Speakers Called For Balance Between Enthusiasm For Technology And Risks It May Bring

Attendees of Wednesday’s keynote addresses on “The Unmanned Lifestyle” heard calls to balance enthusiasm for all that unmanned systems can bring to humanitarian causes and public safety with caution regarding the risks of turning over too much decision-making control to intelligent machines — and those who might hack them.

Opening speaker Zeynep Tufekci, a techno-sociologist based at the University of North Carolina, emphasized the importance of acknowledging the potential for discord and destabilization during times of great transition. On balance, she said, outcomes can be overwhelmingly positive, but the progress is often painful.

“You often hear how well the first industrial revolution turned out. We have modern medicine, we have books, we have knowledge — it’s great, right? We have industrial production; it’s wonderful in so many ways. But it also brought about hundreds of years of upheaval.”

Tufekci particularly emphasized the risks of fuzzy accountability when problems arise with products that incorporate more and more advanced computer technology. For example, while autonomous driving has great potential for making roadways safer by eliminating human error, it also could put car manufacturers in a position of selling products with components they don’t understand well enough to ensure security.

While they also emphasized the importance of safety, the second and third speakers focused more on how corporations have helped to save lives by bringing unmanned technologies to humanitarian efforts.

For example, Eduardo Martinez spotlighted the UPS Foundation’s Global Humanitarian Relief and Resilience Program, which uses drones to provide disaster relief. Martinez is president of the foundation, which leads UPS’s philanthropic efforts, many of which aim to further the United Nations’ Global Sustainable Development Goals.

Martinez showed photos of people around the world facing earthquakes, floods, and wildfires, as well political and civil unrest, noting that such circumstances often destroy roads and airports. “The last mile to get to people in desperate circumstances is often the most difficult. And that’s where logistics expertise and drones have become critical.”

As an example, Martinez cited work that the UPS Foundation did in partnership with the American Red Cross and drone manufacturer CyPhy Works to help victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana last year. CyPhy’s Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications (PARC) system flew at 400 feet to provide a bird’s-eye view of damage even before waters began to recede or volunteers could begin to canvas neighborhoods.

Martinez said the foundation is also using drones to provide relief in regions where public healthcare suffers from poor transportation infrastructure. He cited the World Health Organization estimate that 5.9 million children younger than 5 years old died last year because they lacked access to basic care.

To that end, the UPS Foundation already has partnered with Zipline and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in Rwanda. Many health centers there receive deliveries just twice a year, but with a drone, deliveries can increase to two per day to more than 100 centers. The foundation aims to expand the program to countries with similar needs.

The final speaker, Stephanie Hill (pictured, above), added multiple examples of corporate work to use autonomous systems by Lockheed Martin to help people survive desperate times. Hill is senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development at Lockheed Martin.

“We live in an extremely complex world with a full range of complex problems,” Hill said. And today we are addressing those problems by combining sensors that will allow machines to sense the world around us using intelligent software to plan and execute complex actions and then evaluate the impact of those actions.”

Among the examples she cited was a demonstration of different autonomous vehicles collaborating in a way that she expects to become a regular occurrence in firefighting. Last year, she noted, California spent $1.8 billion fighting wildfires and lost 40 lives.

In the demonstration, Hill said, an unmanned aircraft called Indago located the epicenter of a fire and sent info on the source so that water could be concentrated there. Another small UAV named Desert Hawk was used to survey the site and spotted a man at risk on the ground. Then an unmanned helicopter deployed to rescue the man.

(Image provided with AUVSI news release)

FMI: www.auvsi.com