In the first half, aerospace and defense systems developer Sir Charles Shults discussed the rapid advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) and why some people fear they will dominate the available jobs for humans, as well as eventually gain an upper hand over humans. "If you build a machine that's smart enough to clean up after you, maybe it'll realize it doesn't want to do those jobs just as you don't," he remarked, adding that the question becomes, can we throttle back the self-interest of the machine in its design? And, "if you have a machine that's perhaps smarter than a human being, how do you know whose interests it's acting in?"

We are so close to opening a Pandora's Box, with an explosion of AI coming our way in the next decade or so, Shults commented. It actually won't be that difficult to produce emotions in the machines, and there's going to be many different types of AI, and "we're not going to know which ones are potentially dangerous and which ones are very beneficial to us until we actually see them in practice," he stated. Because of this, Shults suggested "sandbox systems" or virtual worlds where the AI can be tested before being released into the real world. Further, he continued, everyone who works on artificial intelligence should have to take a course on morality, and unintended consequences, in order to think through how these machines will interact with humanity.

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In the latter half, UFO investigator and contactee Diane Tessman spoke about her encounters with aliens that began when she was a child in the 1950s, various paranormal experiences, and theories about the aliens' origins and agendas. While her early alien encounters were benign, she believes they removed a membrane from underneath her upper lip, as she suddenly no longer had it, though she suffered no pain or discomfort. During these encounters, she met a human-like alien she calls Tibus, who has remained with her throughout her life as a kind of spirit guide and shared consciousness.

Tessman recounted some of the odd paranormal events surrounding the Skyway Bridge collapse in Tampa Bay in May of 1980, including the sighting of giant orbs in the sky, a Mothman-like creature, and unexplained beeping sounds in her home (near Tampa Bay). She listed a number of possibilities for the origin of the UFO occupants, which included:

• computer simulation-- with the aliens similar to avatars sent in to investigate
• dark plasma halo-- a kind of biosphere that stems from dark matter, which is invisible to us
• a manifestation of the collective subconscious
• humans from the future

News segment guests: Jeff Nelken, Lauren Weinstein, Mish Shedlock