remotely. So

38:36

you can have an officer in a

38:38

remote flight center who is, through

38:40

a web browser, controlling the drone. And one

38:42

of the things that that does is

38:45

it gives some time and distance between

38:47

the person who's in the heat of the moment

38:49

on the ground. You've got somebody who's removed from

38:53

that who can be more objective

38:55

and be a guide to the people who are actually on

38:57

the ground. So increasingly, I think

39:00

you'll see the center of control shift

39:02

from the officers who are actually on

39:04

the scene in the moment to folks

39:07

who are helping them and on their

39:09

team. They're police officers themselves, usually, but

39:11

who are operating remotely. And I think

39:14

that separation can be quite valuable in

39:18

terms of the outcomes. And it's all digital stuff.

39:20

I mean, the drone is recording the video. We

39:24

have a partnership with a company called Axon that

39:26

has a digital evidence management system where

39:28

the video gets uploaded. It tracks chain of

39:30

custody. So there's good

39:32

controls in place. And I

39:34

think that the availability of this objective

39:36

aerial video is fundamentally a

39:39

good thing for transparency and

39:41

accountability of police officers.

39:43

Don't be fooled by the clock, because it says we

39:45

have 45 seconds. But I've got two questions.

39:47

So we're going to go over time. And

39:50

you've touched on AI technology. And

39:52

I want you to expand a

39:54

little bit in

39:56

reaction to something that retired Admiral

39:58

James Cerritos recently wrote. in

40:01

the Wall Street Journal. And I'm quoting here,

40:03

the winning side will

40:05

be the one that's developed the

40:08

AI-based decision making that can outpace

40:10

their adversary. This is using

40:13

AI technology in drones. My question

40:15

is, what happens when the country

40:17

that's developing those AI drones en

40:21

masse is Iran or

40:24

China? Do you believe the US is

40:26

currently outpacing other countries

40:28

in that space? So

40:32

I basically wholeheartedly agree with the

40:34

sentiment there. And

40:39

I look at things through a drone lens. We're a

40:41

drone company. If you look

40:43

at the last decade of drones, there's no

40:45

question it has been dominated by Chinese companies.

40:48

But I think the shift to

40:50

AI and autonomy presents an opportunity for the

40:53

US to really stage a comeback. I do

40:55

believe that by and large,

40:57

the US is leading the way in

40:59

AI today, like the most cutting edge

41:02

stuff is happening here. And

41:04

this is fundamentally why we founded the company, because

41:06

we believe that AI and autonomy were the future

41:08

of the industry. And we

41:10

have a technology lead there over our Chinese counterparts.

41:13

And I think that that stuff is going to

41:15

become more and more important. So we

41:18

can't stop other countries from developing

41:20

it. But what we can do is move

41:22

as fast as we possibly can ourselves. And

41:25

I think that that really matters. The stakes are very

41:27

high. So we've talked

41:29

about the power and possibilities of

41:31

drones in warfare and public safety.

41:33

But is there anything that gives

41:36

you pause? Pause

41:40

in terms of how it's? Yeah,

41:42

I mean, yeah. So we watch the Terminator

41:44

movies. That's what I

41:46

mean. Well, the drones, there's a humanity.

41:48

Yeah, there might be some software classes

41:51

inside Skydio called Skynet. Look,

41:55

I think that the I'm

41:57

a technology optimist. I think that if you look at the

42:00

at what our products are doing today. The

42:03

most exciting thing to me, we're building this

42:06

incredibly cutting edge sci-fi level technology. But

42:08

we're really deploying it to the core industries

42:10

that our civilization runs on. We're giving it

42:12

to energy utilities and construction workers and departments

42:14

of transportation. And they're using it

42:17

to do things that would be, where the alternative

42:19

is like a person hanging

42:21

off a rope to go inspect something,

42:23

or not knowing the state

42:26

of an insulator in a substation that could lead to

42:28

an explosion. And so there

42:31

are certainly things that you could be concerned about. And

42:33

we try to think through this stuff. We try to

42:35

be proactive as a company. We try to engage with

42:37

external experts to help us think about our product roadmap

42:39

and whatnot. But I think that

42:42

the impact today is overwhelmingly

42:45

positive. And I still think we're just scratching

42:47

the surface of what's possible. So

42:50

I'm generally very excited and optimistic about

42:52

the impact that technology is having now and where

42:55

it's going. OK, so I lied. I have one

42:57

more question because I got to ask it before

42:59

the last question. And you've mentioned this a couple

43:01

of times. And for those of you who know

43:04

drones and the technology, I

43:06

apologize for the simple-minded question. But a

43:08

couple of times, you talked about expert

43:10

pilots. Yeah. How do

43:12

you become an expert pilot? I

43:15

mean, if I flew airplanes, would I be

43:17

a good candidate to become a drone pilot? This

43:20

is a great question to end on. So

43:22

I'm an expert pilot. An

43:24

expert drone pilot? I am, yeah. So I agree. Just to

43:26

be clear. Yeah. Which

43:28

is actually harder than being a real airplane

43:30

pilot. We could talk about that. Because

43:32

when you're flying an airplane, you're in it. You

43:34

see exactly what it sees. You feel what it

43:36

feels. Whereas when you're on the ground trying to

43:38

fly a drone, you have to sort of project

43:41

yourself into it. So I

43:43

grew up flying radio-controlled airplanes. I took it

43:45

way too seriously as a kid. I actually

43:48

won a couple of national championships. There's competitions

43:50

for drone flying. Most

43:52

people don't know about that. I did not. It is

43:54

as nerdy as you would expect. Absolutely. So

43:59

it takes place. years of practice, like anything else,

44:01

like you can spend as much time as you want on it,

44:03

and the more time you spend, the better you get. And actually,

44:05

so I grew up flying this stuff, and

44:07

then I was starting grad school at MIT around the

44:09

time when you could first take radio control airplanes and

44:11

put computers and sensors on them, and write

44:13

software to get them to do smart stuff. So

44:15

my origin into this was basically trying to take

44:18

the things that I could do as an

44:20

expert pilot and codify them into

44:22

algorithms to get the drone to

44:24

do it on its own. And

44:27

that's sort of the genesis of the technology

44:29

stack that's in our Skydio drones

44:31

now. Hmm.

44:35

After hearing that last answer, I really do

44:37

think you should change the pronunciation to Skydio.

44:41

Adam Brie, thank you so much for joining us

44:43

here today. Thank you. Thank you. Hold

44:46

on one second. Yeah,

44:48

this is the closest we'll get to

44:51

TV at a newspaper. That concludes today's

44:53

Futurist Summit. Whether you joined us here

44:55

at the Washington Post or online, thank

44:57

you for being part of a fascinating

45:00

day of conversation. For those in

45:02

the audience, please join us in

45:04

the lounge for lunch. I'll

45:06

be out there with a number of my colleagues from The

45:08

Post across the newsroom. So

45:10

look for the sign Meet The Post. We

45:12

look forward to meeting you. Thank you again.

45:18

Thanks for listening. For more information

45:20

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45:22

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