. i think that should, if that's an option, that should be the last option after you've explored all the others. >> let me just chime in. i would agree with him that and what you're saying in that we do not want that money rated. i worked at the va from 2001 to 2009, and every time there was a management failure $300 million i.t. program failure there was no accountability. just give me more money, give me more money. can't give any more alcohol if they're fail, you've got to fix it other ways. i always like having a bit of a va that he should do an audit of the books. maybe that money's not off the table anymore, but i'd love to see an audit to see what's really there and what's not. >> va -- oh. veterans should not suffer because va is unable to get itself in order.

va must atone for its gross mismanagement. it should find cost savings in this program and other programs in any way it can. ultimately congress does have an obligation to ensure va has the resources it needs to complete this project and additionally, further delay and funding uncertainty will only lead to higher costs overrides. gl . >> there is no easy answer and i believe the that the facilities are necessary and must be completed. where that money comes from is another question, but i think it was said it's about veterans and veterans need to be cared for and congress needs to find the money somewhere to continue. should never happen again. i think va should get out of the business of building hospitals. >> we would agree in regard to the construction and just more broadly, in and all cost overruns of va provide high risk of no provides the highest quality care to veterans.

whether for construction or anything else. iva supports the secretary's budget request. we also support his request for greater flexibility, as i said in front of his committee in the previous hearing, in theory, with that greater flexibility the to move money within those line items, would allow him to move more money, so we support his request for that. weshl choices in opportunity to better understand how veterans and where veterans want to receive the health care that they deserve. and that frankly ties in to what i think everyone's talking about, which is a strategic plan for coordinated care in the community. again, mr. chairman i think that was a phrase you used in the previous hearing and we've starteded to use that because we believe that whether choice stays in its current form or fashion, we think it is an opportunity to better understand a customer. our members so the va can move forward with the plan to provide the best services possible.

thank you. gl gl. >> i appreciate your answer, which confirm my views and the chairman and i have stated those views and the chairman has stated and i have as well that we have alternatives, different options. that we think have to be explored. and look forward to working with you on those options and also, on this concept of accountability, which all of you have mentioned you heard me talk about earlier, which includes looking backward holding people accountable who in effect, are responsible for this nightmarish debacle. and also looking forward and i might mention in your written testimony, you discuss the va's need to redesign its performance and accountability report. you make reference to the department of homeland

security's similar regiment known as planning, programming, budgeting and executing ppbe as a possible model. i'm sure there are others as well, but to your point, mr. roush, i have said that the va ought to be out of the business of construction. it should be the corps of engineers or some other agency that takes over this function. no disrespect to the va. it is not within their job description to manage these mammoth, multi-million dollar in fact billion dollar projects. on which the future of va health care depends and you know when you and i go to build a house, we don't ordinarily, we are not our own contractors. maybe some of you are, but we try to get real professional help to do it and that may be an

inexact analogy but for all the government agencies not just the va, there should be some professional center of management that maximizes resources and costs and makes it energy efficient. decides what materials and designs should be incorporated so i think we have a lot to discuss going forward. i welcome your participation. i think the chairman for this. thank you all. >> thank you senator blumenthal. let me just echo everything richard said. origin originally in our first hearing, the va people that testified told us in terms of distance driven versus flying, that was going to expand the number of people being eligible for va choice. it was going to cost more money. then we talked about the care you need and that definition which we're working on one of

the estimates is it's going to cost more money than we planned. we understand that to go from point a, which was a disaster in phoenix that led to the problems that caused veteran's choice to where we want to go is going to take time and money and it's going to take coordination. where it comes from. there are savings in coordination. once you accept a few principles. if you use the private sector well, an alternative to make the veteran system work it's not a substitute, but an alternative. when you save the va money this cost, you're getting the private sector investment and getting better health care. i'm willing to look at -- we just did a budget in the congress, it's a ten-year budget balances in the tents year. va's got some problems it's probably going to take ten years to financially solve but you've got to begin that in some point in time.

so, hopefully, we'll work through the problem in denver and get the resolution on who builds what. we also look at a macro sense, the change we need to make a. eventually, we're going to have a delivery system that's probably less costly than building the bricks and mortar. it's going to take us a while to get there but i want to thank you for being here. thank you for your service to america. appreciate the time everybody's given us today.

if you missed any of this hearing, you can watch it anytime in our video library. elsewhere on capitol hill today the senate voted to block the president's fast track trade

authority. the hill writes that senate democrats delivered a stinging blow to president obama's trade agenda by voting to prevent the chamer from picking up fast track legislation. a motion to cut off a filibuster and proceed a bill fell short of a 60-vote hurdle in the vote. senator tom carper was the only democrat to back it. mitch mcconnell witch switched his vote from yes to no to verve his ability to return to the measure at a later date. fast track is a top legislative priority for the white house, but it has run into significant opposition that's been led by senator warren. you can see the debate on this bill in our video library at cspan.org. speaker of the house john boehner weighed in on today's vote with a statement that read quote more trade means more jobs for the american people. this is also been a difficult issue for the president's political party, but i hope that democrats in both the house and senate will put politics aside

and do what's best for the country. this weekend the tour to learn about the history and literary life of ft. lauderdale florida. >> so, this is really cultural tourism. along the way, the trail, really early ones, sometimes, only lean tos, the buses would stop because here was a tourist attraction. the seminoles camping by the road, so when they came in to the tourist attractions, they were getting food, a weekly allotment of food and they were also getting sometimes like a -- sewing machines. would rent and other people would use them when they lived in the tourist attraction and they would sometimes get fabric because it behooufed the tourist attraction people to supply them with fabric so they're sitting there sewing and making things for craft market.

this is a little boy's shirt. this was an experimental time for patch work and you can see that on the bottom this is not a design say that's made today. this is a little experimental design. the designs were bigger in the '20s and sometimes, they weren't used any longer than during that particular decade. >> the thing about the devil's triangle and bermuda triangle there are all kinds of things that have happened. it was a regular mission and would take off in the base. they would go east up towards the bah hamas. there was a, an area called controls and they would drop bombs on that and they would continue on and make a turn north. then make a turn west towards ft. lauderdale. they never came back.

after they returned on a field, they sent out these big rescue planes. one disappeared. had 13 men aboard. the next day, they started a five-day search with hundreds and hundreds of planes and never found anything. >> watch all of our events saturday at 5:30 p.m. eastern on book tv. and sunday afternoon at 2:00 on american history tv. on cspan 3. iconic women their stories in first ladies, the book. >> she did save the portrait of washington which was one of the things that endeared her to the entire nation. >> whoever could find out where francis was wearing, what she looked like, who she was seeing that was going to help sell papers. >> she takes over the radio station and starts running it. how do you do that?

and she did it. >> she exerted enormous influence because she would move a mountain to make sure that her husband was protected. >> first ladies now a book. looking inside the personal life of every first lady in american history, based on original interviews from cspan's first lady series. learn about their lives ambitiouses, families and their unique partnerships with their presidential spouses. filled with lively stories of fascinating women who survived the scrutiny of the white house. sometimes, at a great personal cost. often changing history. c cspan's first ladies is is an illuminating, entertaining and inspiring read now available as a hard cover through your favorite bookstore or online book seller. 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 state 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 biodefense 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 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 cooperation 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 involved, 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 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. >> 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 handouts 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? 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, 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 logistics 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 trucks can 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, so 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. technology. how much is non- u.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 transferred 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 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 electrification 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 electrification 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 electrification. 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 electrification. 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 forums 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 faculty, 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 together 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. aesthetics is extremely important.

so we need to reach out to colleagues and disciplines that we might not otherwise 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 --

>> the more you think about that, the more interesting it gets. so, i mean, the possibility of truly radical de-escalation 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 that. 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 right now. 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 kinds of technologies is really tantamount, paramount. so i think that this is something that we're going to be looking at already this year. one of our board members, christine holman 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 implications. >> i want to -- just -- when i drive down the street. and this 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 instead 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 is 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 which 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's an ethics 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 issue 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 auditorium at the brookings institute. >> but 30,000 people die every year in auto accidents. 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 you know 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 let's save the 27,000 lives. >> so i agree with you completely, and i am very benthamite about reducing death. and when i make exactly this argument in the context of robotic weapons systems, there is a mobilized 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 autonomizing 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 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 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 that are opposed to autonomous vehicles, but at the end of the day we have to make some pragmatic decisions. and the weight will be on the side of saving lives. >> 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 whole, in the aggregate, autonomy 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 holistic issues that 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, again, access to health care. in rural communities people who are disabled, they may be able to get access to health care to services much quicker through an autonomous vehicle or an autonomous fleet of vehicles than either waiting for their friend or having to walk or to get to a service. and so that is one life-saving result. not a direct design consequence, a design point but it's definitely a direct benefit of autonomy. and i think again if you look at not 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. 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 and the united states, which, as many of you know, fight about data a lot. not just in the nsa contacts but also principally in the business context. so now you have, 15 years from now, a giant fleet of big data machine s machines roaming around every city. what are the prospects for, "a," harmony 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. but 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 generating by itself. because everything it's generating by itself it 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 french was thinking about we need a lot of data from around the car, that the city sends to

us and so on. they then have immediately the problem, what is a privacy and security of this data? outside the car to drive autonomously can corrupt the car, 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. so there 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 just 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 regulatory bodies diplomatic missions, executive, et cetera. so these kinds of collaborations are absolutely necessary because we need to make sure that moving forward the technology is advancing generally at the same pace as a societal adoption. society's willingness to accept this kind of technology. and 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 kind of 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. and we have the opportunity now to be doing that 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 the changing 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 that 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 alluded 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. i know in our company we have basically internal hackers who are tasked with trying to hack

our vehicles all the time. you it's amazing, as i said before, some of the systems which are in our 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 we mentioned, 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 by how you're sitting and how you were driving compared to when you were first driving 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. but 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 maybe we have to differentiate between data which is necessary to drive autonomously and 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. and 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 of 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, then 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, quite sure. 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. and this we have to protect. we have to be very, very precise. it's not all the data. it's just a 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. you know, the energy system. i just came from a two-year appointment to the department of energy. we think about this all the time. because 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 plant or into the grid, that can cause some 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 secure aviation systems are. and the answer seemed to be that they're quite secure as long as they don't interface with the public interfacing -- the public facing computer systems on airplanes which are not secure at all. the trouble is we've now interlaced them because people like to watch flight data on their little computer screens. so these two systems now interact in ways that create vulnerabilities for the other system. 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 questions brief. >> thank you. i'm nick farver. could you speak to the idea of fully autonomous vehicles in a shared use environment? not as a personal car that i own but as a fleet vehicle that i use. sort of like the daimler car to go, fully autonomous. can deliver packages, can deliver food, can deliver people, can replace cars buses, taxis in an urban environment. seems to me that paradigm change, looking at it much differently than trying to replace each individual's car has a lot of opportunity for more quicker implementation. >> totally. i think when you're talking about fleets, this is something

we're already seeing. ben mentioned a couple of times. military use, not only drones but talking about land vehicles and military, looking at the fleets there. they're definitely looking at this kind of technology. from a consumer perspective, something like car to go is kind of a perfect platform for this kind of technology. you see it here in washington, d.c., those of you who travel to other cities, we're in lots of cities around the world. you see these little smart cars which are a little bit reminiscent, if anyone has seen the google's perception of what an autonomous car will look like in the future that doesn't even have a wheel at all, but is kind of like a little transportation pod for one or two people. these kinds of systems are meant for urban environments, like you said, because they're small. they're not for long road trips. generally go at lower speeds which i think will definitely contribute to some more consumer acceptance of this kind of 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 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 platforms available. everywhere from the small smart car to the 18-wheeler heavy-duty fright liner. that this kind of technology can be applied to in different settings. it's just something that, like i said, 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 a really important topic. there's a heading in my book, which is when 2 plus 2 equals 10.

the truth is when you synergize these things car sharing, autonomy electrification, fleet management, you get all these terrific possibilities in terms of more efficient use of capital, urban land development. imagine if you can just eliminate parking, that is a huge amount of land within the city that we could use for so many productive causes. i think it's really important for us to think about these issues systemically and not just take them piecemeal and to figure out what are the ultimate implications of bringing these various technologies together. i think it's a terrific question and something we have to think a lot about. >> ms. evelyn smith. i'm with the american enterprise institute. my question is for jessica. you were mentioning that in the autonomous trucks that are being tested now in nevada that

there's not -- 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 truck drivers or uber drivers? >> absolutely. i think that's a good question. it's exciting for people in this field. i think 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 once someone in this kind of career is trained like this, that provides a lot more opportunity than the current truck driver role. so from the technical perspective, obviously we're going to need a human for the time being in cars and trucks even with high levels of autonomy. even once commercial 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 alluded to with the disabled community. i was at c.e.c. earlier this year with the mercedes-benz

fo-15, completely autonomous sedan. we had a big group of disabled -- advocates for the disabled community 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 just 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 old jobs that we lose? unclear. i think it's really important that we think about these issues in a 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 then a third of the taxi drivers. so two-thirds laid off. they made the same simulations of autonomous driving, so then they have to increase the numbers of cars because the cars have to reallocate themself but then no drivers any longer. >> yes? >> hi. i'm forr jang 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 computer programs 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 about in terms of the right approach to making those calculations? do we know that ethical decisions of this kind can actually be reliably automated and be done by a machine and do we need to know that before we have mercedes one of daimler's is 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 this 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 a 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 i mean, when you have a tragic choice and you have an

engineer -- a prospective engineering answer to that is there an ethical obligation to lay it out and to imagine "the washington post" headline and "the new york times" headline, siemens engineers 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 a physician somewhere in the world, in the third world has to do this decision every day. >> yep. >> every day has this decision. ethical morality decision and nobody is helping him with this.

now as we have it in our public 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 they will 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. >> i will also say 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 coal-fired power 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 actually

the appropriate role of a policymaker in many senses. >> i think as you mentioned the transparency issue, this is something that we are discussing within the framework of the ethical debate to begin with. i know the other german automakers are also having these discussions. it was in the news this week one of our competitors voiced a concern that they didn't think that the ethical concerns could be surmounted, which we disagree with. we think it's certainly worth discussing, but 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. and one of the -- >> 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 principal problem you have on the road is different. we want to transport people. it's an exception. it's a situation of accidents. and then it's a decision. and 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 pisarski. 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 perspective and how we have to get our house together in order in order to let automakers innovate towards this future that's more efficient, more safer socially optimizing so that's actually, i would say, it's something that calls out 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 is 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. here. when you're done with the mike just pass it to the gentleman in back of you. >> my name is brad thompson. i'm with our energy policy.org. i had a question to touch on the safety issue. it sort of 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 do think that there could be potential push back specifically looking at who is responsible for making those programming decisions, whether that'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? >> regulatory agencies to address that issue given the fact that it may be 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 the kid. that's more likely to be where the problem is where the pushback will come from. >> there is a terrific paper by john della sr., which i think copies 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 kind of illegal or undefined. in some states they're legal and there are regulatory methods that apply to who drives them where they can be driven. then on a federal level, you have a push towards defining how regulatory agencies will deal

with autonomy. ntsa is working very acid with usually on their connected vehicles policies right now. but yeah, 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 to piggyback on that, the framework is set up or at least getting set up. i know the d.o.t. has the 2015 through to 19 a multimoto plan that they're working on between the u.s., eu and japan already. this is a working group that has already been established. there already have been several meetings. the correct people identified. these kinds of 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 of another, you do have a federal/state issue here that is peculiar, which is that traditionally the licensing agency for driving is your state government. now you're talking about the agencies -- the decision-making entity being a commercial product that presumably doesn't have a license from the district of columbia to operate a motor vehicle. so there is a question of how how much -- how much do you -- how much autonomy does a car have before you really lose the foundations of, you know 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. but let's let this gentleman ask his question then 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 just a third alternative in the algorithm. >> i'm sure that wt comfort. >> my concern is really dealing with deployment of this technology. because it was my good fortune to be part of the jet propulsion laboratory in the '70s. we had an autonomous vehicle running around the lab in the 1970s. the technology was on its way. it was an engineering model but deployment and where it made sense and the continuity of programs, none of it came true.

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. because 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 bmwz-5 or 6 and you're in a nice country road. >> that's okay. 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 precisely 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. so 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 just say that month automakers 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 vehicles." 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 urban driving. you can do that from a technical perspective. it's not that big of a deal.

it gets more complicated when you're in high speed urban driving in a very dynamic environment. i think what automakers 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 kind of off the table because you're never going to be driving in an environment where they're likely to arise. >> from a manufacturing perspective, especially as a german manufacturer, i completely agree with you. that's why our first big stab at this in the fl-15 which has been showing at ces and has been traveling around the world ever since still has a wheel, a steering wheel. because in our perspective, consumers are going to want to that choice and want to use the car differently on a saturday morning versus a monday morning. so 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 with the house commerce committee as a lawyer for years. i worked on the '74 amendments to the motor vehicle safety act. i kind of know a little bit about ntsa. 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 guys haven't mentioned, 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 in a way that forced the technology. so i just want to point out there is some role to the states.

with the federal system, y never know what's going to happen with the supreme court. it doesn't affect commerce. this is a federal issue of the united states government. >> i think you misunderstood my remark. 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 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 one half 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. >> 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 whole international aspect is really 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 perspectives. 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, pundits 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 a vehicle do you think would make it acceptable and desirable to the actual consumer that would lead to acceptance? >> this is a really 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. because as far as the technology and the centers 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

bit differently than some mainstream car brands. i point you to google, with the google car looking at 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. but for us it's the luxury, it's the comfort and the privacy of your own space especially when you're thinking 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 pretty excited about the way that 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, six years ago, we made this worldwide study. we conducted it in china and japan and europe and the u.s. we were discussing in this study the point 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. sorry to say it was six years ago. we were wrong. because now it's already announced that we have the first autonomous systems or automation systems in 2017s and '18s in the cars followed by '21 and '22 where we have highway assistance system and where we have the parking assistance systems where you don't have to drive your car by yourself on the highway. this is coming soon earlier than we predicted that. it was five, 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 propulsion systems. or your autonomous car in your lab. it took also 100 years till we have mass road out of electric cars on the road. because we had them the 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 already 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. and so to answer your question, hour 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 to live in herndon and be 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 automakers will be thinking about that and thinking about how they can integrate not just entertainment but the rest of life into your vehicle as well. >> i would just 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 there 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 ]

this weekend the c-span cities tour is partnered with comcast to learn about the history and literary life of ft. lauderdale, florida. >> so this was really cultural tourism. so when they'd set up their villages along the way, along the tamiami trail sometimes only lean-tos, the buses would stop because here was a tourist attraction. seminoles camping by the road. and so when they came into the tourist attractions, they were getting food, a weekly allotment of food and they were also getting sometimes the rental of sewing machines where coppinger would rent and let other people use them when they lived in the tourist attraction. and they also sometimes get fabric because it behooved the tourist attraction people to supply them with fabric. so they were sitting there

sewing and making things for a craft marketp. this is a little boy's shirt, belted shirt from the 1920s. this was an for patchwork, and you can see that on the bottom this is not a design let's say that's made it down today. this is a little experimental design. the designers were bigger in the '20s. and sometimes they weren't used any longer than during that particular decade. >> you know the thing about the devil's triangle and the bermuda triangle there's all kinds of things that have happened. flight 19 was a regular navigation mission, training mission. they would take off from the base and then flight 19s, they would go east out toward the bahamas, there was an area they would drop bombs and they would continue on another 70 miles or so and then they were supposed to make a turn north, and go 100 and something miles and make a turn back west towards fort

lauderdale. they never came back. later at night after they were sure they were out of fuel they had sent out these big rescue planes looking for them and one of them disappeared with 13 men aboard. and the next day they started a five-day search with hundreds and hundreds of planes and ships and never found anything. >> watch all of our events from fort lauderdale saturday at 5:30 p.m. eastern on c-span2's book tv and sunday afternoon at 2:00 on american history tv on c-span3. a number of 2016 republicans presidential candidates and others who are likely to run spoke at the south carolina freedom summit in greenville over the weekend. we covered all of the day-long event which you can see at c-span.org. right now we'll hear what louisiana governor bobby jindal had to say. ♪

>> thank you. thank you for at very warm reception. it's great to be back here in south carolina. i thought long and hard about what i wanted to talk with are you today. i decided i want to talk about what i think is the greatest threat we face from the obama administration. now there are a lot of things we could put on that list. i don't know about you but i worry about $18 trillion of debt. [ applause ] i worry about obamacare that puts bureaucrats between patients and their doctors. i worry about a president who seems intent on signing a deal that will allow iran to become a nuclear power. [ applause ] i worry about a president who's trying to force common core in our classrooms. i worry about a president, i

worry about a president who day by day seeks new ways, new ways to change our country. but the greatest threat i think we face from the obama administration, because a lot of what i just listed can be undone by a conservative in the white house. we can lower tax rates. we can draw back the epa. we can get rid of the regulations strangling our economy. we can stand with israel, proudly, again, as she fights off hamas, hezbollah and other terrorist groups. but the greatest danger posed by this president is what he is doing to redefine the idea of america. the idea of the american dream. now what do i mean by that? if you listen to his policies if you listen to his speeches you see what he is trying to do. he is trying to redefine the american dream. he's trying to redefine it into one about dependence. about government growth, about government spending. the longer you listen to this president the more you hear him trying to divide us by race by gender, by geography, against

each other. he wants to make us sound and look more and more like europe. europe. i don't know about you but that is not the american dream my parents taught me. when i hear this president, when i see his policies he's trying to turn the american dream into the european nightmare. and i want to tell you why the american dream is so important to me. and i want to talk to you about an external and an internal threat to that american dream. the reason this is so important to me, my parents, they have lived the american dream. now what do i mean by that? my daddy is one of nine. grew up in a house without running water, without electricity. was the first and only one in the family to get past the fifth grade. now i know because we heard these stories every single day growing up. i'm sure you've got a dad like that. good luck trying to get an allowance out of a dad like that. but here's the amazing thing. my parents over 40 years ago got

on a plane traveled halfway across the world, to come to baton rouge, louisiana. i want you to think about something. the first time they ever got on a plane they were coming to america. i try to explain to my children they don't understand this, there was no internet, there was no google there was no online back then. they couldn't search and see what people were like in baton rouge. they couldn't -- they didn't even know anybody who had visited baton rouge to come back and tell them what the food what the people what the culture, what the tell turp was like. bus this is what they knew. even though they had never visited, never met anybody who had come to baton rouge they got on that plane my mom was pregnant with me they left behind their parents their families, and their friends. what they knew they were coming to an idea as much as they were coming to a place. they were coming to the idea of freedom and opportunity. they were coming to the american dream. so they land in baton rouge my

mom goes to lsu. my dad needed a job. yeah, thank you. i realize there may be some clemson and some other fans in the audience. and university of south carolina. i don't want to play favorites. let's just stick to lsu. so my mom goes to school at lsu. my dad he needs a job. they're in student housing, they're running out of money doesn't know anybody, so he opens the yellow pages. i love this story. he starts calling company after company after company looking for a job. now i don't know how many days or weeks it takes. i don't know how many people hung up on him. i don't know how many people laughed in his face but finally, finally, he convinces a guy from a railroad company to hire him sight unseen. and my dad tells his new boss, hasn't met the guy yet hasn't started work the guy says you can start monday morning. my dad says that's great. tells his new boss he goes, now, look, i don't have a car, i

don't have a driver's license, you're going to have to pick me up on the way to work. [ applause ] who tells their new boss that? it's like the top ten things not to do in a job interview. the guy was so taken by his enthusiasm he did exactly that. six months later, i was born at woman's hospital. now i was what you would politely call a pre-existing condition when i was born. there was no obamacare. it's just my parents insurance didn't cover me. women's hospital is a great hospital. we've got three children two of our children were born at that same hospital. now that third child, that was the child that was born at home. now, i didn't come here to tell you that story but since tomorrow's mother's day i'll tell you two very quick things. our last child, he was born at home, first child took 36 hours of labor, second child 24 hours of labor. third child, 30 minutes of labor. so this wasn't on purpose. we were at home.

it was my wife and me on the bathroom floor, two things i learned. number one tomorrow's mother's day. every man here you go home, you thank your mothers, your wives, your sisters, your daughters there's a reason god in his infinite wisdom allows women and not men to have babies. [ applause ] dumbest thing i ever heard was the next week we were in church, guy comes up to me and says bobby the exact same thing happened to me. i said what do you mean? he said i had me a kidney stone it's exactly the same thing. i said, well, unless it was a nine pound kidney stone it was not the same thing. second lesson i learned being married to my wife this will be our 18th year of marriage, i've lied to her exactly once. and it was that morning. our baby was coming out and you know on the movies they come out they're beautiful and they're pink. there's a reason in the

hospitals the nurse takes that baby pretty quickly away from you. that's not how it happens in real life. so my wife's asking she can't see, how does he look? how does he look? [ laughter ] if i'm honest i say he doesn't look like he's done. let's put him back in there for a little longer. [ applause ] what i'm really really thinking at that moment is he looks like your side of the family, doesn't look like any of my relatives. i like being married so i told my beautiful bride, i said he looks beautiful. ten fingers, ten toes, that's all that counts. but i'll tell you the moment i gave my baby son it was our third child, to my wife to hold for the first time, i fell in love with her all over again. she didn't worry about the pain or her discomfort, it was just mom and child. and you just knew that you were witnessing a miracle. going back to women's hospital

when i was born when my dad was there with the doctor he went to the doctor and here's the amazing thing, our other two kids were born at the hospital. it took us hours to fill out the paperwork, and we had good insurance. my parents' insurance didn't cover me so my dad went to the doctor, no contracts, no government programs, no paperwork. my dad went to the doctor and said, i'm going to send you a check every month until i pay this bill in full. and then two men stood there and they shook hands and that was it. [ applause ] that's just how things were done back then. you know it was a simpler time. i asked my dad, how would that work today exactly? how do you pay for a baby on layaway? i mean if you skip a payment can they take the baby back? what do they do, repossess the baby? he said, trust