Patrick, Yeah, greg O, what are you? Intro the show?
Hey, welcome to the You Project with Craig Harper, Tiffany Cook and special guest Patrick Bonello.
It's great to have you groovers here today. That's pretty good. Now, that's good. Maybe if you could pop up because sometimes I can't be fux saying that, so, well done, well done, and hello from Fritz as well. Who is sitting on your lap.
We probably should screen grabbed this and placed it somewhere. He's pretty damn cute, isn't he. Well?
Yeah, and also your dog is somewhere else in the house. Good morning, tiff Patrick, thank you for introing the show. Per my request, Tiff, how are you?
I'm very good? Thanks? How are you?
I'm good? What's going? You're a little bit flatty mcflatster. Earlier in the week we're recording this Friday morning. Have you have you found your fucking rhythm, your mojo?
I have you know when you just need to have that one day of throwing it all away and then and then you're good. I'm good? Good now, I am really good? Thank you?
Yeah, good, just checking in. Patrick? Are you good? Do you have flat days? Mate? Do you ever because you. You always present yourself like I try to present myself as up and aboutside is tiff, I know, but do you have flat days sometimes?
But I kind of my friends excuse me of being way too busy. I've got something on all the time. Next week, I think I've got something on every night. So I've got book group on Monday night. Tuesday, I'm singing in a choir. Wednesday, I'm teaching tai chi. Thursday, I'm teaching tai chi, and then Friday, I don't know yet what I'm doing on Friday. Don't like they're both laughing at me. You asked me a serious question. I gave you a serious answer, and I'm just saying I'm busy.
I don't have time to think about other stuff. I think if you fill your world with stuff you don't forget, you get bogged down.
And I just said, don't think you really understand mental health if you think busyness is the cure. Let me. I said you. I said to you, do you hang on? Do you ever get a bit flat? You didn't even fucking answer the question you just told us about your calendar.
I think, like all of us, we do tend to get flat. But what I've tried to do in my life is put in mechanisms of joy and things that I really enjoy that can be uplifting. So, you know, it's like running your own business. There's cash flow issues, you know, sometimes some months and a bit lean, So those issues come up all the time. And yes, you can get a bit down when you look at the bank balance, or something happens, someone.
Cuts you off in them, you know whatever.
But I think that looking for mindfulness moments and I try to really actively search for that. So I look at things engagements, I catch up with friends, I walk for its and meet up with friends at the park, that sort of stuff. So I think we can be proactive about trying not to be flat. You know, I spent my teenage if we're going to get deep here, I spent my middle teenage years and later teenage years self harming and going through a really dark place.
And so for me, I started to understand.
That, you know, at an early age that those engagements and the people that I connected with really helped get me out of those dark places. So I think that I've done that as an adult successfully, and I think part of it also it's not so much fooling yourself. And you said, oh, you know, you always put on a cheery attitude. But I think you can all you can alter your mindset.
You know.
Part of the journey of being, say, a really good athlete, is convincing yourself you're a good athlete. Part of the journey it's if you know when you step in the ring, the confidence that you've got, if you believe in yourself first and foremost, then that's going to give you that little edge, that extra five percent that means that you're going to get where you need to go. And I think that's right in life. I think if we look
for those positive engagements. You know, I walk down the street in our little country town and I might bump into three or four people and it's great, you know, But at the hardware store, you know, you know, the people at the post office. Just seeing people around and engaging, I mean, you're really social.
Harps.
You go down the street and you have your coffee across at the cafe. It does make you feel better and feel good about yourself.
No, I tell them to fuck off. I might stop talking to me. Fuck off. No, I'm not answering your questions. Fuck off. No, I'm not like that at all. I love it. I'd be exactly like you if But I did laugh when you said, you know, in the traffic in Milan, there's fucking seven cars, So don't don't talk about the traffic in Milan. We don't even have a stop. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean you did talk. You've spoken to us before about growing up and trying to figure out sexuality and stuff.
Was that part of the being a bit emotionally lost and in the wilderness for you or was that a separate thing?
Oh it isn't it was. I don't think it's much different than most teenagers, you know. I think you lose a lot of confidence and you look towards peer pressure for validation, which is takes on the whole online thing we'll chat about later. But the reality of it is, you know, when you're growing up and you get to those teenage years and your brain chemistry starts to alter, you do look for peer approval, I think for most of us, and if you doesn't fit in, that can
be aspiraling experience for you. So unless you put on your desert boots and decide to go for a jog around the park because you're a bit of you want to change by.
A good memory. Yeah I was. I was just yep, I had a shit experience and then I went for running desert boots because I didn't fucking know what I was doing. Let's talk about AI and tech and all of the patrick things. I'm going to let you lead it today. Well, I just want to I want to lead one. Then I want you to take over the reins. Obviously you send us a bunch of topics and of also I want to know about sex in space.
Knew I knew you would look at that straight away. Well, this is a funny thing. We've been or humanity has been going into space for a long time, but everyone is a bit mum about whether or not people have sex in space. International Space Station, you know that sort of stuff, intergalactic copulation. Well, if this is a broader research and broader I guess to study into and a
look into the feasibility of long term space travel. So if we're going to Mars and it's going to take months and months and months or years to get there, then what happens with the viability of being able to have sex? And then there's the whole thing of like, wouldn't it be great to be floating around and have sex? Well, actually it would be pretty tough because you know, you can't be banging into things because it just bounce away. So you're like, that's what sex is. Yeah, you tried
on the International Space Station. It's a whole new experience.
I feel like you should take some ocki straps with you.
And gaffer tape because they use a lot of gaffetape on the ISS.
No.
Look, so some brains have been thinking about this, and the question has always been have astronauts actually ever done it in space? And NASA won't say a thing, and astronauts tend to be really coy about it. Your body changes when you're in low gravity, so fluid distribution actually changes, and the way your body because you've got no gravity, I guess to pull the body fluids in different directions.
I mean, it does open up a whole experience. Well, think about the two astronauts up there at the moment that went there for eight days and now have been stuck there for eight months. I mean, let's face it, there's got to be some relief somewhere. I mean, we're all human beings, but I don't know what do you reckon? Would you like to be floating around in space and doing a bit of you know, playing around at the same time as it seemed like something.
You haven't read a lot of sci fi, have you, Grego? No, But you know what I'm asking chat GPT does does the viscosity Does the visity of body fluids change in space? Shif that's where he went, No, no, no, because you were talking about, Yes, the viscosity of body fluids changes in space due to the effects of micro gravity on fluid. Because what I'm talking about is obviously sperm is a fluid, blood is a fluid. Saliva as a fluid. Look at you, Patrick TIFFs making a face as well. What's wrong with
you too? If you two didn't have fluids, you'd both be fucked. So embrace your fluids, Patrick, embraced your sperm and your blood and your saliva and your wi all of it. Yeah, because I think that would I think that would change things in terms of on.
All evels viscosity we're talking about here. Well, evidently the only person after this little research study and questioning of astronauts, a cosmonaut, came back and said of course you have sex by hand, so I I.
Don't think jacking off on the moon is the same. Well you know that. And then it comes to.
The dear, I just yeah, anyway, it just occurred to me that you know the way that you know if you're floating and all of a sudden, No, I don't worry.
You lost your trying to thought? Have you lost your trying to thought?
Really visual there for a moment, I think we should go into another time.
So but the answer is, but you do make a valid point because for and I think it takes doesn't it take like ten years to get to Mars or something? But I think less because they have a different wind, they have a window.
So it's when the planetary alignment's right to get Mars.
Closer because it's years, right, it's not? Yeah absolutely, yeah.
Yeah.
So then let's say you put one hundred of people on Mars. Well, for the proliferation of the pop population on Mars, you can't just keep topping it up with people from Earth. I guess you need to produce a few new ones.
But would you want to have children on Mars? I don't think quite yet.
I feel like day care. Oh fuck? And imagine. Yeah, I'll tell you what. You wouldn't have any traffic problems up there, Patrick, but Land would be busy compared to Mars.
Three years I go just on average, depending again where the planets are aligned, around about three years to get to Mark.
And nobody wants to know this except me. But what's the gravity on Mars relative to what's the gravity situation relative to Earth.
It's it's small, it's less so, but it's still a reasonable amount of gravity.
I don't know exactly what it is, but lot so that what that means is if there's less gravity, that means relatively I could fuck this up, but I think it means we're lighter in inverted commas on So I might only be about thirty five kilos on Mars, I might be able to run at about eight hundred miles
an hour. Yeah, I don't think so. But the problem with all that anti gravity stuff is the moment that you get in zero gravity, your body starts to fall apart because you don't need muscle and strength and bone density and all that shit starts to fall through. People who come back from long stints in space, their body has aged horribly.
Yeah, exactly evidently the if you weighed one hundred pounds, and this is I'm using pounds as the example, it would be thirty eight pounds on Mars, So it's a third, right.
Yeah, my poo's weigh a hundred pounds some morning, depending on what I've had the day before. So maybe not quite. You haven't already turned off yet to those three remaining listeners. See all right, you talk about something other than pooing and pro creating in space? If that could be the title of the show, Pooing and pro Creating in Space.
I feel like I need to do a positive story because the stuff that I was going to talk about was really kind of a bit of a downer. Well, I know, we don't we talk about this a little bit? And do you ever did you've.
Watched Star Wars? Obviously, Yeah, I actually quite like Star Wars. I also don't mind a bit of start track. Okay, so the New Hope.
Do you remember when they're on the Millennium Falcon and they're playing the chess game and they've got the little holographic chess pieces moving around, you know, when Luke Skywalker's playing.
Don't be ridiculous, you don't remember that. Do you remember that, say, you mean Star Wars was nine seventy seven.
But everybody's seen it. I'm trying to get a term of reference. There's the NBA in the United States has teamed up with Apple and what they've done this is
kind of cool. It's really interesting. If you're a big sports fan, imagine that you're sitting in your lounge room and you're watching a live sporting event, and then you have a holographic representation of the footy or the tennis or the rugby or whatever, and all the players are in miniature running around the field, and you can kind of walk around your living room table and see all the action as it plays out on your dining room table or your living room table.
Wouldn't that be kind of cool? I don't know, that would be weird.
I guess it'd be god view, wouldn't it's downing on the Wouldn't that be great.
To sound I've always wanted to feel omnipotent. That could be my best shot I think for.
A sporting fan though, because suddenly, because when you think about it, when you watch sport, you're I guess beholden to the camera, people, to the directors, they show the scenes that you're looking at at any given time, but if you see the entire match played out holographically in front of you, then you can just walk around and see all your players playing the game, all the action and this is real. Now they're talking about doing this using at this stage the vision Pro headset. That's the
the the Apple the headset. But it would be a really great way to mean what about a boxing match, Tiff.
You know, if you're if you're able to.
Walk around the ring, the rings there in front of you, and you can move around it and walk around it and see the see the boxes from different directions.
Wouldn't that be cool? There's already a version of that, But I think Tip would rather just punch a human and faith in the Yeah, okay, goggles, just give me a just give me some warment to punch. Speaking of Apple, I don't know if you saw this. I meant to watch it and then I forgot. Last night on the news they were talking about Apples brought out a new smartphone which is like about half the price like their You you know how they're up to. I know you're
an Android person, but you probably didn't see it. Did you see that TIF anyway. Okay, so apparently Apple have brought out a new iPhone which has got like everything you need but not too many of the bells and whistles. But I think it's about half the price, which I mean a lot of the providers have been doing that.
Google has been putting out their A series, So when you release a phone, they say put out the you know, the nine, the Pixel nine, and then a little while later they'll put out the Pixel nine A. So it's more of a budget version of their flagship phone. It's a good marketing strategy. It means that you know, when you think about it. I mean people in Australia, it always staggers me how many people have iPhones. I was at dinner with some friends last Friday night and somebody was, oh,
I know what it was. They were looking at their calculator on their phone because they'd had an update to their Apple phone, their iPhone. And now there's a new fixture that gives you real time cash transfer from different currencies. So whether it's the ASX or something built into it,
but you can do it. You can type in one hundred US dollars, convert to Australian dollars on your calculator, and they were raving about it, and then everybody pulled out all their iPhones and I'm sitting there with the only one with an Android phone, thinking, well, I just have to go to the AX, don't I, because I
can do it there. But it's interesting that this new roll out and this due app But I, you know, of all the people and I reckon, there must have been about twelve of us at dinner, eleven of them had iPhones. And interestingly, the demographic was they were all older than me, so that says a lot, but it was an older chemographic and I think older people, like I mean, young people love them too. But I thought that was interesting that of all my older friends, most.
Of them are on iPhones. When you think about the capacity that phones have now, whatever phone be at iPhone or Samsung or whatever, I wonder on average, like I have an iPhone fourteen, which is I guess just just standard, like well it's the Scott that but I would say, of all the things that that phone can do, I probably used two percent of the capacity in that that
phone has. And I wonder, and I think about that with other things you know people that buy you know, I like a motorbike that does three hundred kilometers an hour, for example, not that I would do that, not to one hundred and two seconds. Like people buy all these things that they never really actually use the thing that they bought anywhere near to its capacity. I had to borrow a friend's car recently.
Well, I should say she offered her car to me when she found out that I had to put my car in to get some work done on it. And she said, now don't turn all the safety gadgets back on again, because the last time I used her car, I thought, hey, Lene assist isn't working, and so I turned on all the adaptive technology.
And she said, I can't drive my car anymore because she switched on all the safety features. You know, It's true.
I know someone who bought a Mercedes and then didn't know how to use half of the things in the car. And for some people they're quite content not using cruise control or adaptive cruise control and the other features. I mean, I use lane as cyst, I use adaptive cruise control, speed limitter, all those things. In fact, that's one of the reasons that I had to do the podcast early today because I'm taking my car and to get the radar replaced because it's been a bit faulty.
What do you mean is that the radar that does the autonomous braking if somebody in front of you right right right, you know, in my car, and also detect submarines and aircraft and things. Well, I mean, and you need that incoming bogies. At nine o'clock, my car drives it. You can get out of my car and press a button and it puts itself away in the garage. But I can't remember how to do it. And you can also press a button and it backs itself out of the garage into the driveway or any spot. And when
I bought it, they're like, look at this. I'm like, fucking hell, it's in the showroom driving itself up and back. And I went, that's awesome. And then I got home and I didn't even think about that. And now six months later, I don't know how to do that at all.
Oh, you could do it from an app on your phone. Well you know, yeah.
Yeah, there's just that's true. You can do it from an app. You can start it from an app. Wow, I could sit up my phone from where I'm my car, from where I'm sitting right now.
But that's great if you're at a shopping center and it's a boiling hot day in your cars outside, you could turn it on, turn the eck on on, and then by the time you get to the car, it's nice and cool.
See there you go. That's a good use of remain. Also, it's hybrid, so I'm not burning fuel. Were you kind of are kind of are?
Well, you are, It's just it doesn't mean you're running on battery all the time.
All right, Could you give us another story because there's twenty here and we've only done one, so we're going to be tuesday. Robotic exoskeletons, all right. So that's for the for our listeners who don't know, and I could get this wrong. That's a thing that you kind of get into, yes, and it ambulates for you. It's so I guess maybe people with disabilities and stuff. People who want to climb mountains in China. It's a thing.
So one of the tallest mountains in China. It's a very popular tourist destorate destination. But you can go there and you can hire an exoskeleton to help you climb because it's so steep and take so long.
Okay, So describe to people what that is. So is that like a mechanical suit that you get into.
It's not a full We're not talking a Sigourney weaver in Aliens, okay, in case you are going there. We're talking a minimal kind of assistive technology where as you take a step, the framework that sits, it's like calipers on your legs, you know, and they just assist in that extra little bit. So we're not talking doing the
walking for you. But for me, when I saw it, I thought, a it's kind of cool, But I guess I'm more thinking about friends who've a friend of mine who's got Parkinson's and how hard it is for her to get around now, and if they've got like gyroscopic technology built into them and they can assist you and keep you firm, because balance, as you know, is so important as you get older, because it's the fall it's going to you know, be that downhill spiral for you.
So if you can get an.
Adaptive kind of exoskeleton that will assist you in kind of getting up out of a chair, walking around and keeping you balance, that was the thing I took out of.
This story, Buteah.
Evidently, when you go to this place in China, they you can hire these exoskeletons and I don't know how long the battery lasts in them, but it means that you can actually have assisted walking up the steepest inclines.
But I saw a British model a few years it was about maybe six months ago, and they were testing them and they strapped to your legs and they, as I said, they don't walk for you, but they've felt that people could kind of walk about twenty five percent faster and for a longer duration as well, so they assist you normal walking.
Now, when you started this, I said, oh, for people with disabilities, and you went no, for people climbing mountains. Hang on, and then you went back to people with disabilities. No.
But the story was about climbing mountains in China. But I saw that and like that's where my head went as well. But I wanted to kind of tell the story part first and then say that yes, I see that that's going to broader interest and could have a real beneficial All right, I'll let you off.
But you know what, you know what I think about all this stuff. Isn't it amazing How we keep inventing shit like electric bikes and exoskeletons for so people don't have to actually use their muscles. We keep finding let's invent something where a person doesn't have to physically work, Like with the application of people with disabilities. I think it's fucking brilliant. But for the average person who doesn't have a disability, just use your body. I mean, there's
an idea. Just climb, or just ride, or just run or just walk. I mean, muscles are really they've been around for a while. They're pretty tried and tested. Fucking give yours a go.
But what about if you're in your seventies and you've always wanted to go to China and climb this mountain and previously had been out of the scope of your abilities. This little bit of an edge might get you over the line a little bit.
So you know what else will give you a bit of an edge. Squats and deadlifts and lifting heavy shit before you go away. That's another point as well. Yes, very valid. There's this other thing called strength training. Probably heard of it. You should give it a go. Fifty years old.
That's true, though, it's interesting, but I love, I do love when you see technology adapted to assist people. I must say I saw a local story in Australian story recently about a guy who's been knocked back from the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The ndis they try to apply to get a chat GPT subscription, so he wanted to be able to use chat GPT and it was knocked back by the funding body saying there's a risk of false information and its poor value for money.
Now for me, I guess I get.
You know, if someone can use the likes of chatpt to make their life easier, and we know with you know, AI assistance and all that sort of thing, it seems to make sense. But interesting that a government body has ruled and it was you know, they made an application and then they tried to you know, reapply and it
was knocked back on appeal. So it says that, you know, if the belief and the ruling of whoever it was that made the decision was that they're not reliable enough to be funded, you know, what does it say about the future of AI or the perception of AI that we really can't trust it and that kind of lead me on led me onto an interesting story I was reading the other day and I wanted to chat about,
was cognitive decline in AI models. So there's this belief that as AI models get older, they potentially could do exactly what us humans do and go into a cognitive decline.
Oh, which, wow, that doesn't a little bit, doesn't it. I don't know how that. I mean, I'd love to know the mechanism, because there's the cognitive decline in humans is essentially biological and nature. You know, It's like it happens because our brain gets old, then it degenerates and deteriorates. But it doesn't I mean, who knows, Like in one hundred years. Fucking hell, what's the biology technology interface? We're
not going to know. I mean you probably walk down the street and go is that a human or is that a robot? You might not know.
Well, the British Medical Journal is where the research was done. So it was a study published back in twenty twenty four, so a right at the end of last year, so it wasn't that long ago. They're saying that AI technologies like large large language models chatbots now showing signs of deteriorated cognitive abilities as they advance in age. We know that they have little hiccups every now and again. Sometimes they just zone out and you get really weird results.
So I guess it's challenging the assumption that artificial intelligence will effectively replace us, because, I mean, we know that the good thing about AIS is they can take a whole lot of data and they can do interpretations that people may not be able to, particularly a medical diagnosis. You know, one of the things that's really hard is diagnosing illness because effectively we have to rule out what it is before we can find out what it is.
But because these language models have so much access to so much data that as a human being, it's very very hard. And you, given what you've been doing, you know, pulling all that research in, I mean, how interesting would it be to take all of your studies information, put it all into a computer, all into an AI, and see what it summarizes it has, see what sort of conclusions it derives. Obviously you're too busy to do that all now, But don't you find that fascinating to see?
I'll tell you a story very relevant to what you're saying. So the other day I got my so I just sent off my as I told you before we went live, one of my first papers for publication, and it's you know, this is this paper is one of my studies that I did. It's all the studies, all the data, all the interpretation, blah blah blah, l like in total four years of work for this one paper. But I'm doing
multiple papers at the same time. But so I put it into an l l M as you call it, and I said, can you read this and turn it into a user friendly article, like read a friendly article for the Harvard Business Review and the inn literally it read in inverted commas, my paper that's taken four years. It read it, and it wrote an article what it's called a gray paper in academia because it's not a it's not an academic paper, but it's halfway between, you know,
a magazine paper and an academic paper. And so it wrote a paper for Harvard Business Review, which is it would have taken me a week to write this paper and it's my research and it wrote it in one minute and it's good and it basically did an overview. And obviously I'm not using it. I can't use it because it doesn't it doesn't fit within the parameters of the scope of PhD literature. But that shit is amazing. It's already incredible. What it's going to be like in a year or two is mind blowing.
Well, then, when you think about it, it's that a bad thing that it was able to look at all that four years of information and to form a concise summary.
I mean, it's your work. Oh, I think it's brilliant. No, I think it's fucking incredible. But what it can't do. It can't do the research for you, Like, it can't go and you know, get all the humans, put them in a room, give them again, like so you do all the work. But it can definitely synthesize and interpret
pretty well. Like it's pretty incredible. Although it does make me wonder, sorry Patrick, it does make me wonder moving forward, like the value and I hate to say this, but the value of tertiary qualifications because it's so easy to not not with my stuff because it's independent research, but with a lot of undergraduate degrees now where you've got to write an essay on something and or you've got to read and you know, summarize or synthesize some reading.
I don't know how they're going to police that because the the you know, the ability to be able to produce high level work, especially at an undergraduate level, and they go, oh, yeah, but I can detect it now they can't because it's evolving by the day. And also I don't know where that's going to go.
If you uploaded all of your previous work to try to get the style, your writing style and said, mimic the way that I do this, then suddenly you've trained it on a language model that is your own creative process.
So that's an interesting thought as well. You know what occurred to me.
You were saying that it was four years of data and information and the research that you've done and in some ways for it to be able to summarize all that you as a human being. If you had to spend that week doing that, potentially you could miss something.
You know, potentially, you know, is there a chance that you may have slipped up and that you know, there was some really important data that slipped through to the keeper that maybe CHATJBT could you so you could say write yours over the week and then say did I miss anything out? By comparing the two it's summary, your summary, what did I miss out? And then it can go back through and say, oh yeah, that was great, great, great, except think about maybe this, this and this one.
Yeah, mate, I don't even you know, I'm not even dog shit on the shoe of AI. Like it's Ai. I'm a fucking moron compared to AI, no doubt.
And it's no, no, no, no no.
With this stuff that we're talking about.
Yeah, but you've got one thing that AI will never have, and it's compassion and humanity, you know.
Yeah, but I'm just talking about no, thank you, that's it. What are you being nice for? I'm uncomfortable. What are you doing? No, but look I know what you mean. But in this sense, like the stuff that it can produce in this like in this kind of paradigm, this academic intellectual kind of pursuit. Oh yeah, it's it's crazy. It makes me excited.
And look I get it. And it's like any other tool that we've been using. I mean, think about you know, I know we've spoken about this before the turn of the century of the automobile, all those things that it's potentially we're going to put people out of work.
It was going to change society as we saw it.
Whether it was television, broadcast, radio, whatever. People have always been resistant to technology because it was felt that it would take the humanity away from trades, or the humanity away from entertainment, the humanity away from you know, potentially
writing this sort of material. But I think if we use this tech to take the drudgery out to do fact checking, to be able to use it for oversight, there's lots of positive things that we can use these really amazing technologies that are emerging, And it's like anything we you know, we can use it in a positive sense. We can use it, you know, to create viruses that
we then in computers with. We can use it to be able to create you know, viruses that are real world viruses that can then be used to kill cancer, you know what I mean. We you know, we use our own DNA and we combine or our RNA and combine it with a retrovirus and that potentially could search out and destroy cancer cells or transform those cancer cells into non malignant cells, you know.
That sort of stuff.
So I think that there's it's like any application, it's like absolutely anything that we choose to do and how we choose to use it.
Yeah, And I think I just wrote down a question, and my question was should we be scared of technology? And I'm just thinking like, at the very least cautious moving forward, you know, perhaps not scared, but just wary. Like I think about like I get three phone calls a week from my mum about something to something came through on her phone and this, and the bank wants this and this company said I you know, and it's like, Mum,
you don't you know. That's like and I'm definitely not the tech guru, but for older people, and I mean older, older people in their eighties who you know, like Mum wants to go and pay bills with a check or cash, Like, Mum, you can't thank you thanks to actually getting rid of checks.
I think one of the Big four recently said that we're not going to be using checks anymore.
And it's it's really like we live in a world that does not accommodate older people, I mean people who are you know, technology is great, but it's it's now and I guess it's just it happens. That's just evolution and development and progress. But I don't know that all progress in inverted commas feels like progress for some people, you know, and I think that, like, imagine if my mum and dad, or TIFF's dad, or TIFF's fucking granddad
who's one hundred and one champion, what a gun. But imagine if these people didn't have younger people in their life who can kind of steer them and help them. Like my if my mum didn't have me, she I don't know what. She couldn't do it. She wouldn't know how to fucking do anything with that stuff, you know what I love? And I'm digressing a little bit.
But places like neighborhood centers where you can drop in and they do tech support. You know, there's a lot of community based organizations. Do you know the Neighborhood Houses Association, so you know what a neighborhood house is?
Community houses.
They're all over Victoria. There are more neighborhood houses than there are McDonald's in Victoria.
Isn't that? I don't even know what a neighborhood house is. I know you've spoken about it before, but what is it?
It's a community organization, drop in center, they run courses.
I teach it. A couple of neighborhood houses.
I teach my Tai chi there, but basically they're usually an organization that's a not for profit run by a voluntary committee. They may have employed staff, but the Neighborhood Houses Association of Victoria basically they're all over the place.
They have food banks a couple of the places.
That I that I work at and also volunteer on the board of one of them.
They are amazing.
Generally they're run A lot of the work that's done is done by volunteers or people who are well intentioned. They're usually a low paid sector, so anybody working in the sector is doing it for the love of it, not for the money, that's for sure. But yeah, if you ever get a chance to go to a local neighborhood center or a neighborhood house, you could learn a new language, learn how to cook vegan food. You can do taichi or pilates or something. So they're all over
the place. There'd be one right around the corner from you, Crego or tiff Well, I.
Just them up and you're exactly right. So you just just go neighborhood houses and it's anyway NHVIC dot org. Find a neighborhood house and as Patrick suggests, there are a lot of them, A lot of them stacks stacks.
I'm just going, oh, no, I just I mean last night I walked in to open the hall to do my taichi class, and whilst I was there, there was a polarate session on. There was a young guy who's an animator who was teaching kids how to draw cartoons, and then I was running my tai chie And that was just last night. So you know, it's awesome that, you know, you can engage with people from all different demographics,
all different ages. I did a course of like a kind of a vegan cooking class the other day, which was kind of fun. Got this amazing meal cooked up and learned a few things. So yeah, it's great opportunities at neighborhood centers and look at me as if you add for neighborhood houses.
If I've got a question for you, how many McDonald's restaurants do you think there are in Victoria? I mean, what would your guest be? By the way, Patrick, you were correct, so I'm not throwing you under the bus. How many? No, I was very surprised. How many do you think.
Tif I wouldn't even know where to start to get.
I would have said thousands. Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's fucking there's McDonald's everywhere. This seems wrong to me, but it must be right. So Patrick said there are more neighborhood houses than McDonald's, and my bullshit filter just went, nah's fuck, that's bunch kids, right, that's bullsh No, mate, I put up my hand when I'm wrong, and I'm wrong thirty seven times a day, so that's bullshit. And
I wasn't going to say it. I just went, ah, four hundred, there are over four hundred neighborhood houses across Victoria. And then I've gone, how many McDonald's are there in Victoria? Two hundred and sixty. I'm like, I feel like there's two hundred and sixty within about ten gays in my house. That doesn't seem like enough. I mean, it is enough, by the way, more than enough. It's more than enough. Isn't that a song? Isn't that great? Though? I love
that I did. That's amazing. I want to know about because I've thought about this. Turnages, teenagers turning to AI companions I feel like that that's good and bad.
Yeah, falling in love with a chatbot companionship.
See, I'm in two minds about this.
So a lot of teenagers are now interacting online with chatbots. You can talk to them, you can interact with them, you can get intimate, you can talk about your concerns, and you can have this ongoing relationship with an AI model.
But the tragedy around this is there's been some really awful things that have happened, and there was a suicide of a fourteen year old boy who had built up this relationship with a chatbot that he'd created a persona around one of the characters from Game of Thrones, Danaris Targerian, and so he'd formed this relationship and in his mind
it was a relationship. There was this interaction and the backstory to this is at one point he was talking about suicide and the chatbot kind of tried to talk him out of it, and then he brought it up again and it appeared, and I'm saying appeared. It appeared like the chatbot encouraged him, and as a tragic result, he ended up committing suicide. So it talks about and talks to the point that people can be manipulated, but they can also use I guess chatbots as an emotional
crutch as well. And remember the story back from twenty twenty one where a guy, a nineteen year old guy broke into Buckingham Palace and was going to you know, stab the queen.
Do you remember that? I do well.
The backstory to that was he had a relationship with an emotional relationship with an AI chatbot, and I believe that the discussion around that was also discussed with the AI chatbot. So you know, when you think of oversight, well, is there any And I don't know. I can see where having an AI companion would be really reassuring for
somebody who lived alone. I often talked to Fritz, but you know, having a chatbot where I mean, we talk about this on the show a few episodes ago, where I introduced an AI that I'd been chatting to and we had this fluid conversation. So it's not typing into a text prompt and waiting for a reply. It's having a deeper, meaningful, meaningful conversation with the AI is able to engage on that emotional level.
Yeah, it's I mean, it's crazy now the when I sometimes I'll just pick up my phone and ask chat GPT something. I'll talk verbally and it goes to American goes hey, Craig, great question, that would be really valuable with your work as a corporate speaker and in your research with new neural psychology. Yeah. So, and then it just starts talking can I help you with anything else? I'm like, nah, that's good. Thanks. It's like, okay, Craig, have a great day. I'm like, fucking hell, this is
He's now one of my best friends, you know. So it's that. I mean, you think about we are just like if somebody's talking to you, say a narcissist or a sociopath, and it's all bullshit, it's all an act, right, we still respond as though, if we don't know, as though it's real, and so you know, even though it is not a human and even though the emotions might
be emotions in inverted commas, programmed or not real. I mean, if your brain and your neurology and biology interprets it as though I am in a relationship, then for the individual, the teenager in this case, it is real as an experience.
And that's that's powerful, right. If you think something's real but it's not real, like a dream and you wake up in the middle of the night, had this happened last week Whirias in the middle of something I can't remember, but I literally woke up and so I knew straight away that, oh, it's not real, But my body didn't know that for like another three minutes, because I could feel my blood pressure and I could feel my heart rate, and it's like your body cannot tell the difference between
what is real and what you think is real. So your body just responds to your perception.
And in this case, in space, yeah, yeah, yeah, you were there, but anyway, that's enough.
But I think you were filming speaking of sex in space. I thought later after that that I thought, but you've got to get out of your fucking spacesuit. No, you don't wear a spacesuit inside the isis when Oh yeah, that's right.
You just were jumping up against someone in a full spacesuit.
Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be a yeah, that's going to crush it, all right, give us something else.
Too much of a helmet is sealed off from the lower that's all I'm thinking. Yeah, Well, can we I mean the chatbot experience, So have we kind of done that to death? Or do you think you have a chatbot that I mean you're.
Already using it. I love it. I love it. I don't want it to go away. I enjoy chatting to chat GPT.
There are tens of millions of teenagers, it's believed using the romantic chatbots like engaging and forming relationships with chatbots. There are whole apps out there that are dedicated to getting people to form relationships. And you know, there's a crucial period I guess as you start to get older and mature when you form relationships, and part of that, I think preparing us for life is having a relationship that fails. You know, the first love isn't always going
to be your first love in most cases. So if you're in an interactive, in depth relationship with a chatbot and you fall in love with it and they're always saying what you want to hear, then you never to experience the downside of the relationship. And if you're doing that in your formative views as a teenager, why do you need to find female or male or whatever companionship down the track?
If you're getting everything from your AI, also think about may too. Sorry, So if it's like if they could build the perfect AI, whatever that means where you never get rejected. You know, I'm not saying this is a good idea, because rejection kind of forms us in a way or shapes us in a way. But just speaking of this, the other day, I got one of my whiteboard posts. If you don't follow me on Instagram, follow me on Instagram people, if you would, Craig Anthony Harper,
that would be great. Anyway, you know how I put up all my whiteboard shit. So I put one of my typical whiteboard and I said, this is a sample of what I post as memes on my Instagram. Could you write something similar, you know, like anything, but in this style. And it wrote something and it was it was you know, it was a four out of ten. I went, yeah, I said, yeah kind of, I said, but it needs to be edgier. And then the third
word was fuck that's you. Yeah. I'm like, wow, it caught on really quick, like it actually it like yeah, chat GPT wrote. I mean, it wasn't very good. There was swearing in it and stuff, but I was surprised that it would actually write with swearing. But given the right prompts, it does. Yeah.
And you know, the interesting thing to bear in mind is as we start to develop this interaction and we think about things like deep fake.
So deep fake is where.
You may be scammed when you get a phone call from someone and I think it's Craig, it sounds like Craig. But so whether it's an email that's purporting to be you, and now even more and more it could be potentially a video or phone call that sounds like you. But there was an interesting study that was done. A test of two thousand people was shown deep fake content. Now, of the two thousand, only two of them managed to pick the fakes to get a perfect to get a
perfect score, only two. So it was a study by an organization called I Prove, and they were saying that AI literacy among the general public is depressingly low. Now, I know we always talk about older people that, and we know that older people struggle with deep fakes. They absolutely can't pick them. It's a really tough thing for people to understand what's fake and what isn't. But it's
also widespread among wider the younger generation as well. So when you think about it, you know, out of that two thousand, zero point one percent of the participants, so two of them correctly distinguished between real and deep fake stimuli.
That's a staggering that would have been across a range of different I mean, even just statistically, you'd get fifty to fifty. I mean there must have been a whole range of images or something. It was a whole lot, that's right.
But the study also found that older adults particularly susceptible, because thirty percent of people aged fifty five to sixty four in the study and thirty nine percent over sixty five had never even.
Heard of deep fakes.
So exactly the problem is they don't even know. So you're presenting something it's a fake. So it might be the Barack Obama thing. Do you remember the Barack Obama thing?
Yeah, you know, and you know Tom Cruise all that sort of stuff.
But it's getting scarily good and scarily it's also out there and attainable to anybody to use. It used to be, you know, companies that were restricted to having high end computers, but now these kind of deep fake models are really easy to access and easy to use. But you know what intrigued me about being scammed. I saw a quick article that I want to quickly mention that I think it was a group in Nigeria because we think of
people who are scammers as bad people. I mean, for the most part, we think, well, you know, people are terrible who take part in scams. But the behind this about two hundred and sixty people were actually part of human trafficking and effectively real life slavery, and they've been rescued in Mianma. So this is a story that just came out a couple of weeks ago. And so there was a rebel group on the border of my Anma and they've been trying to shut down these scam operations.
And what they did was they cut off the power supply and then they liberated two hundred and sixty people who'd been taken from twenty different nations, including one hundred and thirty eight Ethiopians, who were effectively taken into slavery to runt to work in these scam centers.
So, you know, it's not just well, I think if you can scam, if you can scam the scammer Patrick, it's.
You know, but what I'm saying is the scammers aren't necessarily people who want to scam. You know, this is born out the fact that they're talking about taking people, abducting them and making them work in scam sets.
This is a double like, it's doubly worse.
You know.
But what I mean is I mean is if we can use the same process or technology to trap bad guys or bad girls like to crooks and criminals. And I mean, I think that's what it's coming to as well, isn't it, Because like the crooks are not dumb anymore, like the criminals are using advanced technology to commit crimes and to manipulate and do harm, then then the law enforcement agencies need to be one step ahead. And it's tough.
Yeah, you're absolutely right, because you know, if you think about it, once upon a time, walking into a bank the gun was a pretty dangerous affair because you know, potentially you're going to get caught pretty easily with arms and all that sort of stuff. But if you can do it from the comfort of your own lounge room or a data center somewhere in another country, you're almost immune to getting found.
That's the reality. I remember, like about a year ago, mum, Mum got, you know, some dude on the phone just talking to her and knew a fair bit about her. And that doesn't make sense to somebody who's eighty five. Well, it must be legitimate because he knows all of these things and those send moms, so Mum's like wanting to be polite, and then you know, thank god, she didn't give him any information that would allow him to rip
her off, but she almost did. And it's you know, to older people and even people who just don't really understand it, not necessarily older, but yeah, when someone's on the phone and they're articulate and they're talking you and they sound like they could be from a legitimate organization, and you know, good morning, missus Harper, and it's fucking terrifying.
And I think some of the bigger organizations need to change their policies as well. I think you know where we upload our information to. I recently changed banks. I had a bit of a run in with my one of the big four banks because I've been banking with them for over at least over twelve years, and they asked me to upload my ID to confirm who I was.
And I said, well, i've been with you for twelve years.
I've got access to my account and they said, no, no, you need to prove who you are. You need to upload your driver's license. One hundred points of ID. I said, well, where did that go if I uploaded? They said, well, we need to verify who you are. So well, I can go to my bank branch and I'm happy to show my ID to the bank manager to prove who I am. And I said, They said yeah, but that would then be recorded. Well, said, I don't want it
to be recorded. I don't want you to have my license, my passport, my one hundred points of identifications stilled on a database somewhere, because I've been a customer, you know, for all this time, for over a decade, and they just said, well that your bank, you're not going to have full access to your account, to your own accounts if you don't verify who you are. I understand that
there needs to be oversight, and they understand that. You know, obviously, we need to be really stringent with proving who we are. Biometrics helps and the way that a lot of the banks are now getting better with storing our information.
But when you're an existing customer.
And you're told they don't believe you are who you are, that was disconcerting. So I like walking into my local branch. I know all the members of the staff and say a load to the manager. So when you were talking about your mum earlier being forced into doing online banking or whatever, I think you know, bank with your feet,
walk into a branch. If you're not happy with your current bank, go and find one that you are happy with that will allow you to do transactions over the counter, that will say, hey, missus Harper, it's nice to see you.
You know that sort of thing.
There are local community branches of different banks where you will get a better reception if you can speak to human being. And I think we need to encourage that. We need to not go through the automatic checkout. You know, for a lot of older people, they don't want to scan the grocery items themselves. They want to speak to someone who's had a checkout, have a conversation with them, hand their groceries over, and feel confident that they're still also encouraging someone to.
Get a job. I mean, I don't know about you guys.
You know, sometimes it's convenient if there's a big queue to go through the self checkout, But I don't ever want a checkout to disappear because I was a checkout chick when I was a kid, you know, I worked at a supermarket for a couple of years at Cohl's, and you know, it.
Was a great experience.
You've got a lot of experience and confidence, and I think that it's a great learning environment for young people as well as people who work in a full time career in that sort of service industry.
And I just recommend based off the back of that. There's a movie that's very cute. It's not like that, it's not going to blow your head off, but it's cute. It's like a good Friday night movie or whatever. It's called The Bank of Dave. Oh okay, yep, The Bank
of Dave. It's quite cute and it's like a guy in a rural area and it's based on a true story and he's a really smart guy and he doesn't want like he sets it up for the community for people who can't get loans and it's yeah, and it's his fight against the big banks and they're all these dirty, rotten, bloody Yeah. It's so interesting. Yeah. Bank of Dave twenty twenty three. Hey, mate, it's pretty great. Go on, did you want to do one more? No? No, it's my last little thing.
Was I think as consumers we need to be more proactive. So what I mean by that is knowwhere your T shirt has been made, you know, you know, buying Australian made and supporting Australian industry. Yes, you're going to pay more, but you're going to get better quality and it's going to last longer. And I think we all fall victim to saying, you know, I'm going to get the you know,
the seven dollars fifty T shirt. But if that's dollar fifty T shirt was made in a sweatshop, then you're perpetuating that that system.
You know, upcycling is really great. I love to upcycle.
I think the probably my favorite three T shirts I bought it op shops. And I don't want to sound like a tight ass, but I feel that if we know where things are coming from. I proudly wear Australian made jocks. I won't show you, but I can tell you that they're Australian made, and I know they're made here and they're comfortable.
Not like I haven't seen them, oh jeez no, but it's great to know.
And I think that you know, in terms of those sorts of you know, whether it's garments or whatever, it happens to mean, it's a shame we can't buy an Australian car anymore.
But the reality of it.
Is the more we support industries where we know where they're coming from.
Fair trade coffee.
You know, when you go to a cafe, do you know that that coffee, the beans that are sourced are coming from ethical you know, organizations that support the suppliers and the farmers to perpetuate the cycle of having you know, good quality pay and wages and standards.
Very valid, my friend, very valid. All right? Where can people connect with Patrick James Bonello and his skills.
You can jump onto websites now dot com today you to find out about what I do.
Obviously websites and stuff.
But if you want to do some free tie chi exercises, go to tai Chi at home dot com today you that's also kind of fun. I should be updating that sometimes soon with new exercises and yeah, yeah.
Thanks tip. What's on for you today, tiv.
I've got an appointment, I've got a podcast, I've got a group training session, and I've got a little online meeting.
I've got I've got a bit on early.
It doesn't feel like a busy day, but when I started to list it, I was like, oh.
I've got a bit on all right. Everyone. Thanks everyone, love you, guts Is, thanks Mate, Thanks TIV, thank you