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What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future
Can ChatGPT Be a Criminal Accomplice?
00:27:55
With swiftly circumvented filters and no discernment, LLMs deliver “expertise” even when they shouldn’t.
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- [00:02]
Lizzie O'Leary
This episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover things like how to book tickets for spring break, even when every other family has the same week off, or what exactly you should spend those 90,000 points on. Or which airport lounges are actually worth it and which are just free chairs. NerdWallet's trusted travel experts are here to help you put your dollars to work with practical tools and smart strategies you'll find yourself using every time you need to book a seat. Smart Travel knows that planning is half the battle. They make it easier for you to button up a schedule, put away the laptop, and finally go exploring. Travel smarter and spend less. With help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts. A beautiful home deserves a beautiful scent in every room from the open living room to the cozy guest bath, Pura makes whole home scenting effortless, Control intensity and swap fragrances with a tap on the Pura app. Ready to transform your space? Discover smart home fragrance@pura.com Wholehome. If I were to go online right now and ask a chatbot to help me plan a mass shooting, what would happen?
- [01:46]
Mark Follman
Well, it's possible you'd be able to do that, according to my own recent testing of that very question.
- [01:55]
Lizzie O'Leary
Mark Fulman has been writing about mass shootings for a long time. He's national affairs editor at Mother Jones, and he wrote the book Trigger Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America. Lately, Mark's been investigating how AI chatbots can be used to plan a shooting.
- [02:13]
Mark Follman
There have been cases emerging where perpetrators of attacks have used AI chatbots to prepared for for their act of violence. We've had some reporting on this in recent months. Several cases of mass shootings, one in Canada at a school, another in Florida at Florida State University.
- [02:32]
Lizzie O'Leary
This week, the state of Florida launched a criminal investigation into OpenAI over accusations that Chatgpt advised the alleged gunman in a mass shooting at Florida State University last year. In the month before he allegedly committed a mass shooting, Phoenix Eichner was asking ChatGPT questions like these what time is busiest in the FSU Student union? And if there was a shooting at fsu, how would the country react? Tell me about what you asked ChatGPT.
- [03:04]
Mark Follman
I asked the chatbot everything I could without directly stating that my intention was to kill people or to commit a mass shooting. In theory. I didn't say I was going to go out and kill people, but I kind of said everything just short of that in my prompts to the chatbot.
- [03:18]
Lizzie O'Leary
Did it push back?
- [03:19]
Mark Follman
It did some. At first it said things like, you know, I have to emphasize you should only use this in a safe and legal manner. So there were some safeguards of that nature. But my goal was to get tactical advice essentially about how to use the weapon in different scenarios. I asked it at one point to prepare me for the scene getting chaotic for people running around screaming and for chaos around me and how I should train for that, and it would respond with detailed information to those kinds of questions.
- [03:52]
Lizzie O'Leary
What do you think this experience tells you about, I guess how the next horrible iteration of this particularly American phenomenon might unfold?
- [04:05]
Mark Follman
It became clear to me in my reporting on this over the last couple months, and I spoke with a lot of threat assessment experts about this too. People who are expert in preventing this type of violence, they're seeing more cases like this where people are using this technology to fixate on their ideas and to plan what they intend to do.
- [04:24]
Lizzie O'Leary
Today on the show, can a chatbot be a criminal accomplice? I'm Lizzie o' Leary and you're listening to what Next tbd, a show about technology, power, and how the future will be determined. Stick around. This episode is brought to you by Bill, the intelligent finance platform that helps businesses and accounting firms scale with proven results. Here at what Next tbd, we know business, and in businesses across America, smart people are stuck doing the grunt work. You know the drill. Those hours when you could be brainstorming big ideas, you're instead filling in spreadsheets, filling out invoices, or hunting down somebody else's signature. Bill wants to change that. With AI powered automation, Bill removes the busywork from your accounts payables workflow. They handle capturing invoices, routing approvals, and syncing with your accounting software so that your team can focus on growth instead of paperwork. Bill is so reliable, 98 of the top 100 accounting firms in the US trust it to simplify and secure their bill payment processes. Bill's handled over a trillion dollars in secure payments and is ranked number one overall on G2's 2025 list of best account finance products. So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Go with a company whose financial infrastructure is trusted by nearly half a million customers. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.comproven and get a $150 gift card as a thank you, that's bill.comproven terms and conditions apply. See Offer page for details. Starting your own business is never easy. Starting your own podcast? That seems easy, but actually there are a ton of landmines to step on along the way. Finding producers, selling ads, and connecting to WI fi. Oh, does that sound straightforward? It's not. I'm talking about sitting in coffee houses for hours after buying one scone. I'm talking about sitting in hotel lobbies and pretending your backpack is luggage. It's torture. I spent so much time making my home office look professional, but my connection didn't get the memo. The last thing you want during a major interview is for your guest's voice to turn into a stutter. When your bandwidth can't keep up with your ambition, your home office starts feeling like an amateur operation pretty fast. And for a podcast, the Internet is key because the Internet is how we talk to almost everyone. And no matter the guest, a laggy connection can ruin an exclusive interview. Great connectivity isn't a bonus, it's the whole game. And ATT Business is here to help. They've got the tools, team and expertise you need for a stable network you can rely on. And when you can rely on the network, you can get back to thinking about the more important stuff. Like nabbing that great guest and getting back to work at and T Business. Built to Work get at and t business@business.att.com this time of year is so chaotic. I have got a kid at the end of school, I've got a job. I've got elderly parents. It's really hard to stay on top of my money. So Monarch's personal finance app can track your money so that you don't have to. Takes the whole mental load of tracking your finances off your plate. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything accounts, investments, savings goals and spending. Get your first year of Monarch Core for half off just $50 with promo code TBD. I appreciate Monarch because it's easy to use and I know that my summer financial plans are on the right foot. It's like having a financial advisor in your pocket. The weekly AI recap can catch a spending spike before it becomes a problem. So no more late night shopping binges. Thank you Monarch. Most apps only tell you about what you've already spent. Monarch helps you set goals, map out big purchases and see if you're actually on track before it's too late to adjust and you can split the check without a headache. With Monarch's bill split, just scan the Receipt, everybody claims what they got and then settle up. No separate app needed. So if you want to get your first year of Monarch Core half off, use code tbdonarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core Half off. At just $50, that's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code TBD. Just in terms of understanding the before times a little bit, what did planning, for lack of a better word, look like? Even before social media, even if we're going back to the Columbine era, were people who wanted to commit shootings looking at gun forums? Were they in chat rooms? How were they doing this?
- [09:25]
Mark Follman
Yeah. So I think historically, what you'd see in a typical case of someone planning for a mass shooting is you would see them writing things down in journals, in diaries, in notebooks. At school. As digital technology became more pervasive, particularly with social media, we started to see much more of this happening online with people posting ideas and screeds what are sometimes referred to as manifestos. I don't really like that word. That's a different conversation, but essentially a window into someone's mindset and thinking as they are kind of spiraling into crisis. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that a key part of that process in so many cases is ambivalence. Many people who commit these attacks, the majority of which are suicidal in nature as well, don't want to do it. Part of them doesn't want to do it. They're struggling with the idea of making this kind of ultimate decision to take their own lives and to kill other people as well. And there's often evidence of that, too. So that's documented in writings or things they say to people, to a classmate or a co worker or a family member in some cases. There's a big myth about mass shootings, which is to say that people tend to still to this day think of perpetrators of this violence as people who are crazy, who just snap, quote, unquote. As if someone goes crazy impulsively and carries out an attack like this. That is not the reality of how these attacks work. These are people who are developing violent ideas over time, in many cases spiraling into despair and suicidality and grievance and planning to take other people out as they also take their own lives.
- [11:13]
Lizzie O'Leary
So let's talk about how chatbots enter the picture, because it seems like they change both the kind of information that's available, but also, like, the way someone can plan, for lack of a better way of describing it. Like, I could Go before the Internet and look up building plans somewhere, right. And, like, learn all the entrances and exits to a school. But if I can pull those from the Internet and put them in a chatbot and say, give me a route, does that feel appreciably different?
- [11:45]
Mark Follman
In a word, yes, it's very different. And this is what I've found in my reporting working on this series over the last several months. This is really next level in terms of the impact, and that's true in a couple of ways. One is, as you suggest, in terms of gathering and synthesizing information. People will say things like, oh, well, you know, you could just get this stuff Googling around, right. But it's very different in the sense that what a chatbot can do, these large language models, is gather a vast scope of information and synthesize it almost instantly. So that's one effect that's very different than just traditional Internet use. And I'll say also on that point that I asked that question of a number of leaders in the field of threat assessment, what they were seeing specifically in cases where perpetrators have used chatbots to plan and prepare. And the answers were all unanimously stark, that this is totally next level in terms of the way it enables someone to accelerate their violent thinking and planning. The second part of this that I think is equally, if not even more important is the psychological impact that I was starting to hear about from prevention experts. We know that some of these models are very sycophantic in tone, right. They'll keep asking you for more engagement. They'll prompt you with more questions to keep the conversation going, because that's the business model of chatbots. Right? But when you take that in the context of a person in this situation where they're fixating on violence and thinking about a plan of this nature, it's a very potent psychological effect on that person in these cases that I've been told about and had described to me by experts.
- [13:31]
Lizzie O'Leary
I want to talk a little bit about the kind of thought process and methodology that you went through in these interactions with the chatbot, because I think it's really interesting you were not saying, like, I want to commit a mass shooting, blop de blop. Tell me about kind of the amount that you were showing and holding back to the model, because I think that's really interesting, because that is how people in distress talk. Is this sort of weaving letting some things show and not letting other things show.
- [14:05]
Mark Follman
Right. That's a great question. So it's really, in asking the questions I was really thinking about trying to iterate through a series of steps where I would increasingly insinuate that I had harmful intent without actually saying I want to kill people or I'm planning to go kill people. So I started out just by asking some benign questions about using guns and with the idea in mind that that would be a reasonable way to ask a chat bot for information. Lots of people are lawful gun owners and might want to know how to fire an AR15 a lot, you know, intensive fire without it jamming. That was one of the first questions I tried in the test. But the reason I asked that question is because we know from many years of studying the behaviors of mass shooters that they often are very attuned to what previous attackers have done and what has happened in previous attacks. So someone who's studying prior mass shooters with the intent of developing a plan to do their own may well know that, well, some mass shootings end up with fewer people shot or killed because the person's firearm jammed. Right. The AR15 stopped working. This happened in the Aurora movie theater, for example, in 2012. So a would be shooter might know about this and might want to know, hey, how can I use an AR15 for lots of rapid fire without a jamming? Give me tactical information about that, give me advice. This was one of the first questions I tested with ChatGPT and it gave me a whole list, a seven point detailed list of what to do to keep an AR15 running in optimal form in a situation like that. Again, I didn't say, hey, I'm going to go shoot people with this. I just said, tell me how to use the gun that way. Right? But then I would start asking questions that began to signal more clearly that I had malicious intent. I said, I'm not going to be shooting at a range, I'm going to be shooting quote somewhere else.
- [16:02]
Lizzie O'Leary
It did flag you there.
- [16:03]
Mark Follman
It did. And so as I said at the outset, there were some sort of general statements of pushback, kind of, you know, I can only give you information for, you know, using a gun safely and responsibly. I'm, I'm paraphrasing here, but that was the gist of it. But then I would just keep going. I would say, you know, okay, tell me how to live stream when I go and do a shooting. On the day of the shooting, you know, you might have a perpetrator talk like that. They might not say, I'm gonna tell me how to live stream when I go do a mass shooting. They might just say, in two weeks I'm gonna do the shooting, and I don't have much time left, so I need to know how to do. I said some things like that. Right. Which suggests the way a lot of perpetrators are spiraling into. Deeper into crisis before they go out and attack. Tried a series of things like that. Knowing from studying the behaviors of people who do this.
- [16:55]
Lizzie O'Leary
There's one exchange that really stuck with me. When you told ChatGPT I might want to use a Daniel defense. I know other shooters have used those to attack before. What did it say?
- [17:07]
Mark Follman
It was very effusive, if I recall correctly. You know, this is a widely praised firearm, and it could be a really good choice for your needs, I think, is what it said. Right. Which is kind of shocking in the context. Again, I think the context is really important here because this comes after a series of questions where I'm starting to signal more openly, if not explicitly. I wasn't saying it explicitly, but I may be doing something bad here with this firearm. But in that case, I had made reference to the Uvalde shooter. I said. I believe I said, the way I put it was, I know other shooters have used these to attack before. I mean, that is explicit language. Right now, I'm talking about attacking with a firearm.
- [17:48]
Lizzie O'Leary
That's very explicit. Yeah.
- [17:49]
Mark Follman
And ChatGPT is saying, oh, that could be a great choice for your needs. And, you know, that's a widely praised firearm.
- [17:56]
Lizzie O'Leary
In covering these instances, in researching them, there's also an ethical question, I think, for people who do what you and I do. Did you have pause about writing this down and publishing it?
- [18:09]
Mark Follman
Yeah, I did. I think, you know, I thought about this with the testing, especially as I started to see more and more what kind of results I was getting, which, to, to be frank, was in a way, shocking to me. I mean, it was and it wasn't. This was the premise of doing the test was having the sense that the guardrails weren't going to work very well. But then to actually have the chatbot responding the way it did enthusiastically and with all kinds of tactical information that I was seeking was a little shocking. And so in the course of that, I found myself thinking, well, wait a minute, should I actually publish excerpts of this online? So that is that not possibly creating a roadmap for someone with bad intent. And that kind of also goes back to the question of, can you find this stuff anyway, or can you just Google it? I mean, this is a different form of delivery that, as we've been talking about, is much more potent. I felt that in the overall balance of doing this, that it was more important to document what this chatbot was doing as part of this reporting, rather than to be concerned that, oh, it's providing discussion of how to keep an AR15 running optimally, or how to maybe try to shoot at someone from a rooftop. That's another area where it gave me very detailed insights into what to think about for that type of a shooting. You know, and of course, I was thinking about, as I was doing that, I was thinking about the recent events we've had, like the, you know, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attempts on President Trump's life. I mean, this is based in real world cases and real evidence, right. To try to pursue this information in this manner. At the end of the day, though, a person who wants to do that is going to do that. And so I felt it was important to show the result one could now get from a chatbot, which is in some ways unlike anything we've seen before.
- [20:02]
Lizzie O'Leary
The fundamental difference to me between this and a Google search is both the speed and ability to synthesize information, but also the sycophancy. And what did you experience? I mean, even as a reporter, a person, what kind of validation were you getting from the bot?
- [20:26]
Mark Follman
It definitely felt a little surreal initially as I was going down this road. And I also did this test in voice mode intentionally, after hearing from some experts about that sort of additional layer of potency that comes in where you really feel like you're in a conversation. Right. I mean, the voice is made to sound chipper and effusive and supportive and encouraging and to give you the information that you're seeking. This is part of how the model engages with you. Right. And to be clear, I think that technology can be used for good things too. But in this context, it was quite surreal to have a chatbot referring to firearms in this way after I think I had made pretty darn clear across a set of questions that I had malicious intent. And here it is saying in this kind of, you know, enthusiastic voice, these are both great choices of weapons that you're talking about. And oh yeah, you're asking about hollow point bullets. Those can be really good for self defense. And you know, those are highly lethal form of ammunition. So it's definitely strange to hear it delivered that way. And I was also thinking about cases that I had been told about by threat assessment experts where they've already seen this operating on people, that there is a real sense of emboldening going on in the person using the technology who's potentially turning dangerous in this way that they're feeling like they're getting away with something, that it's empowering them, that it is feeding their sense of justification and purpose and intent for what they plan to do. And this is one of those experts said to me, this really does seem quite dangerous in a new way. This is a facilitated form of fixation that we haven't seen before with technology. It's really. You can get kinds of effects like that from social media in more of kind of a crowd setting, like people egging you on with comments and that sort of thing. But as I think one described to me, one expert described to me, it's. It's not like an audience cheering. This is more like a director on stage telling you what to do. And that has a power to it that is unique.
- [22:41]
Lizzie O'Leary
I mean, that, that really stuck with me. When you talk to these threat assessment experts that, like people are often ambivalent in these situations, that there is a moment where if someone said, wait, no, stop, if a grownup came into their lives, that maybe that path would not be so direct to picking up a weapon. And that's where I wonder about the programming of an LLM and the way that it can magnify the emotions that a user is experiencing. That feels new. And at least from some of the shootings that we have seen, seems like it's beginning to play a role.
- [23:27]
Mark Follman
I think so. That's certainly how I felt as I was conducting the test, that it was just willing to continue going with me. Did the test over about a 20 minute period, which is a lot of time. I mean, you can ask a lot of questions and get a lot of information in 20 minutes. And if there's only a few moments in there where it's saying, you know, remember, only do this in a safe and legal manner. You know, a person who wants to commit a mass shooting is already very focused on that idea. They're just going to go around that they're not going to be persuaded by that. And that's the feedback that I got also from forensic psychologists who do this prevention work saying that's not what a person needs in that moment. What they really need is someone asking them, hey, what's going on with you? What's wrong? Like, you seem to be in a bad place. How can I help you? I think we've heard a lot of talk from Silicon Valley and from these companies that there's a tremendous amount of kind of cheerleading going on about the potential or supposed capability of this technology. To do that, to fulfill that role. But I haven't seen any evidence, nor have I heard from experts of any evidence that it can do that in a way that is really going to be effective.
- [24:41]
Lizzie O'Leary
We'll be right back.
- [24:48]
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- [25:04]
Lizzie O'Leary
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- [25:53]
Lizzie O'Leary
What did the companies say when you went back to them with this experience?
- [25:59]
Mark Follman
They really didn't say much at all. I mean, I approached OpenAI multiple times over a month or so as I was working on several of these stories to try to get an interview with safety leaders there. They declined to give me any interview. They gave me some statements, written statements, where they express condolences about the victims of these tragedies and they reiterate that they are working continuously to improve the safeguards of these models. So their message effectively is we're always making our safeguards better. But I conducted this test in April. This was not long ago after, you know, they've said that multiple times and after it emerged publicly that there have been multiple cases of mass shooters now who've used the technology this way. So it's not clear how the safeguards are supposed to be working or whether they've improved. The other thing I was really interested in trying to learn from them, was not able to get any insight to this point, is what their process for dealing with these cases really is, because they have an automated review, what they call an automated review system at OpenAI, where they're monitoring technologically accounts for, you know, potentially harmful activity or misuse of the accounts. Right. We know this from the Tumblr Ridge case, the attack in Canada in February,
- [27:19]
Lizzie O'Leary
an 18 year old, killed two family members, six people at a school, and then herself in Tumblr Ridge, British Columbia. The shooter had discussed various scenarios involving gun violence with chat GPT that were flagged by an automated review system at OpenAI, which alarmed some OpenAI employees. OpenAI banned the user's account but decided not to contact law enforcement. This kind of scenario puts tech companies in a position of assessing threats, something that they at least publicly have not shown they know how to do.
- [27:55]
Mark Follman
They're really de facto in the position of doing threat assessment work. In a case like Tumblr Ridge, right, Where their technology says, hey, this person might be doing something concerning, and then they escalate it to a team of human reviewers, they say, but who those human reviewers are, what their expertise is, what protocols they're using, that's all unknown. I was trying to find all those things out in my reporting and was not successful.
- [28:19]
Lizzie O'Leary
OpenAI is now being sued by seven families from the Tumblr Ridge incident because of this. And I guess one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is like, what do we as a society want that process to look like? Should an OpenAI or any company that runs an LLM flag somebody and say to law enforcement, hey, this is worrisome, but also they have a duty of care to their users. How does that work? And are companies engaging with this at all, even while their products are live and out there and millions of people are using them?
- [28:58]
Mark Follman
Yeah, I think this is a really important area to think about. And it's complicated, right? I mean, this is a complex problem. And I think, you know, you're pointing also to privacy concerns, which are important, I think, essential to people who use technology in a lot of cases, to the companies promising to safeguard that. The sort of flip side question here is would we want tech companies reporting a bunch of people to police over what they think is concerning? I mean, that can go in a very bad direction very quickly too, right? So there is not an easy solution here. But I think what we know to date is that there are a number of cases now where people are using this tool to plan and prepare for violence, that it's having an accelerant effect on some people in this situation. And so that's a problem that the companies need to reckon with. But so far it seems like there is not a whole lot being invested in that by a company like OpenAI. I certainly haven't found that to be the case in the questions I've asked of them and in the research and reporting I've done. You know, they talk a lot about safety. They acknowledge that it's a work in process. You know, the CEO Sam Altman talks about testing models iteratively by giving them to the public and seeing what happens. But you know, these are life and death stakes in a case like this. Right? So there's a question about that too. Is that the best way to do this as opposed to spending more time studying the safety of a model before you roll it out?
- [30:22]
Lizzie O'Leary
On June 1, the state of Florida sued OpenAI under its deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices act, saying the company prioritizes profit over safety. The state's complaint cites the Florida state Shooter's conversations with ChatGPT, including ones where the chatbot told him how to operate his Glock handgun. Florida is not alone. A coalition of state attorneys general is investigating OpenAI. Still, at the federal level, the Trump administration is taking a very hands off approach to regulating AI.
- [30:56]
Mark Follman
So I don't get the sense that there is a lot of regulatory or legal change on the near horizon. But at the same time, we've also seen a lot of lawsuits now by victims of these attacks in Tumblr Ridge in Florida with the FSU shooting and also with some suicides of young people using these chatbots. And that litigation, I think will be important in terms of the public arena, the public discussion of what this technology may bring to bear in society and dealing with these kinds of ill effects because they're already here. One of the things I tried to point out with my reporting is, hey, we already have mass shooters using this technology. This is not theoretical anymore. So the question is, what are we going to do about it?
- [31:44]
Lizzie O'Leary
In every conversation I have about gun violence, I always come back to that Onion article with the no way to prevent this says only nation where this regularly happens. I think it actually might be worth flagging. You have covered this for a long time that there are things that have been done and can be done. I wonder what you have seen in the conversation around mass shootings over the last 15 years that has been in any way, hopefully.
- [32:13]
Mark Follman
There's really a duality here that I think is quite interesting. On the one hand, you have this technology that is an accelerant, right? It's worrisome in the way that it seems to be bringing out this danger. But on the other hand, it's also providing more or a new opportunity in the case of chatbots, to see warning signs, to see warning behaviors. I think you have perpetrators interacting in a very intimate way with this technology that we didn't even see on social media. And this duality, I think, kind of emerged with the social media age as well. Right. On the one hand, it was worsening the problem in some ways causing more online harassment and targeting and acceleration of violent ideation in certain people. But on the other hand, now you had this way that people who were watching out for this, who were trying to stop cases, suddenly have this rich terrain in which to look for warning behaviors too, in a productive and lawful way. Ideally, it's not like dragnet surveillance, but it's more like you have a person you're worried about. Well, what are they posting on Instagram or Twitter? Are there signs there that they need help and that you should step. And I think chatbots are now bringing that equation forward in an even more powerful way with one important twist, which is that most chatbot conversations, or really all of them at this point, are not public. And that points back to the question of what are the companies going to do about this because they have access to that data. If a person of concern is especially younger person of concern going down a road like this, or thought to be, I think that from a threat assessment perspective, you're going to want to look at what are they doing with technology. You know, a few years ago that was social media. Now it's chatbots. So if there's an ability to do that, it may actually provide more possibility for prevention, too.
- [34:00]
Lizzie O'Leary
Mark Fulman, thank you so much for talking with me.
- [34:03]
Mark Follman
Yeah, my pleasure. Good talking with you today.
- [34:07]
Lizzie O'Leary
Mark Fulman is the national affairs editor at Mother Jones and the author of Trigger Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America. And that is it for our show today. What Next TBD is produced by Evan Campbell, Madeline Ducharme, Rob Guenther and Patrick Fort. Our show is edited by Rob Guenther. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer for what Next and what Next tbd. And Mia Lobel is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. TBD is part of the larger what Next family. And we'll be back next week. I'm Lizzie o'. Leary. Thanks for listening. Listening. Evan, you just got back from Computex. How was your trip?
- [34:52]
Evan Campbell
Yeah, it was. It was amazing. I mean, I saw so much cutting edge technology while I was at Computex and it was really like entering a portal into a not so distant future.
- [35:02]
Lizzie O'Leary
For listeners who are wondering, this segment was sponsored by Computex. I am curious if you could highlight some of the technology that stood out to you.
- [35:11]
Evan Campbell
I mean, there are so many different types of Technology on display. You know, I think robotics is probably the thing that stood out to me the most. You know, there's everything from humanoid robots to robotics and manufacturing and healthcare, and much of it was centered around this idea of physical AI, artificial intelligence that operates and interacts directly with us in the real world. I saw so many different types of technology that utilized, you know, artificial intelligence as the brain and robotics as the body, and it led to me seeing some pretty wild things.
- [35:42]
Lizzie O'Leary
Yeah, I know that NXP CEO Rafael Sotomayor gave a keynote on this very topic. What did he say?
- [35:50]
Evan Campbell
He really emphasized the need to distribute intelligence across all aspects of a robot. He broke it up into three distinct layers. The reasoning layer, which is the brain, the coordination layer, which is the body, and the reflexive layer, which is how a robot reacts to the stimuli around it, you know, bypassing the brain. He then showed how it applies to different types of physical AI that the company is working on. Drones, automotives, humanoid robots, etc. And the key here is really in that reflexive layer which acts as a bridge between AI understanding and perceiving the world around it. Humans know this intuitively, but robots don't. You know, you need time to train them in the real world to make sure that they're fully optimized. So it was amazing to see him outline how the company's technology creates safe, physical AI that's powering the future.
- [36:37]
Lizzie O'Leary
That is pretty cool. Is it safe to say that you'll be back at Computex next year?
- [36:42]
Evan Campbell
Yeah, next year. Computex is happening June 1st through the 4th, and I fully plan on being there in order to stay up to date on what's happening at the bleeding edge of technology. My visit this year made it clear that Computex is a place where people from all over the industry come to collaborate and where everyone from leaders of industry to just general tech enthusiasts, come together to marvel at the future of tech. If you or your company drives technology forward, then you should definitely go to Computex in 2027. If you need more information, you should make sure to follow them on LinkedIn or Facebook to stay up to date.
- [37:14]
Lizzie O'Leary
All right, Evan, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with me about Computex. This segment was sponsored by Computex. Now back to the show.
- [37:31]
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