Many people are concerned with robots replacing human jobs, but what about robots enhancing existing jobs?
The Cleveland Clinic recently completed a robotic surgery in a single-lung transplant—the first to take place in the U.S.
Surgical robots are allowing surgeons to accomplish non-invasive surgeries that otherwise would have called for giant incisions, delaying recovery time.
Phone usage is changing how parents and their kids interact. Kids are learning behaviors from their first role models. This includes screen time.
But how exactly does a parent’s relationship with their phone change their relationship to their kid?
Apple has sued Open AI, claiming that the company was illegally accessing information about unannounced products.
We're talking about all of these topics on this week's edition of Tech Tuesday.
Guests:
- Dr. Gregory Jones, staff thoracic surgeon, Cleveland Clinic
- Dr. Don Grant, media psychologist/national advisor of healthy device management for Newport Healthcare
- Russell Holly, director of commerce content, CNET
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. Many people are concerned with robots replacing human jobs, but what about robots enhancing existing jobs? Surgical robots are allowing surgeons to accomplish non-invasive surgeries that otherwise would have called for a giant incision and a long recovery time. The Cleveland Clinic recently completed a robotic surgery in a single lung transplant, the first to take place in the US. To tell us more about these non-invasive robotic transplant surgeries, we have Dr. Gregory Jones, Staff Thoracic Surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. Welcome to All Sides, Dr. Jones.
Dr. Gregory Jones: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Juravich: So a robot surgeon, I'm sure they've been around doing small things here and there for a long time, but when I heard that a robot was doing a lung transplant, that seemed big, that seemed huge to me. That seemed like a huge procedure for a robot. So how is a robot able to do a lung transplants?
Jones: That's a great question and it does seem very futuristic. So I do want to make a special clarification here that the surgeon is controlling the robot at all times. It's not an autonomous robot that is able to complete the operation. Basically the surgeon will set up the robot arms. There are small, five or six or small incisions that enter the chest and the robotic instruments are controlled by the surgeon in a corner of the room. The advantage really is the multiple fold, but the main advantage is the visualization. The camera that we're able to use can zoom in and out in the chest. It's an incredible 3D visualization with depth perception. And then from a dexterity standpoint, the robotic instruments can achieve angles that the human hands can't and work in a very small space. So the surgeon controls it at all times, but the technology is pretty incredible.
Juravich: So tell me about the process being able to be non-invasive. I mean, what size incision are we talking here versus what a traditional lung transplant incision would be?
Jones: Right, so traditional lung transplant incisions often will go through the breastbone like an open heart surgery incision straight up and down. Occasionally will go side to side through the ribs that often goes through the Breastbone as well and a horizontal incision often requires significant retraction of the ribs or sometimes fracture of the rib in a controlled way. All of that is maximally invasive. So, you know, it gives us excellent visualization, but patients have pain and they have some difficulty recovering from this, given the maximally-invasive nature of the incisions. The nice thing about the robot, we start the procedure with about five or six small, one centimeter incisions for the robotic arms and the camera, some assistant boards. Obviously, the question I get a lot is, how do you get the lungs out and how do get the new one in?
Juravich: That's my next question, yes. Are you, wait, so you said one centimeter, but okay, continue, yeah.
Jones: Yeah. That's basically the width of the instrument ports that need to go into the chest. So once we complete the first part of the operation, which is basically disconnecting the old lung that is removed from the chest through a five centimeter incision, and we're able to get a little creative with some of our retractors and some of the, you know, leveraging the lung anatomy to get the lung out. And it's pretty incredible when you see the size of the incision that you think the lung can, you know, fit through there. So we remove the old lung, prepare the new lung for implant, and then insert the new one into that same incision.
Juravich: Five centimeters, I'm not a metrics girl, I'm an inches girl, so like, you're on.
Jones: A couple inches. Yeah.
Juravich: Yeah, just a couple inches you're holding up your hand, but we're on the radio. So just we're talking like two to three inches. Yeah
Jones: Correct. Yeah, little over two inches. Exactly. Okay.
Juravich: Okay, so of the organs in the body, the lung must be, I'm gonna use a very scientific word here because I can't think of another word, squishable. Laughter
Jones: Yes, the nice thing about the lung is when we're working in there, it's deflated, so it's significantly smaller in size, and it can be maneuvered into and out of the chest, which is what we tend to do to leverage the insertion and extraction.
Juravich: So my experience with lung transplants is just watching them on a TV show, basically, and you watch the young doctor holding this lung in two hands and carrying it over. But you don't have to be so careful and precise with it. It can just be put into a five centimeter incision and then inflated once it's in there.
Jones: Well, it's a good question. So when we're working, when we are preparing the lung for the implant and basically cleaning up the vessels and the airway and getting it ready to be inserted, it is inflated because we want the maximal amount of time where the lungs are inflated. Otherwise, some secretions can develop and some of those lower airways can get a little clogged. So we basically deflate it right before it goes into the chest. When we do that, it substantially decreases in size and we can kind of pass it in using some special techniques to get it in. And then obviously when we're doing the implant, when we have to make new connections between the artery, the vein and the airway, those, the lung is deflated when we are working with it again at that time. And that's why it's important to be you know, safe but fast in that implant so we can get the lung, you know blood flow and inflate it as soon as possible.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News and we're talking about non-invasive robotic transplant surgery with Dr. Gregory Jones, staff thoracic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. What did it feel like to complete this procedure and have your patient only have this minimal small scarring instead of a broken breastbone and all of those things?
Jones: Well, it was a pretty remarkable day. I will say the stars kind of aligned. It took a village. We felt that as a surgical and nursing team and a seizure team, we were ready. But it basically took a lot of help to get everything set up. It really did take quite a bit of groups of people springing into action. And the patient had to be OK with it. I talked to him before the operation and let him know that this was evolving technology, that we felt very comfortable. With our preparedness to do so, but he would be the first patient to undergo this. And I have to clarify this is our first in the United States at the Cleveland Clinic. There are other centers, a few other centers who have been doing this as well that we're we collaborated with in advance of this. So and then our campus in Abu Dhabi and Dubai also performed one last year. So the first at Cleveland Clinic's United States campus. So. Basically, everybody was prepared and the patient was on board with it. The operation went very smoothly. We were all pretty happy with how smoothly things had gone. And that's only the first part of it. We were kind of high-fiving each other, but at the same time tempering our excitement because the most important thing is the patient did well.
Juravich: How far past the surgery are we, like is the patient still doing well? I'm not exactly sure the date this happened on.
Jones: It was May 15th, and I just saw him earlier this week in the office, he's doing incredible. So he had as uncomplicated of a recovery as we've seen. He was off of oxygen within 24 hours, breathing room air. He was out of the ICU within 48 hours and out of hospital within two weeks, so. That's just a remarkably quick and uncomplicated recovery. I saw him in the office at two-week intervals. The incisions are incredibly well-healed, especially that five centimeter one looks about three centimeters now, and it's well-hidden. He feels terrific. His pulmonary function is excellent. Really, I have to give him a lot of because he came into the operation so. Physically fit for a lung transplant patient. We often don't see that. It's obviously very difficult to maintain physical fitness when you're having shortness of breath. He walked as much as he possibly could. He was a very kind of a model patient and the donor organ was an excellent lung. And so basically everything came together for a terrific outcome.
Juravich: Did that make him a good candidate for this? They were like, if you're going to try this on someone, let's try it on someone who's fit and willing and yeah.
Jones: It did. That's certainly part of it. From a patient aspect, he was a great candidate. We also need someone with a larger chest size in order to have our robotic instruments have room to work. So patients that are very short statured or some patients have contractions of the chest wall from their lung disease, those patients right now, we're often not offering a robotic lung transplant to those patients because really just we don't have a safe amount of room to work inside the chest with the current instruments that we have.
Juravich: I guess I should have asked this before, but the actual surgery with the robotic instruments, is it quicker or does it take longer than whenever you break the breastbone and make the bigger thing?
Jones: Yes, so right now it does take longer and that's one of our things that we're working on, one of our barriers. So there is time to get the robot set up, there's time to do instrument exchanges, those things add increments of time throughout each step of the procedure. So it is usually a couple hours longer than what it would be for a traditional open transplant. We like to say that it's certainly more than balanced out because of the improved recovery, but we do have some plans to try to trim some of the inefficiencies off of that case, the more that we do. And as the technology improves and the robot, I think we'll be able to continue to do that and hopefully get to the same time as an open transplant.
Juravich: Yeah. And you, and you, you listed off how long like he, you know, he was out of ICU quicker. He was in the hospital less time. How long does a person typically stay in the hospital longer than, than this patient? Um, are we talking like days difference or weeks difference?
Jones: It's very variable, but I would say it's very unlikely for a patient to get out of the hospital from a traditional open transplant in less than three weeks, and he was more like two. There are patients who are in the hospital months and even some years for after this transplant. It's highly variable based on the clinical presentation the patient comes in with and how the operation goes and how the post-operative recovery goes. But it is certainly expedited compared to what we would expect from a traditional open transplant.
Juravich: And so you said this surgery was in May, mid-May. Do you have another one planned? Do you another good candidate?
Jones: So we do, we have one candidate for a left single lung transplant. He's our only current patient on the list that is listed for a potential robotic approach. Our hope is to do a couple of single lung transplants to make sure things are nice and facile and everybody is efficient. And then we'll begin to recruit for a double lung transplant And most of the patients that are on our wait list are waiting for a double lung transplant. So that's why probably there's not a lot of patients that are waiting on this on our current list. However, you know, we're still getting the word out about this. And I've definitely had many patients call in and ask if robotic is an appropriate approach to their case. So once we can get a couple of more single lung transplants and they go well, we will plan to broaden to. A double lung transplant robotically, and that will certainly increase exposure and availability for our patients.
Juravich: How did the Cleveland Clinic become a leader in this field?
Jones: I feel very lucky to work at an institution that is so supportive of innovation. I do have to make a special mention to those who have gone before us at Cleveland clinics Abu Dhabi campus Duke University was a great collaborator with us. NYU and Cedars-Sinai, those are other robotic institutions that we're more than happy to kind of share their stories with us. You know, being at the Cleveland Clinic, I thank my lucky stars every day that they're so supportive of something like this because you know it is still so new and this technology is still evolving and so I think Cleveland Clinic itself places a large emphasis on improved recovery because that really is what matters to patients and if we can prove that this improves recovery and gets patients back to their daily lives sooner then usually they're in full support as long as it's safe.
Juravich: What does the future of non-invasive robotic transplants look like, besides going from the single lung transplant to the double lung transplant? I mean, I know you're a lung guy, but what other organs can we do here?
Jones: Well, Cleveland Clinic actually has the, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, double fact check me, but I believe the robotic kidney transplant program is the highest volume robotic program in the country. We are also doing robotic liver transplants, and the robot has made its way into many other aspects, almost all subspecialties of surgery. It's only a recent development in the cardiothoracic realm. In terms of improvements, the technology will continue to improve. There will be even improved visualization, improved dexterity and mechanics. The instruments will likely be smaller. Thing that is our limiting factor right now as we discussed is getting the lungs in and out and even five centimeters compared to those one centimeter incision seems big. We've been exploring possibly incisions underneath the ribs that go through what's called the diaphragm, the breathing muscles. So we actually don't have to spread the ribs at all to get the lungs in and out. So that's a possibility. And I think, you know, as the robotic technology continues to evolve, there's a single incision. Robot that is basically being trialed for some of these surgeries. So if we can go from five or six small incisions to one small incision, then that would really be an incredible leap for us. So lots of things are evolving and it's an exciting time to be in minimally invasive surgery.
Juravich: Yeah, and just to end on, because I know I said at the beginning, I made it sound like the robot was doing it by itself, but I understand that the doctor is controlling the robot. Correct. But, I mean, do we want, in the future, big picture? Do we want robots doing some things like this without, you know, on time?
Jones: Yeah, I think it remains to be seen. I think most patients would feel more comfortable having a surgeon make the second-to-second, minute-to minute decisions. Obviously, we probably never anticipated a procedure like this a couple of decades ago, so who knows what's going to come down the road in 10 to 20 years. But right now, one of the most common questions I get is, who's doing the surgery? And so they expected all that training that we go through will be will be replicated in the steps of the operation and the conduct of the operation. So right now, I'd like to keep my job. I'm not going to give it over to the robot anytime soon, but we'll see what happens in the future.
Juravich: But I guess that leads to a question, though. Doctors being trained coming up can be trained with the robot. I mean, you had to learn the robot after you already knew how to do it the other way, right? So.
Jones: Right, it's true. I was luckily exposed to robotic surgery as an intern in my general surgery program in New York City at Cornell. There was gradual autonomy, so as I progressed through my surgical training, I got to learn kind of more and more. And it's a very similar robot to the one we used in this transplant. And my thoracic fellowship that I did here at the in clinic that robotics was a major component of that. I think you're right, this generation of trainees has incredible access to AI, has incredible access to robotics and impressive minimally invasive techniques, and so they will likely be the innovators of the future in carrying this technology forward.
Juravich: We've been talking about non-invasive robotic transplant surgery with Dr. Gregory Jones, staff thoracic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Jones.
Jones: Thanks so much for having me. It was a great time.
Juravich: Coming up, we're going to talk about how parents screen time on their phones is impacting the relationship with their children. That is when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
It's rare for a polarizing topic like gun control to become bipartisan, but Ohio Democrats and Republicans found middle ground in one of the newest bills to cross Governor DeWine's desk. The Keep Them Safe Act allows gun owners to store their guns with registered gun dealers or law enforcement during a mental health crisis. Hear about the bill and what the future of gun regulation could look like in Ohio. Tomorrow on All Sides with Amy Juravich from 10 to noon on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology and the future of our environment. Don't throw stones in glass homes or maybe don't throw stone at glass phones. It's the darn phones has been a common phrase to blame teenagers shortcomings on phone overuse. But teenagers are not the only ones with crippling phone addiction. Everyone is dealing with it. Phone usage is changing how parents and their kids interact. Kids are learning behaviors from their first role models, and this includes screen time. But how exactly does a parent's relationship with their phone change their relationship with their kid? Joining us to talk about parental phone use, we have Dr. Don Grant, a media psychologist and national advisor of the Healthy Device Management for Newport HealthCare. Thanks for joining us today, Don.
Dr. Don Grant: Thanks, Amy. Hello. Hello.
Juravich: Hi, so in studying this topic, I learned a new word. It is techno-fearance, technology interference. So talk to me about that word and the new phenomenon of it.
Grant: Sure, and yeah, it's a hard word. There's actually two, there's technoference and fubbing. And fubbbing is a portmanteau, a combination of the words phone and snubbing, which means when you marginalize someone or use your phone to not, you know, engage with someone and technoference is exactly what you said. It's when we allow our phones or really any device to interrupt, interfere. It's that we're sitting with a friend. At lunch and everything's cool and we're really enjoying each other. And then suddenly we get an alert on our phone and we know we shouldn't look at it. We're with our friend, IRL, but we can't help it. And we have to, and it's so perseverating and that phone's just calling like a siren to the rocks. And we just say, oh, one minute. And we check in, oh my gosh, it's great. We got Kohl's cash, but it's awesome. But we have interrupted. And the phone has techno-feared with the relationship that we're having and the conversation we're having with our friend in real life. That's basically what it means.
Juravich: So parents being distracted by their phones is relatively new phenomenon in the grand scheme of life. But parents being distract isn't necessarily new. There's been newspapers, books, TV, radio, computers, video games. They have kept generations of parents distracted before. How are phones different than all those other things I listed?
Grant: Sure, and that's a great question. A couple of things come to mind. Number one, the behaviors that you were talking about are, in my opinion, two different, two things. One is that they're passive. You can put them down and they're not interacting. You're not really interacting with them. No one's interacting with you. The other thing is that... The devices deliver so many cool things. When I'm done with reading a magazine article or I've come to the end of a chapter in a book, I can also put it down and it's volitional. I am choosing to engage with those more passive behaviors. Not so much with devices. They don't want to let us go. The creators, and we're learning this now, Amy, the creators and producers of these products, it's not like fishermen who fish for sport in the old capture and release. These creators, they wanna capture us and never, ever release us. And I tell people, if it's free, you're the product. I tell the kids, you know, these social media companies are doing this as a public service. So, you now, that's something else. It's a little more difficult because there's no end. With a book, there's an end. With a magazine, there is an end, no end when you actually go into that casino called your device.
Juravich: Yeah, I guess speaking of the ends, because I was thinking about like my childhood growing up and there were certain TV shows when they were on when I was not allowed to talk to my parents, you know, because
Grant: Me too!
Juravich: For that 30 minutes or an hour, specifically like "Seinfeld," when "Seinfed" was on, or "ER," when "ER" was on. You do not interrupt me, right? Do not! But that's just 30 minutes, or an, hour, or just in the evening. It wasn't consistent all day, every minute, when the phone is always with you. Is that the difference now?
Grant: Well, people ask me, I get a lot of questions. I've done this a long time. I'm what's called a digital immigrant. I did not grow up with all of this. I grew up like you did. And yes, there were certain television shows where we learned parents are out, they're out. Don't even try. But I'm the father of digital natives. So I kind of learned this with them. But one of the things that I think is important to realize is that these are here to stay. We have to learn to coexist with them, right? These devices, but also how to manage our behaviors. I don't teach abstinence. That would be ridiculous. Oh, don't use devices. It's more about, I teach healthy device management and the practice of good digital citizenship. So the study that I think we were gonna talk about today, it's interesting when I was thinking about the title of your podcast, All Sides. Well, part of this came from Because one of the questions that I get a lot in my work is, how did this all start? When did this start? How did we become so attached to these things, Don? Well, this is my theory, Amy. It is not proven. It's just mine. So keeping that in mind, I believe that when we look back, if we do, when it all changed, and the question I think that you're asking, and how, June 29, 2007. I believe that was the inflection point. That's when we crossed the event horizon. There was no returning. Do you know what happened? It's OK. A lot of people don't. What happened on June 29th, 2007? The iPhone came out. Yes. And what did the iPhone do? That had never been done before. How cool. I what did it offer?
Juravich: Everything. The internet, yeah.
Grant: You're, you win a prize. If I was in a presentation, I give out prizes when I'm speaking at conferences or to families. You win a price. Yes, suddenly the internet is portable. Once the internet portable through that iPhone, it's over. So we're available and accessible anywhere. We have a device and connection 24 seven. So the idea also, I don't think that people like our my parents were not lugging their television around. But now we're just here. We have these devices that we can always be engaged by. And there's a never-ending troll of things that can engage us. But I was thinking about the name of your podcast, All Sides. Well. We talk about the kids. I do a lot of work in that space. Like I said, I've done this a long time. Like you said in the beginning in, you know, oh, the kids, I hear this, my kids, the phones, the kids the phones. Well, what we started to look at was the parents. It's all sides because I was having kids because I have a private practice and I work with kids at Newport. And I would have kids in my office, Amy, who are saying, okay, maybe I'm a little bad, but my parents are worse. They have different rules. They can use the phone at dinner because it's work. I can't so all sides I was thinking about it. Like yeah, so I started to hear the side of the kids who have been on, you know, on the, the, you know targets of all the criticism for years. But then we did this study about what about.
Juravich: Parents. This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about parental phone use with Dr. Don Grant, a media psychologist and national advisor of healthy device management for Newport Health Care. So let's talk about the study. What did you learn about parents' phone addiction and how it impacts a child?
Grant: Yeah, and so there's a lot of established evidence that's already published, Amy, about how a parent's or primary caregivers, because a lot of families are different, how their behaviors can have an unfavorable impact on attachment. And for people who don't know, attachment is the bond between a parent and a child. It, to me, is everything. It informs the child's ability to take risks for relationships, and it's lifelong. The attachment is formed... By the perception of the child. A parent can think they're the greatest parent ever, but it's the child's perception. So there's two types. There's secure attachment, that's what we want. It means we have a great bond with our kid, we're consistent in our attention, they know they can trust us, which allows them to go out in the world and trust themselves, take risks, have good relationships. But then there's insecure attachment. And there's a couple of different kinds. We focused on insecure avoidant, I'm sorry, insecure attachment avoidant and anxious. So there's already established parent or primary caregiver behaviors that have been shown that they can unfavorably, again, impact attachment, things like mental health struggles, things like addiction, marital conflict, workaholism. So I started to wonder, as I'm out in the wild and I'm watching parents marginalizing and ignoring their children while they're on their devices, and then I got the kids in my office telling me this, and I went, Scooby-Doo, er, wait a second. Could this be a new behavior of a parent like the other ones that could negatively impact attachment? So that's the setup. So this brilliant research team that I was given and I spent the last four years testing my theory. We had to create a new instrument and assessment because this had never been done before. No one had looked at this. I kept thinking I must be wrong because why no one thought about this? So we created the instrument, we tested it, and then we did studies, we did two, but the one that was published, that was the one we were really looking toward, we had 600 kids from across the country and we gave them this assessment and we asked them about their parents' behaviors and then, we compared it to another instrument that's already established that looks at attachment. And the long story short is, it came back that, yes, 100%. The validation and the numbers came back beyond even our wildest dreams. They came back with the strongest validity you can get in a research study, which means that it's true that a parent's, a primary caregiver's device used at the perceived expense of their child can absolutely be a contributing factor and is correlated with insecure attachment, anxious and avoidant in the child. And even if you have a secure attachment with your child. It can pivot, even in teen years. That's what we found. Wow.
Juravich: Okay, so lots of questions here, but I guess we'll just start with, if parents have that screen time limiter for their kids, but then the parent is always on the phone, like what does that do to a kid with them trying to understand why they're not allowed to be on it for hours and hours, but their parents always allowed to, like what happens there?
Grant: Oh, I've heard about this. This is what I was saying. This is, what I heard from the kids, they're watching us. Our kids are watching us and they're modeling our behavior across all things, good, bad and ugly, right? So the kids have a lot of feelings about that, about the parents can just do whatever they want, but they're putting all of these boundaries on the kids. And look, parents work and that's something that is real. And a lot parents work from home now. Well, especially for a young child. A young child does not understand that mom or dad is working. They just see mom or at home and they want their attention. But then they see the parent on the device. Well, the young children, they want that. We want what our parents are doing. So they want those screens. And the older children are looking at this. And again, they complained to me. They've done it for years. They don't understand. The real one I hear is at the dinner table. We're not allowed to have them, but mom or Dad can't because it's work.
Juravich: Yeah, so do you suggest to reduce phone usage? Because phones are addictive, just like any addiction. You can't quit cold turkey, but also you have to use your phone, that's life now. So do you make suggestions to parents to be present, you know, at dinnertime, you can put work away for that time, that kind of thing?
Grant: Yeah, and let's just get into the solutions because they're pretty easy, right? I'm not trying to say you have to never use your device or that you have the drop what you're doing on your device every time your child wants your attention. Yeah. That's not real possible or reasonable. But I do think at the dinner table, look, I don't know about families and families are different and I respect. If I could get my kids and we could all get together around a table to have a meal. I think we can put down our phones. I don't think the zombie apocalypse is gonna happen in that hour. And if it does, anyone who's watched the series about the zombies knows what to do. But here's what the suggestion is. It's very simple. We are not saying that every time your child makes a bid for attention, Amy, you have to drop everything. Sometimes you can't, sometimes you're working, sometimes you are in a conversation. It may be that you're in the last four seconds of an eBay auction and you gotta get that sweater. Yeah, that happened to me once, I'm not gonna lie. I'm getting that sweater. So, I'm not going to, I've worked too hard for this. So what we're saying is that you need to acknowledge your child. If your child gives you a bit for attention when you're on a device, no, you don't have to drop everything. Just don't ignore them. That's the phubbing. That's technoference. Just acknowledge them. Let them know. You see them, they're important, whatever they want from you. Probably money in my kid's case, their teenagers. I want to ignore them. I want them to just fub them because I know when my daughters are coming at me, oh, it's money. So, but you just have to acknowledge them and say, okay, I see you, I'm doing something here. Explain to them what you're doing and say I will be with you as soon as I am done here. Let them hear that. Let them feel important, heard more important than the phone. And of course, make sure you follow through and don't get involved in another eBay auction from something else that was recommended to you that you now need. Make sure you followed through. That's all you need to do and you're good.
Juravich: So what about the, I have to finish this work email, or I need to reply to this text message, or else I'll forget to send it, versus the, you're just doom scrolling social media though. Like what, yeah. That doesn't really matter. Okay.
Grant: It doesn't matter. I mean, unless you're showing your kids what you're doing on the device, it's not really about what, and look, there's a whole other podcast about doom scrolling and quality content versus, you know, quality versus quantity, but you don't have to necessarily divulge to them what you are doing. You just have to say to them, I'll be with you. Now, one last thing, since a lot of parents, and certainly it's surged during the pandemic and has sustained for a lot of the workforce. It's also, especially with young children, because a young little child, again, doesn't know that mommy or daddy's working. They can't differentiate between those behaviors. So what I suggest is if you are working from home and you don't want that kind of awkward thing that some of us experience where your little three-year-old, you're in your office at home and burst in the door while you're at a meeting with your boss and you panic, ah, and you get Zoom bombed, I think it's also and I've recommended this. Talk to your kids about your schedule. You can say, look, especially the young ones, because they don't get it. Mom or dad is at work. We're here, but we're actually gonna be working and we'll be out and available to you at X amount of time. And you can come up with a code if there is something that is dire, that the child really, really needs your attention. And hopefully a child that young, that I'm talking about the developmental stages of early childhood, they're not being left alone. But you can say, you know, if you're gonna come up with a knock, kind of special knock, or a sliding a paper under the door, if it is absolutely they need you, gosh forbid, 911 emergency. Otherwise, let your kids know that you're working and you'll be out. And so they don't, because they don't understand it. They just know mom's in another room and they really need to tell her about this thing they saw in "Bluey." Ha ha ha!
Juravich: Well, we're running short on time, but so you're saying we haven't gone too far. That's what I that's what I was worried about whenever I heard about your study and read your study is that I'm addicted to my phone. My kids are already older. I've already messed them up. I'm not going to be able to fix it.
Grant: Well, I want to give I can take two seconds because there's a target audience that I'm really interested in right now Yes, for some of us that ship has sailed and sunk our kids are launched and now they just want money and I want To ignore them most of the time when they come at me. However, we have Millennials and there's Millennials are interesting I call them the before and afters before the technology we know and after they kind of remember what it was like to have Covalent bonds of people in real life. They're very important. I think because this is the last time and only time in history the digital natives and digital immigrants will cohabitate this planet. So it's important that we teach them how important it is to be together in real life. The millennials, however, were the first generation, especially the younger ones. One of my daughters is a younger millennial. They grew up with this stuff. They don't know any difference. So they are the first ones who are the virtual canaries and the digital coal mines who got captured by these devices. They're now having children. So there's really my target audience because they still have a chance. And if we don't tell them about what we found, they won't know. So I want to give them a choice, but that's really, I'm looking and want every parent to know, but really right now it's those first digital natives who are now having children who need to know you need to be more mindful about your phone use around your kid because they might not know. And that could cause not great outcomes.
Juravich: We've been talking about parental phone use with Dr. Don Grant, a media psychologist and national advisor of healthy device management for Newport HealthCare. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Grant.
Grant: Thank you, Amy.
Juravich: And coming up, we're going to talk about why Apple is suing OpenAI. That is when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Tech Tuesday, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. Apple is suing OpenAI. They're accusing the company of illegally accessing information about unreleased products. Plus, there's a new scam involving FaceTime, and we have updates on the company called OnePlus. Joining us now to talk about these recent tech stories is the director of commerce content for CNET, Russell Holly. Welcome back, Russell.
Russell Holly: Thank you.
Juravich: So Apple is suing OpenAI for illegally accessing information about their unreleased products. What are these secret products that were revealed? I wanna know the secret.
Holly: Well, we're certainly not going to hear anything about what the specific details are until we get to a court hearing and all of this comes out in discovery. But the kind of long and short of this, we've known for a while that there is some something happened between Apple and OpenAI. They you know, at the time that the last iPhone came out, you know all you heard Apple talk about was AI and how the next iPhone was going to work with OpenAI in order to answer questions. And then, you know, earlier this year. Apple made a very strong change to work with Google's Gemini platform, and this may be a big part of why. The accusation from Apple that is going to bear out in court is that OpenAI worked very hard to poach a bunch of people from Apple to come work for OpenAI, and that at least a couple of those folks took some things with them on the way out.
Juravich: So this is not a technology hack for secrets, an actual human being did the thing.
Holly: That's the accusation is that top talent that was hired two years ago, OpenAI was really aggressively going to all of the big tech companies and promising enormous amounts of money to bring people over to OpenAI in order to get their product kind of up and running as quickly as possible, which we have kind of seen the success of over the last couple of years. But Apple has made it very clear that they have significant evidence. Suggesting that individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple's secret and confidential information.
Juravich: Hmm, and one of the employees didn't return his Apple laptop before leaving the company, right? And so I exactly right Yeah, but I feel like that's that's on Apple's that isn't that negligence on Apple part for letting him walk away with the laptop
Holly: I think Apple at the time, given especially we're kind of overlapping with COVID lockdowns and things like that, there was quite a bit of hardware that was at home when some of these acquisitions were happening. Apple was one of the later companies to start doing kind of return to office things. And at the same time, OpenAI was doing its kind of grand hiring sprees. So there is likely some overlap there. I assume we'll hear more as this case bears out, but it is a fascinating accusation and Apple seems. Quite confident that they've got a case here.
Juravich: Okay, and this isn't the first lawsuit that OpenAI is involved with. It feels like they've been involved with controversy after controversy, but the company, OpenAI, seems to be doing really well. Will any of this ever catch up with OpenAI?
Holly: I think a lot of what you're seeing across the AI landscape is evidence that this is starting to catch up with OpenAI. The company hasn't exactly won every single court case that has been against it, and there is, as you pointed out, quite a bit of continuing litigation against the company. But OpenAI's prices have gone up for its customers in ways that have caused problems. You know, the kind of free meal for a lot of the companies that have made this shift. That's why we've started seeing stories from the last couple of weeks about companies starting to rehire engineers and, you know kind of not rely so much on some of these AI tools as the cost become more than the cost to have human beings do some of this work. So it's entirely possible that this is the start of, you now, a fairly significant snowball for OpenAI as a company.
Juravich: So where are we at with the lawsuit though? Is it working its way through the courts? Will we have like a trial of some sort?
Holly: Yeah, so this was a complaint filed in the Northern District of California last Friday. And so that is something that will take time for discovery and litigation. And there will in fact be days in court where these folks will have to stand and deliver their evidence.
Juravich: All right, well we'll have to talk about it again whenever those days in court start. This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We are talking with the Director of Commerce Content for CNET, Russell Holly. Another Apple related item is there's a new scam going around on FaceTime, and this scam is not just random FaceTime calls, it's targeted trying to steal your information. Tell me how this works.
Holly: Yeah, so the core of this scam is someone gets a video chat from a number that looks like a trusted number, and when they answer that video chat, it is someone who looks quite professional on the other side, who uses very alarming language to say that their bank account has been breached and they need to confirm some information with the bank in order to kind of verify that their account is in good standing. And that kind of rushed language and kind of panic presentation encourages quite a few folks to share the necessary information to verify that their accounts are safe, which opens them up to having their financial information not just disclosed, but immediately exploited.
Juravich: See, I was a little dubious when I read this article in CNET about this, because I was, I, who answers a video call from their bank? I was just, I w I, I can't imagine answering a video call from my bank.
Holly: I, this is an interesting one because I don't answer video calls from much of anyone unless I know that they're coming ahead of time. But I think, you know, it really just depends on the person. There are absolutely folks out there who will answer any call that rings on their phone. You know, there are quite a few people who having an incoming FaceTime call and having an income phone call are the same ringtone. So they may not know immediately that it's a video call or they're answering a call and then suddenly they've got that emergency information. But. I think some of that is kind of the knowledge gap necessary to prevent scams like this from happening is knowing that this is something that is even possible for some folks who have phones like this and maybe don't ever video call.
Juravich: Yeah, well, I get a ton of scam texts and spam phone calls, but I don't think I've ever gotten a spam FaceTime. Is this an up and coming thing? Are we gonna all start seeing this?
Holly: No, this is quite new. This is something that there's going to be quite a bit more of. The cool thing about the way that FaceTime works is that it is very good in many cases. If you don't have a contact already stored on your phone, it shows you the phone number that's right on there. The easiest way to avoid this is if you get a video call from a phone number you do not recognize, do not answer it. There is a video voicemail service that FaceTime has where some of these folks can leave those video voicemails. So they look quite professional, and they sound quite urgent. And they say, there's something going on with your bank account, and we need you to call back. I would go directly to your bank, if that is possible, instead of doing this over the phone. Yeah.
Juravich: Has Apple released any statements about the FaceTime scam or anything to prevent it?
Holly: Yeah, Apple is aware of this and you know the things that they have said are very much the same things that we're saying right now a bank is never going to try and FaceTime you that's not how that you know group of businesses operate you know links or phone numbers and things like that that you don't know that are not in your phone you know don't don't engage with them unless you are absolutely sure that that is you know from from a reliable source. And then Apple gave a lot of the same kind of information. Don't ever share your password with someone you don't know. Two factor authentication is something that can be turned on for any bank account and will give a second layer of protection for you for someone trying to access your thing. Don't every use gift cards or things like that to make payments to other people unless it's someone that you know and trust. Like those kinds of things are the... The big kind of blanket statements that Apple releases anytime there's an exploit like this.
Juravich: But they can'stop it.
Holly: No, FaceTime is something that from iPhone to iPhone, anyone can make as long as they have your phone number. And there are a lot of phone numbers that are just quite a bit more public than they used to be because of the way that data miners have acted over the last couple of years.
Juravich: All right, well moving on to the last topic we have today, mobile manufacturer OnePlus will no longer sell in the US. OnePlus is under the parent company, is it Opa or Opo? Opo. Opo, I see. I haven't even heard of OnePlus. So Russell, tell me why are they, why is it going away?
Holly: Yeah, so OnePlus is a spin-off of a Chinese company called Oppo, and they entered kind of the U.S. Market and the European market around a decade ago with the promise of being a inexpensive version of a phone that was the same quality of a really nice Android phone or iPhone. And the first couple of versions of those phones came out and they were as close to true to that statement as possible. These were phones that were coming out that were $300 and $400 and they they were just really well made pieces of hardware with compelling software on them. They were interesting. They reached a very niche market of folks who were really invested in how their phone operated and what it was capable of. Especially when it came to things like camera performance, but the whole selling point was that these phones were going to be less expensive than, you know, iPhones and Samsung phones and things like that, that were at the same time, reaching that thousand dollar mark and now are kind of trending well over that thousand-dollar mark for some of these new phones. Unfortunately, every single thing that goes into a phone these days is quite a bit more expensive than it used to be. And so, you know, while Apple and Samsung can absorb some of those operating costs for short periods of time and make it so that the increase in cost is not astronomical, OnePlus was operating on incredibly thin margins already, and the fan base was, you know, just not growing at the rate that they were anticipating that it would grow All right. So that company is just kind of folding back into its parent company, you know, 10 years later.
Juravich: Okay. And so in the U.S., the main Android phones that we come across are Samsung, Google phones. Everyone else seems to have an iPhone if you don't have one of those. So was OnePlus just not popular here?
Holly: OnePlus was popular in a niche. I think that there was hope that it would grow to compete with some of the smaller brands that you will see as you go into kind of any phone store. But the you know and for a period of time there they had partnerships with T-Mobile and with Verizon to be able to sell in those stores But ultimately it just came down to being able to maintain their one big branding mark Which is that it was less expensive than the competitors And that's just not something that they were able to Maintain over the last couple years their phone prices kept getting more and more expensive to the point where The the most recent set of one plus phones were as expensive as the phones that Google were releasing which you know Kind of eliminated the the you no big benefit to it And there's just no way to recover from that anytime soon, given the massive increase in costs for hardware across the world right now.
Juravich: So the parent company, Oppo, was it Oppo? Okay, are they still selling? Like, where is this brand at? Is it in China?
Holly: Yeah, Oppo will continue to sell phones in some small parts of Europe, but their primary user base remains in China and India and places like that. So as the parent company will remain, and this may be something that as hardware prices normalize over the next couple of years, there may be a return to US markets, but it's unlikely to be something we see. You know, within the next two to three years given what we know about hardware pipelines for things like storage and processors and things like that.
Juravich: This has been Tech Tuesday, and we've been talking about some recent tech news with the director of commerce content for CNET, Russell Holley. Thanks for joining us today, Russell.
Holly: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And if you missed any part of today's show, listen back at wosu.org slash all sides, subscribe to the All Sides podcast. Every episode is available in our mobile app. Be sure to like our show on Facebook or better yet, follow the show on Instagram. Our Instagram handle is at all sides WOSU. I posted a picture there recently after a few days off. If you wanna see some behind the scenes photos of All S sides, follow us on Instagram at allsides wosu. You've been listening to Tech Tuesday on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich.