Okay, a team, it's Patrick, it's Harps, it's no. If it's it's a tipless it's a tipless episode. But I tell you what, Nonetheless, we will put on our big boy pants, Patrick and Soldier on might't we I'm.
Not wearing any pants.
Well are you just? Are you free balling or what are you doing? D I really don't, I really don't. But here is straight off the bat.
Straight off the bat, it doesn't take to hit the kind of belw the belt. Literally, it certainly doesn't if you were wearing a belt. I always wear a belt.
Well, I wear a belt on the cargoes because one of the problems with having huge legs and are not so huge waist is that you've always got to have pants are a little bit looser in the waist unless you take your cargo shorts to the lady slash man who fixes all that stuff. But I can't be bothered.
I'm not sure how personal I should get with our conversation, and it's kind of a serious personal thing. My family doesn't listen to this, so I know we've spoken about this, but never on air. We're having family issues where I'm looking after my younger disabled brother every weekend and then coming up November it'll be for three days every weekend and it's great and it's good spending time with him
because we haven't really done a lot of that. But Jason's very short and he has an unusual body shape. He's got a bit of a belly, but he's got zero ass, so he's got to wear races. And I've been spending my time and he's great. He loves trains, so he took a train trip the last time he was here, just a Ballarat and back. He had the best time and the conductor was amazing. It's great. I think conductors on those vline trains they're so considerate. They're
just wonderful to speak to. But one of the biggest challenges, and I know if anybody out there has been a care for an elderly parent or someone, the biggest challenges is using the bathroom and being a bad shot.
And I can imagine on a moving Oh it's not on the train, this is even station, right, Okay, Okay.
My sister in law has been so good because they've taken in my brother who can't live with my dad anymore, at the retirement village and so she's been amazing. She's washing his clothes every day and doing stuff for him, and so what they are doing is probably ten times harder than what I'm doing. But you do have to clean the bathroom every time he goes, and so I've been trying to convince him to sit down to go.
But the problem is, because of his unfortunate body shape, is he has to wear braces to keep his pants up right. So have you got braces, Craig, Yes, yes, I can imagine the problem with braces is they're not practical in an emergency situation. No, no, yeah, but he's the dar. He's really been trying hard enough, kind of said to him, Look, when you're living at my place, maybe we can get you to sit down when you go to the toilet. Oh no, no, no, Dad says,
I have to stand up. Yeah I know that, but when you're at my place, maybe you can sit down. So it's taken a few months and now he's I'm with dad.
I'm with Dad. Don't you dare? After? How old is he fifty?
He's fifty two.
After fifty two years of standing, let him fucking stand. Don't try and reinvent the wheel, just because you're worried about a bit of we on your floor.
It's not.
Okay the walls, the floor, it's not just about you and you. He're home beautiful.
But you know it's funny, isn't it? How simple requirements? You know, we've been watching train trips on v line, just on the TV on the big screen. I'm going to fill right TV. So we just plug in the laptop and we watch trips from Melbourne to Bendigo and Melbourne to Ballarat and it just you know, I shouldn't say nerdy people. I'm a nerd, but those train spotters they just get a camera and they just record the whole trip something that hour of footage and he loves it. It's been really good.
You know, there's a show on is it SBS? Maybe this is what you're talking about, but there's a show I think it's on SBS, and they literally do. They have these like three hour docos which are silent. There's no commentary. It's just the sounds of the train or the ship or the whatever. But I think, is it the gan that goes across.
He's desperate for me to take him on the gang.
Yeah, So I watched one and it's just like it just obviously it's days and days of footage kind of condensed and edited into this beautiful kind of three hour but you would think. I remember turning it on and thinking what is this? Then I had to look it up and it's like it's a three hour silent doco of Miko the fuck would watch this? And then an hour later I'm still watching it. Transfixed train trips.
I did a train trip my last trip to Canada through the Canadian Rockies, and I was on the train for three days and I'm going to tell you, no Internet amazing views of the just the the stunning, the beautiful Canadian wild wilderness. And it's great. And you go to a little reading car or a dining car, you go to the bar and sit there and they have these perspect perspects viewing roofs in something where you can
sit back watch the sky go past. It is and there's something about train travel that is meditative that that kind of and and I love sleeping on the train as well, you know, so if you if you can get a little cabin and mine was tiny. It was a fold down bed and had a little toy and all that sort of stuff and it was just great if you look for specials and you know, because they can be quite expensive. But I just kind of jumped online and found some deals and had a great time.
Can I ask, what's your brother's name again?
Jason?
How old is Jason? Intellectually?
Like?
What's his kind of functional? IQ? Kind? Not IQ? But you know he's age five or six? Yeah? Okay, So I have a cute story. So last night I did a gig for the eighty nine point nine Light FM, Melbourne's Positive alternative. They were running two big, two big mental health events. One one last night. Hundreds I don't know, five or six hundred people won the night before, six or seven hundred. I spoke at both events. Anyway, last night, Oh my goodness, I had the best night, right I was.
I was talking at quarter to nine and I was up yesterday at five. So I was driving there thinking, I don't know how I'm going to do this. I'm probably going to be rubbish. Fortunately, when I got to to the place, they had a cafe in the boyer and I got some caffeine on board, and I'm like, okay, I'm started to perk up. Anyway, two people spoke before me doctor Jody Richardson and doctor Ken I forget his surname,
but brilliant. Anyway, I'm on last, and I get up and I start tom gunn Okay, I'm riffing, you know, like I'm a bit. The other two are very very professional and slide show and very grown up, and you know, I'm like the dog with three dicks up there in the flannel shirt and the jeans and like different, not better or not worse, just different energy and different vibe
and having fun. And then I'm about three minutes in and this young lady who I don't know how old she is, but I would say sixteen to eight en, but I could be totally wrong on that, just starts laughing hysterically at my not particularly funny joke, like really loud. And then and then you're like, yeah, and clearly a young girl with a disability sitting next to her mum.
And she was awesome, right, And then I was talking about a few minutes later or I don't know, and she kept yelling out and so I just went with it and I would say something mildly funny and she would crack up hysterically, and I'm like, what's your name, and she goes mal like, I'm Mel, can you come to all of my events because you're amazing. I've got a gig with some old stuffy corporates next Monday. Are
you available? You know, I'd love you, you know. So there was this whole banter, right, and then then I was telling the story about Jumbo, the fat kid at the swimming sports. Then she goes Jumbo and then she starts screaming out, hey, he jumpbo all through my thing, right, Oh my god. And so I was up there with like six hundred or five hundred people and Mel screaming
in the front, and she was just awesome. She was such a good kid and such good energy, and it could have potentially derailed everything, but it actually made it better. And I finished and her mom came up with her and we all took a photo together, and her mom was like, thank you. So I'm like, she is. I genuinely mean, she's fantastic.
You know.
It's like when imagine not caring that much, in fact, not even knowing that not that she should be embarrassed or not that she should be awkward, but just not that's not even a thought. So free and so liberated and she had the best time. I had the best time, and the audience loved it as well. You know, it could have been a clunky experience, but it just turned out great. I loved it.
I think people who have special needs really can teach us a lot, and it may be different things. You know, the people who formerly owned my house, I've kept in contact with beautiful people. And the husband is blind and he taught me so much about the world when you are devoid of one sense. Now he's a petrol head.
He loves car racing, loves cars, and just having conversations with David is so much fun because it makes you think about how you can interact with someone with a disability when it even comes to simple things like you know, I saw this yesterday. Well he can't, you know, he's very used to this, and he's a really smart guy.
But I love looking through the world through his ears and through interactions and through sense and touch and making sure that I'm really descriptive when I talk to him, and that I'm really mindful and respectful of where he or how he takes in the world. And I love that.
And that's the same with my brother. You know, the simple enjoyment of just getting on a train and there and watching the countryside speed past and going up to Ballarat, and then we hung around in the cafe and had a dream can then wait for the train to turn around and come back again, and then we jump back on the train again and came home. But it was
a lot of fun. And again, those simple things that we sometimes don't think about or take for granted, sometimes through the eyes of somebody else, can make us really reevaluate what is important or the things that the little things in life.
Yeah, that one hundredsent agree. And also that's very smart of you, Like, that's very naturally socially and emotionally intelligent of you, Like trying to understand the world through someone else's perception or through someone else's window experiences. You know, like you can't see, but you're trying to see in inverted commas what he sees in inverted commas, and that,
you know, in psych that's called theory of mind. Is trying to understand how someone else perceives things, or how someone else thinks, or how someone else sees the world or sees the situation or see the conversation. In other words, trying to put yourself in their psychological and or emotional experience, and that a lot of people are terrible at that,
and a lot of people don't think about that. So, you know, realizing what you're doing in real time is that you and him might be in the same conversation but clearly not the same experience, or you might be in the same situation or circumstance or environment, but just understanding that, you know, the way that you need to connect with him and understand him and communicate with him is very him specific, you know, versus talking to somebody who who has vision. But that's yeah, that's very high
order kind of social intelligence that you naturally do. So well done.
You thanks mate. You know I went to the twenty first birthday of one of his sons recently, who jumps online as part of our online gaming group, and you know, I was there the lunch. It was insteat of winery, and you know, because I've known the family for years, it's really great, you know, they were you know, when you buy a house, sometimes the real estate agent leaves
a bottle of champagne or something. Well, that doesn't happen very often, but the family who were vacating the house left a gift pack for me, like with brochures on things to do, you know, champagne flutes and bottle of champagne and chocolates and coffee sachets and you know, and come and you know, make sure you come and have dinner with us once you've got settled in. Just amazing people, which is back up a friendship, and we've become good friends.
The only thing that really Alex, who is there son who turned twenty one, has got to stop saying to people that Patrick sleeps in my bedroom because it's his old room is my room. And it's like, ah, nah, just really uncomfortable with that.
Ah, just let him go. How old is twenty one?
He does it deliberately, of course, to take the piss and knows that I find it really creepy. He says that. But what I was getting at is when we're at the twenty first now his younger brother is seventeen, and you know what's about their family. His father needed to go to the toilet, and so his youngest son just got up and said, yeah, come on, dad, let's go. How many seventeen year old boys would feel comfortable taking their father to the toilet.
Well, I mean, that's a good question, but I guess that's really because you've just grown up around that, right.
That's just what has that taught them about being people who are considerate young people who are considerate of people around them. And how much better a person has that made them understanding that they need to contribute to the family and that they can feel comfortable in themselves to be a part of that dynamic. I think it's made them much more rounded people. I think it's lovely to see people who don't have reservations about being caring about a parent who has a disability.
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think I think being around, whether or not it's growing up around or being around or having friends with disabilities. And you know, as you know, I've been working with Johnny in the gym for the last six years, who's got a spinal cord injury, and he started training in a wheelchair and then eventually to a frame and now he's walking with
a stick. But you know, it's an undertaking for him to walk twenty feet, you know, And so I mean he can, but it just it takes him ten times longer than it would take you to walk twenty feet, and so I'm often walking around the gym with him and I'm helping him, and I'm either holding his hand or holding his arm or kind of lifting him half lifting him up and down off a bench. And I don't even think about it when I'm not saying a great bloke. I'm saying, it's just a byproduct of being
around someone. And sometimes I'll be through the gym where I'm helping him from one bench to another exercise, and here's these two you know, old blokes, and one of them's holding the other bloke's hand, and I don't even I'm not aware of it until I see a seventeen year old staring at me, like what the fuck are they doing? You know, it's like, no, well it's okay, mate, you know, and it's like and there's no, it's just
not a typical thing. But then you don't because it's so automatic now because I've trained him probably thousands of times, where it's just you know, like, you know, I'm constantly and the crab is the same. Mark's amazing as well, my training partner and everyone. It's like you're just naturally doing these things without drawing attention to it or without
overthinking it. But I definitely think you know, and it's beautiful the relationship you've got with your brother mate, and it's and your friend who's you know, doesn't have sight. I think for us as humans, it's I'm very at the risk of sounding naf and lame, and you know,
I don't know trite. I'm very grateful for all of the interactions I have with people whose life and situation is tougher than mine, because I think I could be a pain in the ass unless I had that gratitude and that awareness that I'm very, very lucky and very
privileged to have what I have. And I don't just mean things, I mean physically, mentally and emotionally, you know, to be able to as we've spoken about before, but to be able to get out of a chair and go and turn on a tap and there's cold water, and push a button and there's some heat, and open a door and there's food inside that door. And then you know, it's like we live in especially you and
me anyway, and privileged Australia. Not that everyone's privileged in Australia, but a lot of us, you know, we've got a pretty.
Good Yeah, very very very much, so very much.
So.
Hey, I know we generally talk about tech stuff, and I think when you asked me to do the potty a little bit earlier than usual, I said, I've got much together. But you know what, I did, throw some stuff together for us.
All Right, I'm ready. Let's let's let's get out of human behavior and into technology. I've got no notes in front of me, so you need to be the host for the next half hour. You need to host.
All right, it sounds good. I found this fascinating. Google, with all the data processing due to AI, is now put an order in to buy nuclear power like so they need more power for their data centers. This is a world's first deal. It was an article that was in the Guardian newspaper yesterday or the day before. So they've ordered six or seven small nuclear reactors from a Californian power supplier and they need it to power all the data processing, the staggering amount of data that's getting
processed now due to AI. Because every time you do an AI search as opposed to a normal Google search, you're exponentially doing needing a data center that can do a lot more processing power. So these AI data centers are running twenty four to seven. They're absolutely going off
tap at the moment. And it's exponential in terms of the growth as well, because what's happening is more and more companies are getting onto the AI bandwagon, and as a consequence, they're needing bigger, more processing power, and that, as a consequence means not just power, but water as well cooling systems. So they use water and they use a lot of electricity. And we're talking a shit ton. That's a technical term, by the way.
Yeah, sure, I've just wrote that down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's actually a tangible figure.
Is it a megawatch shit tone?
Yeah? Well probably Gigawa shit tone?
How many? How many killer wat's per megawatch ship tone? I don't know, just I'm just trying to get the metrics right. I'm just taking professor. Now, can I just ask a question when you said they've ordered seven nuclear reactors, I don't exactly know what that means. What do you mean they're buying their own fucking dedicated nuclear energy? Yeah?
I know, but what is that?
What's a nuclear reactor? Does that create nuclear energy?
Well, it uses nuclear I mean effectively, it uses nuclear power or nuclear the you know you're harnessing the atom. It's a nuclear power plant that generates life.
I don't know what the fuck it's what I'm not physics. Oh no, I can't only tell you about humans.
Well, in the nuclear power plant plant process, what they do is they split the atom that creates energy, and then they use that energy to hit water, and water spins a turbine, and a turbine then generates electricity. That I think that's the rudimentary and.
Hell, by the way, everyone, do not listen to us to I'm the biggest stickhead, but maybe don't listen to him either, because that could be all bullshit.
Google, if Tip was here, should be googling this right now.
That's okay, that's all right. So there, so you're doing it, are you?
Yeah?
All right, here we go explain. You just go into chatters chat GPT and say, simply.
Explain comes from nuclear fission. Nuclear power reactors use heat produced during atomic fission to boil water produce pressurized steam. Steam is routed through the reactor steam system to spin a large turbine blade drives mechnetic generators to produce electricity.
Exactly what I just said. The fucking nothing like what I did.
Come on, come on, all right, So all.
Right, the bottom line is Google are going nuclear. I worry about with the exponential kind of acceleration of all things tech, there's also an exponential expanse of requirement for more and more power. As you've already said, you know, I wonder when we get to that point of you know, energy extinction, like the can't be.
I mean, it's not infinite now were the worrying is at the moment that at presently there's more demand on cold fire generating of power because what I mean here in Australia we don't have there's only one nuclear reactor and it's used for medical purposes, but of it is there's a lot more pressure, so it's putting pressure across the entire system. In the United States, they're turning to
nuclear because obviously for them, it's a cleaner alternative. And I know people there's a lot of arguments for and against nuclear power plants. They've been around for a long time and so a good example is the fact that Westinghouse, the company that may have made your fridge, also makes
the e Vincy. Now the e Vinchy is a micro nuclear reactor and they're being built and they claim to be able to deliver five megawatts of power up to one hundred months, So that's eight years of power, right, That's a staggering amount of power to be able to And these are specifically being designed for lots of different purposes. They're even talking about sending one of these to the Moon, so potentially lunar missions could use these micro nuclear reactors.
So there's a lot of research being done specifically to combat the issue of this demand on power.
Yeah, I think, I mean, I'm I'm not even close to an expert in any of this stuff, of course, I'm just a bloke listening to someone who knows slightly more than me, I say, fucking slightly. But to me it would seem that move I mean an obvious statement. But you know, energy moving forward is just not just energy for electricity and day to day operation, but energy for humans in terms of the quality of energy, calories, food,
micro and macro nutrients. So energy to make you know, computers and cars and organizations work, but also energy to make humans work. I think there's a kind of a dual kind of energetic issue that's looming.
Well, it's already here, I guess you know how my brain works, which is a bit confusing for anybody listening to our podcast, but a litt alone for me who has to cope with it on a day to day basis. But yes, to go through my mind sometimes. When I was hiking this morning, I went to a place called Bosstoc Reservoir, so I probably not very far, maybe went
about five kilometers this morning. Out in the bush, Fritz saw a wallaby and chase the wallaby, but he didn't get close to because there's no way a miniature now is going to catch a wallaby, and he wouldn't want to do anyway, but.
If he did, the wallaby would kick the fuck out of him.
But okay, yeah, but you know what fascinates me about You were talking about the biomechanics, and I'm pretty good with my feeding of Fritz. He gets usually a half a cup of food or a cup of dry food and then something else, so I supplement it with bits and pieces and a few vegetables and things. But what blows my mind is he gets fed once a day and maybe gets a treat after the walk. How the hell is he able to run in the bush? Probably four or five times the distance that I do. He
does all the things that he does. He's so active. We do the zuomies, we throw toys. The fact that that machine, that biological machine, can do so much with main feed a day blows my mind.
Well, they're very metabolically efficient. But also, I mean, you weigh probably twenty to thirty times what he weighs. Yeah, right, so you think, what does he wait? Five ks?
No, he's about eight eight and a half.
Okay, and what are you about? Sixty five sixty eight? Yeah, so you're about six and a half times his weight. Yeah, so you put if you figured out his calories and times by six and a half, it's probably about the same. But you don't do zoomies and you don't chase wallabies. So you do make a good point. But I mean, the beauty of dogs is I mean, well, I was going to say dogs don't eat junk food, but that's not true depending on the owner. By the way, owners
who feed their dogs junk fuck. It makes me mad, Like when you see dogs that are just morbidly obese because their owners literally make them fat by fucking makes me mad because you don't see that. You don't see that with any other animals except animals who are genetically required to be fat for survival. But anyway, no, he doesn't need that much food. That's the point. But also I feel like dogs miss out because you know how we get so much pleasure from food.
Yeah, but you know what, they get so much pleasure from being off lead, running around, exploring, sniffing. They smell everything. It's like social media. They love it. They pee on things, they smell other dogs pee, They sniff bums. They do so many fun.
Things, letting them go different ways. So hang on, tiff, can you make that a real please? They sniff bums. They do so many fun things. Let's just capture that, will we They sniff bums, They do so many fun things. They smell pee. The fuck is wrong with you? What makes you think any of that compares to a pizza or fucking cheesecake? Like, oh, yeah, sure, sure, they're diets boring, but they get to sniff asses and we oh wow, that fuck you sold me. I'm changing. I'm going to
become a greyhound. Oh, I am.
Putting myself in the realm of the dog because I'm trying to look at it from a dog's perspective.
Are you using theory of mind with canine's Canine Theory of Mind with Patrick? Welcome back to today's episode Through the Eyes of a Dog. I'm Patricks.
Someone told me that today that dogs aren't self aware. So elephants are.
Are?
Some animals are. But if a dog looks at a mirror, it doesn't see itself, it just sees another dog.
Is that's true?
It's I think dogs are. That is a very good question, and if I'm being totally honest, I don't know the answer. But that makes sense to me. But I think that they look at you googling. I think that they are definitely aware of other people's needs and emotions, and I think they are especially with dogs that are very very bonded with their human I was going to say owner. I hate the word owner.
I don't use it. I don't use the word owner.
I think they're human, they're person and yep, their dad, their mum, there, whatever. I think they are very attuned to the needs and emotions and even mental states of they're human. But self awareness is a slippery slope in general. But it doesn't surprise me that.
But then, how do you know, well, like looked at two articles, one from the Smithsonian magazine that says dogs may be more self aware than experts thought, and then the second one is from an article on the website earth dot com, and it says that although dogs can't identify themselves in the mirror, they still have some levels of self awareness. They ace other self recognition tests, They can recognize their own odor, and they can recall memories of specific events. So there you go.
Should we ask Chap GPT go for it? All right? On?
Yep?
On are dogs self aware?
Dogs have a level of self awareness, but it's not quite like human self awareness. They show signs of understanding their own bodies and movements, and they can recognize their own scent. However, in tests like the mirror test, which measures self recognition, dogs generally don't recognize themselves. They might see their reflection as another dog or just ignore it. So while they have some degree of self awareness, it's more limited compared to humans.
Thanks shatters here you get well, yeah, I think also, And also you got to remember, even with chat JPT, they're just drawing on whatever's on the Internet that they access at the time.
Too.
But interesting, all right, what else you got for US tech boy.
While we're talking about AI and we know it's a billion dollar industry. Now here's an article that I read recently that actually frightened me a little bit in terms of what it means in the implications. So this article was in published on the Conversation and it's stated that that AI is being underpinned by an exploited workforce. So what does that actually mean? There are you know, we think about people working putting garments together and working in sweatshops.
There's one part of AI we don't think about, and it's data labeling. So data comes in and a human operator has to label that data to explain what it is. So if it's a picture of Craig, it's said handsome, middle aged man, big guns. You know, it's got to come up with something, right. But the interesting thing is that, you know, with the AI industry expected to be worth about four hundred and seven billion US dollars by twenty
twenty seven, right, that's not a long way away. The problem is that there's up to one hundred data labelers for each AI and all these AI workers are in places like Kenya and they work for these companies like Facebook, SCALEAI Open AI all that sort of stuff. And the thing is that they're on really crap conditions and wages.
So data abeling, So this is the basically you take the raw data, images, video, text, and then you say to AI, this is what you are seeing, this is what you are hearing, so that AI can understand what it is and whether it's self driving cars, smart devices, chat, GPT, all that stuff has to be labeled because AI thrives on data and these data models that they have to keep updating. So for AI to continue to be as smart as it is, you've got to keep updating it.
So these data sets need to be updated and refreshed regularly. They cannot work without them. So tech giants so Meta, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, They outsource all of this stuff to the Filmilippines, Kenya, India, Pakistan, Venezuela, Colombia and now China of course is jumping on the bandwagon as well. So this has become an ethical thing that I guess we in the Western world, sitting on the other end of a phone or a computer or a tablet, just don't think about the implications. And look,
there's moves. I think Joe Biden was looking at some sort of international agreement. But the reality of it is, I don't know what we can do. I mean, we're getting we're using it as we speak, you know, we've just within the last ten minutes. So well, it's good to be aware of it.
Yeah, but also you I mean, wow, I find that not hard to believe. But I find that curious that you know, on some level there's people sitting in some third world country, potentially third world country, looking at images and describing that image and that's part of the very very very high tech evolved, you know system that we're in the middle. How is that happening in twenty twenty four?
Like and not? Can't AI itself? Hasn't it been trained and developed to a point where it can look at me and go, you know, middle aged I can white bloke with a bad attitude. Can't it do that all by itself? Now? No?
The problem with that is if you're using AI to train AI, that's your AI cannibalism. Isn't it.
Not to train AI? But surely surely it can look at pretty much anything now and figure out what it is. Like, do we still need people to be going, oh, that's a train, that's a yellow train with red wheels.
People are better at it. People are much better at it. We adapt. You know, the reality of it is that it's a good thing. That there's an oversight in some ways, but at this stage it appears is not. It appears that the industry needs this, and when people are being paid between say you're in Venezuela, you're being paid between ninety cents and two dollars US an hour to do this generally mindless work.
Do you know what I think? I don't know. I don't think we've ever We've kind of spoken about this, but not in any great detail. I think there's a vast, vast chasmhole in the in what's happening right now in terms of the role out and the I guess the
overwhelm of technology. You know, we've spoken about my mum and dad a bit with tech, and you know that now I've taken over the paying of all of their bills electronically because mum and dad were freaked out, because you know, I mean, the truth is that there are even in Australia, there are millions of people who are not tech savvy who are constantly having problems with navigating world that is very very very different to the one
twenty years ago. And of course technology brings with it great advantages, but it also brings potential or many potential problems. What I mean, there's no answer to this, but or
there's no immediate answer. But being able to create technology that is truly user friendly, truly user friendly for people who don't understand technology, I mean, I think that's the next great bloody opportunity or the great the next great problem to be solved, because you know, even for me and I use technology all day every day, we're using it right now, I've got multiple computers, phones. You know, I'm my life, my business, my career is dependent on it.
And I'm still a complete fucking dummy compared to you, and you're a complete dummy compared to someone else. But then you take at one level beyond me and you go then there are like my mum and dad who do not know how to pay a bill unless it's with a check or cash. You know, how do we look after those people moving forward? Because it seems like they're not really being hated.
For the digital haves and have nots. I guess it's probably people maybe fifty up because they didn't grow up in a schooling environment with technology. They may have not adopted technology because they didn't need it for their job if they were in a trade or they did something that didn't require them to be on computers. And I mean, do you remember when they started rolling out atm machines, how lot people just didn't know how to use them and struggled with them. And there's still concerns for a
lot of older people. For me, you asked two kind of really pertinent questions there. One is how do we support and help the people right now who are in that digital divide, who are part of the other side
of the digital divide? And I guess it's compassion from the banking system, from those services, you know, whether you're going to my other account and being able to still have face to face contact and saying, well, you know, the reality of it is, if someone's over the age of sixty or seventy, they may still need to walk into a bank and sit down and talk to their bank teller, their bank manager, and we need to not force them onto technology because maybe beyond them, we need
to understand that some people a they may not be willing, but be they may be frightened. They may have many reasons for being part of the digital divide. So I think, first of all, as a society, we need to be more compassionate to those people and not force them to do something. COVID forced a little of people to work out what a Q code was, but a lot of people stressed over that, so it's difficult for those people.
But the secondary thing is, and I think the exciting thing from the next level up and it won't help your parents, but it may help us and people younger than us as we get older. Is as technology and AIS in implemented, is getting technology that doesn't just have a this one way to turn something on and off. If you think about it, if you ask different ways, you know, you can use different phrases to say the same thing to try to get the same results. But
generally most computers are binary. It's yes or no, it's off or on. But with the deployment of things like AI, it will make technology easier because you know, I envisited a time where we won't be using phones anymore. We'll have a pair of our glasses will project the information we need hovering in front of us like a heads up display. Your car has a heads up display, doesn't it your new car?
Yeah?
Yeah, okay, So it's not obtrusive at all, and in fact it helps with the road experience because you're not looking down at your speedo. But I could imagine a future where I would just say, you know, what's the weather going to be today, and tell me that without searching for an app, without going going to a Google search bar and typing that in. So I think as technology becomes more used friendly, then hopefully for us and people who's substantly come along, you won't have the barriers.
We won't have keyboards to worry about. We will have conversations. You just had a conversation with chat GPT and that was very natural. And the thing about a lot of these searches now is they remember what we previously spoke about. So if you can think about your experiences of using a phone and then putting it all into smart glasses, it's hovering there. Quite often. We don't need to look at our phone. If you want to call me and you say call Patrick Bonello, you don't need to go
through your contact list. It verifies it's you and then the call gets initiated. So for me Hopefully we'll get a hybrid of this that will help your parents down the track, maybe, you know, if they get more and more comfortable, at least with using voice activation. It takes screens and keyboards and mice away from people who may have problems with it.
Even my little old car that I get around then, which is a five year old Suzuki. It's not that old, but you know what I mean, it's and it's just really it's a Suzuki Swift that's super basic. There's a button on the thing which is like a bloke talking or a person talking. I press that and I go call Patrick, and the lady goes calling Patrick Bonello, you know, and then it rings you. I don't even I know where that button is without even looking at the steering wheel.
I can just watch the road, press that button with my thumb and tell my car to call you when it does. And I mean that's five or six year old technology. But I mean everything you're saying I agree with, and I think moving forward it's great. And I'm a little bit selfish and I'm a little bit biased with this because of my eighty four and five year old parents.
But like, hands down, at the moment. Hands down, my mum's biggest source of anxiety is technology because it's scarce a shit out of her and she doesn't know, you know, in my mom Like my mum's got an iPhone, she literally doesn't know how to use it other than to make a call and get a call, you know, and even I could, you know, I've tried to teach her so many times how to do that. She can she
can send texts, but even then it's pretty clunky. But I will send her a text and she it'll go, she'll get it, but she doesn't get it because she never thinks to look or that little sign in the window or whatever. You know. It's like, I don't know. I guess there's no answer. But it's like we're so brilliant, we're so advanced at solving problems, and we can do you know, we can we can do pretty much anything now, but we can't create a way for old people who
aren't technologically minded or trained. It'd be great if we could produce something which for them is just as easy as talking to a human or having a human interaction. Because you think about the percentage of people in Australia who are say older than sixty and that's the group we're talking about. I don't know what it is, but I would guess it would be somewhere in the three four million range. I mean, that's a lot of humans,
and we're not a massive population. Then you think globally, you extrapolate that it might be a billion people who are sixty year older. You know, that's a big that's a big market.
There are some companies that are servicing that market. I was thinking about your mum and the iPhone, and then I kind of thought, well, my little brother has a phone that doesn't have a screen on it. All it has, if you can imagine, you know, it's a bit smaller than a standard mobile phone, a bit bigger than card and all it has is you pre program. It's got a big, chunky name next to it, so it's Patrick,
it's Dad, it's all the various contacts. I think about eight or ten on it, maybe only eight, and you just button and it calls them. That's it. All you've got is a call and a hang up. Doesn't even have a keypad to dial numbers. You just have emergency contacts or people you want to speak to, and he just press the button, it calls them, and he presses the hang up button most of the time to hang up.
And how does he know who's ringing?
If someone rings, Oh, I guess that lights up next to them.
I don't know, amen, because I'm just thinking what efforts, you know, one of those fucking annoying people trying to sell your shit. You don't want to be answering those all the time.
I just realized that the contact details that I've got in my phone for his phone is Jason's lego phone.
That's hilarious.
Yeah, but I don't know. I'll have to try that next time. I'm not sure what it does when you ring in and how he knows where it's coming from. That's a really good question. I need to follow that up.
Oh wow, oh wow, all right, let's do another one or two if you've got anything on your list.
Well, this is an interesting one. The government's getting really proactive. When I say the government, this trading. Government's getting really proactive with a first ever standalone Cybersecurity Act. So what this means there's two cybersecurity bills that are currently being reviewed by a parliamentary committee and what they're looking at is a mandatory minimum cyber security standard for smart devices because things like speakers, vacuums, doorbells, fridges, all that sort
of smart connectivity because they're there now. They want to have an absolute minimum that that security means. Because there was a brand of vacuum cleaners recently that they found out that because they have cameras built into them, these robo vACC You don't have a robovac, dear, no so, but there's been a.
Bit of stuff in the news about robo vax fucking doing like attacking dogs.
And dog yeah. No, well, in this instance, recording everything so they can send to the cloud and they can basically look through through the cameras. I mean for your own personal security. This is scary to think that your own devices could be spying on you. So your robot vacuum cleaner has a camera in it, and if you think that it's vacuuming around the house and you've got kids, and you've got older people, and it could be seeing
and watching and then recording that information. There was one brand, and I can't think of it at the moment. It's not one of the big popular ones, but certainly was a reasonably popular one. They didn't have protections in place, so that data was being captured, including camera footage and audio being recorded. So you've got this digital spy that's running around your house. So I think it's a good step in the right direction with this kind of cyber
security legislation that hopefully will go to Parliament. It's a security bill they're talking about putting it through, and then it puts the onus back on the companies to make sure that the devices that we use, the smart things. You know, we call it the Internet of things. So a device that's Internet enable and can be right in our digital ecosystem, it's referred to as the Internet of things. And I think that more companies need to be put
under pressure to make sure these devices are secures. That's a real problem. If you've ever installed a router in your home, you know, when you connect the internet, generally the standard username and password is either admin admin or admin password or admin one two three four. You know it's it's it's mind blowingly ridiculous that standard that comes out.
I mean, you should be forced when you install a router or a modem, it should be found to create a password and a username that's unique to you, not the standard because it means that all these off the shelf devices could be potentially hacked into.
Hey, David gillespian I did an episode on October eleven, What's that six days ago? Episode sixteen seventy one called is your car spying on you? And he wrote wanted or not aware of it or not? If you have a relatively late model car, there's a very high chance that much of what you're doing when you're behind the wheel is being recorded. Henry Ford would be horrified his model T once a symbol of freedom, has morphed into a rolling surveillance device tracking our every move and eavesdropping
on our conversations. Some cars Tesla for example, even turning into rolling CCTV cameras capturing every move Grimace and nose Pick, So there are Choice Magazine did like an expose on that. They did and then Gillespo wrote about it. But yeah, that's that. That's fucking terrifying, Like they're not just audio recording but video recording you in your car and then
keeping that. And I said to him, what about But surely they need approval or they need and it's like, yeah, well when you buy whatever or you of course you just go accept and he said, like trying to what did he say? He said, trying to read and understand what you're agreeing to is like trying to read a ten thousand word document in Klingon.
You know, that's right. I know that in Europe, the EU is trying to force companies to make their terms of service and agreements to be a lot clearer, to spell them out, to put more kind of you know, to make the more succinct as to what they're storing and what they're keeping from you. By the way, I remember I found the article about that vacuum cleaner that
collects photos and audio to train AI. It's called the d Bot dwbot robot vacuum and they're saying, and this was an article on the ABC by the way, ABC Australia. So they've been found to suffer from critical cybersecurity flaws and they're collecting photos, videos and voice recordings has taken inside customers' houses and what they're using that data for is to train the company's AI model. So they're taking it.
This is a Chinese home robotics company and they sell the debot, which is a lot of people illustrated him may have one of these. I'm going to tell you a story. A friend of mine just brought himself a Chinese car. It's called the Tank. Have you heard of the Tank?
Yeah? Yeah, it's made by GWM Havelet's there's a three hundred and a five hundred, so he probably bought the three hundred.
Coincidence two one of my friends bought the three hundred. One bought the five hundred. But I had to laugh. I got into his car the other day. He's only had it for about two weeks, and there's a camera that faces you to crack whether you fall asleep or I mean, it's about effectively that's what it's supposed to do. He's put a sticker over it because he does looking at him. I don't know if I could be in a car that's looking back at me constantly. That's his frame.
Mine's got the same thing.
Oh really yeah yeah.
If you blink for too long, it tells you to pull over and have a rest. Yeah wow, I mean, but just quickly jumping back to the vaxspying vacuum, think about the fact that what a genius way to get a mobile microphone and camera into your house where imagine if you know, like it looked like a microphone and camera. You wouldn't let it anywhere near your fucking property. But because oh it's a vacuum, it's a vacuum that happens
to have a camera and a microphone. And you go into room and all of a sudden, there it is listening and filming, you know, And now I'm in the shower. I'm not sure why it's in the bathroom, you know. I'm like, that is potentially fucking terrifying. Well, not potentially, it is terrifying.
Well, they also do a two D and sometimes even a three D map of your house. And the concern is this company may legitimately be collecting the data to try to map their vacuum cleaners better, but what they can't guarantee is that they're not going to be hacked. Could you think about a crime syndicate hacking your vacuum cleaner moving around knowing where you are, when you are, when you're off to work, and where all the valuables are in the house.
Well, it's funny you say this, and this is not a very good way. You and I have been quite you know, unprofessional today. But I'm just having a look at vacuum, vacuum threatening. I read this thing person, excuse me, No, I can't find it. But this this one of those vacuums was basically somebody, I don't know what the word is hijacked it. You know the word. I don't know the word, but took and they have speakers in them, and somebody was abusing. Somebody had had hacked it and
was abusing the homeowner was abusing that. So obviously not the company was doing, but somebody had had that particular let's call it what it is, robot, and yeah, they they were just abusing this person who was in the home. Yeah.
Yeah.
It is a worrying thing that we allow technology into our homes. And we talked in an episode not long ago about how some apps owned by Facebook Meta and they were tracking people in conversations. So once you have the Facebook app on your phone, potentially they could be listening into your conversation so they can serve up ads. So there was an advertising agency that ran ads for the likes of Meta, and what they were doing was they were tracking conversations for keywords and then serving up ads.
They've been caught out, but they were serving up ads related to the conversation. So we're talking about robot vacuum cleaner. Potentially you could jump back on your phone and suddenly an ad for a robot vacuum cleaner would appear.
Yeah, yep. I have that happen all the time, where I'll be talking about something, my phone's not even near me, and then I start getting ads. Hey, listen to this South Korean woman's hair eaten by robot vacuum cleaner as she slept. Oh my god, there's a photo. When a South Korean woman invested in a robot vacuum cleaner, the idea was to leave her trustworthy gadget to do its
work while she took a break from household chores. Instead, the fifty two year old resident of chang Wan City ended up being a victim of what many believe is a peek into a dystopian future in which supposedly benign robots against their human masters. The woman, whose name is been with was taking a nap on the floor at home when the vacuum cleaner locked onto her hair and
sucked it up, apparently mistaking it for dust. The agony of having her hair entangled in the boughs of the contraption raised her from a slumber, and then there's a photo of what looks like ambos. Oh my god. Yeah, firefighters, so you found it trying to rescue the woman. Yeah, that's going to hurt.
Can I just say, I'm going to take the side of the vacuum cleaner on this one.
Well, that's because you've got no fucking hair, so you're not You're number anybody.
Can I just say if you have a robot vacuum cleaner in your home and you lay down on the ground with your hair spread out on the floor, which is pretty gross as it happens, and the innocent robot vacuum cleaner happens to be doing their job and they find some dirt on the ground that happens to be someone's hair, it will vacuum it up. It didn't know it was attached to a human.
Well, that's an that therein lies the problem.
When you first told that story, I envisaged the vacuum cleaner jumping onto the bed and attacking her because that's what you made it sound like. And then the actual story was that she was naively laying on the floor while the vacuum cleaner was innocently doing its job. It doesn't it has to work times.
Have I told you off air, don't let the facts get in the way of a fucking good story. So you, you and your bloody reality check can fuck off, mate. How can people connect with you and find you and follow you? Where are you at?
Well? They can go to websites now, dot com, dot au and as it suggests, we actually build websites when I'm not on podcast talking crap, but we do all sorts of marketing and stuff like that. So go to if you want to ask questions, if you want us to talk about something in particular, So just go to websites now, dot com today you They can then jump online and send us sends a note, email me, contact me and I'll happily.
Can I tell you if you do want to get a web and this is not a paid endorsement, but if you do want to get a website built, for God's sake, go to Patrick. Because one, there's a whole lot of fucking people who overcharge and under deliver, Like really, I've experienced it, He's not one. And there's a lot of people who try and keep you on the hook forever with a range of things you don't need, so save yourself a bit of time and energy and just start with someone who's good at it.
Well, thanks, mate, that's really nice of you to say. Looking at what I love about what we do with our clients is we have such a diversity, and I love getting to know people and their businesses. I never knew that I would know anything about delivering a baby, but I do. Wow, that's because one of our clients does the most amazing obstetrics and gynological training models in the world. And they may just rand the corner from you, actually just down the road from your house.
Well, the babies or.
The everything, well, I guess they're happening all around you.
It makes everybody everywhere appreciate you, mate, Thank you.
Jeez. I