>> rose: wx to the program. we begin this evening with foreign policy, and president obama's speech, commencement speech at the u.s. military academy at west point. joining me michele flournoy, e.j. dionne, jeff goldberg, and david rennie. >> u.s. military action cannot be the only over even primary component of our leadership in every instance. just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail. >> between, you know, doing nothing and boots on the ground military intervention, there are all kind of options for american leadership and engagement, and smart ways of influencing situations on the ground. so i think in principle, he's absolutely right.

>> rose: we continue with a look at a new driverless car produced by google with chris urmson and ron medford. >> we've done about 700,000 miles of driving, the cars driving themselves, and we've gathered that data, and now we can use that data to have the algorithms learn what does a person look like when they're about to change a lane and learn where is that cyclist about to move, and these kind of predictions are what the human brain does constantly. >> rose: we conclude this evening with the great writer george saunders who made a commencement speak that became a book called "congratulations, by the way." >> what i tried to do is in the setting where people are more open than usual, it's a big day, try to make the case that kindness is not this kind amorphous, gauzy, optional thing that we add on, but it's actually an essential human characteristic, and it should be parent of an intellectual life.

it's a valid intellectual concept that anybody who is a writer or an artist or just a citizen should take some time to think about. >> rose: a commencement speech on foreign policy, look at a new driverless car, and a word for kindness by george saunders when we continue. >> there's a saying around here: you stand behind what you say. around here, we don't make excuses, we make commitments. and when you can't live up to them, you own up and make it right. some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where it's needed most. but i know you'll still find it, when you know where to look.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: president obama delivered the commencement address at the united states military academy on wednesday. he took the opportunity at west point to recast his brought broadvision of foreign policy and america's role in the world. >> america must always lead on the world stage. if we don't, no one else will. the military that you have joined is and always will be the backbone of that leadership but u.s. military action cannot be

the only or even primary component of our leadership in every instance. just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail. >> rose: the speech comes a day after his announcement that a residual force of united states service member will remain in afghanistan beyond 2014. by 2016 most troops will be out of the country in america's ames longest running war. the president is clearly thinking about foreign policy, and this speech, his commencement speech at west point is said to mark a series of speeches from the president about foreign policy over the next 10 days in an attempt to respond to critics who say that current u.s. policy is weak. he'll go to a trip to europe. he'll give a speech about u.s. commitment to europe. he'll honor u.s. veterans in normandy on the anniversary of the d-day landings. we have a distinguished group of

washington observers. michele flournoy is c.e.o. of the center for new american security. former undersecretary of defense for policy. e.j. dionne is a senior fellow for the brookings institution. jeff goldberg is a columnist for "bloomberg view." and david rennie is bureau chief of the "the economist" magazine. i am pleased to have all of them on the program this evening. i begin with this simple question-- why did the president feel necessary to make this speech now and the follow-up speechedz as well? and what does he believe is necessary for him to accomplish? jeff? >> well, i think the white house felt that it was lose, a grip on a narrative, and i think that the narrative that they don't want to hear is that foreign policy-- obama's foreign policy is aimless and weak and that our allies constantly need reassurance that we're not

abandoning them. so i think he wanted to set out-- this was really like a state of the union address on foreign policy. so it was literally and figuratively all over the map. but i think he was trying to signal in two different ways at once. one was a level of deep engage oment issues that he considers primary importance, and also there was a little bit of-- of development of a kind of obama doctrine, neither too interventionist, nor isolationist, nor military focused nor not military focused. the amazing thing about the commentary that's come out in the hours since the speech is it's so all over the place. there are people who are read, this as interventionist. kind of a new interventionism in the middle east. there are people reading it as america withdrawing from the world. there is people reading this as appeasing russia. all kinds of things. to borrow from e.j. dionne and also steal a line from him. these speeches are sometimes

like rohrshach tests and people are taking so much from them i'm not shiert message they wanted to get out is entirely clear, even to the people who are the target audience. >> rose: e.j. what do you take away from this? >> i agree with jeff that they have been under a lot of attack, both direct, and kind of subtle about america's role in the world. so this was their way of hitting back and saying, yes, we do have a clear policy. and i think it was a particular attack on his hawkish critics because he went out of his way to say that we've made more mistakes by over-intervening militarily than we have through restraint. so there is a strong element of restraint here. but he is also trying to say we're not pulling back from the world. he's very tough in saying america is not in decline. in fact, we're as strong as we ever were. and he is also saying that i am not george w. bush. i think what really underalize this speech is i want to go back to before george w. bush. i'm not going to stay away from

intervention in all cases but it will be more like bill clinton or george h. w., than the last administration. >> rose: the president has on occasion said his foreign policy was similar to that of george bush 41. michelle, tell me what your takeaway is and as a former policymaker you thought was essential for the president to say. >> i think this was an effort to reset the narrative. this administration has had to deal with so many different foreign policy crises, one after the other. they've gotten pushed into a very reactive mode at some points in time. i think this was an effort to sort of get back on the front foot and not only say, hey, the u.s. does have a key leadership role in the world. i do have a strategy. but here's my framework. here's when i'm use force and when i won't. here's a new approach to counter-terrorism. here's why the united states has to undergird the international

order. un, here's why we support democracy and development around the world. so i think he's trying to put out a framework. the real issue, though, is, you know, how does this translate into policy and action? is this a new framework for the policies that are already in place or does this set expectations that some new policies will be rolling out in support of these elements? >> rose: you'll answer your own question. >> i think it's a little of both. i mean, i think he's trying to provide a framework into which a lot of the piece parts fit. but i also think there will be some new init$u)]t:k like he mentioned, a counter-terrorism partnership building find, $5 billion devoted to helping build capacity of partners to deal with terrorist groups on their soil. i expect there will be other initiatives like that to undergird this over time. >> rose: david, did the president answer the question you posed on the cover of "the economist" magazine, what will he wyatt for?

what the united states fight for? >> i think ultimately not, in that a kind of question, looking for a positive answer, a list of policy objectives. i think it was a very effective speech as a catalog of the mistakes that he thinks america should avoid, and some familiar themes, and he was very effect 95 attacking, sometimes using a bit of strawmen, but attacking his critics who want america to use military force when that's not appropriate. who spurn the idea of going through the u.n. or other multinational. it was a goldilocks speech-- not too hot, not too cold. where i think allies in europe and the expheeft asia is there are hard tradeoffs if you're the world's remaining super power, and when those tradeoffs bite, he didn't get an accurate sense of where america falls. he said it would be very good to use peacekeepers from other countries, build alliances with other countries. what if they don't turn up?

what would american force be for then. >> rose: the president said the united states will use military force unilaterally if necessary when our core interests demanded. my question is when do our core interests demand and when do we recognize that? >> i think it's when our vital interests are directly threatened. the most visible examples of this in the obama administration have been in the counter-terrorism domain, whether the raid against osama bin laden or the willingness to take strikes on individuals when there are continuing and imminent threats abroad that-- homeland plots that we are defeat orgdisrupting and so forth. so that's been the most visible example. >> rose: e.j.? >> what i was going to say is it's almost like we want another speech because as president clinton might put it, it depends on what the meaning of the words "core interests" is. >> rose: exactly. >> and there was some clarity there. and he did in particular say

when the security of our allies is in danger. so that's stronger than just when the united states faces attack. and i think there was an interesting-- i don't know if the word is ambivalence-- where on the one hand, he's really talking about pretty hard realistic threats that we will respond to, like terrorism, but he also talks about creating the framework for a world of tolerance and liberty. he talks about international norms. so he is not simply a narrow realist here. he has some language that suggests the united states has an obligation to a larger world order. but in the end, it's worth remembering, he was elected as a president by a country that was weary of war. and in some ways the proudest line in this speech is which he basically declares a season of war over. >> charlie, two quick points, if i may.

let me go back to something e.j. said, he said, obama seems to want to return our foreign policy to the period of clinton and bush 41. but i would say based on this speech, that it's not at all clear to me that obama would intervene in bosnia in the same way that president clinton did, or somalia, for that matter. i don't think those rise to his definition of what our core interest is. however-- and let me use one of the primary examples of an american interest at the moment-- on iran, if you listen to him carefully, you be, he believes that nuclear proliferation, w.m.d. proliferation, w.m.d. falling into the hands of fanatics, these are core interests, so on an issue like iran, i think what he's signaling or suggesting is, hey, i am serious about using-- having the option of using force to stop countries like iran from going nuclear. so it was not as soft a speech as some people might think. >> rose: but he disw have this sense-- there seems to me in

everything he says, some sense we have to be wiser about being drawn into conflict conflicts tr national interests are not at stake. and more careful about that than his predecessors. michelle? >> i think coming in the wake of iraq and the way that, that initial intervention-- you know, the mistakes that were made going into war, i think that is something that has, you know, been on his mind from the beginning of his press perez against. and i agree with, i think it was e.j. who said, the proudest part of the speech-- this is a president who wants to be the president who ends the inherited wars on his watch. he wants to hand off to whoever the new president is without a major, you know, war going on in which american troops are involved. and i think that's a noble goal in some ways. the challenge is, you want to make sure you manage the draw-down in a place like

afghanistan in a way that secures the hard-fought gains we've had. and the second caveat is the world doesn't always cooperate. there may well be challenges to our core interests that need a firm response between-- that we can't necessarily predict or control. >> rose: two quick points. number one, does this speech show that the president wants to make it clear that there is a new threat of terrorism, and that we must be prepared and have the resources to fight that? >> i think so. i mean, i thi the terrorism threat has morphed. it has moferred into a set of regional affiliates that are more widespread but also more diffuse, and i think he's trying to shift and adapt our strategy to be more tailored to that, and to be more sustainable to the american body politic in terms of something we can sustain over a longer period of time. >> i think it was really striking that terrorism, more than any other question,

dominated the whole beginning of the speech. when if you want to know what core interests are in obama's view, keeping us safe from terrorism seems to be right at the top of that list in this speech. >> rose: i think-- >> charlie i can point out one contradiction in this speech i think is the following. he talks about intervening sparingly and wisely and, obviously, syria is an example where he did not intervene early. he also speaks of syria as a new epicenter of al qaeda-influenced terrorism. there is a lot of people in washington, a lot of people in the pentagon, who believed had we intervened earlier and supported the rebels more robustly-- to borrow a word we often use in washington-- had we supported them with arms early, that we might not be dealing with such a terrible al qaeda problem in syria right now. in other words, in other words, one of the big lessons here for president obama, the last decade, is that there is a price that you pay for taking action,

but there is also a price that comes with not act, and in syria, you could argue that syria is worse today because we did not help the rebels when they were more moderate leaning and when they had a better chance of some success in syria. >> rose: my also impression is this president has-- does not believe that he should have acted two years ago when he was urged to do so. and certainly, still has the strong feelings he did against a no-fly zone. michelle. >> i think there are two things that have changed. one is we do better understand who these groups are. and we're better able to distinguish them and have greater confidence in who we're supporting. but i also think the conditions have changed. and the syrian civil war has drawn jihadist, terrorist groups from all over as a training ground, as a battleground, and that has taken it from being a civil war to now being something

that poses a threat potentially to the united states, potentially to other western powers. so our skin is in the game in a different way than it was several years ago. so i think that's also a cause for the change in the greater willingness to do more. >> rose: the other two things that come out of this is, obviously, he says the u.s. wantwants to lead but we also wt to do it in concert with all kinds of allies. and secondly, he wants to focus on nonlethal weapons, that we have more tools available that we're not using. >> that's in some ways sort of a european approach to multilateral diplomacy. the problem sin europe's context, that for a long time has been a rationalization of impotence. and i think there were worrying flickers, as a european listening to the speech, worrying flickers as-- in egypt, the tradeoff between stability through an autocratic regime versus america's values and he

was trying to have it both ways and i think that would also work in syria. is an autocrat a source of stability? he said it wasn't in egypt but carry on supplying aid to the egyptian government because the relationship is fundamentally about security. that's a tradeoff between even the course of interest versus values. he fudged it, i think. he was trying to have it both ways. and in as much as he started sounding european and explaining inaction in advance, that troubled me. >> he's right in the fundamental sense that between, you know, doing nothing and boots on the ground military intervention, there are all kinds of options for american leadership and engagement, and smart ways of influencing situations on the ground. so i think in principle, he's absolutely right. i think, again, the devil's in the details of how we actually engage effectively in some of these very complex situations. >> rose: so where are we in ukraine and where are we, especially in the conflict with

vladimir putin in russia? >> i think that the list he gave, should be remembered, was not in any way a new list. i think he was in a way saying these are all tools we used to have, we've always had, but we haven't used them enough. we've had this habit of going too much to military action. and that was a kind of defense of his policy in ukraine. he says implicitly and explicitly, we weren't going to go to war with russia over ukraine. but we seem to have had some real effect on putin's behavior-- and we'll know more in a couple months-- but we seem to have had some real effect on putin's behavior with the sanctions we put up. and that he's also had more success than you might expect in getting the europeans to be willing to take some steps that are economically more painful for them than they are for us. we're putting a lot of hope in the winner of this ukrainian

presidential election, his savvy, the fact that he has relationships with putin. we seem to think he's the magician who can somehow tilt towards europe and satisfy putin at the same time. >> one quick point about the speech and ukraine, one word that wasn't mentions in that speech is crimea. it's as if it never happened. russia invaded, occupied, and annexed a piece of another country, and the white house-- the europeans, for that matter-- are acting in a way as if it never happened. they're talking about that's a fait accompli. that's done. so you can cast our current policy as containing them or boxing them nbut he-- putin won something very important in this latest round. >> i think that's right. >> i think you're going to hear a lot about crimea and that issue when the president goes to poland and normandy and at the g-7 where russia will be noticeably absent and so forth. i think in europe that topic will be front and center. >> rose: michelle, if there is an obama doctrine, would you define it for me? >> i don't know that i have a

bumper sticker, but i think it is a-- >> what about a short pamphlet. >> something along the lines of smart, selective engagement. un, i think it's with an emphasis on the stock market meaning not always military. and selective meaning not everywhere all the time. this is the thing. he has a very-- he's trying to convey a very nuanced message with some internal tensions and that's very hard to do in a bumper sticker. >> rose: if all of you had to evaluate the obama foreign policy so far in his second term, how would you grade it? jeffrey? >> um, geez, thanks, charlie. look, i mean, i just wrote today that, you know, this is a president who has avoided making catastrophic mistakes in foreign policy. i mean, we have to face the reality that, that inaction is

often the wise move or that non-military steps and cautious steps are useful. that said, you know, i've spent a lot of time overseas in the last six months in countries that are allied with the u.s., and their leaders are almost uniformly uneasy about our world leadership, and there are people clamoring for more leadership and more assertive leadership. i would give it in the c to b range, i guess. >> i think he was very successful in the first term. he got us out of iraq, which was a central objective, without the place completely falling apart. he tried the surge in afghanistan, which he probably had second thoughts about, but there was some progress made there, and, of course, he killed osama bin laden. so i think that the voters felt in 2012 this was a-- quite an effective foreign policy. i think the mixed signals that started coming from the syrian difficulty-- we'll put it that way-- last fall have set off a

lot of questions that this speech was partly designed to answer. so i think he did sort of very well in the first semester, and he's trying to get back into shape in the second semester. >> rose: david? >> it's one of those frustrations, isn't it? you can look at individual cases and each time there's a rational, sensible, sober case to be made for how he's behaved. but in its entirety do worry, and colleagues of mine at "the economist," hear from allies, they do worry about america's commitment-- what is america for. the idea that america is moving towards less the indesspencible nation. the indispensable cat list is what the nation seems to think of itself. >> rose: one thing that comes up when you see him talk about this, whether with david remnick or jeffrey, whoever he is in conversation with, it seems to me its notion that it's

important for a president not to screw it up. and that, that is ever-present in his own mind. michelle? >> i do think that he places priority on not make big, blundering mistakes. and, you know, again, given that we've experienced some of those in the recent past, i don't think that's a bad goal. i also think this is a president who is consistently, both first term and second term, been fighting to try to create more wandwidth and focus for the domestic agenda, for the economy, for growing jobs, for infrastructure, health care, immigration, and i think he's constantly fighting that battle to try to preserve more bandwidth for the domestic agenda. again, the problem is the world doesn't always cooperate, and as he himself said, the u.s. has this indispensable role to play. and we can't-- we can't, you know, not step up to that fully.

>fully. >> i think the title of richard haas' book, the council on foreign relations, "foreign policy begins at home," that is very much obama's position. i think all presidents, especially after they take over after an unpopular president are partly the product of what came before. reagan's presidency was built on the perception that we were somehow weak at the end of the carter years. the obama presidency is built on the perception that we were reckless during the bush years and that defines a lot of what he's chosen to do. >> i think that's true. some is course correction, and you have to be careful as you correct the course udon't overcorrect. >> rose: jeffrey? >> >> presidencies often come apart in the middle east. jimmy carter's, reagan almost lost his presidency in the middle east. george w. bush. obviously, any-- any smart,

sensible president would try to avoid having his presidency-- have the wheels come off in a middle eastern conflict. and i could also add this, i think and other people in the white house have said this privately, but it's been said so often that it's become public, the bumper sticker, in many ways, is don't do stupid stuff, although sometimes another word is used for "stuff." that's not f.d.r. un, that's not-- that's not mr. "mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. of but in reaction to eight or 10 really difficult years, it's not the worst-- it's not the worst approach to take to some of these problems. >> rose: thank you all. thank you very much. jeffrey. thank you, e.j. thank you, david, and michelle, thank you. great to see you all. >> thank you, charlie. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> rose: we'll be right back. stay with us. for 16 years, google has helped us navigate the information

superhighway. alongside its core business, the company has invested aggressively in the so-called internet of things. one such project is a driverless car. until now, google has relied on modifying existing vehicles. yesterday it unveiled its own prototype. the futuristic vehicle has no steering wheeled whooelz, no brakes, and no gas pedal. it takes all responsibility from the human driver, instead relying on a combination of radar and laser sensors. chris urmson leads the google car project. ron medford leads safety. i am pleased to have both of them at this table to talk about this development. welcome and congratulations. >> thank you. >> thanks, charlie. >> rose: i think. so take me back through the evolution of trying to produce a driverless car. gl. >> we started at google about five years ago with a vision for how can we make transportation better? and we looked at safety on the road, transportation in america is a wonderful thing.

you can get from one place to another, you know, with amazing ease. but we kill an amazing number of people on our roadways every year, 33,000 people a year. >> rose: biggest killer of teenagers. >> from 4-34, it's the leading cause of death. not gun violence, not cancer. traffic accidents. when you look at mobility, there are huge swaths of our society who lose the privilege of driving or never had it. lots of people have had to have the conversation elderly grandparents or parents. they need to take the keys away. and these folks are left without the ability to interact with society. >> rose: so there's the need. >> that's the need. and so in 2009, we kicked off the project, and the idea initially was to see was it even feasible. so we set two audacious goals. the first was to drive 100,000 miles on public roads which was an order of magnitude more than anyone had ever done before so it was kind of a big deal. and the other was to drive 1,000

miles of interesting roads, so things like going from google's campus to san francisco, but instead of taking the freeway, go up over the mountains, along the coast, and through san francisco. >> rose: and the idea is to prove what? >> could the technology work? could we get to the point where for the first time you could do it without touching the steering wheel, or the brakes or the hand pedals. after about a year and a half we made it through that. and then we thought about where can this benefit people? and we spent time thinking about the freeway system. and we had a system of google employees could use it on the freeways. and it was astrownding. people loved it. you know, we had one woman who had about an hour and a half commute, and she never cooks and she never exercise. sp she used this for a week. she didn't want to give it back. every day she cooked for her family and every day she

exercised. it was amazing. what we also saw was it was hard for people to pay attention when they needed to. the thing is mostly working all the time, does a really nice job. and they would get distracted because it works so well, they would trust it. and we started to worry about the ability of people to stay attentive and reengage with driving. when we thought back on our vision of helping everybody, we realized we could spend time trying to debug the attention problem or push harder on making the car work everywhere. so about a year and a half ago we reset and focused on that superpower and as we did that, we started think think about well if the car is going to drive everywhere, what should is really do? what should is be like? that's where we kicked off building prototypes. >> rose: here's the question, the broader question, though. before this people were fascinated by the idea of driverless cars, for the obvious reasons we said. but there was some focus on the road. >> yes, trying to make a smart

road and embed things in the road so the vehicles would know where to go, and that just never happened. and i think you can realize why, charlie, in some ways. trying to put enough infrastructure in place and pay for it that would allow that to happen just was never very feasible, i think. so having the car do it on its own is, i think, the most effective way to do it. and i think we finally have reached that point in our history, in our technology, that we can outdo that. ais>> rose:aise mentioned, peope have been trying to do this by modifying existing cars. >> now we have built the car from the ground pup using the kind of sensors that it needs. so it can see 360 degrees. now it gives us the capability of doing things that has never been done before. >> rose: like? >> like seeing and reacting to everything in your environment, and many things at the same time. >> rose: but does it have a problem distinguish be between what might be and what might not

be? >> me, i think as chris would tell you, we are make really rapid progress, and being able to classify projects and know who they are and being able to react to them. that's part of the development process. >> rose: i want to stay with this, chris, because this is really interesting. if it was easy it would have been done a long time ago. >> absolutely. >> rose: what is the biggest challenge? >> it's really about understanding the world, right, and predicting it. so you might look -- >> so you can build in the predictions. >> that's right. and this is one of the really exciting things that we've actually been able to do at google. we've had our vehicles on the road and we've done about 700,000 miles of driving, the cars driving themselves. and we've gathered that data, and now we can use that data to have the algorithms learn what does a person look like when they're about to change a lane, and learn where is that cyclist about to move? these kind of predictions of what the human brain does constantly. this is what the vehicles have to be able to do glaz we know

with artificial intes, that's a long road. how does it distinguish between what might be a person versus an animal? >> that's great. we look at the shape of the want. we kind of look at how it's moving. there are a lot of these different complicated, what we call feature vectors that the machine-- that our engineers designed. and then we throw a whole bunch of data at this machine learning algorithms and it figures out this collection of features mean that's a person or that's a tree or that's a car. >> rose: when it's wrong what, do you do? >> it has to be robust to being wrong. it will be conservative. one of the things we program into our vehicles is to be a defensive driver. that means leaving extra space places, blind spots on the vehicle, all these kinds of things that athrough to have a margin to deal with situation where's it might slightly misclassify things. >> rose: what worries you most? your experience has been in safety. >> yes, for me, it's making sure we do everything we can to do the testing that's necessary to

prove to ourselves that it's safe, and there's a commitment at dwoolg to do that. so i think just making sure that adequate testing is done. and i think google has already tested 700,000 miles autonomously now, and all that data has been collected and we're able to use that to simulate scenarios and keep adding to our scenario database so i think we're in a strong position to make sure we have it right. >> sebastian was here a number of times and formerly headed up this operation. he said an interesting thing-- put too much intelligence in a car and it soon becomes creative. i assume that means with too much information inside it begins to take chances. >> i'm not sure exactly what he meant by that. we do use a lot of machine learning, but we do that offline. and then we have have this really amazing system that allows us to review where the car has driven in the past, how it reacted, and how it would

react given whatever new thing it has learned. we can predict a lot of the behavior of the vehicle. it still needs to be generalizeab. you're not going to see the same cyclist in exact let's same place every time but you learn enough and get enough confidence that it will behave the way you wanted to. >> rose: it was written in the atlantic, right now it can't detect a car waving it into a lane, and still can't understand the universal language of urban traffic, honking. true? >> that's fair. what's interesting-- and this is one of the things we learned early in the project, was there's a lot of myth around this. that you have to be able to see one another and make eye contact. it turns out that you can send a lot of a message with how you position a vehicle. once your car starts moving forward that signals to the other people around you that you're going to do. we've been thinking about how do you do that in a safe way that

allows other folks to get the cars miewfl. >> rose: how important is what google has done for mapping to this process? >> i think it's vietal and distinguishes what it's doing from all the other companies. this map, which allows a company to know exactly where it is in the world at all times. and knowing what to expect tarkz knows what's on that map, really helps it figure out a lot of the difficult issues and the requirement it's operating in. >> but it has to be far more precise than what google maps does today. >> yes, it's more precise because the geometry and details are what you need to drive safely on the road. >> rose: take a look at this. this is an interview i did with larry page, first one he's done in a while, at the ted conference, talking about his interest in driverless driving. here it is. talking about the future, what is it about you and

transportation systems. >> i guess i was frustrated with this when i was in column in michigan. i had to get on the bus and take it and wait for it and it was cold and snowing. and i did some research on how much it cost. and i just became obsessed with transportation systems. and -- >> and that began the yesterday an automated car. >> about 18 years ago, i learned about people working on automated cars and i became fascinated by that, and, again, it takes a while to get these projects going. but i'm super excited about the possibilities of that improving world. there are 20 million people or more injured per year. it's a leading cause of death for people under 34 in the u.s. >> rose: you're talkin talking t savings lives. >> ye, and also saving space, and make life better. los angeles is half parking lots and roads. half of the area. and most cities are not far

behind, actually. and it's crazy that's that we whatwe use our space for. >> gl how soon will we be there? >> i think we can be there very soon. i have driven well over 100,000 miles now, totally automated. i think i'm-- i'm super excited about getting that out quickly. >> rose: so there's your leader. >> yeah. absolutely, yeah. >> rose: here's what some people say-- if driverless cars were once held back by technology they're now held back by the law. >> so i think the law is trying to-- not the law, per se, but regulations. many people believe the law somehow is standing in the way of technology. i don't think so. i think the law is every day solving new technology problems and finding ways to deal with new issues that are presented by new technologies. and i just think that eye don't see where this is a big problem that the current legal system doesn't have the capability of

dealing with. i think it does. it doesn't mean there may not need to be some changes. but i don't think the laws are in the way. there are a few states beginning to regulate the tech noblg and wanting to understand it. we're working closer with them to make sure they understand how it works and give us the flexibility necessary to be able to continue to innovate and pb effective in developing the technology. >> rose: it gets easier to do this. you couldn't have done this in 1999. >> no. >> rose: coming int coming inton you look at it today, how fast can these cars go? what's spacing required? what are the limitations that can be overcome? >> so, we've had our vehicle goes-- i think we had a prius about to 104 miles per hour on a runway on a closed course. the controls can drive fast. but there are practical

limitations. so these vehicles for the foreseeable future are going to be interacting with other human drivers. they're on the road with humans that are driving so we need to behave in a way that's normal for other people. that's exactly how we keep safe. we have a social norm that matters. our cars today air, lot of effort we put into developing them is make sure they behave in ways people expect. but overof over time we'll be able to double the capacity of our freeways without -- >> how expensive will it be? >> it will be affordable. this is something where the value is for everyone. so the technology has to be at a price point where everyone can use it. >> one google engineer said they wanted to make cars that drives better. we want to make cars that are better than drivers. >> sound like something i might have said at some point. >> absolutely, that's the goal.

thank you, chris, great to have you here. thank you very much, ron. >> thank you very much, charlie. back in a moment. stay with us. george saunders is here. his recent short story collection "tenth of december" received a national book award nomination. and awarded story prize and folio prize. last year he gave the convocation address at syracuse university. his message was both simple and powerful-- try to be kind to others. three months later, the "new york times" posted a transcript of the speech online. within days, it had been shared more than one million times. speech is now the book "congratulations, by the way: some thoughts of kindness." i am pleased to have george saunders back at this table. welcome. what am i having in here that's different from reading the speech or hearing the speech? >> originally, i had written a

20-minute speech thinking that was the length, and about two days before i was going to give it i called and they said, no, eight minutes. i just put in some of the cuts of course basically. it's very stlar to the speech itself. the speech, it was kind of surprising. i didn't expect it to really go beyond that day. and so when it did i kind of felt like maybe i did something write without knowing what it was so i won't mess with it too much. >> rose: what do you think that was? >> the eight-minute late meant you had to be urgent and there wasn't a lot of supporting data. and the fact i gave it at syracuse where i teach. it loosened me up. and i thought i'm going to speak from the heart. at the end of the day, what i do really think? i had actually given a version of the speech in 2004 to our daughter's middle school graduation, and it was even more

of, that our daughter and her friends, just real simple, one thing, an urgent thing i believe. whether i can support it or not, i'm just going to say it. >> rose: you can sum it up by saying it's about kindness? >> yes. in that setting where people are kind of a little more open than usual, trying to make the case, kindness is not this kind of amorphous gauzy optional thing we add on, but it's an essential human characteristic. and it should be parent of an intellectual life. it's a valid intellectual concept, that anybody who is a writer or artist or citizen should take some time think about it. so in that setting, ifts trying to validate things for the kids. some of these other ones -- sympathy, compassion, kindness, patience -- sort of nice but

optional. and i was saying these are all parts of being a powerful human being. >> rose: i couldn't agree more. david remnick said graduation speeches run so many risk use risk of gregg people, the risk of 15,000 different kind of cliches, there are all kind of risks and i'm aware an effectivuation speech is a very rare thing. one of the best i ever heard was george saunders last year because it was simple and deeply felt and had a certain clarity about it. >> from remnick, that's great. >> rose: david foster wallace your friend gave a commencement in 2005, and it went viral, and what he said-- he called his, this is water... he was a friend. did you know of that famous

speech? and did it influence you to think about it? >> in 204 when i wrote the first chapter i didn't know. and i think in the meantime i'm i dave it. they have kind of beautist or eastern underpinnings. when you judge a question about ciens, why aren't we kind, i think you come back to the idea that we're trapped in these thoughts that we create. and by too vinlulently supporting the boards themselveses you end up self itch. we talked about one of the strangeification we're at are-- i also mentioned that we understand ourselves to be separate from the rest of reality in a way that actually isn't true, and we understand ourselves to be exprmt solnid a

way that isn't true. at the end of life, we sort of get the bill for this false thinking, but i would argue along wait you also think i wish i had been more present for this or more kind for this person, you're paying the bill of is this of this false idea to the relation to the world. >> rose: simple is worth a lot, isn't it? >> yes, and it's difficult. in a sense, i had a friend which is the eight minute limit, and you get? a room that's hot, like the dome there was kind of echoey, and poem to don't want to necessarily hear you talk, it has-- >> i just want to get the diploma and go party. >> the big speech was the next day so they still had to get through that. it was a great exercise, taig eats only -- >> so many people i have interviewed who acted

courageously, which is different than kindness, but it's never-- it's always like "i had no choice." "what else would i have done? i couldn't can do it-- it was my-- it was the thing to do." >> one of the scary things to me is the thought maybe it would depend on the day. if you happen to be a certain place-- i was thinking in the sense of safe you had somebody i'm going to run a marathon today, i just have to, and they had never run befer, it's not going to be successful. and i was thinking since the kindness scms and goes, it makes sense to start early, start training a little bit. you don't want have to sing for the first time-- in the speech i lightly aliewld to it. one of the messages was is it you'll take my advice, maybe turn your mind to those things. >> rose: is there some danger ikind of digital culture we have

we don't think about interpersonal relationships in the way we should? >> the idea of an nimentd seems a license to kill. i think that's a problem. although, i teach at syracuse, and i have never met kinder, more mindful kid. i think more so eye don't know, but when i was a kid in the 70s i don't realize us being as much-- >> how was it expressed, the kindness? >> we teach in these really high-level writers in a workshop format and they are just wonderful at being specific in their comments but not ever harsh, not trying to put somebody down. there's a real kind of sim pat qusimpatico, and i remember our generation being a little cynical, so afraid of sentimentality, you'd rather say something harsh, and these guys

are real comfortable with-- i think-- positive emotion and addressing it. >> rose: there a moment where absurdism was actually realism. >> oh, yes, so many. i went into a period in my 30s after we had our kids where i was working these corporate jobs, and just sort of not having a lot of success. and in that sense, it was really-- you could see absurdism was really just realism seen from close to the bottom. your efforts don't amount to anything, and you sort of people mistake you for someone less capable that you know are. >> rose: when people talk about your work as being poetion modern or dark, does that ring true to you? do you think of what you write as dark? >> i think it's dark. my feeg is art is a purposeful exaggeration. it's not supposed to be a

perfect mirror to to life life. if you've i've been in a situation where you were struggling. to properly represent that in a fictionive mode, you might have to really take thiks off into the dark side. for example, if you wanted to talk in a story about kindness, i don't imagine i could do it with a bunch of people at a restaurant. you have to put-- it's sort of roaring out the light. an untest virtue isn't a virtue. >> rose: an untested virtue is not a virtue? >> right. if you want to talk about love uhave fought it just like you would-- in the emergencying test, you have to put it under heat and tress it and see what human beings will do in those conditions? >> you think artist has a moral

function? >> yes, but i think you have to be careful. my sense is the moral elements of a story will come out but you can't look correctly at them. you have to comment on the esthetiction. it's about people. and you want to see people in their full glory. we're looking at a human being, saying, what are you about? what are you made of? and that's by definition is more moral. >> rose: many people who look at writing say you can get through fiction better without looking at it. i've never quite been convinces of that, that real stories can't be as powerful as the mind of-- >> i don't really think picket is trying to quote, unquote,

show you life. it's like a black box should go in there. you come out of it sort of alive. you almost have to lieb a roller coaster. after a roller coaster you're not inclined to tich it. >> rose: when will you give another commencement speech? >> i don't think i will. that one went pretty well. >> rose: there was also the guy from pittsburgh who wrote the book and died, i think, about making last lecture, giving your last lecture. did you ever read that? >> i heard parts but i don't think i read it. >> rose: it was recorded, i think, and he became a huge celebrity-- not a celebrity in the best sense of the words. not just because-- because people so responded to what he

said. whe>> about 10 years ago i was a plane from chicago and one of the engines went out. there was panic. black smoke coming out, and people standing. that was a clarifying experience. >> rose: how did it clarify for you. ... ail could think was the word no repetitively. at that point, i didn't think i'll never write another book. it's ravel in the kind of a space of two or three days where it was clear that the goal here is to open yourself up and don't be afraid and be in proper relation to other people, love other people.

i think that's really it. i'm noticing as a get older, i become quietly more sure of that and are you straightthat i cannot realize it earlier. you can get back at it but it's hard go. >> rose: thank you for coming. it's always great to you have here. this small book "congratulations, by the way." some thoughts on kindness which we all cowl do a bit with. thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications

captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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