I'll get a team. It's to you, projectivity and Cook, Patrick, James Bonello, Craig, Anthony Harper, just reporting in on a Friday, well as Friday as we record. Whenever you hear this is whenever you hear it. Let's start with the boy in the room. Hi Patrick, it's just going to you. TIF didn't you?
Yeah?
I did? I was ready, Hi Patrick?
Last episode do you ask for the girl in the room? And then came to me and I just thought, you're going to be smart again, or try to be I.
Was going to be more respectful this time. How's the land space station where you're currently residing.
I kind of feel like we need to do a screenshot or something so people get a sense of my backdrop being a giant space station looking out on a planet just hovering.
Do you know what I mean? I know this sounds silly, but it like if my mum looked at that and I told my mum Patrick's in space, she would believe it. It looks literally like you're in space, like you got this big round window just looking at it. I don't know whatever it is is that the Earth below you and the moon in the distance.
Yeah, yep, yep.
Yeah.
The other thing too is you know, when you and this, I've started to this sounds like a real foible of mine, but I've started to get annoyed at having zoom meetings with people turning on fake backgrounds.
It is, what do you mean that's a photo of the studio. Well, it's not real.
It's a fake background.
And you know what a fake background. It's a photo of my real studio.
Exactly, it's a photo. It's fake. And his hair kind of starts to disappear. Well, actually that's just age. No, but you know, look at his shoulders disappearing and.
Straight out of the gate. Everyone straight out of the gate, attack ups. This is this is what they do. Okay, when they're insecure, they just go, let's attack him. Keep going, keep going, do your best, not me, keep going, do your best. If you can't say anything nice about people, don't say any thing. That's what Mary would tell you. That's him. He's just that out. Okay. So I'll talk to you, Tiff. Tiff, how's your day going.
It's really good. Thank you, thanks for asking. And I think your shoulders look great with the background.
Yeah. Thanks. I don't know what's wrong with my background.
When you put your arm up, and.
Now's interrupting because he's trying to get back in the good books.
I'm not getting back any good books. Hey, Now what I mean by you know, when you're hit in a zoom meeting or a teams meeting and the people have fake backgrounds and they just start to shimmy in and out and disappear and re materialize and deep materialize. It's like watching an episode of Star Trek and they're all about to go on away mission. That's that's started to annoy me. Just have your background. And so I decided
to buy some backdrops. And obviously, because I took like tech stuff, I thought a space station scene would be good. And that's why it looks more not realistic. You were talking about fooling Mary, But the reality of it is, I'm not shimming in and out because it's not a superimposed background, because it's actually a material picture that's hanging on the wall behind me. And that's why it looks more authentic.
All Right, you're better than us. Well done, next Tiff, all right you win? Yeah great, I'll tell you what when that's your biggest problem is fucking worrying about people's backgrounds on Zoom. Your life's good, Champ. Yeah, true, you probably find you had to find a real problem. Uh, tiff, how are you? What is going on on planet Tiffany?
Oh? Great stuff, Harts.
I got up at the crack of dawn. I had a seven am appointment with my body magician, as I call him, and I got the tick of approval. Things are all tracking well, I'd had that tennis or golfers elbow rubbish. I've already rehabbed it myself. You give me a little pat on the back and sent me on my way.
How was that?
A couple of things I want to chat about, and one is relates to might relate to Patrick, because you sent me a gift voucher that we're going to talk about. When you say your your magician, what is it? A he or she? Doesn't matter? But before it he Okay? Is he a cairo, a physio, an osteo, or mio? Is he any of the things ending in?
Oh? Yeah, he's a sports chiropractic, but he works in a thing called neuro something rehabilitation. He does a lot of it, does a lot of work with the brain and how the brain communicates with the body. He's just I just call him a magician because I don't know. He never does chiropractic adjustments ever.
Does he need any more work? Because I'm feeling if you share his name, he's going to be inundated. So I don't know whether or not weishul.
He already is in undated. He's hard to get into. All my clients get sent to him at some point because he is the superior being.
Well, if he's treating you at seven am, he's busy. He's busy. Patrick, do you have a mechanic of sorts who works on your your sor like? Do you like massage or physio or cairo? Do you like any of that stuff?
Not really. I tend to only do it if I'm really falling apart, which luckily not much. I'm so my tai chi. I do tai cheese so often now I teach it, I participate in it, doing lots of core work. We were chatting before the show, so I feel like I'm in pretty good nettle at the moment. Does anyone say that I'm in good nettle at the moment?
You and Mary feeling pretty good.
I used to get some really chronic pain. When I was at the gym with you, I used to get bad shoulder pain, but that was because.
It's a shout out, that's a good ad for my work.
Was it as a result of training with you? Was it as a result of sitting in a bloody desk on a stool our radio station when I was working in news at a company Trip and Fox. When I was working for them in the newsroom, he sat on stools, unsupported feet, and the keyboard was sitting in front of you, and the monitors were sunk into the desk, so you hunched. Your natural sitting position was hunched over the monitors. It
was horrendously bad ergonomics. So I had chronic shoulder pain for such a long time and went to lots of different people. I don't know if you remember. There was an amazing South African lady who was a Cairo and a physio. I'm trying to think that name.
Yeah, it worked at my place, Yeah, absolutely, And what I love about her was that she took a very broad approach, you know, a holistic approach to looking at what was causing your ailments.
Because I've been to lots of people and she fixed it.
She was good. I should remember her name. She did work in my business. But yeah, no, figure that was twenty five years ago.
It was a while, but I and you know what fixed it for me. And this is going to sound weird. She gave me a home traction kit where you put this neck brace on. You had a clip that was fixed to the top of the door, and you put water in a bag, so say three leads of water, so three kilos and it stretched your neck.
Well, are you sure that was meant to be rehab or something else?
It?
Yeah, that's that. Actually, neck traction is a real thing. It's just a it's a be careful thing.
Pretty of a professional. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don't get your kid to yank on your neck while you're lying on the kitchen table or something.
Now, it was under quite strict medical supervision, but it fixed everything. Just stretching the old neck was great.
Now, before we jump into the show proper, I'll go on.
No, it's just gonna because it was very you know me, I give a very long winded answer. So no, I don't have a regular person who manipulates my joints and touches me all over. But I'm taking applications after the show.
Okay, just shout out to Patrick if you feel like you might be that guy TIV. You sent me a message this week to say that you put on some inordinate amount of muscle over the last month. You've got an inbody or a body contest done. Are you feeling quite powerful and strong?
I'm feeling quite good doing strength training and I'm loving it. And it's such a nice shift. And you know, as a female that's always been very athletic and very borderline obsessive. But you know, I loved that high intensity, calorie burning, sweatfesting type of training. It's been a real nice switch. And what comes with that is kind of wanting to see the scales go up knock down.
That's hilarious. We watch your I would not ask any other woman this but you, because I know you're happy with it. What what's your current weight?
Sixty three?
How do you feel it that? Yeah?
Good?
Good. And the thing is like, I want to I want to put lower body muscle on and the reality is I can't do that staying at the same weight because it's just physiologically not possible. I can't lose that amount of weight to put it on in fat in body fat, it'd be too lower body fat.
Yeah, well you can't. Yeah, I mean, what's that?
Sorry, Greg, I had to all aids.
If one sixty just under one sixty eight.
Oh wow, I'm trying to do this s stare because I'm one sixty nine and seventy kilos. It's just yeah, that's that's that seems really light to me. But obviously your shape is totally different. Yeah.
No, she doesn't look I mean not, I mean she looks jacked, you know. She looks like an athlete, which is it's good because that's what she wants to look like. So up and Grandpa in the middle of the screen. My screen anyway, is eighty kilos, which for me is borderline anorexic. I haven't been this light since I was about twelve, not even probably eleven. How funny is that? People are going, Oh, that's funny. I got No, that's actually true. I probably weighed this when I was about eleven or twelve.
But do you remember sitting in a boardroom in an advertising agency with me when we were working on a project that didn't quite get off the ground, but it was just helping people lose weights, and there were a number of people, and one of the directors of the agency was a kind of a bit of a bigger guy, and we were all talking about, you know, collectively losing weight.
So the idea of the project was instead of losing weight individually, you set up a team of people and you collectively lost weight, and that way it was more of a team effort to help encourage people. But I remember saying whilst we were sitting there, saying, yeah, I like to lose a couple of kilos, and I was, and this guy got kind of really tore shreds off me, saying, oh,
that's ridiculous. You don't need to lose any ways. But it's a very personal journey when we look at weight loss and one kilo to me is saying, oh, man, I just wish I could lose one or two kilos in the grand scale of things. Because a good friend of mine we were talking about losing weight and he's
lost about forty kilos. He's a very big person and it's a massive amount to lose for him, but relative to his size, he's got a little bit more of a journey to go, and he's doing really, really well because he's losing it over a span of time, but it is a personal journey and it's and you know, sometimes people forget that, you know, and you almost face ridicule if you say, if you if you present to somebody who looks quite fit, but you feel that you'd
like to lose a little bit, without being obsessive, it still is how you feel in your own skin.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's I remember exactly what you're talking about and who you're talking about. And what's tricky is, especially in twenty twenty five, you can't almost talk about weight.
You know, I can, and I do. But the problem is that when we are talking about physiology and health and body composition and subcutaneous fat and visceral fat and diabetes and all of the things that kind of float around how your body works and what your body is made up of, and you know, people almost take that as an emotional or psychological judgment or attack. Whereas I'm speaking as an exercise scientist and I'm talking about data and science, and so without being rude, I don't give
a fuck what people way. I don't give a fuck what they look like. I care about how well their body works. But like it or not, there is a relationship between weight and how much body fat a person is carrying, and they're likely health outcomes. Now that's not a guess or a stab or an insult, but when you point that out, people would rather find a way to get insulted than enlightened, right, And they're like, oh, you're fucking fat shaming. I'm like, I was the fattest
kid in my school. I know what it's like to be obese. I know what it's like to be called jumbo. I am not fat shaming. I'm fucking talking about health and wellness and coming from a place of literal personal experience, you know. And there's that kind of trying to navigate
that road at the moment publicly when you're talking. It's tricky because in many ways it's easier to find a way to be offended than it is to take it on board as just you know, science or information and do something positive with it.
The AMA, the Australian Medical Association, a few years ago were trying to encourage doctors to be more blunts with the language they were using and not to gloss over the notion that someone might be morbidly obese. And the thing is it's such a difficult journey for different people,
for lots and lots and lots of reasons. And I guess that the how do you walk that tight rope of glossing over it to protect the person's mental well being but also to you know, to say to them that you potentially are putting your life at risk by maintaining the current status status quo. So I don't know that I'd want to be in that space, but it's certainly a challenge in every GP and health professional faces.
Yeah, and I think, I mean, it is tough because of course you care about people, and you have empathy and awareness, and you don't want to make people feel bad. But also I don't want people that I care about, or even people that I don't know that matter. I don't want them to wake up in five or ten years and have life threatening health conditions because everyone was too concerned with their their feelings for the next thirty seconds.
It's like, I care about your feelings, but it's not my job to manage your feelings or work around your emotions. I'm literally sharing practical, real world information with you, and if you don't want to listen, that's fine. If you get upset. That's also fine. I don't want you to be upset. But I'm not going to apologize for just saying what I know. Like, I've literally worked with tens of thousands of bodies, so I'm not guessing you know. This is not some random theory and it's it's funny.
We live in that time where where did Tiff go? By the way, Patrick, can hear?
We can hear, yeah, we can. We're missing you. What's going on?
Well, my screen has frozen, so everything and I can't move the cursor or anything, so I can hear you, but everything's frozen on my computer screen.
Don't touch anything. Was doing what you're doing?
Yeah?
Yeah, you just talk from behind that black curtain. I don't know what I was going to say, but let's talk about Let's talk about the stuff that you're the best at, Patrick James.
I've got a nice segue to that. Because a lot more people are turning to AI for health advice, And there was a really interesting story about a man who became hospitalized with psychiatric psychiatric symptoms following getting after getting advice from AI. So this guy was wanting to reduce his salt intake. Okay, so he started this whole chat with the chatbot, and he decided to set up his own health plan and thought, I've got to reduce my
salt intake. So he basically found a substitute by talking to chat JPT and it suggested sodium instead of sodium chloride and you can swap them around if you're going to be cleaning a bath tub but yesting it. So yeah, he went and bought this stuff online and thought, oh, I'm going to reduce my salting take with it, but
with different sort of salt. So he's just eating this over three months he's decided to take this on and then after that time he started, he ended up in the emergency department with paranoid delusions and he believed that his neighbor was trying to poison him. In fact, he was poisoning himself. And that's because he'd listened to advice health advice, and that the chatbot didn't really discern that
it was about him taking it. It's just well, what's an alternative to salt, and that's what ended up happening. So yeah, it's a really timely reminded that everything that you see may not necessarily be the right sort of advice when you jump into a you know, you chat, GPTs or whatever it is that you're using. So that was a very vivid ex you.
Know, that's that's bloody amazing. I mean imagine, yeah, well that that's one of the dangers, isn't it. I mean, that's a danger of I think how much, how much we pay attention to rely on trust and I think everything even though you know, I think we both agree that AI has got unbelievable potential and unbelievable capacity to be of value. It's also you know, it can also do untold harm if not used the right way, and if perhaps trusted in inverted commas when it shouldn't be trusted.
So oh yeah, And there's a lot of AI slop out there as well. And in fact Wikipedia, I don't know if you use Wikipedia much, but I tend to find it still pops up and I have a bit of a read, you know, whether it's a profile or something like that. But they're battling AI at the moment because Wikipedia is managed by a whole stack of volunteers, and a lot of them a pandemics. So these people who are really passionate about keeping the content out there.
So I guess it's like the Internet version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. You know, it's the traditional encyclopedic format to be able to give you information on a whole host of things. But what they've always taken a lot of pride in is the way that they fact check and the way that the volunteers try to make sure that the content that's on Wikipedia is proper, you know, whether it's scientifically based or information based, it's you know, it's a rigid way to kind of you know, keep the
system in place. But the problem now is that this AI slop is being pushed out and anybody can contribute, but then there's the fact checking that goes with it.
So they call the people who moderator called wikipedians, and they go through all of this and what they're trying they literally have to read the written articles, they have to go through and they're trying to monitor what's being proposed and they're getting good at finding the crap stuff and there's a process that they go through, but they are really working hard and typically articles that get flagged
then have a seven day discussion period. So it's a pierce peer thing goes out other people in the community, members who moderators, and they determine whether or not the sites should be you know, should they should delete the article. So they feel it's quite robust, but they're kind of fighting a bit of an uphill battle at the moment to try to keep Wikipedia as you know, AI free
as possible. But there's so much slop. I read an article a little while ago that said fifty one percent of all content on the Internet now is AI generated. That scared the shit out of me. That's pretty scary to think of that sort of content. But maybe at the moment, Wikipedia seems like they're doing what they can through a whole horde of volunteers.
Overall, just one word or the other. Are you pro or anti AI? Just overall? P Yeah? Cool, Tiff, where you've been?
I fell fell off My Carl computer just shut down and said we've needed to shut you down.
You didn't.
Patrick was just we've been talking about you for three minutes. Tiff actually fell off the podcast. Now she's gone, I'll tell you what. She's having Internet problems. She actually dropped right out. There was just Patrick and I on the screen for the moment. It's a good thing I'm recording from this end, isn't it.
Yeah, that's true, it certainly is. Tif's flashing in my window.
Well, there's a thought I'm not even gonna. I'm not even gonna. I don't I reckon yep, Oh, so many things, you know, Like I have this thing where I play this verbal scenario out in my head on fast forward before I'm going to say it, and on rare occasions I choose not to say it.
Today's that well, except for the stuff we've had to edit out of the show. At the start of the show because it's been heavily edited listeners, it started off pretty well.
That's because I went very dark, and I'm like, I self edited.
Actually talking about dark. I think I feel I need to work this into the conversation now scenes we're talking
about AI and Dark. You know the problem with AI, and we talked about this in a previous show where I did some testing with AI and I asked to get some image generation and you might recall that I wanted to see what would happen if I asked AI to generate a picture of Alexander the Great with his lover, and the initial pictures were of Alexander the Great with a female and then we now know except for Gemini, which was interesting because Gemini is Google's AI, and it
pulled up a whole lot of factual information about the fact that it's thought that Alexander the Great had a male lover. And then when I got Meta to try to generate the picture, when I corrected it and said I no, no, I don't want a female lover, I want a male lover, it refused to generate it, saying it was inappropriate content. So it's interesting because when we think about who programs these AI and what are the
biases that are built into it. You know, if you just type in you know young female or young male, or you type in you know man working, generally, it's going to be a white person. It's not going to be a person of Asian origin or a person with dark skin. So sometimes there's been a lot of biases that have been picked up. But what creeped me out a lot reading this article is Meta had some rules
that they've been picked up on. So there was an internal investor in an investigation by Reuters, the news service, and they reckon that the social media giant had a rule for their chatbots, which permitted them to have a provocative kind of behavior when talking to children, including issues
around sex. And so there were documents talking about what was appropriate behavior and what wasn't and they were condoning, effectively, the notion that the the the AI chatbot could engage in child conversations with romantic or sensual information related to that.
So Reuters said that basically the document that it saw from Meta discussed the standards that its guidelines were based on, and the chatbot this is we're talking Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, And they confirmed the document's authenticity and said that effectively, it could say things to children about how so an eight year old could have the chatbot say your body
looks in a certain way, it could in a sensual way. Effectively, is how it was looking at And so if an eight year old asked how its body, how their body looked, they could say it looks like a masterpiece, you know, a sensual masterpiece. There was some really creepy kind of
terminology in there. And the concern is that this was vetted internally by the people who are providing the chatbots, and they're saying, well, yeah, it's okay for the AI chatbot to talk to children about sexual things or sensual things, but then when it was flagged by Reuters, they removed it. So the thing is they have ethicists who work for them, and they vetted this and said it was okay, and then Reuters pulls out an article and they say, well, actually,
what you've got here isn't good. So the term that was used this is a shirtless eight year old. Every inch ofview is a masterpiece. Is the terminology that they said was okay as far as Meta was concerned. And now of course it's been picked up by Reuters and they're going a little bit more strict on that policy. But this is the frightening thought that who is training the AI and what's the background, what are their standards,
what are their morals, what are their values? And you know, when you're pulling all this information in and then you know there's a bias that then gets adapted to the AI, which is then born out in the results that it's giving us.
Yeah, it's like who, as you alluded, Like who says that that's okay? Like ultimately there must be someone somewhere giving the green light or the thumbs up or whatever. The whatever the equivalent is, the virtual equivalent, say this is that stuff? It actually makes me angry. It makes me quite fucked off that that's even a thing that needs to or not needs to, but that exists. Is anything anything around the abuse or exploitation or of kids. I don't know why, I just have this. It fucking
annoys me a lot. And adults who perpetuate that or facilitate or allow or promote that, fuck you, all of you, like I just don't like it.
And on the flip side, there's a few Australian businesses I don't know if you've seen this in the media recently, where businesses that potentially might do say early childhood photography, so they take photos of kids with mums and babes and things like that. Well, there's been a couple of instances where businesses have been shut out of their social media because the imagery has been flagged by the AI as inappropriate and potentially child pornography, when in fact it wasn't.
But there's no appeal process that seems to be robust enough to have a real human look at it. So there have been businesses that have been said that they do all their promotion to all of their customers online and they rely on Facebook, they rely on Instagram, and they've been booted off for having inappropriate images. And I guess that's where you know, Wikipedia is doing it right
with the human oversight. But as these mega companies just get bigger and bigger and bigger and are using AI to decide whether TIFF's photograph as a child, because she wants to show what she looked like as a kid and what she looks like as an adult, may be
flagged as inappropriate. Well, your social media could be switched off, you know, if it's a day at the beach and Tiff shows herself as a kid, you know of running into the water or running out of the water with dad holding her hand, or something that could potentially be flagged and then your social media will be switched off instantly overnight. And then what's the process to then go through?
And in fact, the a Triple C is looking that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is looking at putting pressure and potentially calling for legislation to force these big tech companies to have a better and more robust system of appeal that's not going just through an automated system, but where there is rapid response, not weeks and months of response time to try to get your social media back up again if it accidentally gets flagged. So I mean,
it's problematic on both sides. And that's the challenge, isn't it. When you take humans out of the equation and you're relying on an algorithm, then that's where it becomes a problem. And if they're taking you, I mean, and the other thing I guess is, you know, at the moment, Facebook is pushing businesses to pay now to have a you know, to be able to have a kind of a subscription process to make it easier for them to validate their business. So if you want to validate your business, you can
pay for that to happen now. And I guess there was going to be a point at which they wanted to get some money for you know, all those hundreds of millions of sites out there that rely on social media for marketing. The reality of it is when we get something for free, we lose control of our data and information. Because you know, everything we think is free, whether it's Gmail or whatever it is, Facebook and Instagram,
it's not really free. It's just giving them all the content that we put up there.
Wow, that was quite the monologue. Fucking hell. I could have gone and made lunch, hat it grown a beard out of shave and come back.
You actually listen at all, Like I was listening.
I was waiting for a break.
It's good.
No, no, no, it's all good. It's you know, here's the absolute truth.
Right.
I shouldn't say this, but everything you said makes sense. One, but this kind of exploitation. I don't know why, but there's something in me. It makes me fucking angry the way that people it's not just kids, but it's anyone who can't really protect themselves and anyone you know, like my mum who like people wring my mum regularly and
try and scammer. It makes me so angry, which I know is not a solution, and it's probably a flow of mine, but I just get incensed and I just want to, Like, honestly, I want to change the fucking topic. That's what I feel like. But I think it's good that we talk about it. That's the truth. But yeah, that stuff that kind of pushes a button in me, you Patrick or no.
Oh, absolutely it does, absolutely.
Yeah, I know I'm the problem. But yeah, it's like if.
You ask me the question earlier, AI good or bad? So I'm going to post it to you and Tiff Crago AI good or bad?
Yeah, that is a good question that I asked it you. I think overall, I think overall it's an amazing tool. So I'm going to say good. But my caveat is I don't think AI of itself is good or bad in the sense that it depends what we do with it. See, I know that I can give you a bunch of tools and resources, and because I know you, you're going to do You're either not going to use them or you're going to do something positive with them, right because I know you and I trust you, and I know
your values. But give those same tools and resources like your knowledge, right, You've You've got pretty expansive knowledge in their space. Somebody with your knowledge who doesn't have your values or internal sat NAV, they could do some horrible shit. So it's not so much about the AI or the tools, or the technical capacity of whatever, or the technological capacity. It's about who's doing what with it. Like I would gladly,
I would trust you with pretty much anything. I would go well, Patrick's doing it, So I'm fine, But there are most people or many people that I wouldn't, you know what I mean. So I still think it comes back to the user. And as you said, nothing's for nothing. So when people are letting you have this resource or this tool or whatever for free, it ain't for free.
There's a tech company in the US called in Vision and they work with kind of disability technology and using tech to help people with disabilities. And they've partnered with a company that makes glasses called Solos and they've just launched a new camera equipped called the Alley's Solos Glasses. And what they they've made is a set of glasses with cameras built into them for people who are vision
impaired and blind. And what they do is they can translate text, they can describe the surroundings in real time, search the web, recognize people object signs, so if you're vision impaired, and they have speakers built into the arms of the glasses, so someone who's vision impaired can effectively
use these to decode the life around them. You know, they can be walking down the street, they can use a navigation it's three meters away, but watch out as a fire hydrant on the right hand side, you know, to your right. It's literally describing the world around them and it recognizes like all these Craig Harper quick change over, go to the other side out of the street, all these tears hurtful. But isn't that amazing? And so there's
the practical example of this tech. Now they've got a they're doing a limited release US about four hundred bucks at the moment. They're going to end up being I think seven hundred dollars US and a couple of different frame sizes and all that sort of stuff. But that uses chet chepte before and they use an AI assistant called Ali, and it's just going to be a groundbreaker for people who are vision impaired, and I think more
so I know people. You know a friend of mine who went blind progressively in his late teenage years, and he's a real uh you know, he's a real petrol head too, So it's it's amazing he's got these He's got this amazing car that he's helping or he's getting, you know, fixed up, and it's looking phenomenal, but he can't see the car abscribed to him. But to lose
your vision progressively. But then again, when I have interacted with people who have been blind all their lives, they say that they don't necessarily want to have smart glasses that will describe the world around them because they've grown up in that world of having no visions. So I guess it depends on the stage of life that you're in whether these would be useful. But I think for most people who could potentially navigate the world and be more autonomous, that would be fantastic, wouldn't it.
Oh mate, that's at the very very positive end of the AI scale. Yeah, I'm with you. That's amazing. I have a selfish question I want to ask you, which is not on your list?
Yep.
So, my internet at the moment is shit, and every day, like I've been trying to get someone out here to fix my internet and every day so I'm having to hotspot from my phone. So my internet in my house now is my phone. Like right now we're running, the internet is coming from my phone. Starlink. Tell me what starlink is? I can't know your shape, Can your head tell me what it is?
Do we like it?
Do we not like it? Firstly, just explain to people what Starlink is if you would and then give us the pros and cons, and you've only got three minutes, not ten.
Go Elon Musk launches his Starlink satellite network low orbit satellites which mean that your point of contact is directly above you, but they're in low Earth orbit, which means it's created effectively and a whole network around the planet. So potentially Starlink could allow you to be able to if you're in a camper trailer in the middle of Australia, there's no phone signal, but you'll have Starlink because it's
low orbit satellites, so that's basically getting your Internet. And it's really good as an alternative to the NBN's Skymuster because Skymuster is just a big ass like satellite that beams it down, whereas this is lots of little micro satellites. That's where starlink works. The only disadvantage I guess is starlink isn't so good in built up areas. If you've got buildings around you, it doesn't work as well. And also you know you should be on really good Internet
through the NBN. So Starlink is totally independent of our current terrestrial I guess network here. So when you deal with Telstra, Optus and all the other local providers, you're getting the NBN to the National Broadband Network, which is the backbone of all the Internet services that we get in Australia. Star is totally separate. It's an independent company and you're buying the Internet through Elon Musk effectively. And
that's right. So it's good if you're in a wide open spaces, if you're in rural areas, but it's not as good in city areas, in built up areas, it may not be as good for you. I certainly wouldn't be looking at that as an alternative, particularly because at the moment in September, if people are listening to this around about this time, all the speeds NBN is going to increase, all the speeds to home Internet users, depending
on what sort of Internet connection you've got at your house. Crago, did that kind of makes about what starling you?
No, that's great, that's great. I mean that answers my question. I knew you. I knew you wouldn't know the answer to that. Tell me about the Chinese researchers who have unveiled the world's larger scale brain like computer called the Darwin Monkey.
I love that they've called it the Darwin Monkey, don't you.
I love it. I love it.
So they've built a massive computer, but they've tried to use what they're calling a brain like interface, and that
they call it newomorphic brain like computer. So they're trying to simulate the neurons of the human brain, and they're saying this has got too bigger neurons, so this can mimic the workings of Now they're not saying human being because they're nowhere near what a human being is, but they reckon that they can they can mimic basically a monkey's brain in the way that it works, and that's that's why they've called it the Darwin Monkey, which I thought was kind of cute. Nothing to do with up North,
we're talking a different Darwin, yep. But I thought that's really interesting because you know, computers traditionally work off a totally different system of processing, whereas this is going to try to mimic what a brain in the functioning of a brain. So that's what I thought was kind of is interesting about this. You know, who knows in the future if they could, you know, would you upload your brain to a computer crago if they could mimic all the neurons and that would that really be you?
Ah? That well? See that's the philosophical six thousand dollars spiritual question, isn't It's like who knows? Who knows? But I don't know. I don't think so. But that would be interesting. But something I am interested in, which I've thought about a lot, which you've written this question. I didn't read the actual story. But humans keep building robots that are shaped like us. So robots that are shaped like humans? What's the point? And I've always thought this.
I've thought, like to try to build a robot that's bipedal and walks and is six foot tall? And why would you? I get it because humans identify goa kind of looks like me, and it can talk, and it's got in inverted commas eyes and arms and legs, And I get it from a psychology point of view that humans might relate better to something that looks like it.
But I would think from a function and an engineering point of view, it'd be much easier to have something that's much more practical and functional that isn't shaped like a human like I don't know, a little box that ain't going to fall over or you know what I mean, Oh, a dog, I'd go four legs, I reckon that would be a much better option if you're going to design a robot to go up and down hills and navigate. I mean, think about a wheelchair system that had four
legs as opposed to two legs. The balance that goes into kind of coordinating bipedle as opposed to well they exist. Yeah, but also you think about the dog. You think about you know that MIT motherfucker that they built. You know, have you seen that tip that to look at the MIT Capital MIT robot dog that they're that they're using for warfare, And yeah, these things are as you suggest, just the fact that they've got four legs not two, they're much more stable.
Cleo, Cleo, the robot dog. But look, it does make it. You're ponder this because you've heard the term the uncanny valley, have you, Yeah? Yeah, So the uncanny valley was coined by a Japanese robot research and robotics research in the nineteen seventies, and what he discovered was the more you make a robot look like a human being, it gets to a point where the fakeness of it, so you put eye lashes on it. You have a mouth moves, but you know instinctively that it's not a human being.
But the mouth is moving, but the you know, this doesn't have proper skin texture, or the muscles don't the musculature isn't the same, and it gets to a point where it starts to look creepy. So if you've got a screen on a robot with a smiley emoji, then I can deal with that. But if you've got lips that are moving and fake skin, that's the uncanny valley. That's where it looks that little bit creepy because it's not real.
Yeah yeah, and but we know that it's not real. But in another thing, which I know you know, and I'm sure Tiff knows and our listeners know, but more and more people are having relationships in inverted commas with with bots, you know, and people are marrying them. I saw a Japanese dude marrying his Japanese bride, yeah, and the whole bunch of people at the wedding, and I'm like, okay, so yeah, I don't know how that's going to work.
The ABC had an article that I read a couple of days ago, and you could probably find it pretty easily about a woman who has got some emotional problems and she'd been in a relationship with a chatbot for four years. And I think she was on the NDIS and her care a talked to the chatbot as well, so she had a conversation, but she felt she was in an authentic relationship with the chatbot, and she lives
her daily life. She gets up in the morning, starts talking to her chatbot, and then when people come in to visit her, they interact with the chat bot as well. And there's no question, and I know we've spoken about this many times, but developing a relationship with an AI, with a chatbot or a robot, as that happens. If you finally do have an autonomous bipedal robot in your home making you your soup for lunch, there's no question
that you would probably interact with. I mean, God, the amount that I talked to my dog, I can imagine what it be like if I had a robot walking around the house talking to me. I mean, Fritz doesn't even talk back to me that I know, just a monologue for me. Which is really hard to do.
Oh yeah, I can imagine you must really struggle with that. That poor dog. Has he ever jump under the fucking couch and put a cushion over his head?
Wow? No, dogs are amazingly resilient and of coase it. Don't forget I'm the person who walks and feeds him and plays with him, so you know he knows on which side.
He's bread has butted? What's what's his vocabulary? How many actual words? We're digressing, We'll get back on track. But how many actual words do you reckon he understands?
That's a really good question. I've often thought about that because I was reading a book and I can't think of the name of it a little while ago, where the character in the book was determined to teach their dog six hundred words. It was a very cute story, and the dog was really smart. I don't know how many words he knows? I think t if you could probably answer the as well. Having got a dog yourself,
do you give Luna other names? Like the most pet owners have about three or four names for their dogs. She Yeah, mine does too, Yeah does as well, So I've got multiple names. But as far as what he can understand. I mean, he certainly what really staggers me. And I remember a friend of mine, her father had a sheep farm and he was ill and had to go to hospital, and they had a working dog that would round up the sheep in the bottom paddock and
bring them up to the top paddock. And they were trying to get the dog to bring the sheep up, and they didn't know what the command was. They know the dog was really smart, but they couldn't work out what the command was. And eventually they got a message to the father and he said, oh, no, it's not a verbal command. I just flick my eyes to the left and the dog knows to go up the hill and bring the sheep up. So that's how subtle the
interaction was. And I know with Fritz, I can just point to the ground in a certain way, or put my palm flat to the ground and he'll drop. And then I turned my palm and he rolls over. So those sorts of things. So when it comes to words, it probably knows a few of them, but he certainly knows actions and movements as well, and hand gestures. So I guess if you wanted to spend a lot of time.
Friends of mine just found these little electronic tiles at the opshop and you can there buttons that you record you on your voice, So it might be I want to go outside, and then you train your dog to hit the button to send you the message I want to go outside, I want to go outside, I want to treat, and you can train the dog to hit the buttons for the different things that it wants you to do.
That wouldn't be annoying at three am at all, I want to treat. Your phone is covered in germs. I'm like, like, this is one of the stories, just quickly before you tell us about it. I was talking to a lady who's a microbiologist and she's like, you know what creates more more sickness than all the germs on whatever is the propensity that we now have to try to sanitize
the whole world? And who was it someone on the show they were talking about we need germs, like we need germs, We need you know, we need a level of germs so that our immune system has to deal and cope and adapt. And when we put ourselves in our kids and in a completely or close as we can sanitized environment. Then when we do get exposed to something, which inevitably we will, we have no resistance, like we
have no immunity because we're always nerfing the world. So I reckon, let your phone be dirty, That's what I think.
Okay, well, we've had this conversation, and it's the pre flush or pre wipe and post wipe phone use. So you know when you go to the toilet. We all know we take our phones to the toilet. Don't lie, you know you do, right, my popuy is the pre wipe policy, so the second that I start wiping, the phone doesn't get touched again until I've washed my hand. So pre wipe you can use your phone. Post post wipe, you can't touch your vote until you've washed your hair.
I saw a show on your favorite station, the ab C, a couple of years ago, and it was talking about this, and it was talking about one of the you know what fecal matter is is bits of pooh. They were talking about you know what has pooh on it? And one of the things that's got a pretty liberal smattering of pooh on it is your toothbrush. Because yeah, because it's generally or for a lot of people it's within a meter or two of the toilet, so and a pretty simple way to offset that is to I don't know.
I don't because I've never watched anyone else. Let's not go there. But I always shut the lid when I flush. Do you shut the lid when you flush? Tip, Yes, yep, because if you don't, you kind of just spray shit literally around the room.
Did I talk about the next level of paranoia? My toothbrush sits in a cupboard, so I close the cupboard and that way it's not exposed to any flushing potential. Well, the thing is because I have a home based office and so my main bathroom does get used by staff, but it's also the same bathroom that has my toothbrush in it, so my toothbrush is definitely cleep behind.
Yeah, you don't want me to come to your house because you know where I'm going to look on what I'm going to do with it. I'm going to I'm just going to clean my nuts with your toothbrush and then give it a just pop it back in. You're welcome, thanks for that. So what I was doing one more champ, one more champ.
Is going to say, don't clean your like. Yes, so there are lots of micro organisms on your phone, but don't be careful what you wipe the phone down with. Anything above like an alcohol wipe over seventy percent is going to damage the screen of your phone. So be aware that what you clean your sunglasses with may not necessarily be the right thing to clean your phone with because the screen is touch sensitive.
So a bit of old windex, yes or no?
Well, that's a good question. A bit of old index. I'd have to look at what the chemical content is. Just YouTube? It can you use in index to clean your phone?
Hey?
If can you look it up for us? Is that all right? Maybe?
Chat GP t it? I reckon that that'd be that'll be quicker. No, really, fuck YouTube, it's not the nineties.
Hey, you know what you're here? YouTube? Google says no, you can ah see No, why not?
Contains ammonia, which can damage your anti glare coating discolouration. Windex is pretty pretty shit chemical that way, you.
Know, it's pretty good. Hanky in a bit of spit, that's what Mary, that's what you're on there? That was Patrick?
Did you want one more? Did you say?
All right?
Go on?
Be quick?
Okay? Drivers in wa right, wait for this, and this is probably happening all over Australia, but this is an article from Western Australia. They're hitting the mute on annoying car safety technology. And I've got friends who've done this as well. They don't like lane assists, so they turn off lane assists. They don't like the car warning them that they're going too fast, so they turn it off.
And it seems like this is a survey that was done in Western Australia by Double Ami, the insurance company, and they said twenty three percent admitted to having turning off or dialing down car safety features, and seventy two percent say noises and lights are distracting. So they find all those noises and lights and you know when someone overtakes you and the light blinks and a noise might come up to say that there's someone in your blind spot.
But most drivers, so seventy two percent of drivers says they didn't like all those noises in their cars, and twenty three percent of turning them off.
I agree with them, but I don't know how to turn anything off. My new car is my new car is it's essentially a computer. It's like I don't know if it can do one hundred things I know how to do. For I do not know how to use that car other than drive it and park it and lock it and unlock it. It just does so much shit that's beyond mine.
Next time I'm over, let's go for a drive and maybe I can.
Ah, you'll love it, Yeah, you'll love it.
But you know what, there are companies are going back to knobs and dials. I had my car being repaired recently because unfortunately, I had an interaction or an altercation with a kangaroo. The kangaroo survived, my car didn't. It's kind of bumped the side of the car. But I was driving a courtesy car for a while and I didn't realize how much I like all the features in
my car. You know, the head's up display, But what I love about it is that I can reach down and still physically hit a button to turn the temperature up or down. There's a screen version, but it also has analog versions as well, Knobs to control the volume, you know, change the tuning, to move things around. So I kind of like that. It's got some tech features, but it's also got a lot of analog features as well.
I had to do a gig in Ballarat yesterday and I was.
Oh my god, he went right past my house. I'm just shattered. I'm so shattered.
I thought about coming to see you, but I had to be back in time for a thing. Anyway, For I did think of you as I saw the Bland and I thought, I thought, no, self, don't tell him you went the Ballarat. And then I fucked up, didn't I? Anyway, I was leaving the rac V gold Fields gold Mine, gold Field's bloody resort in It's actually in Creswick, which is right near Ballarat. Anyway, I'm like, Creswickwick, we thank you. I was. I was five minutes out of the car
park and driving back. And if you don't keep your eyes in a certain like where the car thinks your eyes should be, it tells you to pull over and have arrest. It's like, might be time for a coffee and a rest. I'm like, how about you shut the fuck up like he was telling me at you know, five o'clock in the afternoon, pull over, chill out, have arrest, have a coffee and then reboot.
I'm like, no, bro, shush, I thought we're going to say that you're It said to you that your left eyes so beautiful. You're right. I keeps trying to look at it.
Fucking hell. Patrick, tell people about you where they can find you, and.
Really anybody wants to know anything about way if you want to interact on any level, websites noow dot com dot Au, websites now dot com dot au, or you can go to ty chi at home and do tai chie with me, because I feel like I've a split personality.
There's my tychi me and then there's my tech bor not boring. It's kind of fun because we get to do lots of fun stuff with clients. But yeah, so there's the websites now me and the tai Chi me.
Tech you and so yeah, prefrontal cortex, all logical thinking, and then the the spiritual tie chie. Get out of your brain, out of your thoughts, out of your bloody cognitive whatever. Yeah, that is quiet, it's pretty We'll say goodbye a fair but tif thank you. Thanks.
Kids.
Try to get you, try to get your computer work the will you.
I wish Patrick could fix it.
It's an excuse to come visit. I'll come visit help
You with your computer okay, all right, see everyone Bye.