I'll get a team. Welcome to another installment of your favorite show, with your favorite people. David, John Ken, Patrick Gillespie, Tiffany and Margaret, Woman of Veronica. Two dogs, Cook cloak Cookie?
Can they two dogs?
Are you all right?
I'm great?
Thanks great? Great, dog's good, dog, good, cat, good, motorbike good.
Everything's good.
To get rid of the cat, the motorbike or the dog. What would go first?
One of them? None of them. We'd all live homeless on food stamps if we had two meat, the cat, the dog and the motorbike.
A food stamp still a thing.
I don't know. Never were in Australia, but I think they are in the US. Yeah.
I think you've been watching too many Disney movies. Tiff. Hello, Professor Gillespie, how are you?
Yeah?
Good?
Good to be here. I got to ask. So, last time we talked, Tiff had bought an accessory for her bike to make it really really noisy. That now fitted, Tiff.
It's been fitted. It's so good. I am so obsessed. Now you've got no idea, David. We'll talk about it later.
No, talk about it, talk about it now, because I want people to know what I have to contend with.
So you were frustrated at writing around on the equivalent of a singer sewing machine, and now it's a singer sewing machine that sounds like a Harley is it? It really is?
And it's like I can't even describe. It has transformed my relationship with the bike. I cannot ride it enough.
There aren't too many women that I know that are I mean, in fact, you might be the only one that's totally enamored with a motorbike that's loud and obnoxious. So how good is it? Though? It is good? It is good. It does so, I mean, but I'm a bogan.
So you're going to have to get a sound clip and edit it in here, Tiff, so that people know what we're talking about.
I'll go give it a few revs. Maybe next week I'll get out on it, give it a few revs, and pop it in for the listeners.
You could just go out record it to your phone. Could you do that? Could you literally record it on your phone and insert it into this episode.
I could do that. I could do it, Tiff.
Let's hear your motorbike now, boom, And that was TIFF's motorbike. Everyone, I've just created some more. Every woman listens to the show will be like, not every woman, but a lot will be like, I don't get it. I didn't get it.
What it?
What didn't you get? What do you get now? Sorry, David, this is really this is very inappropriate. But what do you get now that you didn't get?
Well, I didn't get how much it was going to change the entire riding experience, not just the ah everyone's bad bokes louder than mine. And I'm on a Junomi sewing machine, so I go the long way home. I couldn't be bothered getting it, getting it unpacked, to bring it fifteen minutes to the gym before. Now, I, oh, I don't know something, something happens. It's very visceral. It's
it's the sound, it's the feeling. And do you know what, I've got a comms unit the communications for other writers, and I don't like it because it takes me away from the presence of the sensation of the whole bike experience.
Yeah, I know what, I know what you're talking about. You know my first car was a Gemini, Yeah, which was you know, it's a singer sewing routine with four wheels and it. It became a lot faster and better when I went and bought some speech stripes and put you stuck them down the side of it.
It's it's it's an indictment on you that you owned a Gemini and then but that you are brave enough to say that you.
Are under Gemini a long time ago.
Although back in the day they were they were kind of okay.
It wasn't that kind of Gemini. It was a blue nurse's car. So it was a lovely hell blue.
Had kind of baby powder blue. All right, Now, we're not here to talk about bloody motorbikes or forty year old geminis. We're here to talk about the things that you've been sticking your nose into, because you fucking stick your nose in a lot of places.
You do.
You do open doors that nobody asked you to open. Let's just say that. But you do it with gay abandon You just you just throw it open and just cartwheel in there. And so one of that. By the way, everyone, David who please help him get some more followers on Buddy LinkedIn. He's up to two thousand, but my nana's on two and a half thousand and she's dead. So if you could give him, if you could give him
a chop out, follow him on LinkedIn. And also, if you're not a member or if you're not following on the U Project podcast Facebook page where he posts every second or third one of his articles, jump in there. Also follow on there. But you put up something this week around an AI kind of let's call it a resource that was developed. Do you want to I won't. I won't spoil the I won't spoil the show. Tell us what was developed and what it's for.
Okay. So O two, which is a British telecommunications company, decided that rather than just blocking scammer numbers as they're coming through their servers, they would prefer to waste the scammer's time, figuring that that's actually a more powerful this incentive to phone scammers because just blocking their numbers just means that the computer moves on to the next number, and you know, they haven't really harmed the scammer at all.
So what they developed was an AI that imitates your grant and this AI will have a really lengthy conversation with anyone that rings them, and it's really interesting. I think you've got some audio here, Tiff, and I whack it in because listening to this is your You're now going to listen to the actual AI having a real conversation with real phone scammers.
So W is than a dot W. And then Dodd, I think you're perfectly bothering people, right, I'm just trying to have a little chat. Gosh, our time fly is it's showing me a picture of my cat Fluffy.
It's showing you a picture of your cat Fluffy.
It's not stupid, got it.
Dear, Because while they're busy talking to me, they can't be scamming you. And let's face it, dear, I've got all the time in the world.
So you know, she's got a bit of a sense of humor as well. You know that one of fellow saying has been nearly an hour and she's saying, oh, how time flies. So it's an interesting approach to the problem in that they figured, well, we haven't just got one Grannie we can put on the phone. You know, got one AI grannie, You've got a billion of them,
so you know, run them all simultaneously. And so that's their plan, is to just waste the scammer's time and clog up their calling networks with conversations with not very real grannies.
Is is it? It must be bloody great AI. If they can keep someone on the phone for an hour thinking that they're actually having a real conversation with the real person, well.
They've got a strong motivation to stay on the phone. So you're remembering that, you know, it's a fairly unrewarding job, I guess, in the sense that you know, ninety nine percent of people are to speak hang up with in the first second. So they want to stay on the phone. They want to think that they're making progress. They want to talk to someone and see if they can get them too interested in what they're doing. And the interesting thing about an AI is that it can adapt. It
can have a genuine conversation with you. It can talk to you about what you've said, it can listen to what you've said, it can engage in it. And this one has been told programmed to keep the conversation going whatever it takes. And as you heard from those examples, it was managing to do it for an hour, which now, look, I suspect this is a fairly short term solution and that you know pretty soon these scammers will be AIS themselves and see AI is talking to our eyes, and
no one will waste anyone's time. But I guess a few within megacycles of computing time might go down the drain. But it's an interesting use of AI at the moment, and it shows how far it's gone that you could be talking to what you think as a person in real time and in fact you're not.
It is getting It's getting harder and harder to identify what is real and what is not. Like I got sent something today through one of the speaking agencies that I do some work for, and I didn't open it, but it looked legit. It was from there, had they had everything that looks like the other emails I get from them, But it had a file to open, which didn't make sense, so I didn't open it. And I'm
nine to nine point nine, I'm sent. Sure it was a virus or something, but I just nearly automatically opened it because I've opened things from them many times and it just came in and it's like, oh, there's a file here, blah blah blah about that, and then I read what it was about, and I'm like, what is what is that, but you I think if you're not ever vigilant, you know we're going to get in trouble
because the quality. I mean, there's also some ridiculously terrible kind of you know, scams, but some of them are pretty high level, aren't they.
Yeah, But I guess on the flip side of this is it's worth thinking about where it could be useful.
If you've got AI capable of holding a reasonable conversation with you, but also with access to a significant amount of data about the organization it works for, then wouldn't you rather be talking to an AI like that than sitting on hold for two days waiting for your bank to talk to you, or for your Telcoe to talk to you, or for cent a Link to talk to you, which is the alternative at the moment, which is press this button and then go on hold for three days.
Wouldn't you rather be answered every single time, even if it's by an AI that you can actually have a conversation with and who probably has a pretty good chance of giving you the information you're after.
And also you're not talking to anything that gets pissed off or impatient or frustrated or has emotions or is going to judge you or you know.
So in the example we just played the grandess, they were swearing at her. It's perfectly calm, just keeps the conversation going.
Yeah, yeah, that is, that is.
Yeah.
There are a range of applications even with I don't use chat GPT for any of my writing or obviously for my research because it's irrelevant. But sometimes I'll look up something just to see what it says about something I already understand, to see if what they bring up is similar to what I would write or what I
would say. And I was thinking the other day about what I call in personal intelligence, like how the ability to be able to you know, understand others, all that communicates, solve problems, work alongside other people, that kind of social intelligence. And I thought, I've never heard the term into personal intelligence. I wonder if it's actually a term and an area of research. And I pulled it up and I said,
what is inter personal intelligence? On chat GPT? And it brought it up and A Blowke wrote a book Come on Boy you forty years ago, whole thesis, whole and a guy at a Harvard a psychologist and a professor, and yeah, it's one of eight kinds of intelligence he describes.
But anyways, so it finished, and then at the end, unprompted by me chat, GPT goes, I hope you find that valuable, Craig, because it's interesting because that intersects with your research and probably something you could talk about in your workshops and on your podcast. Like it gave me a whole paragraph of just general advice around how I could potentially use this information in different capacities and context
and I didn't ask it any of that. I'm like, this motherfucker has been studying me, like what it's like, it knows me.
Well, that's a nice segue to the next bit that we want to talk about, Craig, which is you would have seen the things about Bunnings getting a slap over the wrist with a damp piece of lettuce by the Privacy Commissioner saying, oh, you'ren aughty folks, you shouldn't have done that. And what Bunnings were doing was for three years they ran profiling software in their stores without telling
anyone they were doing it. So this was facial recognition and the reason that Bunnings said they were doing it was to because they wanted to identify criminals in, known shoplifters, potential trouble makers, etc. In their stores. They say seventy percent of problems in their stores come from a very very small group of people that they would use this software to identify, and the privacy commissioner said, wow, you
can't do that. They didn't have a problem with them using the software, they had a problem with them doing it without telling one. So and this sort of thing is increasingly becoming part of retail. I don't know if you've ever paid close attention to the self checkout kiosks in the supermarket, but if you have, you would have noticed a real time video of yourself operating the machine. And there's no guarantees around any of this stuff, you know.
Bunning said, Look, it was deleted as soon as it wasn't a match, like you know, in less than a second, your photo was off the system. No one was keeping anything, And maybe that's true, probably is, But the fact that it's being recorded at all and is being used for identification,
I think gives pause for thought. Because profiling software like that, which well facial recognition software all of us use all the time, use it probably every morning to unlock your phone, every five minutes to unlock your phone and is using facial recognition software. It's used at the airports to you know,
get you through customs all that sort of stuff. The question then comes, is it okay for to just be being used everywhere all the time, for us to be able to be identified, particularly in places where it can be matched to other information about us, like our credit card or our flyby's number, or a rewards number which records every purchase we've ever made and our preferences, you know, whether we happen to like the full fat milk or the trim All that kind of stuff starts to be
then being associated with stuff that can be picked out immediately by software that's automatically identifying you. Because if you all had a number plate stable to your forehead, So
how comfortable are we with that? So taking the example that you just gave with chat GPT, what if you you know, you were browsing the women's little lingerie section at Target, you know, as you do, and you know, the facial recognitions software says, oh, Frank, it's got an interest in women's underwear, and pops onto Instagram, does a
complete search of Instagram. You know, the reverse image search of Instagram with your face identifies your Instagram account and then starts popping ads for women's underwear in your Instagram. So that's the sort of thing that can be used commercially and is all doable now with existing technology, And who's to say it isn't. I mean, how did chat GPT know so much about you? He is a good question to ask, But the question is how much of
this are we prepared to allow have happening. It's all a bit amusing when it's about your lingerie shopping habits, but it's less amusing when you get a fine in the post for jaywalking at two am and Mount Iseres because you know, a camera picked you up, identified your face, it reported you to authorities and sent you a fine.
Or when your car, as we've talked before, you know, shoots a letter off to the to the to the coppers and says, oh, by the way, Harps was doing five k over the limit and he's photographic proof of it.
You know, even what you were saying with at Woolworths, I was thinking that because well, where I shop anyway, there's I think there's two cameras, so there's one that is straight on and my face.
But then there's one above me where it can see what you're doing. It can see you scanning things. So it's above my head looking at me, scanning things, looking at me taking things out of the basket, scanning them, then putting them into my bag. So it's this kind of overhead view and I think, I mean, honestly, I guess it doesn't bother me because I've never thought about
it too much. But no, no, I mean, maybe it's there, but I've never seen this anywhere where it says, by the way, you're being filmed right now.
Yeah, And that was the problem that the Privacy Commissioner had with what Bunning's were doing. Like I said, they didn't have a problem with the fact they were doing it. The problem was they didn't tell people they were doing it and give people the opportunity not to consent.
So what would be then if they if they told everyone? I mean, what would you do tif if they went, hey, if you shop here, we're going to film you, would you still shop there? I mean probably, I guess I get like, I know I'm being filmed, but then do we know what they'd do with that footage? David or like a.
Big problem, isn't it. No, we don't we know what they say they do with it when the Privacy Commissioner hauls them up before them. But do we really know what they'd do with it and what guarantees we've got.
And last time when we talked about this with the cars, and this data was being sent off to Chinese and South Korean companies, and there was no explanation as to what was being done with it other than it was being used to train ais well to do what you know, there's just no real detail about this stuff, and I don't think anyone can with confidence say they know what's
being done. I guess that coming back to the question you asked about, would TIFFs still go into Bunnings, Well, she might, but I reckon there'd probably be a roaring trade in those face masks. Things you can buy that make it really, really difficult for these detection softwares to work. So there's these ones that they sort of blur your features. They're still basically see through, but they blur your features
and the software struggles with it. They were very very popular in Hong Kong, by the way, during the democracy riots because they knew that this technology was being used there, and so they sold a lot of those masks. You might see a lot of that sort of thing happening if people are being told what's going on and deciding, actually, I'd really rather not be identified. You know, when I go in and buy a lawnmower.
I wonder if in some not too distant dystopian future they are selling so they're filming us and then selling that too. I mean, unless there was some commercial upside for them, there'd be no reason for them to record it unless they were going.
To there's a lot of commercial upside. So just the example I gave you before, where you know, if it noticed that you're hanging around in the linger section, then that day not.
Just stop saying that. Please, could you find another example or another example? Could it not be the fresh produce section or something?
To be really really clear, listeners, I have no evidence to hang around in the lingerie section. It is just a hopothetical.
But target do though that.
But but I guess there's an instant commercial upside to that, which is that information is valuable to an advertiser of lingerie products, and there's other commercial applications as well, because then they've got that information linked to the other things
that you purchase. So you may never purchase lingerie, but it now knows something about you that it didn't know before, which it would have only gotten from your purchase history, and so it can cater the advertising to you, It can target things to you, it can sell that targeting information. I'm not suggesting anyone is doing this, It's just possible. And whenever something is possible, there's likely to be someone pushing the envelope.
If you look like you wanted to jump in, well.
I feel like if this, why is this a thing around these sorts of things and not people that are doing child trafficking and pornography, And like, if this sort of stuff exists, is on their better uses than trying to catch someone fucking scanning a roma tomato or something else.
It's probably, Yeah, it's probably because law enforcement often lags be in terms of its access to technology. And then the other problem is giving these sorts of capabilities to law enforcement is a whole new level as well, in the sense that it's people are almost okay with it. If all it's going to happen is they're going to sell you a new pair of shoes with it, but they're less okay with it if someone who can throw you in the slammer has access to this information.
Oh, there is so much stuff to sort through with this. All right, let's do one more before we close the Gillespie door. So you wrote an article the other day. Well, there was an article that you commented on from the New York Times called is being busy good for people with ADHD?
Yeah?
What tell us about that? Because I'm I don't know the answer. I'm suspecting it might be.
It is so interesting study, big study done in the United States tracking people over sixteen years to see whether there're ADHD symptoms, you know, stayed the same, got worse, got better, whatever. And what they discovered along the way was that it went in and out with adults, and that the thing that most accurately predicted the ADHD symptoms
or the severity of them. And remembering what ADHD is, and that the primary symptom is lack of focus, you know, lack of an ability to focus, particularly in an adult. That can have severe consequences because you can't get anything done. You're a bit study at work and in general. And so they were tracking this and they found it really
was affected by how busy you were. So the busier you were, the more you had on the more stress you were under, which is a little bit paradoxical, the more stress you were under, the less likely you were to have ADHD symptoms. So and in fact, for many people, the more stress they became, the more likely they were
to be completely in remission from those symptoms. So that's an interesting finding and it backs up some of the things that we've talked about sort of over many episodes, which is find a way to generate dopamine if what you want to do is address ADHD symptoms. ADHD is a lack of dopamine. You do not have enough dopamine to keep you focused. And the definition of enough is what your brain says is enough, and the level of that is dependent on how addicted or stressed you are.
The higher your addiction or stress levels, the higher it says you need. And so even a normal level in someone else is not enough to keep you focused. So the way ADHD medication works is to give you a dopamine spike. They're stimulants, so not that people would be prescribing it, but you could give someone cocaine. It will give them a dopamine spike, and it would fix their dopamines,
the their ADHD symptoms. So the interesting thing is this is entirely predictable, which is make someone busy, make them really really have to focus, have to stay on task all the time. They're having to generate their own dopamine because they're so busy, put them under stress. Stress generates dopamine just as well. So make someone busy, time poor, under stress, they are likely to not have ADHD symptoms, is what this study is saying. And the reason is
because of that, because they're generating their own dopamine. And this lines up with the stuff we've talked about in the past about ice baths, for example, how do you address something like this jump in an ice bath because an ice bath is a massive dose of stress and it gives you a huge dopamine hit. So that's what this found. The interesting thing is also backed up with some earlier studies on students which found, okay, but what
they're busy doing matters. So you have to be interested in the thing you are doing or that's keeping you busy, or you won't get any dopamine from it. So being busy doing housework, for example, did not have any effect on students' ability to focus, but being busy playing sport did.
Oh right. It's not just any busy, it's a certain kind of busy.
It has to be something you want to do, like so it's got to be something that you enjoy or else you're not going to keep up motivation to stay busy with it anyway. But also it's not actually giving you a dopen mean hit because you don't want to do it in the first place.
That is very interesting. I wonder if I wonder if knowing that in the education system, they could do something with that insight.
I think a lot of teachers know this sort of without any official science behind it. They know if I want these boys in my class that are bouncing off the walls to focus, I'll let them go outside and bounce around for a bit and then I'll get more out of them.
Well, t if it looks like you've got some editing to do, because you've got to insert you may have to reinsert that lady's audio because I don't know how good that was, and you have to it was bloody awful, and because yeah, that was a bit dodgy. So you might have to figure that out, but you're a whiz. And then you've got to insert the MT seven with the Akropovich System on it, which that means nothing to our listeners, but just.
Trust me, it means something to some of them.
It means something too much to the twelve Bogans that listen to the show. Shout out to the Bogans and Glespo's like, what's in Akropovich full system just makes it sound good? Mate with the baffle out.
Yeah, I'm going to have to do something I've never done before. I'm going to have to go and listen to one of these episodes so I can hear it.
Yeah, you'll hear it, So it'll be out, not tomorrow, the next day. I'm able to say goodbye, Affair, but as always, we appreciate you. Thank you sir, right out see ya