denham, a republican from california, heavy latino district, and he's pushing to expand the immigration language to allow illegal immigrants to serve in the military in exchange for legal status. now, he has tried that in the past and gop leaders didn't allow him a vote on that amendment on the floor, and it's not clear if they're going to do the same thing this year. but he's also pushing for that even as more conservative guys want to eliminate the sense of the congress language that's already in there. so you're going to see that republican versus republican battle on the floor on thursday over this defense bill and immigration. >> a full week ahead in both the house and senate. we appreciate mike lilles who covers congress for the hill joining us. thank you very much. >> thank you, bill. appreciate it. the new congressional directory is a handy guide to the 114th congress with color photos of every senator and house member plus bio and contact information and twitter handles.

also district maps a foldout map of capitol hill, and a look at congressional committees, the president's cabinet, federal agencies and state governors. order your copy today, it's $13.95, plus shipping and handling through the c-span online store at cspan.org. tonight on "the communicators," at this year's consumer electronics show we met up with you a thor peter nowak who says we're in a new phase of human development and through robots and other technology we're likely to enhance the human condition. >> robots i think is an especially interesting one because 2014 i think was the year of robot angst. i don't know if i could -- a day went by i didn't see some kind of story about how robots are stealing jobs from humans and we're all going to end up out of work. on a daily basis you hear stories about here is a robot that's a better bartender than humidities a better waitress or waiter than humans and so on and

so on. the thing that i find -- the point i think that's missed a lot is that every prior revolution or advance in automation has actually resulted in better jobs for humans. we're really worried about the robots taking our jobs and we're having a hard time meteorologisting what we're going to be doing not just 200-year-olds from200 years from now but even 10 years from now. i think history has shown we will find a way to combine with the robots to create new jobs that were previously unimaginable. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. friday the brookings institution hosted a discussion on the challenges and opportunities with autonomous vehicle technology. speakers included deputy assistant secretary of state for science, space, and health jonathan margolis as well as industry leaders from daimler north america and siemens corporation. this is just over 90 minutes.

>> good morning, everyone. i'm cole donovan from the u.s. department of staft and it's my great pleasure to welcome all of you to the discussion on bringing driverless cars from markets and introduce you to the deputy assistant secretary of state for science, speight and health, dr. jonathan margolis. as a member of the service, dr. margolis oversees policy programs in the areas of international science technology, international health and b.io defense and space and advanced technologies. he also conducted courses at the university of maryland, american university and at the foreign service institute on these areas. dr. margolis began his career at the department of state as an american association for the advancement of science policy fellow and has worked in numerous bureaus and divisions at the intersections of science and diplomacy. with that i will turn the floor

over to dr. margolis. >> good morning, everyone. my name is jonathan margolis and i do work at the department of states a the deputy assistant secretary of state for science, space, and health. it's my pleasure to be here today at the brookings institution and i would like to thank brookings for putting together this distinguished panel to talk to us today about autonomous vehicles. let me also thank my colleagues from the embassy of germany here in washington for their work in bringing together some of the panelists today. the topic for today is one that is near and dear to the obama administration. i think most of you know that the obama administration has placed a huge emphasis on the critical role of science, technology, and innovation. s and t underpins many societal goals whether they're security goals, economic goals, environmental goals health

goals, it's at the center of them. and today science is global. many countries around the world are increasing their investments in r & d and that's true in uecd countries. and the countries with aspirations to develop further further and bolder economies and in the united states we are facing a situation where we have to start thinking about how our scientists can engage not only domestically but much more internationally globally so they can get access to the best minds that may be out there, some of which are here, some of which are outside the borders, and the best institutions, some of which are here and some of which may be outside of our borders. in the state department we have a concept we call science diplomacy. we think about using science to advance our diplomatic goals and using science to vance our diplomatic goals. the goal is to use science to address some of the global challenges that may exist out there and the answers to those challenges may come through

international collaborations in science. this is part of what secretary kerry has referred to as the shared prosperity agenda, a way of raising economic growth in other countries around the world. in my part of the state department where i work now in the bureau of oceans, international environmental and scientific affairs, we maintain over 50 bilateral science and technology cooperation relationship was other countries. the goal of which is to advance our science and technology cooperation as part of the broader agenda that the state department might have for building its relationships overseas. one of those countries is germany, and we're here today in large part because two days ago experts from the united states and germany met to discuss bilateral science and technology cooperation as part of what we call the u.s./germany joint committee on science and technology cooperation. that's one of the ways that the state department advances science diplomacy, and in this meeting i described that we had two days ago, we identified

areas of joint cooperation. one of those areas was e mobility. so the topic specifically we'll be talking about today is very much on the minds of those engaged in the bilateral kooges between the united states and germany. e mobility is a piece, central piece, of the obama administration's national innovation strategy, and the discussions that took place earlier in the week formally between the two governments, the discussions that will take place here today, fit squarely with president obama's prioritization of advanced vehicle technology as part of what will be the soon to be released national strategy for american innovation. this technology i think you all know judging by the interest here today could be a transformative technology. the experts talk about this in terms of not only the technology spinoffs you might have, but also reducing traffic fatalities potentially -- it says so here i'm not sure it's true, to zero. the panel will discuss that, i'm

sure by 2050. doing so, however, will require a major major investment not only in r & d but a range of other issues. in the obama administration's budget for 2016 it doubles the request for investment in autonomous vehicles and proposes a number of pilot programs to prepare the roadways for safe introduction of these vehicles. clearly that's a u.s. priority, but if you think about this in the international context the technologies that are going to be 1r06dinvolved, the applications will go far beyond our borders. we need to cooperate with other countries particularly those countries that have major automobile exporting capabilities and manufacturing capabilities. the major manufacturing companies in countries such as germany, japan the united states others as well where the largest auto manufacturers are in the world will need to cooperate on the development of the technologies but also the

difficult fusion of the technologists and the environmental, health, and safety regulations that will be part of making this technology as transformative as it can be. this brings me to the next point that i'm sure the panel will discuss, that's the enabling environment that will be necessary to create to make the technology work. we need to work together internationally to make sure that the new market can take advantage of the best approaches towards innovation and technology technology diffusion. safety issues, market conditions, a whole range of things to make this possible. the individuals we have on this panel, i think we're in very good hand. i was privileged to be with the group at the beginning when they were discussing about what topics they might cover and i think you're in for a real treat in the sense the folks we have here cover a wide range of capabilities not only from the development of the technologies the vision for where we're trying to get to using those technologies, the implications for society as those

technologies get applied outside of a government context and then ultimately the international implications and how those international cooperation mechanisms might be necessary. so with that as kind of the preview of what we're going to do and why we're here today, let me say again how delighted i am to be here to express the state department's joy at co-sponsoring this event and i will turn the floor over to ben now to moderate the session. thank you, ben. [ applause ] >> thank you all for coming out on a beautiful morning when we would all normally be outside to talk about driverless vehicles. i want to do this in a discussion oriented way so the panelists all agreed to dispense with opening presentation statements and we are going to go right into a conversation. i am going to introduce the

individual panelists as i direct initial questions to them so as to not gum up your time with repeating information that is lovely, all available in the andouts that you were given as to their full bios. a couple of things, we will take audience questions, and so, you know as you have a question, you know, please do wait for a microphone to come find you because we are being recorded and broadcast. and please when you speak, introduce yourself and say who you are and frame things in form that would be recognizably a question. so i want to start with jessica altschul who is manager of outreach and innovation policy at daimler north america, and i

want to start by defining terms a little bit. we all say the words driverless cars as though, a, we are all talking about the same thing when we say that and, b, as though there's some generally recognized definition of a driverless car. this morning i was driving in a nondriverless car my son to where he needed to be this morning, and i had to explain to him what a driverless car was and actually it's hard because certain levels of driverlessness have been with us for a long time. anti-lock brakes cruise control, various autonomy features and yet the phrase driverless car connotes a certain, you know, total autonomy, and so my question is, what the heck is a driverless car? and what's the -- what is it in practical terms today and what are we aspiring for it to be in the future?

>> that's a heavy first question, but before i answer it i really want to thank brookings for tackling this issue and the other panelists for being here because i think this is definitely an issue that is going to only grow over the next several years and couple of decades decades, and i think it's much bigger than a lot of people recognize, and i hope that some of the remarks today will get that point across a little bit. also in the international context. but to answer the question or attempt to a driverless car i think maybe a little bit of a misnomer. really what we're talking about is an automated vehicle and there are different levels of automation. some of which, as you said are here in cars today especially in some new cars. we're looking at currently in some of our mercedes-benz vehicles technologies that are far beyond just cruise control but adaptive cruise control and lane assist active brake assist. these kinds of things that can really take over if you're

having an emergency as the driver in the car to brake for you to avoid an accident things like that. so looking forward taking that as the current situation, looking forward to say 2025 2030, we're looking at a level of automation on the sae scale that could be a fully automated vehicle by that time frame which would mean that there still would be a driver but the definition of driver would also change just as the definition of a car has changed in the past 50 years and 100 years and will continue to change as we move forward. so really what we're looking at is a driver who is more of a manager, a vehicle manager. on the heavy duty side we're looking at a logistics manager rather than a truck driver. and that role would really be for monitoring and being able to step in if there is some sort of glitch or problem with the system. but the way that daimler sees

this issue moving forward and our vision for autonomous vehicles in the future is really kind of on the passenger car side a mobile lounge which will allow passengers and drivers to have a more relaxed environment as they are getting from home to work or home to daycare or wherever you need to be but still be able to take over on a saturday morning when you really want to drive on a nice country road, something like that. on the heavy duty side also we -- as many of you know we produce freightliner trucks and school buses et cetera. just this week we released our freightliner inspiration which is a fully autonomous 18-wheeler heavy duty truck which has a license now to drive in nevada on its own with a logistics manager behind the wheel for testing purposes. and there are two of those on the road now in nevada. so i think this has implications for most of us on the passenger car side, but looking at fright

management and lowgistics it starts to have huge implications. >> so it does beautifully, but i want to follow up on the fully autonomous truck because i suspect that a lot of people in the audience walked in here without the sense that there are fully autonomous 18-wheel vehicles driving around nevada, and -- i mean, did you know that? because i didn't when i walked into brookings this morning. and just tell us about the truck. what does it do? what does a fully autonomous 18-wheel vehicle mean? and how autonomous is fully autonomous and what happens if it, you know -- what does it do? >> i don't want to get too into the details but i will say that for those of you who study

logistics management, freight these kind of issues, this has such -- the implications of something like this for the trucking industry and for freight management in the united states and in other areas is huge. this car -- the truck will have a driver not called a driver who will be more attuned to where other trucks are, where they need to go what the fuel economy is looking like. certainly in the future the power trains for these vehicles we're looking at fully electric or hydrogen so this has implications in the environmental sphere as well. so the future of trucking we see is certainly a large part due to platooning, and this kind of automation will definitely help with that. the fuel economy is going to be greatly impacted by platooning and by these kinds of

technologies such as the adaptive cruise control. when truck kansas city stay a certain distance ahead of another and travel at exactly the same speed regulated not by a person's foot on the pedal but rather by the computer within the truck, that has enormous implications. that kind of a system i think moving forward is going to change the trucking industry. it's going to change the jobs. what it means to be a truck driver. what it means to be a logistics manager and how we get goods in this country from place to place, especially because trucking accounts for a very large percentage of the gas use in this country. the mpg is much lower on a truck than on a passenger car, and it also is contributing to the wear on the roads et cetera. all of these issues can be impacted by a level of autonomy

that we're moving forward in the trucking sphere. >> thanks. so karl-joseph kuhn is the head of reliable automation and control at siemens corporate technology for new technology fields. i'm interested in your sense of the research and development necessary to actually accomplish the vision that we just heard. what's -- what are the missing pieces? what do we need to develop that we haven't developed, and in the spring of the sort of international side of this conversation, how much of that is u.s. negetology. how much is nonu.s. technology and what's the interaction between the two? >> first of all, thank you for the invitation to this

interesting panel discussion, and the route to automation or autonomous cars is not just the route with cars on the road. it's more because we'll see more and more autonomous or automated systems in our daily life. so we have it in the military area already somehow, and we will see it in the next step on the road but we'll see it also in private households and factories and so on. so the car industry is recently the driver for this technology but you will see it in other areas as well. i want to answer this with five focus topics. i want to address for the research -- it's first of all the safety and testability of the systems. when is a system safe enough? what's the question about that? actually the standardization we see, we see some figures flying to probability for failure.

is ten up minus nine? it might be two more or ten up minus 11 or 12, but nevertheless, there is a probability for failure. every technical system can fail. and we have to deal with that. on the other hand, this testability and safety of the system how are we proving that? so the calculation very simply shows that one billion kilometers on the road is not enough for driving to show the system is fulfilling these conditions so we have to find new ways for testing, proving, and certification. and this cannot be done on a national level. it has to be done on an international level because human kind has to accept to this. there is a need for harmonization and the way we come to that with modeling, with simulation, and so on. so it's not the old way we did

in the past bringing the car on the road just driving several million kilometers or miles and it's done. so it changed. a paradigm change in testing and system verification. the second point is a machine/machine interface. actually, as we explained it will take some time. we will have more way to automation and more functionality which will help the driver to avoid accidents and this functionality will increase. but when we accept that the driver is the backup for the system because the technical system is failing, how fast is a driver coming back into the loop? what is happening to the driver during that time? is he still able to take over the system? how are we supervising the driver? whether it's possible. so this is an open question.

the question -- actually the anticipates from ten seconds up to 15 minutes. so you see how big the variance here is. we have to find the right way how we can solve this problem. third point is a security and privacy. as soon as a car is driving autonomously or automated on the road, some manufacturers and researchers are expecting that this is done with a lot of environmental information. but this data traps fered to the car could be corrupted. what is happening then? who is liable at the end? how are we guaranteeing that the data is the data which is expected. and who is the reliable at the end if the data is not contribute. how are we dealing with such problems? the fourth point is the social and ethic impacts we have here.

it's also a reseven arena. so what is happening if a machine is causing an accident? actually the drivers are causing accidents. so this is a big difference. are we accepting in societies and societies are different around the globe, when this is happening that the machine has a choice between who bad situations. every situation is causing an accident, but the machine is making a choice, and the choice of the machine can be followed up because it's programmed. if the same choice would be done by a human, it's different. and fourth it's the real pass to autonomous systems because one of the capabilities of autonomous systems is that they are learning. so these are not systems which have a fixed state and are delivered to the customer at the end. they will change over lifetime. and this is still happening

actually when we have autonomous driving or automated driving car because as soon as this car is using maps, these maps will change over time. there is some learning. it might be in the car it might be outside of the car, but the system will never remain the same as it was in the starting point. and how are we dealing with that? how how are we guaranteeing these systems are still safe? >> thank you. we are going to return to a bunch of those discrete points momentarily because i have like a million questions about that. but i want to hear from levi tillemann who is jeff and karl leonard fellow at the new american foundation. author of a book on electric

cars. this is an interesting element of the story. this is not the first time that we have had or tried major transitions from one form of automotive technology to another. some have been more successful than others and some of them have been promised for very long periods of time without actually materializing in the form that we would -- we imagined. what are the lessons for earlier transitions to the current set of transitions and specifically when you think about the experience of the attempt to make the vehicle fleet electric rather than internal combustion engine based. how much does that make you optimistic or pessimistic about grand promises of removing human agency or minimizing human agency from the driving in the first place? >> big question. first of all thank you for

having me here. i'm really excited to be part of this discussion. and secondly before i get right into the question, i want to talk a little bit about what i think about when i think about autonomous vehicles which is my experience growing up driving around in a car. i had ten brothers and sisters and as you can imagine, that's quite a brood to manage. and so my mom would be sitting in the front driving around angling the rear-view mirror trying to look at us and yell at us while she was sitting in the front of the car and manage all those things at the same time so i can easily manage an autonomous system being somewhat more safe than the alternative when it comes to big families. >> humans are really overrated. >> so i will then also say happy mother's day, mom. you kept us safe all those years and we really appreciate it. getting back to my book and the lessons we can glean from autonomous or from electric vehicles, i think the first thing that i would say is that

these massive societal technology transitions don't just happen. they're driven by policy and it's really important to remember that. and what my book is, is it's really an international examination of what policies are effective and what policies aren't effective and how those policies can be applied strategically over the course of decades. it primarily looks at china, japan and the united states which are the three largest automotive producers in the world. cumulatively they produce more than 50% of the automobiles in the global economy, and it comes to kind of an interesting conclusion which is that while all three of these huge economies and the governments that i guess manage them or are regulating them, we're pushing for electrification during the period stretching from 2007 to really the present date. there was another factor that happened to have a much bigger

influence on electric if ication and really ended up being the technology driver for the entire global automotive industry and that was the state of california, and the reason why is that the state of california has an institution embedded within their government called the california resource board that made it a priority to drive automakers towards electric if ication and they did this over the course of decades and they used a specific set of market-based tools paired with mandates in order to make that happen. what they did was they told automakers that if you want to sell cars in california, they have to make a percentage of them electric. which is a mandate. but that mandate is kind of draconian and potentially very expensive and inefficient. what if a carmaker doesn't have particular expertise in electric vehicles? that could force them to develop a whole new set of technical

capabilities that, you know, maybe they don't want to invest in that moment. the thing california did to make this system much more efficient is they overlaid a market on top of that mandate, and they allowed automakers to buy and sell credits that they were awarded when they sold an electric car. and so then what you had was a market-driven mandate, and that resulted in a system that was just much more efficient than it would have been if you'd had a pure mandate behind the electric if ication. this is applicable to the concept of autonomous vehicles but autonomous vehicles are also very different from electric vehicles. electric vehicles are great. everybody loves a tesla model s. i would argue it may be the best sedan in the world at this point in time, but the truth is that what we're aiming towards with electric cars is really a whole set of social goods related towards climate pollution,

energy security, and other things like that. i personally, as you can tell from my introduction can see many reasons why an individual might very much want to have an autonomous vehicle, and so i think they are going to be much more powerful market drivers for automation than there were for electric if ication. nonetheless, that doesn't mean that we don't have to think strategically about the regulatory aspects and the industrial policy underlying the transition from standard vehicles that we all drive ourselves to autonomous vehicles. and so i think we should take the lessons from california and realize that very small corner of the global economy if they act strategically and apply policies strategically over a long period of time can actually end up setting the agenda and that's why forecupums like this and bringing together the united states and germany to talk about global cooperation on standards and on a road map for autonomy

going forward is so critically important. >> thanks. so finally, last but by no means least, sonya smith is professor of mechanical engineering at howard university. and i want to ask you about this international cooperation aspect. jonathan margolis talked about it directly and several of your co-panelists have alluded to it as well. when we think about auto development historically, we don't think of sort of international cooperation, right? we think of detroit or we think of, you know, places in japan or germany, but these very kind of local, you know, engineering hubs right where, you know, great cars were built, and we think of them in very regional

terms. why is this different and what is the consequence of you know, a, having a significant global cooperation dimension to this or, b, in a negative sense, not having it. why does the global side of it matter? >> well, thank you and i echo my panelists and thank brookings for asking me to be here. i think as the educator on the panel, i need to emphasize that part of the answers to these questions, be it research and driving the technology further, has to do with incorporating students and faculty in global collaborations. at howard university we are one of the institutions in the partnership for the advancement of collaborative engineering education, and it's a partnership among general motors, siemens and some others to catalyze collaborative global

projects in education. and so i think that in order to answer these questions and why this is important, we need to not only involve researchers at companies and fafaculty, but students as well. one of the things we do in the pace consortium is we collaborate on global design competitions, and this involves teams of students and faculty from universities across the globe. the team that howard university is partnering with is in germany, university of sao paulo, and we're partnering on a global design project. these students work tocchet in order to answer these kinds of questions. we exchange interns. we have an intern here in the audience. and it's a very very rich experience and the students are the ones that are going to be

the early adopters and drivers of the technology. and to get back to your question of why it's important to have a global perspective as opposed to the original siloed engineering aspects, with he talk about autonomous vehicles, that subject spans all disciplines. it's an interdisciplinary problem. it not only spans policy it spans engineering. it spans creative design. it also spans atmospheric science, et cetera. when you get all of these disciplines together particularly in an educational arena, it definitely enriches and enhances the educational experience for not only the students here in the united states but also globally. >> so i want to just push you a little bit on why is this truer in the area of autonomous vehicles than it is in other vehicles or is this -- is it just the scope of the research

necessary to do these things is so vast? what's -- you know why is it that we see these international collaborations involving companies, students, you know, universities in this area but we didn't see it when it was -- or maybe we did and we just didn't talk about it when it was earlier generations of cars? >> i think that there were different types of collaborations earlier on but as we move -- as the vehicles become more complex the issues become more complex. you need a collaborative and global approach in order to solve the problems. it's not just pipes and pumps from mechanical engineering and, you know software from computer science. you also need policy involved in that. as thetices is extremely important. so we need to reach out to colleagues and disciplines that we might not otherwisein

incorporate in a design or vehicle type process. >> i want to talk about safety. a bunch of people have raised safety, and we started with the possibility of the promise of a zero accident/fatality road system. this sounds totally fantastical except that in defense of this completely fantastical hypothesis, i want to point out that this year it is safer to fly in the united states than not to fly in the united states. there are all kinds of accidents happening in your home. you're actually safer on a commercial airplane than you are not traveling. and so -- >> great. >> the more you think about that, the more interesting it gets. so, i mean, the pocketssibility of

truly radical de-escalation of the violence associated with roads is -- i mean, you don't have to get to zero before you have to get to -- before you get to something that's really attractive as a policy matter. on the other hand as we heard the deaths that do happen will happen because of machines, and as we see in the military context, when machines cause human death as opposed to people causing human death we get really, really uncomfortable with this. and so i want to throw this open to the panel in general. if you have a regime technologically and policy in which many many fewer people die but those deaths are caused without human agency and by programming decisions made remotely or systems failures is

that a win or is that something that we're going to have great social difficulty accepting? >> i guess i'll try to tackle that first. i think that this is another example of one of the issues that need to be -- needs to be discussed across country borders. this is something that is cultural, which as we know is different in different cultures around the world thoughts on these issues, as well as the technology, et cetera, and this is something that the oems, us manufacturers, are really looking at here and we haven't had to as much before on other technical issues the ethics of this kind of technology. as someone mentioned before the issue of an inevitable crash and what the computer programming should look like for something like that. and the liability in a situation like that. the ethics of how to program

these kind of technologies is really tantamount, paramount. so i think this is something that we're going to be looking at already this year. one of our board members christine holleman denhart has convened a group of academia as well as technical experts and representatives from the eu and the german government to come together and discuss the ethics of this every couple of months moving forward because this is going to have big irm plicationmplications. >> when i drive down the street and i am -- this is has never happened to me by the way, but you think about it. you're in a situation where there is no good option. somebody is going to get hurt no matter what you do, and you make a split-second decision. there is no policy behind that decision, but it amounts to i'm going to kill that person not that person. or i'm going to risk that

person's life to protect my own life. you don't make a policy -- there's no global policy about that. but when you replace my mind with a computer, you have to have a policy about that. and you have to -- and it's called code. and it amounts to a policy-level decision on the part of the programming to kill "x" person yesterday of "y" person. and i'm just -- you know, what are the ethics of that? >> of course it's a matter of the ethics but the difference is, you know, if you are able with autonomy to really reduce the number of accidents on the roads, first of all, that's a big advantage, and we have to admit this as well. so the second thing is as soon as a machine can s causeis causing an accident with full transparency we know what is the rule behind it. at least you can follow up the

complete process as long as the human is causing an accident you know nothing. you have a split second decision and what is happening there? who is really able to judge in a split second what is best choice we have here? and the program the algorithms, they made a choice and they made a choice based on a rule system that they have behind them. as long as the whole process is transparent, at least we know what is happening here, and now we have to discuss which kind of rules are behind that. and that ethic decision. and we have to do it somehow somewhere. what is better if you have the choice. a or b, both causing an accident. but that's something we have to go on. and then we have to make this decision. >> i mean, it's a very important issue and obviously it has to be addressed and it's a very washington issue. i think it's an interesting that lends itself to a lot of washington naval gazing and hemming and hawing and this is

really important -- >> don't complain about washington naval gazing in the brookings institute. >> but 30,000 people die every year in auto accident. my father died in an auto accident. his father died in an auto accident. this is something that affects us all very personally, and if we have the prospect of potentially eliminating 90% of those auto accidents, that's a win. just back to the personal example, my father died because of a mechanical malfunction on his car. there was nothing he could do about it. we were in the mountains in colorado, and he was driving, and there was a mechanical malfunction and he ended up going off the side of the road. his dad died because of a human error. someone was driving drunk and slammed into him and if you have the prospect of potentially eliminating 90%, 95% of accidents or fatalities on the road through autonomy, i think much more important than hemming

and hawing over the we have to get machines to make these decisions is to lets save the 27,000 lice. >> so i agree with you completely and i am very ben fa night about reducing death. and when i make exactly this argument in the context of robotic weapons systems, there is immobilized constituency of human rights activists who take the view that, you know, if you can have dramatically greater compliance with the laws of war as a result of fully you a ton myselfing certain weapons systems, they object to it because you have removed human agency from the task of killing. and so i wonder if those of us who believe that actually

aggregate death reduction is a really really great good that should presumptively trump a lot of other goods are actually going to have a really tough hill to climb just in terms of social acceptance of the idea that removing people from the chain of command that leads to death is somehow presumptively suspect. what do you think? >> well, i think that you have to again step back and although from a policy perspective and from a logical perspective it seems like these things are apples and apples. i think from a human perspective they look like apple as and oranges. what you're talking about are robots that kill people and the thing that we're talking about here today are robots that transport people and try to keep them safe. and so i can understand why there would be a constituency that would mobilize against robots that kill people just like there are people that mobilize against guns and

nuclear weapons, and i think that, yes, there are probably going to be luddites opposed to autonomous vehicles at the but at the end of the day we have to make some pragmatic decisions. >> do you find sonya that in these educational and development partnerships that these -- the safety and sort of ethics issues associated with safety are kind of front and center of what people are working on or are they kind of background issues that are concerns but mostly there's just a lot of excitement about the technology? >> well, there is a lot of excitement about the technology, but i would also look at it from a different perspective. saving lives is not only through autonomy going to be achieved through reducing the deaths in auto accidents. autonomy is also going to affect

mobility and access to other services that will also save lives. health care is one of them. so i think that in the aggregate that autonomy is not -- it will not be looked at through the same lens as just saving lives through automobile accidents. and those are the type of policy issues and wholistic issues we look at through these partnerships. >> flesh that out. what's an example of, you know, that it's not merely reduced traffic accidents. we've heard about sort of environmental benefits, particularly with respect to fuel efficiency and the truck fleet, but what's an example of social, you know, great social goods and reduced human suffering as a result of autonomy that is not -- autonomous vehicles that is not fewer traffic accidents? >> we don't have specific evidence of, but an example that's been studied and talked

about is only lives saved through reduced auto accidents but also lives saved through personal mobility and access, i think the autonomous argument is quite different from the drone strike, et cetera, that you talked about. >> and i'd like to just add one thing to that, which is a couple years ago i was at the doctor's office and as i was coming out, there was a gentleman in his

electric scooter and he was severely disabled guy about my age and i started talking with him and saying, hey, you have a really cool electric car there because i was writing about electric cars but he said what we're really looking forward to in the community of people with disabilities is autonomous vehicles because there's so many things that autonomous vehicles can allow us to do that we just can't do on our own right now. so i think that's a really compelling human argument. >> all right. so one issue that autonomous vehicles necessarily raise is data collection. these are incredibly sophisticated sets of many, many sensors, all of them collecting a lot of data and processing a lot of data in order to make decisions. data collection gets controversial, and it has

different cultural baggage in different countries to different degrees, and this strikes me as an area where harmonization across borders might be pretty difficult, particularly between germany difficult. particularly between germany and the united states. which as many of you know, fight about data a lot. not just in the nsa context, but also in principlely, the business context. so now, you have 15 years from now, a giant fleet of big data machines roaming around every city. what are the prospects for, a, regulatory harmony on this subject across borders and, b, what are the prospects for cultural queasiness associated with the idea of our cars as pervasive surveillance devices? >> i will answer that. first of all we have to

differentiate this sensor, a class of machines running around the cities or the country. they are collecting a lot of data. what is happening with this kind of data? is the car relying on data outside of the car to drive autonomously, or must the car also drive without data from outside the car? there is a separation between what the car needs from outside and what the car is generateing by itself. everything it's generating by itself can forget immediately after the driving situation. so this is in the research community not quite clear what is the right path for autonomous driving vehicles in the future. the frenchman thinking about that said we need a lot of data from around the car, that the city sends us and so on. they then have immediately the problem, what is a privacy and security of this data? data used from outside the car

to drive autonomously can corrupt the driving situation. we have, again, safety issues and all these things. secondly, as soon as the car is sending data outside of itself, who is the owner of this data? who can use that data? is it the driver? is it the car owner? is it the society? these are open questions we have to discuss. and this is a cultural issue as well around the globe. it's not in every country the same. we need harmonization anyhow. how we want to regard that in the future. one thing is for sure. as soon as data is available, it will be used and it will be used for business. it was always the same story in the world, and it will happen here again. as soon as the data is outside of the car, available, it will be used. that's for clear. >> i want to underline that. i think that this is a perfect time to really explain why this kind of collaboration between

governments, between companies and between legislative bodies and corporations makes so much sense. it's really important. of course, informed by academic bodies as well. we do a lot of research with universities around the world, and have been for decades. obviously, most companies do interface with government at different levels. both leg rahregulatory bodies, executive, setet cetera. these clapollaborations are absolutely necessary. we need to make sure the technology is advancing generally at the same pace as a societal adoption. society's willingness to accept this kind of technology. at the same parallel speed as the laws and regulations. because we want to make sure these are harmonized. we have an opportunity with this technology to do so. obviously, cars have been around

a really long time. we invented the car almost 130 years ago. at that time there was really no need at all for germany and the u.s. to be talking about safety regulations in automobiles. now, there is overwhelming need for all of these countries to be discussing this together. so we have a new kind of technology that needs to be addressed societally and legislatively. we have the opportunity to do that now across country lines, as informed by the experts with the technology and privacy data experts, as well as the mechanical experts, et cetera. i think that's something that we can't overlook. as this process moves forward, there is no choice but to be working together. >> and i will also say that automated vehicles or autonomous vehicles are just one small facet. significant facet of course change in relationship between data and vehicles. we are moving towards a world of connected vehicles. where our cars will have huge

amounts of media and internet connectivity. an era where you're going to have connections between vehicles and the infrastructure in the city, to tell the car how fast to go and what kind of traffic situation is going ahead. that's a new stream of data. cars will be connected to each other, vehicle to vehicle technology. that is something that is under development. we have whole regulatory structures being built up around it as well. finally, you have this uppermost tier of automated vehicles. i think we have to think very carefully about data and transportation and how we're going to manage that emerging relationship. >> all right. several of you have eluded to, as distinct from safety issues what we might call cyber security issues with respect to you have all this data. you have these systems that are autonomous. both the data streams and the systems themselves that are

operating the vehicles, like any complex computer system, are subject to attack. as we have seen -- or in the case of the data -- corruption. as we have seen in other areas that we have systematically networked and become very dependent on -- these become very attractive targets for hackers, from the lowest grade to the most state sponsored. is this a situation where we are now creating dependencies that we will eventually turn around and say, oh, my god how did we come to give the north koreans control over our traffic safety just to use an example i'm sure has nothing to do with the news. i mean why shouldn't we be

worried -- how worried should we be about the cyber security implications, of having basically our cars as you know the operations of our cars as network instruments? both in their own internal systems and the data that they're collecting and relying on for safe operation. >> from my perspective as an optimist also i actually am not so concerned about this. i think that it definitely needs to be done right and this is another area where we need to be talking between private and public sectors across country borders. to really effectively regulate these issues and make sure we're thinking about them in the right way. in our company we have basically internal hackers who are tasked with trying to hack our vehicles all the time. it's amazing as i said before, some of the systems in the passenger cars today are already

very advanced and already maybe starting to inch up on the scale of automation. such as these kind of lane assist and adaptive cruise control, the braking, et cetera. these issues in some of our cars we have systems which will notice if you're getting sleepy. not by looking at you, but how you're sitting and how you're driving compared to when you were driving when you first started the car. it will flash a coffee cup on your dash to tell you, hey, why don't you take a break now? those kinds of systems are collecting data on you as a driver. and the way that data is stored is certainly cause for debate. we think that -- i can only speak to our company -- but we are -- because we're based in germany, we are probably the most stringent. we're subject to the most stringent data laws possibly on

earth. so we're confident that moving forward, that's the view we'll take. >> talking about the data privacy and security. we have to differentiate between data which is necessary to drive a autonomously and not all the data we have in the car. we have more data as was mentioned already. so this kind of entertainment data, it's just a free flow of data, and every user can decide what he wants to do with that. this is actually according to some agreements between the provider and the user and so on. and the data we have in the car to drive this car somehow autonomous in the future. it happened already in the past, that cars were hacked. so that's not a new issue. we know that already. the research arena, it's a known

problem. it will happen. this is for sure. to make first of all the right choice, what is really necessary for the automation of the car and as small amount as the data is, it's more difficult to attack it. if you need everything, what we get around from the car every camera system in the city, then it can be corrupted very easily. if it's just the small amount of data, or maybe no data, that the car is collecting everything by himself, keeping it for himself and deleting it afterwards, we have not such a big issue at the moment. so as i said cars were corrupted in the past already. so you can hack a car and put some wrong data into it. because in the future we will see with the autonomous vehicles, we'll see a different kind of car in the future. you can load your own apps down to the car. you have your special driving

functions and so on. this will be the future of the cars, not just this autonomous driving. this is just one of the functionalities. so as soon as you're bringing new software into the car, it can corrupt the car in another way. this, we have to protect. we have to be very precise it's not all the data, it's just the few. as fewer as this amount is the better we can protect it. nevertheless, we have to have the public discussion what would happen if. if something is corrupt. >> for sure. this is why we see so many redundancies also. i should mention that. >> obviously, it's not just cars. there's so many facets of our economy where this is a huge issue. the energy system. i just came from a two-year appointment to the department of energy. we think about this all the time. all these systems are now connected to networks. if you have someone break through the control system of a nuclear power plant, or even a

more traditional coal or gas fired power plants or into the grid, it can cause pretty huge problems. so this is definitely a big issue, and i think it's an economy-wide issue. >> you know, i just read a report recently about commercial aviation and how severe aviation systems are. and the answer seemed to be that they're quite secure, as long as they don't interface with the public inter facing -- the public facing computer systems on airplanes which are not secure at all. we've now interlaced them because people like to watch flight data on their computer screens. so these two systems now interact in ways that create vulnerabilities for the other systems. let us go to audience questions. if you have a question, flag me and please wait for the microphone. we've got a lot of questions. the gentleman over here i saw

first. please introduce yourself and please keep the questions brief. >> thank you. i'm nick fav err verfarver. could you speak to the idea of fully autonomous vehicles in a shared use environment? not as a personal vehicle i own, but the fleet vehicle. fully autonomous can deliver packages, food, people, can replace cars, busses taxis in an urban environment. seems to me that paradigm change looking at it differently rather than replacing each individual car, has a lot more opportunity for quicker implementation. >> totally. i think when you're talking about fleets, this is something we're already seeing, ben mentioned a couple times military use, not only drones but talking about land vehicles

and military looking at the fleets there. they're definitely looking at this technology. from a consumer perspective, something like car to go is kind of a perfect flat platform for this technology. you see it in washington, d.c. those of you in different cities you see these smart cars which are reminiscent if anyone has seen google's perception of what the autonomous car will be in the future. doesn't have a wheel but it's a transportation pod for one or two people. these kinds of systems are meant for urban environments, like you said, because they're small, not for long road trips. generally, go at lower speeds, which i think will definitely contribute to some more consumer acceptance of this technology in an urban environment. so not only from a safety perspective, but you said it has consumer applications as well. these kinds of companies like

amazon or mcdonald's are looking at same-day delivery in certain city cities. get your big mac in two hours. these kinds of things. this is going to be definitely contributing to that kind of an economy moving forward. so we like to think that because we have this multi-layered system internally within daimler that we have these different platforms available. from the smart phone to the 16-wheel freight liner. it can be applied in different settings. we need to work on the regulation to make sure that we're in lock step. >> hi. can i just say one thing on that? i think you hit on an important topic. there's a heading in my book, which is when 2 plus 2 equals 10. the truth is, when you sinynergize

these, fleet management all these things, you get terrific possibilities in terms of sufficient use of capital, urban land management. imagine if you could eliminate parking. that is a huge amount of land within the city that we could use for so many productive causes. so i think it's really important for us to think about these issues systemically and not just to take them piecemeal. to figure out, what are the ultimate implications of potentially bringing these technologies together? i think it's a terrific question and something we have to think a lot about. >> ms. evelyn smith. my question is for jessica. you were mentioning that in the autonomous trucks that are being tested now in nevada that there's still a vehicle manager in the car. i think there's a public perception that this technology is going to eliminate a lot of

jobs. but it seems like that's not the case, at least in the short-term. is there a different level of skill that's required to be a vehicle manager? is there a different type of job we think will replace uber drivers or truck drivers? >> it's exciting for people in this field. we are looking at the elevation of this kind of a career. from a driver to, like you said a manager. someone who is monitoring all of the systems in the vehicle. this is a high-tech job. advanced training. actually, i was at an event here in this room a few weeks ago about advanced industries. the kinds of education that are going to be necessary moving forward for different kinds of industries in this country. i think that this is a perfect example. unlike, say, travel agents, we don't see too many of them around anymore, this is a job

this is a career that's going to transform. i don't see layoffs necessarily. i see the elevation of this kind of a career. and especially because once someone in this kind of career is trained like this that provides a lot more opportunity than the current truck driver role. from the technical perspective, we're obviously going to need a human for the time being in cars and trucks, even with high levels of autonomy. even once licenses are granted in certain states and countries. but looking several decades down the line, that's the time when we're looking at possibly no one in the car at all. that's something that sonya eluded to with the disabled community. i was at sec earlier this year with the mercedes benz fo 15 completely autonomous sedan. we had a big group of

disableddisabled advocates who wanted to talk about the implications of this technology for the blind, the deaf, people with severe physical disabilities who are completely unable to manage their own transportation as it stands right now. >> if no one else has something, i feel like i have to. are there going to be layoffs? yes. are there going to be lots of layoffs? yes. is artificial intelligence and deep learning transforming the way our economy works? definitely. will there be new jobs? yes. will there be as many new jobs as the jobs we lose? unclear. i think it's really important that we think about these issues in an eyes wide open kind of way, and realize that we are moving towards an era where computers will be able to do a lot of the things that only a human can do today. actually, there is a huge feature piece in the "economist" about it, for this coming week. i recommend it. i think it's very well done.

i think that anyone who looks at these issues in a balanced way is going to have to admit that there are going to be a lot of layoffs and there's going to be a huge transition. the kind of job that is available right now to a truck driver will not necessarily be available 10, 15 years from now. we have to think about that from a policy perspective and plan for it. >> just want to say something about that the layoffs. there was a simulation of singapore, singaporean university, to replace a complete taxi business by car sharing. it was done at a university level first. then they came to the result it's possible. the service time for the customer and the average time was better than with a taxi because it's a shorter waiting time. and then they said okay, but we still need people to relocate

the fleet. this was 2/3 of the taxi drivers. 2/3 laid off. they made the simulations of autonomous driving, so they have to increase the number of cars because the cars have to relocate themselves. then you have no drivers any longer. >> yes? >> hi. i'm with nature. i had a question for jessica and karl-josef about reliable automation and ethics. as i understand, one of the things that's difficult, if you're an autonomous car making a decision between, say, if you have to brake quickly to save the person in the car, but that could cause a chain reaction or something. it's quite difficult for a computer program to deal with things like counter-factuals and calculating whether it's better to do one thing versus the

other. i wonder what are daimler and siemens and engineers who deal with this thinking in terms of the right approach in making those calculations? do we know that ethical decisions of this kind can be reliablely automated and reliableably computed by a machine? do we need that when we have mercedes doing testing in california. do we need to know and how much do we know before we can actually sort of have these ethical questions answered in terms of what the car is capable of doing? >> the question is not so difficult to answer. as soon as you have an algorithm, you know what the algorithm is doing. it's decided before something is happening. the rules are fixed. it's programmed. so you know exactly how the car is behaving. if he has a choice to make an exit in left right or the car

coming from behind you know it. the situation is known. so the calculation time so it's just making the selection between a few choices. it's done much faster than the human brain. you know exactly this will happen in this situation like this or this or this. so we have to make that transparent, that we want to have this reaction so we can discuss situations before they are happening. >> is there an ethical obligation to make the algorithms public? to make the choice to say, okay, we're choosing if you have a choice between killing a kid and killing an adult, you kill the adult? or you kill the kid? whatever your choice is. i mean i'm being reductionist. but when you have a tragic choice and you have a prospective engineering answer to that, is there an ethical obligation to lay it out and to

let -- imagine the washington post headline, siemens engineering killing kid. did you have to do that, or are you allowed to have a proprietary killing kid algorithm? >> interesting question yeah. but you have to see the following points. we are making now this discussion explicit. we want to have it in the public. we want to have it in the parliaments of the world. that's the discussion we have to have at the end. this discussion or this question you are asking, physician somewhere in the third world has to do this decision every day. >> yup. >> every day has this decision. ethical decision, and nobody is helping him with this. now as we have it here, we have to discuss it. we have to decide before. if we are not making the

decisions, we are blaming the engineer. that's the wrong way. >> i'll add one thing. these decisions will also be adaptive. so they will evolve, and they will change and also be dependent upon region, government. the same way the physician in one part of the country in the same situation, is not going to make the same decision. so the same will be true of these algorithms. >> and i would also they that this is an area that calls out for regulatory guidelines and for government decisions. we make these decisions every day. we decide how much so2 are we going to allow cole fire plants to emit and that kills people. i think when it comes to making these big ethical decisions about how stringently are we going to regulate certain kinds of technologies and who lives and who dies, that is the appropriate role of a policymaker in many senses. >> i think as you mentioned the

transparency issue, this is something we're discussing in the framework of the ethical debate to begin with. i know the other german automakers are also having these discussions. in the news this week, one of our come petpetitors voiced a concern that they didn't think the ethical concerns could be surmounted, which we disagree with. we think it's worth discussing. if years go by and there are still no answers then that's something that we'll have to tackle at the time, internationally. >> i want to point out that when i referenced the problem that the military and the covert agencies have had in attempting to engineer exactly this civilian harm reduction problem, you said well, it'll be totally different because these are robots designed to transport people, not robots designed to kill people. and yet here we are having exactly the same conversation.

>> i think that's partially because you're asking the questions. >> i didn't ask this question. >> but still the difference is that in the military system, the program is to kill people. the principle problem you have on the road is different. we want to transport people. it's an exception. it's a situation of accidents. then it's a decision. not for normal driving. >> so which is the company that has decided that the ethical problems are not surmountable? >> bmw hinted this week that they are concerned about that. >> yes? >> my name is alan. i'm a consultant and researcher in transportation, travel behavior and public investment. i'm wondering about the critical interface perhaps between public investment infrastructure and technologies that we're talking

about. are there game breakers? are there critical interfaces that are important to the future or are you going to be able to have the activity autonomously outside of whatever public investments are undertaken? >> so i think that that's something that has to be studied very carefully. that's actually my next project, is to look at what that interface is and what are the critical roadblocks from a policy inter spective.perspective and how we have to get our house together to let innovators get to a future that's safer more optimizing. i would say it's something that calls for further research. >> i also want to bring up here in terms of infrastructure the spectrum use issue, which is a little bit of a hot topic here in d.c., if you follow these issues right now. it's something that we feel very strongly about preserving that

band of the spectrum for automotive use. so this is something that even though we're talking about vehicles 10 or 15 years from now, it is going on right now, from a policy perspective. >> right here? when you're done with the mic pass it to the gentleman in back of you. >> my name is brad. i'm with our energy policy.org. i had a question to touch on the safety issue. it builds on some of what has already been asked. i think i tend to agree with eli, that the public support would be towards the net reduction. however, i think there could be potential pushback, specifically looking at who is responsible for making those programming decisions. whether it's the company or a regulatory agency. i'm wondering what the current regulatory framework looks like in terms of being able to support those types of

decisions. particularly with the international angle as part of it. >> i'm sorry. i'm not sure if i completely got the question. the question is? >> [ lairtorylairtory issues. we don't know at this point whether it's the company itself or a regulatory agency making those programming decisions, about whether to kill the adult or kid. that's more likely to be where the problem is, the pushback will come from. >> there is a terrific paper by john which i think copies of are out there, about liability issues, product liability issues with respect to driverless cars and road liability issues. a lot of what you're describing

as a regulatory architecture in this country is not a regulatory architecture. it's a liability and blame assignment after the fact architecture. you know the question of how you apply that legal system to a system in which the point person on the decision may not be the driver is a very hard one. and i don't think we entirely know the answer to it yet. >> that's right. i would say these systems are embryonic, taking shape in some states. autonomous vehicles are illegal or undefined. in some states, they're legal. there are regulatory mechanisms that apply to who drives them how they're driven where they can be driven. then on a federal level you have a push towards defining how regulatory agencies will deal with autonomy.

one group is working on their policies right now. this is something that we have to get on and think very creatively about from a regulatory standpoint, starting now because it's coming soon. >> i think honestly, the framework is set up or at least getting set up. i know the d.o.t. has the 2015 through 2019 plan for vehicle automation, between the u.s., eu and japan already. this is a working group that has already been established. there have been several meetings already. the correct people idend fiidentifyies. these discussions are well placed already and have started. >> another just dimension of this is that unlike the other area where this kind of automation is really taking place, which is in aviation of one sort or another you do have a federal/state issue here that

is pe cubeculiarpeculiar. traditionally, the licensing for driving is your state government. now you're talking about the agencies -- the decision-making entity being a commercial product that is presumably doesn't have a license from the district of columbia to operate a motor vehicle. so there is a question of how much do you -- how much autonomy does a car have before you really lose the foundations of state licensing rules that have governed car driving for the last hundred plus years. >> it's going to be a tremendous undertaking, to look at these regulations, many of which were established in countries and states decades and decades ago a century ago. and look at amending them. >> i would say this is --

>> so we have a gentleman shaking his head with annoyance. let the gentleman ask his question. when you're done pass to the gentleman who wants to correct me. >> all right. i might like to note there is a third option when you were killing the kid or the adult. kill the occupants of the autonomous vehicle. that's a third situation in the algorithm. >> i'm sure that's of comfort. >> my concern is deployment of the technology. it was my fortunate to be a part of the jet propulsion in the '70s. the technology was on its way. there was an engineering model, but deployment and where it made sense and the continuity of programs, none of it came through. so it's 40 years ago and here we are again. to me, you need a couple of things to go forward with.

i'd like to see anybody respond to this. one is a specific duty cycle. that way, maintenance is controlled. that way, if you're dealing with electric propulsion technology, which you don't have to do, but it could be that is controlled also. so that you know your system, vehicle systems, are operable when you introduce it into the rest of the system. the other is i believe there's a hybrid that's in there. that's what we anticipated long ago. that is that imagine you're driving along in your bmw z5 or 6. >> slk. >> i'm sorry. but you're on a nice country road approaching the town you want to be in. you throw it into automated mode, sit back and relax. the car confirms you're in automated mode and you proceed through a city you know nothing about, to where your destination is and you go. when you leave, you exit in the same manner.

if you choose take the freeway and forget the nice country road. but that choice is a great way to introduce this technology. along with mass transit. that's the specific duty cycle. mobility for people that don't have a driver's license, never did or have lost it, is critical. so if you work on that, the hybrid concept, and getting mobility for all of the people, you get quick deployment and acceptance. that was my comment. because i've been in this field. >> okay. hybrid version is the road to acceptance. thoughts? >> i would add another element to the hybrid road to acceptance, and that's the last mile, first mile access to a public transit system. that is a perfect way in order to sensitize the public to these technologies. go ahead. >> i would say that most auto makers completely agree with you. we love to talk about autonomous

vehicles because that's sexy. autonomous vehicles drive themselves. for instance, if you talk to toyota, they do not use the term "autonomous" vehicles. they say "automated." the reason why is because there are certain instances in which it's difficult to write that line of code that decides whether someone kills a kid or the dog or the occupant or kill themselves or do something else, as yet undefined. what toyota likes to talk about is the fact that there are large stretches of highway and road in this country for which autonomous driving is quite simple to program and very safe. usually, that's highway driving. then the other thing that is relatively easy to do is low speed you are panurban driving. you can do it from a technical perspective. it gets more complyicated when you're in high speed urban environment in a dynamic environment. i think what auto makers would

like to see is a system where we can get 80%, 90% of the benefit of autonomous vehicles while leaving those last critical, difficult decisions off the table. because you're never going to be driving in an environment where they're likely to arrive. >> from a manufacturing perspective, especially as a german manufacture, i completely agree with you. that's why our first big stab at this in the fl-15 which has been traveling tarndaround the world still has a wheel a steering wheel. because in our interperspective, consumers are going to want to use the car differently and lyly on a saturday morning versus a monday morning. not everyone necessarily wants more than one vehicle. that's kind of the way that we see things, as having that comfort and luxury in a mobile

lounge to be able to drive it when you want, or when you need to, versus being able to relax when you don't. >> thank you for recognizing a mild dissent to your comment about the federal government versus the states. i was a lawyer for years. i worked on the 74 amendments to the motor vehicle safety act. i kind of know a little bit about this. states have very little control over the equipment the car. they license drivers, but motor vehicle safety equipment, like passive restraints, which i'm surprised you haven't mentioned, is the best example of forcing technology. that was a federal proposed rule 30 years before it was finally adopted. hate to use that number, 30 years, a long time. but it forced the technology. there is some role strt statein the states. with the federal system, you don't know what's going to

happen in the courts. >> i think you misunderstood. i did not mean to suggest that the states were the primary regulator here. what i meant to suggest was quite the opposite. that the more of the driving function you give to equipment, the lessened -- the more you lessen the role of the state and the more you give to the federal government. the function that we traditionally associated with the state which was the day to day operative supervision of the driving function. >> i think it does raise a good point about -- and we see it in environmental regulation, too, that certain states are doing certain things to go above and beyond what the federal government does. if you even keep 1/2 of an eye on the auto industry in the last several decades, you know that we push for harmonization across all states so that we don't have a patchwork of regulations. that'll be the exact same issue we're look at with automated driving as well. >> so we have --

>> it brings it back to a bigger issue around standards and collaboration and cooperation, to make sure you don't have different infrastructure in different states that is not going to allow these vehicles to cross lines and countries in places like europe. cars frequently travel internationally as well. i think this international aspect is critical. >> we have time for one more question, and then i'm going to give each of our panelists a chance to wrap up in response, either to the question or if he or she chooses to ignore the question, to anything else that moves. sir? in the back. >> thank you all. this has been an excellent talk, and i really appreciate the different perspective. i'm john watts. my question is, we've danced around a little bit and there's been several remarks regarding it, but the human factors that lead to the acceptance. we've talked about the tesla being arguably a superior car to the alternatives, because of the

design. uber or car to go, can have as much concerns or anxiety about the service until the second they use it and it's more convenient. jessica, you mentioned the mobile lounge. what other design factors, human factors that would go into the design of the vehicle, do you think would make it acceptable and desirable to the consumer that would lead to acceptance? >> it's an interesting question. i'm glad you brought it up because design is something that can't be ignored when we're talking about consumer acceptance. as far as the technology and the senators come, and as far as the regulations and laws come, if people don't want to buy it this is a problem. this is what we're seeing now with certain drive trains in california and other states. we are a luxury car brand, and we look at this issue a little differently than mainstream car brands. i point you to google, with the google car looking it a what

that is versus what our fo-15 is, is incredibly different. so what we might -- the kind of design we might put in an autonomous smart car in the car to go fleet, versus something that a wealthy businessman might buy for his personal use is going to be completely different. for us, it's the luxury it's the comfort and the privacy of your own space, especially when you're lookthinking about the cultural aspects in the u.s., of people who generally like their own space. that's why there's some reluctance to beef up the public transport systems in this country. we're looking at all of that from our luxury perspective. i'm excited about the way it's going. i'll leave it at that as my closing remarks, too. >> let's go straight down the line. >> one last point to the autonomous driving. it was an interesting time about five or six years ago we made a worldwide study. we conducted it in china and

japan and europe and the u.s. we diskovrwere studying how much software or automation we will have in the cars in the next years. we made some predictions about that, what would happen in the future. it was six years ago and we were wrong. now, it's already announced that we have the first autonomous systems, or automation systems, in the 2017s and '18s in the cars followed by '21 and '22, where we have the highway assist system and the parking assist systems, so you don't have to drive your car by yourself in the garage or the highway. this is coming very soon. it's coming earlier than we predicted it. it was five or six years earlier. and i guess that the same will happen with autonomous driving because there is a need for it in the world. that's a difference to what you

said with your propumgssulgspulsion systems. we have mass road out of electric cars on the road because we had them beginning of the last century. there are more electric taxis in new york on the road than we have with the combustion engines. they were there, then gone and coming again. now, these autonomous cars are coming. i guess they're coming faster than we think already now. >> i couldn't agree more. to answer your question our discussion has been kind of safety, safety and safety. the answer to your question is productivity productivity productivity. if you can have a mobile office that allows you to commute in and be as productive in your car and comfortable in your car as you are in your office, then that's a real game changer. i think that the productivity gains are going to just

overwhelm opposition to autonomous vehicle technology. and i think that smart auto makers will be thinking about that thinking about how they can integrate not just entertainment but the rest of life into your vehicle as well. >> i would encourage us to think about the autonomous vehicles not just in terms of the direct benefits reduction in traffic accidents, but also the increased access that these types of vehicles can provide. and the benefits they are to society as well. >> with that, we're going to have to close. thank you all for coming. yeah thank you all for coming. [ applause ]

be with us later this afternoon when the atlantic council will be hosting a discussion on how low oil prices impacted fracking. also look into the shale oil boom in the united states and the potential for fracking to spread across the globe. live coverage starts at 3:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. the new congressional directory is a handy guide to the 114th congress. with color photos of every senator and house member. plus bio and contact information and twitter handles. also, district maps, a foldout map of capitol hill and a look at congressional committees, the president's cabinet federal agencies and state governors. order your copy today. it's $13.95 plus shipping and

handling through the c-span online store at c-span.org. tonight on the "commute caters," we met up with peter who says we're in a new phase of human development and robots and technology and likely to enhance the human condition. >> robots is an interesting one. 2014, i think was the year of robot angst. i don't know if i could -- a day went by when i didn't see some story about how robots are stealing jobs from humans and we're all going to end up out of work. on a daily basis, you hear stories of here's a robot that's a better waitress or waiter than humans. so on and so on. the thing i find -- the point i think that's missed a lot in that is every prior revolution or advance in automation has resulted in better jobs for

humans. we're really worried about the robots taking our jobs and having a hard time imagining what we're actually going to be doing not just 200 years from now but even ten years from now. i think history has shown we will figure out a way to combine with the robots to create new jobs again that were previously unimaginable. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. last thursday, a senator appropriations subcommittee looked into challenges faced by health care patients and providers in rural communities. the health resources and services administration. in addition, ceos and specialists from health institutes in missouri and kansas talked about opportunities facing rural hospitals. senator roy chairs this with patty.

this is just over an hour and 45 minutes. >> so the appropriations subcommittee on labor health agencies will come to order. glad to have all of you this morning. i want to thank the witnesses frr appear for appearing before the subcommittee to discuss the unique health care needs that face rural communities. we have two panels this morning. members should know that i expect to call up the second panel around 11:00 a.m. so we have adequate time to hear from both. of course, if for some reason we get done with this panel earlier, we'll go to the second panel quicker. we'll try to go to the second panel no later than 11:00. we're glad that everybody has come today to help us talk about this issue. certainly one of the priorities of the committee and one of my priorities in congress has been to ensure that all americans

have access to quality and affordable health care in their local communities regardless of where they live. the obstacles faced by rural health care patients and providers in rural communities are unique and often significantly different from those in urban areas. albeit the truman medical center in kansas city tomorrow and they have different problems but unique problems, too. both the inner city hospitals and rural hospitals have the challenges that are unique to them. in rural health care, the issues can range from a lack of access to simple primary case physicians to difficulty finding a specialist. as a result, many patients have to drive long distances to receive care or simply just may not seek care until it's too late. this creates unnecessary disparities in health care not found in other parts of the country. ultimately, cost taxpayers more

in medical expenditures than if we provided access in a better way. i think it's critically important that washington recognize that health care access is essential to the survival and success of rural communities across the country. i'm concerned that some of the proposals within the department's budget and recent regulations that have been issued that would disproportionately affect rural health care and jeopardize health care access, and when you do that, you threaten the survival of small towns. the medicare payment system often fails to recognize the unique circumstances of rural or small hospitals. this administration has appeared, in my view, to target a rural hospitals in particular. for example, the department, once again has proposed to decrease the reimbursement rate for critical access hospitals and eliminate critical access hospitals within ten miles of any other hospital.

the department has proposed that change for years, yet recently has been able to provide details to the congress about which hospitals would be eliminated if we look at that new mileage standard. the department has continuously issued regulations that would disproportionately affect rural and small hospitals more than the larger urban counterparts. cms's abrupt enforcement of the condition for payment for critical access hospitals and the direct physician supervision rules and the aweudits not only hinder the care of patients but consume significant amounts of medical staff time and resources to comply with the rules. finally, given the fact that the department requested $4.1 billion increase for the coming fiscal year it's even more surprising or maybe not so surprising that the office of rural health received a $20

million cut in the proposal that the administration issues. the administration, in fact, has never once asked for an increase in rural health programs. more than 46 million americans live in rural areas and rely on rural hospitals and other providers as their lifeline to care. they face ongoing challenges in assessing proper medical treatment while rural health care providers are overwhelmed with federal rules. certainly, senator murray and i have an interest in this. i work forward to working with her and the rest of the committee to ensure that all americans regardless of where they live have access to affordable health care. senator murray? >> thank you, mr. chairman, for calling this hearing on such an important topic. and i am very pleased to welcome all of our witnesses who are here today. i'm particularly excited to welcome julie peterson. she's hiding behind mr. whomorris.

he's an executive officer in washington. through her work at pmh and her leadership across our state julie is helping make sure that rural communities get the health care they need. julie, thank you for coming out here to testify today. over the last few years, we have taken historic steps forward when it comes to making our health care system work better for our families. i believe strongly there is much more we can do to continue to improve affordability access and quality and to keep building a health care system that works for women, families and seniors and puts their needs first. in my home state of washington where about one out of every five residents lives in a rural area, a critical part of this work is making sure that families can find the doctors they need right in their own communities. regardless of whether they live in seattle or proser. this is true in other parts of the country. i'm proud that washington state is doing so much to tackle this

problem head on. washington state recently received a federal grant to explore the role of community paramedics in provideing home follow up care. this approach could reduce emergency room visits and help patients avoid the cost and inconvenience of leaving home to get care. i also hear repeatedly about the number of new patients getting coverage through the affordable care act across my state. for example, a network of four rural health clinics in wattkin county had 40% increase of patients. it's good but we have to make sure there are enough doctors and health care providers to treat all of the patients. so i'm glad to have the opportunity to talk about the investments we need to make to build on that program. the agreement that the president recently signed into law took steps to support access to health care in rural areas. it included funding for health

centers and the national health service core helping struggling families in our rural areas. the sgr legislation also extended funding for teaching health center residencies. my home state of washington was a leader in setting up these training programs. now, primary care providers are being trained in communities with a shortage of providers. we know that training in rural areas is critical to keeping providers with an interest in rural practice in our high-need communities. i'm pleased we were able to agree in a bipartisan way to sustain those investments and i hope we'll be able to do more moving forward. i'm also pleased that the president's budget maintains investments in other key programs that support rural health. the 340 b drug pressing program provides outpatient drugs to eligible health care providers

at lower costs. 26 out of my state's 39 critical access hospitals which provide crucial support participate in the program. the budget continues to support enhanced payment for rural health clinics and community health centers. in my home state and others these facilities make sure that when a parent needs to take a sick child to the doctor or a senior needs follow up care it's easier for them to get the treatment in their own community. we really need to make sure they have the resources that they need. i do also want to express concern that the budget proposes to cut the rural hospital flexibility program. that program helps sustain and improve hospitals in the most difficult to reach communities, including ten hospitals in my home state. i believe we absolutely need to seek strong support for the investment in the health and safety for families in rural communities. i know rural health access is a

priority. all of us care about it. i want to note the president's budget is able to sustain those investments, along with supporting other key priorities from education to infrastructure to defense, because it responsible responsibly replaced the cuts. i'm proud that last congress republicans and democrats were able to come together to reach an agreement that rolled back se sequestration sequestration. i hope we can build on that bipartisan foundation and prevent these harmful cuts to investments in families and jobs in our economy including critical support for the rural health care. i look forward to working with all of the colleagues on this in the coming weeks and months. i want to thank all of our witnesses for being here. mr. chairman, thank you for hoping this important hearing. this is a topic that means a lot to the people in my state. >> thank you senator. we have two witnesses on the first panel. sean, the deputy administrator and director of the center for

medicare centers for medicare and medicaid services. and tom morris, the associate administrator for the federal office of health resources health policy and we're pleased you are both here. we'll listen to your opening statements. >> okay. mr. chairman, members of the committee, i want to thank you for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the health resources and services administration in the federal office of rural policy on the topic of rural health. pleased to discuss not only the challenges that you outlined, but also some of the accomplishments of our programs. across the department of health and human services, there's a range of programs and resources that support rural communities. in 2014, this was $11 billion in grant funding that went to rural communities. my office is the focal point with improving access to care.

today, nearly 50 million people living in rural areas, that's 15% of the population spread across 80 % of the land mass in the united states. individuals in rural communities often travel further for their care, and this can impact their health care outcomes. new research shows over the past 20 years, life expectancy in rural areas is bigger and is wide ping. there's a variety of initiatives like supporting health centers, building a strong health care work force, and expanding the use of tele health. they focus on capacity, buildings in rural communities, and fund offices of the health program ensuring there's a focal point for rural health in each of the 50 state, the flexibility grant program, and small hospital improve. grant program working with hospitals on quality improvement and stabilizing finances. first, it supports the outreach program to provide funding for pilot programs. and they are, obviously, in

central component of the delivery system because they provide accessible, affordable, and efficient care in underserved communities. there's nearly 1300 health centers supported nationally with 9,000 health center service sites and 50% of those service sites serve rural communities. they announced 164 new access point grants for new community health centers, 74 of those in rural communities totaling $45 million in investments going to improve access to care in rural communities. the training programs work to increase access in care by ensuring there are providers in underserved areas. the payment and scholarships for primary care providers, almost half the providers that we support located in rural communities, and fy2014, health students supported by hrsa went to 11,000 training sites in communities, and we invest in

community based rural residency training and work with training tracks around the country. telehealth plays an important role in extending its reach, and hrsa funds projects in 230 rural and underserved communities and 48 critical areas including mental health. we've seen them pilot new initiatives like the emergency care and esu services and we have 14 telehealth resource centers that provide free information to start with telehealth or advance what they are doing in telehealth. they benefitted from the work of the council created in july 20 is 1, and the council's focus on getting federal agencies and departments to work together to coordinate and serve rural communities better, and i know in our case, this led to ongoing partnership between my office and u.s. department of agriculture and veteran affairs on a number of projects. one example is to expand to critical access hospitals.

i thank you for the opportunity today to talk about rural health issues, and thank you for the support of hrsa programs, and i look forward to answering any questions you might have. >> chairman blunt, ranking member murray, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the tumpbt to talk about preserving access to quality health care for beneficiaries in rush areas. providing high quality care to the quarter of those living in rural areas provides unique challenges. they sl fewer physicians and hospitals, and beneficiaries reside a significant distance from the nearest provider. medicare beneficiaries represent a i higher number of the providers, making organizations particularly sensitive to changes in medicare payment policy. at cms, we have a number of steps to improve rural beneficiaries, and created numerous opportunities for stake holders to engage with cms to understand concerns and challenges.

cms has rural health coordinators at each regional office who meet monthly with central office staff and with representatives from the hrsa office of rural health policy to discuss emerging issues. cms offers rural health open door forums to provide information on cms programs, answer questions, and learn about emerging rural health issues. we're trying to remove regulatory barriers for rural health providers. last year, cms reform medicare regulations identified as unnecessary, obsolete, or burden some, saving providers over the next five years. they reduced burdens on rural health care providers, for example, a key provision reloses clinics and fqhcs eliminating the requirement that a physician held to a prepgs schedule for being on site. this provision recognizes improves to provide care at lower costs while maintaining high quality care. we are expanding care through the use of technology. medicare's telehealth benefit

allows services normally requiring a patient and practitioner to be in the same location to be delivered via interactive communication system. there's physician, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and this requires that they pay for professional consultation, office visits, and psychiatry services. each year, cms solicits comments on additional services that could be billable under the benefit through the annual medical fee schedule rule making progress. in 2015, we added wellness visits, psychotherapy, and prolonged enm services and exploring how to end prove the current benefit. the centers for medicare and medicaid innovation is testing pilot programs to bring additional services to rural communities.

for example, the health care initiative has awarded a grant to help link now, and they are pairing aspects of telemedicine and telepsychiatry to serve patients with chronic mental health behaviors in frontier and rural communities in wyoming, montana, and washington state. we announced the next generation aco model, currently accepting applicants to start next year, and that tests expanded use of telehealth services as well. as you know, critical access hospitals serve communities that otherwise lack access to in-patient care. medicare reimburses at 101% of the reasonable cost rather than rate set by the perspective payment systems. there's more than 1300 in the united states, and here i pause just to thank congress, also, for extending the medicare dependent hospital program in the sgr repeal legislation that you recently passed. the rural health clinic program increases supply of physicians and non-physician practitioners

serving in rural areas, approximately 4,000 rhcs nationwide provide access to primary care services in rural areas, and finally, innovation centers is uniquely positioned to test and evaluate new models to improve access and quality care for rural communities. for example, the center is testing two models designed to support acos in rural areas. the advance aco model helps smaller practices and rural providers with less access to capital and help them get into the medicare shared savings program, and similarly, the aco investment model is a new model of prepared savings to encourage new acos to form in rural and underserved areas. cms recognizes challenges faced by beneficiaries and providers in rural areas, and i look forward to working with hrsa and congress to deliver quality care

to beneficiaries regardless of location. thank you again, and i'm happy to answer your questions. >> thank you, both. i have to ask a couple questions, and we'll do five minute rounds here. on mr. morris, the department -- the budget the administration submitted would have cut your budget by $20 million, did you ask for that cut? >> mr. chairman, we support the president's budget and requests that came forward. we think it supports the key programs for our office and includes continued funding for program for our policy and research activities, and we any that those can be most effective in meeting needs. >> so where are you going to spend $20 million less than you are spending this year? >>. >> there is a decrease, yes, sir. >> what programs will you decrease? >> no request in the small hospital improvement program or

no request in the rural access to emergency devices program. in the case of these program and administration's request, these are challenging budget times and require tough choices, and the budget reflects a request for the program that we think are effective and that we need. in the case of small hospital improvement programs, we have rural hospital flexibility grant program with a $25 million request for that. that program focuses on what we see as the most vulnerable of the rural hospitals sector, the critical access hospital, and there's going to be 25 million requested to support quality improvement and performance improvement working to improve states and their activities. in the case of the rural access emergency devices program, we -- this is a program that places automatic external defib laters