The You Project#1609 What's Real & What's Not? - Patrick Bonello
Is it human art or Al art? And if it is Al art, is it actually art? Was it written by a human or a Bot? Is it inspired creativity or 'programmed' creativity? Did he do the assignment or did ChatGPT do it? Is it a real photo or an image generated to look like a photo? Is the 'information' I'm getting through Al actual (accurate, objective) information or is it a 'story' about something, designed to influence the thinking of the researcher/reader in a certain way? Is it a legitimate opportunity, or is it a well-crafted scam? Is this a real link, or is it a pathway to my financial ruin? For better or worse, reality is becoming harder and harder to discern.
I get a champs Patrick, Tiffany and Cook you asked for you Project fortnight They get together with two smartest people, Patrick and Tiff and the ex fucking bogan from La Trivalley. Just trying to hang into the conversational brilliance that is these two.
Hi, Patrick, Hey he doing.
O'm good, I'm good. Good morning Tiff who was up until thirty seconds ago?
Me just trying, just trying it on, just seeing how it feels. Be great.
For some reason, TIFF's little window on this zoom call said my name, and then she said to me, did you do that? Like I have the skills to do?
That's the funny thing. You were touting us as the tech genius is And after our last show where I impersonated Tiff, I jumped into a team meeting with a client and realized that I was still Tiff. So it's all kind of all goes downhill from here, doesn't it.
Yeah, Well, you know there's there's the claim, there's the brand, and then there's the reality behind the claim. How are you Patrick, I'm good?
And I was just thinking that impersonating you, you could probably sue me.
What go on? I feel like this? That was a segue I feel.
Mat I's just that Meta is about to have to fork out one point four billion dollars for using facial recognition on the public without checking with them first. So that's that's a big thing that's come through. I think that's one point four billion US by the way, so it's even more of course converted to our currency cocaine.
How they how have they been using that in what capacity?
So they like they was being social media accounts and using facial recognition. So what they would do is they would say, oh, this is Craig Harper's Facebook account and will now match his face and then look at where all his faces appear on other people's postings and on the internet, all that sort of stuff.
It So, oh so then to what end do they do that? Sorry, Like, what's the what's in it for them to do that? Obviously money at some stage.
Yeah, look, I think the part of it behind that is to try to develop I guess, an algorithm that's going to keep Craig using Facebook. And if you can refer to Craig and say, oh, look we saw you in this post that was done it was a group shot at Nova or you know, Tiff had a function. I think it's about that connectivity, about trying to link you and to be able to know where you're going, what you're doing, and how you doing it, but then matching that up with because you know, you've had you caught up with Tiff and you might be doing a training session, so you might need a new boxing gloves or something because Tip's going to punch the shit out of you. Go to the dentist.
Now, I think I saw somewhere on your list that I saw it on the news the other night. Don't know if it's the same thing, but like a wearable I don't know, electronic brend like.
I guess it's imagine if you had a wearable electronic craig. That would be hilarious.
People have one. It's called the You Project.
This is interesting, Okay, So the idea of incorporating AI into a wearable device that interacts with you, this is so creepy. So it's a ninety nine dollar product that's being launched out into the marketplace. It's only on Apple at the moment, and it's called The Friend and it even can bully you as well, which is interesting. So the promotional video for it basically has attracted a lot of interest ninety thousand views, and it's kind of growing all the time. So what it does is there's actually a scene where this AI model mocks there wear like it bullies them. But what it really monitors what you're doing. So effectively, it's a medallion that you wear, right, It's attached to a lanyard and you you as you walk around and experience your day, it monitors and it just throws in comments about what you're talking about, what you're doing. You can talk to it as well. It's kind of creepy but sounds fun.
I don't know about the I wonder about the potential lawsuits when you know this wearable thing is bullying people that are already anxious and depressed.
Well, it appears to listen to all your conversations, and it's kind of attached by bluetooth to your phone, and then as you're it kind of starts to using AI. It begins to form its own internal thoughts, so it can give a commentary. It can kind of take in what's happening and understand the context of what you're doing, what you're saying. I just think it would be kind of interesting but I think I just would end up with a grumpy old man sitting around my neck constantly.
I could just for me, there's just alarm bells all over this, like a thing that stays attached to my body that records and tracks and listens to everything that I say. I definitely don't want that, because where's all that data going. Talk about fucking invasion of privacy. Where's that going? Yeah?
Look, I guess it could be used in other ways, like if you go to the free you reach for the Oreo milkshake instead of the carrot juice. It could kind of have a go at. You couldn't it. You could say, hey, well, yeah.
Well I could do that. See I'm okay with that. You know, you fat fuck put the cheesecake down your big fat fuck I mean for me personally, not anyone else.
It has to be your part. It has to be.
Here's what I'm worried about. Hey, we recorded you saying this, Send us ten grand or we're going to release it like well that No, that's a big fucking fat no. Stick a friend, stick your electronic friend up your ass. You can keep it fuck off. There's already way too much shit we don't need more fucking electronic fucking friends. We need humans.
We're wondering what Craig could possibly say outside of the podcast hasn't already said on air live to all of the people, and the terrifying Patrick, The terrifying thing.
Is that this has filtered me. This is this is p g me. If I had the R rated podcast, It'd either be the biggest podcast in the world or I'd be in prison. I'm not sure we can do zoom from prison.
That's okay, you and Baba.
When we're not making number plates and eating fucking rice out of plastic containers, all right, keep going over one.
AI. Yeah, so this is another one that I thought's interesting. A friend of mine's an author. You've met our friend Tour who I did passed with. Now she's an author. She's just doing her second book, and I'm actually doing a bit of a preread, which is really exciting. But there's been a stack of books hitting Amazon recently that have all been written by AI. So there are some sneaky people out there who are publishing and putting out cookbooks, particularly, and they're kind of generating all this content and churning out five books a week, and I know you've written, and you've you know, you've got books that have been published, and it's a lot of work that goes putting whatever the book is. If you're a chef and you cookbook, then you spend decades, yes, fine tuning your recipes and you know, life experience and all that sort of stuff. So it's interesting. So this journal went out and decided to just take a look at some of the recipes and there were things like bratwurst ice cream and croc pot mohito so ai has absolutely no blood. The idea what food tastes like, looks like should be combined. There was one recipe I think it was like two gallons of butter. It was one of the things you had to add yes. So obviously they've got it wrong in a very very very big way. So it's an interesting one that it's becoming challenging to work out what's real what isn't real. And I guess the onus really should be on the likes of the publishing community to make sure that you know, when you look at self publishing, which is great a lot of authors who self published, it's fantastic that they can and in the past. You know, a lot of publishing companies had the lion share, and it was really hard to get a book published. The beauty of technology now is that a lot of people can get out there, and some people may only publish one hundred books that they sell to their friends, you know. And that's great that you can do that, But when you're dishing out literally dishing out crap cookbooks, it's not the best thing, you know, Shepherd's Pie sushi. I thought that one sounded interesting.
I think I think you mean print a hundred books, not published a hundred books. I know what you mean, because a hundred books would be one hundred different books published the only.
One of each.
You could do that. That would be a very inefficient model. But you committed. But I do you know what else worries me mate in the same conversation is because obviously AI is becoming better and better, and chat GPT and the like is becoming better and better. I'm hearing lots of stories of people who are basically sailing through undergraduate degrees doing almost no work because you know, like for the stuff that I'm doing, people go ah like with your PhD. But it's really it's no value to me because it's all based on the research that I'm doing. But you can certainly write a paragraph and then run it through chat GPT. But academic writing at that level s differ. But at an undergraduate level where you might have to do you know, let's say a three thousand word assignment on you know, the metabolism of carbohydrate or energy systems or whatever in an exercise science degree, or you know, talk about the major muscle groups of the shoulder and how they work. Whatever it is. Yeah, I mean that can churn that out and with a little bit of tweaking, it will pass through the what's it called, I forget, there's a program. It will come to me after we finish. But there's a program that you turn it in. It's called So if you write something, you can put it through this program and it will give you a turn it in score, and it'll tell you whether or not it's going to pass the you know, the plagiarism test. And people are cranking these out and it's passing that test quite easily. So we're seeing students at all levels are who are producing what would take weeks some work in minutes and they're getting them passed, which is it is going to be moving forward a big challenge. And then you think about something like copywriting for real estate agents where here's the details of the house, write us an ad. Well, that's a good application and no one's really cheating, you're just using But when it comes to academic stuff where people are getting degrees on things that they haven't done the work for or they don't understand, it's terrifying, especially when you think about things like medicine.
Well, look, I do agree with what you're saying, and we do use AI sparingly. We use it visually probably the most, and I think I might have mentioned this in one of our shows where sometimes when you're designing a website, you want an image to span the entire width. We call it a banner. And if you got a photograph that doesn't have the right aspect ratio, and say you've got, you know, some people in one area and then some cars and some trees or whatever it happens to be, you can use AI to stretch the photo out, which would take hours and hours using normal techniques in photoshop, but you can extend hills and scenes and we do it for our clients all the time. You know, we've got a plumber that we do a lot of social media for and they send us portrait photos that just need to be stretched out a little bit. And there was one of their apprentices actually they had him working on a toilet. It was really narrow and so we just widen the shot and it was great. So we used the original photo. It was just a bit of the sides that we added to. But there was an article in The Guardian only a couple of weeks ago and it basically said that academics are saying, we're now thinking that AI has put the integrity of Australian universities at risk. There is so much cheating. And you alluded to this as well, that it's the quality and the standard of what you know when people are leaving university with degrees, what does actually even mean?
Well, that's exactly right, and I think you know what you talk about, how you would use it in your work. I mean, to me, that's a legitimate, intelligent, positive use, right. But that's not the stuff we're worried about. The stuff we're worried about is people taking credit and getting credit for shit they haven't done. I mean, that's basically lying and deception. Well, we know it's becoming harder and harder to monitor.
We were approached by a client and when we build a website, one of the things we do is we sit down and we do it quite a rigorous kind of Q and A try to work out what they want to achieve, how they're going to get the content together, how they're going to put it together, imagery, all that sort of stuff. But we had a client say, well, can't you look at other sites in the same industry and just use AI to rewrite their content?
Right?
I mean we said no, but you know that's what the mindset is out there. Why do it? You know, why do the hard yards if you can do it easy?
Well, I mean it like if there's no downside. I mean, you know, with the evolution of everything, right, when something new comes in, something old goes out. Like there are so many jobs now that are becoming redundant. There are so many new jobs that are becoming part of the commercial landscape. And you know, as we've spoken about before, you've showed us images of aiart versus real art, and it's like it's those creative spaces where it might take somebody you know, like Dylan Keyes who I follow Chuck old by Dylan, who's an awesome artist. Follow him on He's been on the show on Instagram, Like, his work is fucking amazing. It take him fifty hours of fucking like super focused work to produce one image that's brilliant. And you can produce something that looks just like that in thirty seconds with chat JPT and it's pretty much indistinguishable, and you're like, and you know that one person did it and the other one was synthetic, so to speak. But yeah, if I was a creative I would be worried.
I think I totally agree. Look, I haven't authored any books, but I've done a lot of writing over the years as a journalist and creative pieces. Have written some short stories the idea of someone just taking that material. Even when I've written for clients and we've written copy for websites, you've still spent the hours doing it. You know, you've thought about it, you've spoken to the client. We had one particular client recently, a lovely, lovely couple who you know, were a fencing company. Then they started making steel fence posts and they've revolutionized a lot of the production process of standard domestic wooden fences because they've got metal posts that they have in between all the spacing. So the thing is they don't write they you know. So I spent probably about two and a half hour interviewing them, getting information from them so that I could write the copy for them. Now, if someone else now produces a steel fence post website and they just troll through our site with all that original copy that I wrote, well, you know that's that's not fair. You know, all that hard work that went into it, and you know, whether it's something that you've come up with yourself, whether someone goes through all the you project sites podcasts and says, well, I can kind of copy this and create my own podcast. I don't know.
Do you know how many of my whiteboard lessons have been ripped off? I really like, no hundreds, thousands, like yesterday there was one. Anyway, I get sent them all. Pretty much every day someone sends me one of my whiteboards that I wrote. If you don't know what they are, go to my Instagram page where it's just me writing on a whiteboard. I take a photo of it. I kind of brighten it up a bit, but it's my handwriting, and I put it up thousands of times. In fact, you know one I wrote called twelve fucking Rules for Success. Well, that's been that's been done in different languages. There's details of it, there's mugs with it on it, there's posters, there's you know, it's been turned into product that other people are selling, like my intellectual property. And I've you know, I've opened the door on how do I There's really not a lot unless you want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars that you may or may not, you know, in terms of legal kind of pursuit. But it's I just I don't like it, but I just go all right, it's going to happen, you know, And I think, anyway, let's move on something other than this. I want to know about like Google have gotten. I'll go on.
There's one more thing of this is a new phrase and you're gonna love it. It's called AI cannibalism, all right, what is it? So what's happening is there's so much AI generated content on the Internet. There's now concerns that with new AI models being trained on the content on the Internet that potentially they're now scraping AI model content. So what they're doing is they're learning from other AI and then as they scrape through there's so much AI crap out there, and they're learning from the AI crap that it's including the quality of the product. So the best way to describe it is if if you say, AI draw an elephant, and then AI learns off that picture of an elephant that's been drawn by AI, and there are subtle, weird, creepy, different things that just don't feel right the AI is using that. So I just loved the term AI cannibalism. It's such a great way to describe what effectively is you know, I guess the demise of AI models potentially the demise of AI models if they're training them on information that's been generated by AI, because now AI doesn't even know what AI.
Is well, and also AI doesn't know because if AI is being programmed by programmers who have a particular bias, which is everyone in the world, then you know, like somebody put up a thing the other day and they asked chat GPT, what happened on whatever the date was that Donald Trump got shot what happened on that date in Pennsylvania? And it said, and chat GPT said the next president had something thrown at him, but no one was hurt, like, which is objectively untrue. Yeah, you know. And there was another one six months ago which you would have remembered. I think they said, you know, show us a picture of the founding forefathers of America, you know, like all the old presidents and shit. And it brought up and what it showed was some pictures of Native Indigenous American women, right because it didn't want to show white men. I'm like, okay, but now now, so now there's another conundrum, And the conundrum is how we need to be able to filter through what is objective truth like fact, data, information, and what is something that is being you know, like politically correctified or or there's a there's a particular bias where oh, now this is not this is not information, this is opinion or this is an agenda. And now when it's when that agenda or that opinion on either side, on all sides, right, when that's being presented as objective information, and then over time that starts to become the norm, then fucking hell, we lose a grip on what is real, and it's you know, then it just becomes a slippery slope.
You could know. And he's doing Malaysia, Who's doing in Malaysia? They want an Internet kill switch?
What is that? That seems like I don't even know what it is, but I think we need one.
Yeah. I don't think they even know yet what it is, but they want one. So their parliament at the moment is looking at new legislation to create, so they haven't even created it yet. They want to create an internet kill switch because saying that social media is out of control. They if they've got more than an eight million people in their country that are using a specific platform, they now need to get a license to be able to run in that country. But what they're saying is they want to be able to turn it off. They just want to flick a switch. I like the idea of a big red button because I think big red buttons that glow the best way to do it. And it sits in you know, someone's department there, the president's department.
You know we're not in an episode of Get Smart, right, Yeah, you know you know that it's not a nine and sixty sitcom, right. I just wanted this is irrelevant, but it's a little bit elevant to what we're talking about creativity and the danger for creatives when you know AI takes over. But I saw this quote from Einstein that I don't know why I've never heard it. It's one of the greatest quotes I've ever heard from Einstein this week. And the quote is creativity is intelligence having fun.
Isn't that beautiful? That is so good?
That is love that?
Yeah, I love that one do.
I think I saw that on Lisa Stevenson's platform, so shout out to her.
But what a great quote, isn't it funny. One of the smartest guys that I know who I've interviewed on my own podcast, a guy who is a rocket scientist, and my running joke with him was that the reason I hung out with him is because he brings my IQ average up so high because he's IQ so I and his response to that was, but I hang around with you because it brings up my emotional intelligence.
Now that's probably true. I mean, yeah, well, I think you. I hate to say it because I like hanging shit on you, but I think you go okay, I think IQ and EQ I reckon you're doing okay? Tell me about because I feel like I need a robotic massage table in my house. That yeah, this is like the two point zero of the chair that you sit in.
It seems I know, this is so much better. It kind of See there's two robot II robot driven machines that I want to talk about in the show today. One is a luge table. So this is I guess when you think about it, there's so many different skill sets that are needed to be able or massage, right, and you've had met I mean one year.
I'm a massage I'm a massage slut. This is like the ultimate present for me. H.
There we go. So this therapeutic massage has been around for thousands of years. We know that it works, like absolutely works. So there's a type of massage and I think it's called a escape and it's a five thousand year old massage practice. And so what they're trying to do is effectively use an AI driven machine, effectively robotic massage table. But it is going to be able to mimic some of the techniques of massage. So, I mean, what was the massage that you gave me for a birthday? Reason?
Like a couple of years it was called a hand job. It was oh god, so technically not massage but high massage.
Idiot.
By the way, happy birthday, big boy.
Sorry, TIFFs is choked just having a drink of water.
Then I nearly died.
You call it a massage high message. I call it a happy birthday. They must know that you go there regularly because it's got a really big sign. We don't give happy.
I do. I go to the I don't go as much. I used to go a lot, but I like what It's got to be good though, like tie massage. The problem with massage therapists, whatever kind of style, it's like everything else. There's some are fucking amazing, Tiff, you know this, Some have got amazing hands and some are terrible. Like some. If I within three minutes, I know, within thirty seconds, I know if this is going to be good or a bad hour. And I feel ripped off when I lie down and someone's got clunky hands, like they've got no feel for it.
So you're going to love this device because what it does as you lay down on the table on the platform, it uses infrared sensors to scan your body and then by being powered by AI, it delivers a personalized experience, so it knows you know, I guess potentially where there might be not why are you laughing at me?
I'm thinking about the title of the show and how I can weave hand job in there.
Gone, I'm trying to be serious. Yeah, So anyway, it will scan your body beforehand, so potentially that could be those mystical, wonderful hands that you've been dreaming of.
Great well, firstly available in Australia, and I'm imagining this is not a cheap product.
Look, it won't be. I don't know. I didn't actually see a price with it. I don't know if it's it's I don't think it's a proof of concept. I think that it's actually won a design award, so I'm thinking that it's out there. I'll have to do a bit of research for you, so I'll look into it and see what the cost is going to be. But the other thing that scared the Jesus out of me, and I wouldn't do this in a million years. I don't think about notes. It might have been something I read earlier, but the world's first fully automated robot dentist has done surgery on a human is that it.
Seems like a fuck that tiff shaken a head way.
So I five movies. If you watched where they've got robots with needles and stuff pointing at you, and that was the TORTUD device. Look it's done, it's happened. A person actually had a procedure done. One of the benefits of this, it says that they can do crowns and things in fifteen minutes instead of an hour and speed up the process. He's the crap out of me.
Yeah, I'm not after speed, I'm after fucking human hands. But speaking of such medical procedures, I did see during the week Patrick James, Kevin Fernando that a surgeon operator did an operation, a remote operation on a patient who was in a different location. So he I can't remember how they do it, but I think he has his hands or she. I think it was a he in basically these gloves that have got all of these senses, and he performs the operation remotely and it's carried or it's executed through a robot on site with so again terrifying. But in some situations I guess over time, like honestly, think about in fifty years, maybe ninety eight percent of the procedures are going to be done by robots because they don't get tired, they don't get cranky, you know that, they don't lose focus and attention, and they don't have emotions. And I guess you know, it's just I think for us, well me anyway, it's just a mental and emotional hurdle. But maybe it's going to be much better outcomes.
Well, the remote surgery that you're talking about, when you think of situations, okay, here's a great one, the International Space Station. Now, what if someone had a ruptured spleen or something, what do you do? You can't just pack them into a capsule and fire and back down to Earth. They may not even survive the re entry. So the reality of it is if you're working on an oil rig out in the middle of the North Sea, and so I'm thinking that potentially, you know, you could suddenly turn a remote clinic into a full surgical you know, procedural, you know, a venue clinic. Because when you think about it in Australia, particularly to fly or to travel from one location to another, if you've got a drive for twelve fourteen hours and whatever you've got, that's wrong with you is mission critical, so potentially you you know, this is life saving surgery. If you had a device with a robotic doctor, I guess I'd be putting my hand up. It's either that or die in transit.
We had we had a guy tif do you remember his name, who was from Antarctica. I think you had him on your show as well, David David David Knof, Yeah, and he was talking to us about that. I mean, they're based in Antarctica, Patrick, and so they have to have a whole team of people. I can't remember if it was him was telling me or someone else. But so they have a doctor which is a really good, you know doctor who can do pretty much everything, including surgery, until the doctor gets appendicitis. And so she had to do an appendectomy on herself. So she had to operate her on herself. I think it was appendicitis what obviously while she was awake. So that's in those kinds of situations. Yeah, I mean to be able to and we've spoken before about people who live in remote areas of Australia. You know, they have access to everything now, you know, education and you know, lots of other kind of medical consults and mental health consults, and so it's kind of it's quite a it's quite a leap, but maybe it's part of the next steps.
Yeah, sounds pretty cool. Has you arguing?
You know? You know if you know how I know when Patrick, he's already onto the next topic is when I finish, and he goes, yeah, good, yeah, good, like he's I know, he's bought out of it. And I can see his eyes fucking glazing over because he doesn't he's not even listening to what I'm saying, and he.
Just goes, yeah good.
What was your question? How is my what going?
As your car going? I was thinking about you and your car. I fancy adget, So you've got everything.
No, I don't. I haven't even driven it because i've I'm just yeah, I'm just at home and when I get around Suburbia, I drive, I ride a motorbike. So the answer is I think I've driven it three times, and once was on the way home from the dealership. So I'm not wearing that motherfucker out. If anyone wants really low mileitch, no, no, I'm not selling driven.
It's a good car. Lady to church on a Sunday. That's the ad it's a nice car.
It's just it's a car. Let's not. It's but it's too it's do you know what it's not car? It's a computer that doubles as a car. It's a computer with four wheels and seats. I you know how like the analog, not the analog, but the old Basically the dumb phone is making a little bit of a comeback in some I reckon. Eventually, we're going to do the full circle and we're going to offer cars that essentially are like almost an analog car. Where how do you turn on the heater? You push your button, how do you make it warmer? Your twist and knob right? And how do you lock it? You put the key in and you lock it, or you press the button and then you hold the handle. Like imagine if they made a car with no absolutely zero unnecessary tech, only the tech that a car needs to get around. I wonder if they could sell that for ten grand?
You would have by my like, ah, I'm selling my old miss annex coop remember my miss hand on the little target roof.
Yeah, I'll give you a hundred bucks for it.
One hundred bucks. That's pristine condition. You can put another four zeros at the end of it.
Fuck your Christine condition. Nobody wanted them when they were new, especially now they're thirty years old. You should take that to the Nissan Museum and they'll go, no, thanks, I'll go okay, here's a voucher to the tip. Wow, no, what is it this? And NX isn't it? What is it?
It's an NX coop it was. Actually, you should look it up. They're actually quite a cool little car. The target roof. The roof comes off and you can zip around. It's got a two liter engine. It's the Pulsar trip less engine, so the enginees go.
You know, you know, this is not a forum for you to fucking sell your car, right, so back off. That's why you brought up your car.
It was a segue.
Yeah, that's right. He's like he wanted to tell people that he's selling a car, and he thinks I can't be too. I know, I'll ask Craig about his car.
Oh, while we're on cars.
Guess what I'm selling my forty year old piece of shit? Anyone interested?
A thirty one year old card by the way, and the segway actually was for Samsung because I reckon. They've now been able to produce a solid state battery for evs with a six hundred mile range and it's a nine minute charging cycle to be able to get it up to speed and it will last twenty years.
The battery.
The battery will last twenty years.
Well, that's a game charge, I mean, if that's put it this way. Okay, So if that is real, if you can charge it in nine minutes, six hundred miles is one thousand kilometers, which is forever, and if at last twenty if all of those things are real, then that's a game changer for ev Then I would be if they could do that just well not that I'd be a convert, but I'd be more supportive of that because that makes sense. There's still the small conundrum of what we do with all those fucking batteries.
Well, twenty twenty seven is when they're talking about launching at Toyota and Samsung have teamed up. They're sung to try to develop this new battery, but they reckon twenty twenty seven. The solid state battery. It's an oxide solid state battery, and they're saying they're going to be able to deliver all of this that's a massive boon. Wouldn't that be amazing to be able to have that?
And I tell you, speaking of electric vehicles, what is really struggling on the transport landscape is electric motorcycles. Who blokes well and women who ride bikes. Motorbikes are more men than women. But there are lots of ladies that ride bikes. So I'm going to backtrack on them to say people who ride bikes are generally not warming to electric motorbikes.
You know why I was excited about electric motorbikes because the three top motorcycle manufacturers got together and they said, you know what, why don't we produce a standard battery and that way you do a swap and go when you go to your service station, instead of charging, you just swap the battery out, put the new battery in drive off. How good is that?
Yeah? There's one problem though, it makes no sound.
What the me screaming like the girl as I'm trying to right, So.
You don't understand it's motorbikes. It's about the visceral experience. It's about that fucking throbbing between your legs. It's about the noise, It's about the what I'm not talking about anything central. I'm talking about or it could be a bit central the motorbike, but it's that that fucking sitting on something while you're at the lights and your whole body is vibrating because you're sitting on a two and a half liter engine.
That's what it's about.
You.
I'll tell you what vibrator.
That's right, it's a six hundred pounds vibrator. That's of sorts. Can we get on something less actual?
Because I didn't enjoy my ride on the bike with you at all. I was too busy having the shit scared out of me when you were weaving through traffic.
It's because you're a big baby. If you just fucking let it go and you just you just sat really close. You wanted to just sit on the back without going because you just loved being in that position. You were enjoying it till we head it off all right now, Can you please tell me why Google has got a payback of squillion dollars and why they've gotten in trouble for something recently. Not that I'm too heartbroken for them.
It's an antitrust thing in the United States. So one of the problems is that Google has such a massive market share. You know, we even knew would you google something, you for something, it's when you search online, you google it. So there's a real concern now with a lot of lawmakers. This is kind of happening in the States at the moment, but I'm sure it's being thought. You know, a lot of people are thinking this through, whether you're an advertiser or whether you're somebody who just happens to be looking for something on search. The monopoly is totally with Google, and I think on phones it's about ninety five percent, and on desktop searches it's about ninety percent. But the concern is that Google has done a deal with a number of phone manufacturers to make their search feature or make the Google Search resident on that device. So when you unpack the device, charge it up, and start using it and you want to do an Internet search, Google is the default search parameter the search engine. And this is the thing that's concerning some of the lawmakers. They're saying that they've got a massive, massive market share, and that's the real concern at the moment. So there's Look, it's a hard one because I guess we use it. We use it every day? And what are the alternatives? I mean, you use duck duck go? Don't you?
Oh use duck duck go sometimes? But I do you know what, Like, I'm not a pro or an anti Google person. I use Google like nearly everyone I know, Right, But I think, well, if they built that, if they got that market share, if they did, I mean, who is it moral? Is it ethical? Who gives it?
Well?
I mean I care? But did they do anything illegal? Like do they have a monopoly? Yes? Did they did they create that? Yes? And it's like why, I mean, and I don't care about the welfare of Google, but I'm thinking, wouldn't we go, Hey, well done, that's just really good business, Like you've done some great business to get this foothold and this leverage and your hands down the market leader in that space. And do they have a monopoly?
Yeah?
Has anyone got a gun to anyone's head to use it?
No? Well, this is actually a legal case in the US. So the judge has ruled that Google actually broke the law with its monopoly. Okay, that's where this is the sticking point. This has been effectively a course against Google for the last twenty years. So what they're saying is it's the way that it serves up as search related ads. And so a federal court judge in the US has effectively put through this ruling to say that their share. So this is the Department of Justice. They're saying that the Google share is massive, and that Google had paid in Australian dollars, had paid over forty one billion dollars in twenty twenty one to make sure that its search engine was the default smartphone on app on browsers to keep it right. So that's the sticking point that it was paying off the phone manufacturers to make their search engine the default on their devices.
But why do we use the term paying off? Why don't we just say they had a commercial arrangement, Like to me, that seems like, hey, make us your your preferred search engine a provider, and we'll give you all this money. To me, that just seems like business.
Well, the term that the judge used was monopolist, and it acted to maintain a monopoly, so it forced out any other competition.
So they're just doing better. I mean, I don't know. To me, that's the point of business. We're the best. Yeah, yeah, I know, I don't know. To me, it reminds me of al Capone. You remember, do you know what happened with al Capone? Like he obviously he was a complete gangster, you know, he did all this stuff, right, and they couldn't they couldn't convict him on any crime, any of the fucking hundreds of murders and all the underworld stuff and all the stealing and all the embezzlement and all the corruption, and you know what, they ended up getting him on and putting him in prison.
For no I can't remember, but I know this, yeah, gone.
Yeah, tax evasion.
Oh yes, that's right.
It's like they you know, like such a white collar, boring crime. But anyway, you know, so, how.
Many searches do you reckon Google does in a day, as in people using the Google search engine? How many searches do you reckon have done in a single day all over the world? Just a wild guess.
So I'm going to go, well, there's eight billion people. Let's say half the billion half the people use, so that's four billion, and I'd say three I'd say we all do on average five searches a day. Twenty billion is my guess. Twenty billion searches a day.
Oh, that's a lot of searches. Well, you actually came pretty close at the start, were you're just estimating the usage. It's actually eight point five billion searches.
Okay, yeah, so that's two that's two and a bit per person. Yeah, if there's four million, or if we averaged it out to that's once a day, if we're for everyone in the world.
Yeah, yeah, okay, Well, don't forget though that there are like China has a massive population. You can't use Google in China because they've got the Great Firewall of China.
That's right, that's do you? I mean, I don't know if you know the I don't know if you know the answer to this, but you are a tai Chi teacher, so you should do they do they? Well? I mean you've you've been to China, haven't you?
Yeah? China four times?
Yeah, so I've never been there. So my point is you're going to know better than I'm going to know. Do the Chinese have much of an awareness of what happens outside? Like, do they I mean, do they know about you know, the rest of the world in terms of Google and or are they? Are they somewhat manipulated and brainwashed, and you know.
Yeah, that's a really really good question. I think that. I mean, if I look at my tai Chi family, we call that. That's a lovely term that I really like. I've got my ti Chair brothers in China and sisters in China. But because we have an ongoing dialogue, they do know what's going on around the world. So it's not like they're locked in and we talk about the Great Firewall of China. But you know, VPNs are still something, so they can actually get out of China if they're more clearly.
Tell people what that is. Tell people what VPN is.
So what you can do is you can use a service that can geolocate you anywhere in the world. So say you want to sign up to Netflix, you can use.
Make it easier. People like, what the fuck is geo locate? Just speak our language.
It hides where you are, so the Internet knows where you are when you log on. If you use a VPN, you can hide where you are and pretend to be somewhere else.
Has that thank you, thank you, professor? Fucking hell? So oh can you explain? Yes, so gea lok and everyone's just switched off. It's like all right, tell me about space. What's going on in the bloody intergalactic weirdness?
That is us intergalectic weirdness. It's not integlectic or weird. This is like you've heard of the vault, that there's a vault somewhere in Scandinavia that has all these seeds. It's a seed vault.
I've seen a doco on it. It's under a mountain. It's fucking amazing. Have you seen that, Tiff. So there's this vault where they keep all of these seeds from all of these plants around the world, so that if there's an apocalypse and the world falls apart and that goes to shit and then you know, one hundred people live, there's this vault where people can go and get all of these seeds and replant and regrow if everything. So but to get to it, sorry Patrick, you you literally enter this massive door that goes into a mountain, so it's like hundreds and hundreds of feet underground, so that it would pretty much survive well you know, we don't know, but most cataclysmic events to basically restart the world anyway, sorry Patrick, And it's called the vault.
Well to doomsday vault, and evidently scientists are now saying they want to start up another one. But guess where.
Australia.
No, I just said space. Wasn't that a hint?
Oh?
The Moon? The Moon? They would have put it on the moon. They want to because the Moon's cold enough to preserve the samples without needing to power it. Right.
So yes, here's the problem though, if the Earth blows up, we've got no fucking rockets to get to the Moon to retrieve our samples. Fucking that's great. So we can't get there.
So the seeds are cryo preserve, right, and then you don't have to worry about it. So you know, if the air conditioning breaks down, well there is no air conditioning to worry about because it's so cold on the Moon.
I think you're missing the point though, If we can't get to the moon because we're all dead from starvation because the seeds, the seeds are in.
I think it's not a bad contingency. We're not talking the whole earth blowing up here, right, which.
Isn't we aren't we? No? Did you hear what happened to the dinosaurs? You hear about that, you're familiar with that story.
What the Earth's more than six thousand years old?
Well, well, no, it's not, because the Bible's true. But in some alternate evolutionary timeline, perhaps, yeah, in some fictitious timeline of dinosaurs, maybe that the Earth blew up once or twice.
It didn't actually blow up. Okay, So Throid collides with Earth. Giant plume of dust and dirt and debris enters the atmosphere, blocks out the sun, Earth goes into ice age. Dinosaurs die, but some animals, like the wily little animals that we ended up becoming, when you make it through, and then there's a big sign that says, build a rocket, fly to the moon. You can get all your seeds done.
Now, before you start stating all this stuff as a matter of fact, like you were there as an observer, could you start all of that with allegedly.
Oh sorry, we allegedly and the Earth allegedly there was a plume of dust and allegedly on the dinosaurs die. That's all the fossils and all the stuff that we know have been there for you know, all those hundreds of millions of years, four thousands last week, I was it last week? Yeah?
Can you tell me speaking of nothing to do with crime, I'm interested in this story. Record breaking seventy five million dollar ransom had to dark an Angels gang. I feel like these kind of that was that like an online thing mate.
Yeah, this is an interesting one because this is thought to have been the largest ever ransomware payment ever made. Because look what happens is that ransom were like activists or people who go out, their actors go out and they infect a system and lock out the entire manufacturing process or whatever it happens to be. That freezes out the company's information and they say to them, if you don't pay a certain amount of money within x amount of time, we're going to delete all of your data. So it's effectively what ransomware is. It happens on a small scale, It happens to everyday people, but it can also happen to large corporations and companies. And look, as an off the record, I do know that in Australia there was a company that made a decision to pay their ransomware because they were losing more money every day in production than they did to pay the people who were behind the ransomware attack. But they're saying this is like Threat Labs is a like as a group that looks into this sort of stuff. And what they're saying is that this is pretty deplorable because the thing is, so many legal authorities, so many jurisdictions say don't pay ransomware. Don't pay ransomware. It only encourages people to keep the system going. And so now this and this group called the Dark Angels evidently got a massive payment of seventy five million dollars paid to them by an undisclosed victim earlier this year, and that massively beat the previous record of forty million. So the problem is that this is a ransomware report that comes out and it's on the increase, and the problem is, you know, do we pay it or don't we pay it? The Australian government says don't pay it. The American government says don't pay it. But it's pretty hard if you're in an organization where you're relying on the match, say, the manufacturing process, and allo, everything grinds to a holt. What do you do?
And especially it's all well and good for the government, and I understand the intention behind that, and in principle I agree with that, but Let's say you're the owner of a fifty billion dollar company and you've got to pay out fifty million to get the wheels turning again, and you're losing ten twenty thirty million a day, and you go, well, it's all well and good, but if we don't pay it, my business is fucked and I'm fucked, and we go broke, and my five thousand employees don't have a job. And the easy way to fix that, in inverted commas is to do this. It is. It is a real conundrum and a you know, like financial and moral and ethical and legal dilemma. And while I agree with the intention and the sentiment behind the don't give in to criminals, I can understand in certain I think everything is context dependent.
You know.
It's like I would never hurt anyone, but if someone was hurting my mum, I would definitely hurt someone. Like it depends on what's going on. You know, would you ever want to kill anyone? Of course I would never want to kill anyone, but you put any person in some situations, in an extreme situations, you go, well, if it's like, you know, show me a dad or mum that won't die to protect their child, or kill someone who's trying to hurt their child, you know, I think, and that's an extreme stretch, but I think I don't think that all of these rules or laws are Yes, they're black and white, but in certain things like this where you think, well, someone's going to lose everything and everyone that works in that organization can pay these crooks, and you go, yeah, it doesn't help because now we're kind of encouraging the crooks. But yeah, that's one of those there is no right and wrong, but it's understandable either way.
I think the key finding out of this one is we need to pour more resources into cybersecurity and to kind of churning out of I guess universities where people are using AI to learn cybersecurity. Now, I'm thinking that if the right investment is made to try to encourage businesses and not just big business but smaller businesses to just do what they can to increase their security, and if the government can do that, then we're going to prevent it in the first place. It's that whole prevention is better than the cure.
I just realized I've got another appointment in four and a half minutes, So Patrick, you're the best. How do people find you and connect with you?
You can go to websites now, dot com, dot au. There's all the stuff about what we do. So feel free reach out say gooday.
Thank you for that, thank you and thanks kids. I feel like tis been really distracted today. Have you noticed that? Patrick?
Oh? I know she was just taking it all in, weren't you, Ti? I understand loaded dak dack go and installed it. To be honest, I.
Knew she was doing something else because she definitely wasn't paying attention.
Is every time you talk about.
It, I'm like, I've got to do that, and then I forget, and I'm like, well, I'm doing it now because I'll forget.
See that's good, that's great. She actually listens to what you're saying, Craigo.
Yeah, you're only getting paid half of this episode. All right, thanks everyone, Thanks mate,
