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Patron Bonus Episode [Unlocked] - Zach
23 Plays4 years ago
Josh and M fill you in on either Aotearoa New Zealand's greatest contribution to AI, "Zach," or the most obvious scam in the world...
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Transcript
Humorous Dickens Parody Introduction
00:00:08
Speaker
It's the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy patron bonus episode. Hello and welcome to another exciting edition of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy patron bonus episode. I'm here with Charles Dickens, whose new book, A Tale of Two Titties, has just come out in hardback. Charles Dickens, good evening. I like it in titties.
00:00:38
Speaker
It's an actual quote from Charles Dickens, I'll have you know. Well, you are Charles Dickens, so I'm assuming if you say something, those are actual quotes. Give us another quote from Charles Dickens. It was the best of times, it was the first of times. I believe you are paraphrasing the hit cultural icon, The Simpsons, at this particular point in time. No, I'm paraphrasing The Simpsons, paraphrasing me, paraphrasing The Simpsons, paraphrasing me.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yes, I'm sure that made sense to you. Eventually, have you watched the Cheers episode where Fraser tries to read Dickens to the bathroom? I have actually, yes. It ends with people jumping out of an attack helicopter. And Lilith, what have I done? Yeah. Yes, good story, that one. Classic. And that has absolutely nothing to do with the content we're talking about this week.
00:01:28
Speaker
I really have no idea why I started with that, but then again, I always start these episodes not knowing what's going to happen next.
Introducing Zach AI: A Curious Case
00:01:35
Speaker
So we're going to be talking about New Zealand's greatest contribution to AI research, Zach, a product of the, and I'm going to say this now, terribly named The Terrible Foundation, which seems like it kind of gives the game away from the very off, and yet at the same time, apparently, didn't to a large number of people.
00:01:58
Speaker
Now, as I think we said in the main episode, we have talked about this in the past, but things appear to have actually wrapped up for once with one of these stories. This was something that our very own David Farrier has been talking about for a while.
00:02:14
Speaker
Even though he's had massive success with Tickled and with the Dark Tourist series on Netflix, he's still looking out for those weird, wacky news stories that he can dig his nails into. For a while he was talking about Bashford Antiques, an antique store in Ponsonby here in Auckland, who appeared to make all of their money by clamping the wheels of cars who parked outside their business in a very badly marked private space or something.
00:02:42
Speaker
Now, you might think that's an odd story to be fixated upon by someone who did the tickle king, tickled, and dark tourist. But there's also a person in the story about Bedford Antiques who claims to be European royalty. So it got very weird, very quickly.
00:03:00
Speaker
Bashford to Antiques is gone and they just changed the law actually so that the maximum you can be fined for having your wheel clamped is $100 now. Yes, which some people said, well that's that there's no financial incentive for us to have a wheel clamping business to which people have replied, good.
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, it turns out you actually don't need that business. No. But anyway, so that's one answer.
Capabilities and Concerns: Is Zach AI Real?
00:03:22
Speaker
But the other one has been the story of Zach, the medical AI, which is he's been coming back to over the course of a few years as new developments have come up. So where to begin? Let's begin at the beginning back in 2018.
00:03:37
Speaker
Well, actually, it kind of actually goes all the way back to 2015. That's why you're saying, because there's the earliest set-up stuff, but things didn't start getting interesting until around 2017. Let's start with the Big Bang. So go back several billion years. So several billion years, the entirety of matter and time was condensed into a singularity in something sort of a whole dense state, and then something happened, and then they might be giants sung about it.
00:04:03
Speaker
and then there was the Sheldon and Leonard and all, they never really watched that show much. I actually couldn't stand it. It was okay to begin with and then like three seasons later I caught an episode and it's like okay so Sheldon's just a prick now, like he went from lovable nerd to just an asshole. Yeah.
00:04:22
Speaker
Anyway, so a little while after that... After the advent of the Big Bang Theory TV show. I mean, a long way after the actual Big Bang. Well, relatively. The creationist at which point it was only about 8,000 years ago. This company claimed to have a revolutionary advance in medical technology, the artificial intelligence called ZAC. And what ZAC could do for you, if you were a doctor,
00:04:50
Speaker
is take a recording of your sessions with a patient and then return to you fully typed up and formatted patient notes to go into your records, thus saving a lot of time and effort in documentation. It could also
00:05:07
Speaker
interpret electrocardiogram results or ECG results, which meant you could just send these results to the AI and then it would come back with an interpretation of them, thus saving you time.
Meet the Creators: Elbrich and David Whale
00:05:22
Speaker
So David Ferrier got interested in this partly because it kind of seemed too good to be true. The claims that they were making about this AI would be very impressive if they turned out to be real. And partly because the people behind it seemed to be somewhat opaque.
00:05:42
Speaker
in their dealings with the rest of the world. Yes, very big on promoting themselves, very short on being able to support those promotions with concrete facts. So we're talking here about a father-son duo.
00:05:58
Speaker
Elbrich Whale and his father David Whale who set up the Terrible Foundation which we'll be getting to shortly but also been involved in things like the Luminous Group
00:06:15
Speaker
Now, back when they were being profiled, and this is actually around about 2015 or so, they claimed to have UK investors and they claimed to have millions of dollars being put forward towards particular projects. And yet when Faria investigated all of these links, their major UK investor, a guy by the name of William Creelk,
00:06:45
Speaker
I don't know, I'm afraid. KREUK had no digital footprint whatsoever, which doesn't mean that they didn't exist, but it seemed unusual that a wealthy investor would have no contact details online at all, because how else do you get in contact with your potential investor?
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, so things seemed a little suspect to begin with, especially looking into the details of how Zach supposedly worked.
Expert Doubts: Scam or Reality?
00:07:19
Speaker
Anyone actually researching AI who was asked about it said that doesn't sound credible at all.
00:07:25
Speaker
Especially the way it worked was that you recorded your session with the patient and then communicated with Zach via email. If you sent the recording off and then a little while later you'd get 20 minutes or so later. And this is dealing with one patient. You'd send one patient's recording off by email to Zach and then 20 minutes later typed up notes would appear in your inbox.
00:07:55
Speaker
And this led to AI researchers going, so this makes not a lot of sense for a variety of reasons. One, email seems like a really unusual user interface choice. Two, those result, if it's simply doing a natural language pass, should be pretty much instantaneous.
00:08:20
Speaker
Three, the fact you can only do one patient at a time, as opposed to doing lot to lot simultaneously, seems to go against the way that AI research is working. And four, it sounds a little bit like a scam as if you're sending your recordings off to a human being via email and they're typing up your patient notes and pretending to be an AI called Zack. Indeed, yes, when asked,
00:08:47
Speaker
What would be the difference between an AI doing this and just some guy typing it out? They never really gave a decent response. Now, there were a couple of medical professionals who had been trialing this service with the consent of their patients, who would sing the praises of Zach. There was a Dr. Stephen Smith, a GP from Christchurch.
00:09:07
Speaker
Dr. John Pickering, an associate professor at Otago University, was working with them as well, and they would sing the praises of it, and they would get quite affronted, I think, at any criticism, how much of that was faith in the AI, and how much of that was refusal to countenance the idea that they might have been the victims of it.
00:09:30
Speaker
to the point that one of them said, look, I'm religious and I believe in God, but I've seen more proof of Zach's existence than I've ever seen of God's. And you wouldn't actually say exactly what that proof was. No. No. So it was divine revelation. It was there. That bit where
00:09:47
Speaker
Alvin Plantaker talks about, you know, the divinitus centaatas in the brain. There's also the divinitus ais in the brain, which gets tickled when you have experience of an AI, which tells you the AI must necessarily be true. It's a basic fact about the world. I can't refute that in any way.
Internal Affairs Investigation: Charity or Fraud?
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah, so David Ferrier did his usual David Ferrier-ish thing and would sort of persistently ask questions. He actually got to meet the whales at one point in their weird office with strange looking sort of mathematical equations scribbled on the windows and whiteboard marker.
00:10:28
Speaker
and things like that, and still never really got a lot of fairly extreme claims from them, but never really much to back it up. There's the talk of the, what was it, custom silicon computer networks that Zach was running on and the enormous amounts of money that he was valued at and so on and things like that. But again, it was impossible to basically nail down any sort of concrete details about what this thing actually did, how it worked.
00:10:57
Speaker
and where the money was coming from, or if indeed there was any money. And that's where the update comes in because around about the time that Farrier is doing his investigation,
00:11:09
Speaker
The Department of Internal Affairs, which basically does the whole auditing of businesses in the country, got interested in the charitable foundation aspect of the terrible foundation, so the Wales' grant-giving body, and wanted to find out why if they were meant to be a charitable foundation that gave out grants,
00:11:35
Speaker
they weren't giving out grants. So they wanted a little bit of investigation as to what's going on here. You say you're a charity, but you're not acting like one. And so they launched an investigation, one which Faria tried to find out as much information as possible. And then in December of last year, the DIA released their findings. And the findings were
00:11:59
Speaker
Not a very good look. No, indeed. Albie Whale and his father have found to engage in, quote, serious wrongdoing. Well, that sounds serious. It does. It's got the word serious in it with the word wrong.
00:12:15
Speaker
joined up with word doing directly afterwards. It sounds like a very active seriousness they've been doing and it sounds wrong. It does. Yes, I mean the details of the report sound quite similar to the details of David Ferrie's
00:12:32
Speaker
investigations. They had a very hard time getting straight answers out of anyone. Apparently, any time they would ask them questions of Albie Whale, David Whale, Dr. Seddon Smith, Dr. Melanie Atkinson, who was another trustee, each would always sort of say, pass the question off to each other. No one would ever answer. They'd say, oh, you'll have to ask him. Oh, and then
00:12:56
Speaker
I don't know that much about that. You have to ask Albie about that. And Albie would go, no, actually, I think you'll find that Melanie knows more about that. Melanie will say, no, no, you need to talk with Albie. Or Albie doesn't know. Well, you know, you can always ask Robert. Robert will know about that. Oh, Robert doesn't know. Ask David. And to the extent that they did give answers, they were inconsistent, misleading and untruthful.
00:13:21
Speaker
apart from the claims that appeared to be more fanciful. I mean, this was around the time, as I recall from David Ferri's reporting, they were starting to say things like that Zach was acting as the CEO of their company, that people were claiming to have had phone conversations with Zach, that Zach was now able to actually place phone calls and speak to people.
00:13:44
Speaker
But basically the... The DIA also tried to interview Zach. Yes, yes, in response to these claims that Zach could be spoken to, they said, well, can we speak to him then? And that did not happen, I believe. They did get an initial email where it appeared that Zach was trying to get information about them, but that then didn't seem to go anywhere.
00:14:07
Speaker
No. And we should say Zach allegedly sent an email to get information from them since I think the lead is not particularly well buried here. We don't think Zach actually exists. No, it does not appear to be any tangible evidence that that's the case. Apparently at one point I'll be claimed that they got Zach from Mars.
00:14:27
Speaker
So it was asked, where did you get the technology from? And he said technically, Mars. Which means that he's pals with Andy Bishaga. Oh my God. Why are we doing an expose on the friends of Andy? We should be lauding them. We should. I don't know. Something's gone horribly wrong here, but let's put that to one side. We have failed you, Andy, once again.
00:14:53
Speaker
So, the eventual finding that they concluded that there's basically no evidence that the Terrible Foundation is this large multinational corporation that they claim to be.
00:15:08
Speaker
basically found that, as we were saying before, it was always a little bit unclear exactly who was doing the duping and who was being duped. Were these doctors actually working with the whales to perpetuate their con? Or had they actually bought the con that the whales had given to them and didn't want to admit to themselves or others that they'd been duped?
Belief or Deception: What Drives the Creators?
00:15:29
Speaker
The DIA's opinion basically seemed to be that the whales were the ones doing the the falling of people and that Doctors Atkinson and Stephen Smith
00:15:39
Speaker
were basically not in on the con, at least, but probably not doing their duties as proper trustees of this organisation to know what the hell it's doing. Open question here is, why? Why did they do this? Well,
00:16:00
Speaker
A guy I work with sold his car to another guy, and I don't know exactly what... So you should stop the story there. And I think that explains it. That explains the whole lot. No, he... I can't remember exactly how it worked out, but the guy had given him evidence, like a bank statement, showing him that he had the money to pay for my workmate's car. And due to the arrangement, my mother actually gave the guy his car without getting the money first.
00:16:29
Speaker
and then didn't hear from the guy again and had to do all sorts of following up to try and find this guy and get his money out of them and eventually the police were involved, but purely because he'd given him a faked bank statement. So that was actual fraud. So the police, you know, if it had just been a guy had stiffed him
00:16:47
Speaker
on his on his payment then he may well have been out of luck completely but basically the police got involved they found the guy who at that stage had already tinted the windows and started modding the car and and we all sort of had to ask what the hell was this dude thinking and I kind of wonder maybe some people are just kind of fantasists some people some people maybe just think that if they can talk fast enough shit will turn out the way they want it to well
Comparing Scandals: Zach AI vs VW Emissions
00:17:13
Speaker
see
00:17:13
Speaker
My theory is a variation of that and it's the VW emission scandal all over again. So the thing about the VW emission scandal was that VW was engaged in a research program to create a new emissions reduction technology.
00:17:32
Speaker
Because what they didn't want to do was license tech from another car manufacturer. Because that meant that every year they had to pay a license fee, and every car they sold had to be licensed as well. So you've got two revenue streams going to a competitor, which you want to keep to yourself. And also you want to sell your tech on to other companies. So they spent a large amount of money trying to get this emissions reduction technology to work.
00:18:01
Speaker
And it was getting somewhere, but it A, wasn't as good as the tech they were already using, and B, wasn't reliable. So what they did was they faked their emissions using various sophisticated cheap devices in tests in the UK and the EU, because they thought in a few years time, it won't matter. We're cheating now, but once the tech is up and running in a few years time,
00:18:31
Speaker
If we're not caught, it's going to be fine and we'll have cars that actually do have reduced emissions after all. And so you get this notion that we've got a really great idea.
00:18:43
Speaker
we've got a proof of concept which is kind of fudged but with work we can make it do what we're going to do and then eventually the tech doesn't come to fruition but you've already got people on board you have to maintain the fraud to keep them
00:19:01
Speaker
Because if you lose them, then A, you lose your first round of backers and B, you get a lot of bad press. So you continue the con to keep them alive and you keep spending their money or using their expertise to try and develop something in the background.
00:19:18
Speaker
So I imagine this is that classic case of two people going, I bet we can make a really good natural language passing AI that will do a very specialised task. So doctors' notes, given that doctors use technical terms and they have in theory a kind of standardised note-taking system. You've got an AI which has easy targets to hit,
00:19:42
Speaker
with a limited language set to work with. Shouldn't be that difficult, surely, to make an AI that can take patient notes and then produce a written-up form quite quickly. Turns out that our first pass at the Natural Language Passer isn't very good, so we'll just employ someone to sit in a room, take those recordings, type them up whilst we work on the AI over there.
00:20:07
Speaker
It's not getting any better. There can events. We've got an AI which is working. We've got to maintain the calm. Oh God, this is my life now. Well, it's possibly a more charitable interrelation and indeed returning to my example of the guy ripping off the guy buying a car.
Delusion or Deceit: Final Thoughts on Zach AI
00:20:24
Speaker
Our two theories were either this person was just living in a dream world and thought they could just things would magically work out or possibly
00:20:34
Speaker
They had convinced themselves that they don't have the money now, but if they can just stall the guy for a bit, then they'll get the money together and we'll be able to pay for him. I'm good for it, man. Come on. So, I mean, I suppose...
00:20:48
Speaker
It's one thing to say, oh, we haven't quite got this AI working, so we need to just for the greater good, perpetuate the sort of a con, and another to start talking about getting things from Mars and weird computer technology that doesn't appear to exist.
00:21:06
Speaker
AIs that they're essentially magical, so I don't know if there might be a small amount of delusion there as well. Yeah, the Mars thing does indicate some degree of phantasmagorical thinking. Unless, I mean, I don't know if we know the context, if they were said with an eye roll or a wink or a, you know, if the guy or just, you know, was saying it because he literally had nothing and thought, I'll just say whatever first comes to my head, we don't know.
00:21:35
Speaker
But yes, it's an interesting story, and it's just kind of fascinating that a story which, when you first hear it, seems so incredible that you go, how can anyone believe it, does seem to have taken in an associate professor at the University of Otago. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's the...
00:22:01
Speaker
That, I think, is possibly the more surprising aspect of it. I mean, if these people are just con men, or even, you know, well-intentioned con men, that's one thing, but actual medical professionals buying into it to the level that some of them did. I mean, going back to David Ferri's earlier examples, they really
00:22:23
Speaker
I think it was Dr Seddon Smith who really did seem to get quite irate at being questioned as to whether or not this thing he's interfacing with is what it claims to be. Indeed, when the DIA were interviewing him, he actually talked about David Ferri as being a bit of a conspiracy theorist.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah, so it's odd to see professional people and experts in the field, but I guess not in the field of AI and computer systems, buying into the whole thing. Yeah. So yes, a curious little tale.
00:22:58
Speaker
and one which actually appears to have come to a decent sort of a conclusion. Oh, David Ferrier always has a part three. Well, this is part five now or something. I think he's gone to enough of it. I mean, I don't know the tickled kind of screech to halt a little bit when the guy they were investigating died. Although his empire still appears to continue in his absence. And is diversifying.
00:23:26
Speaker
But for now, at least, it doesn't look like Zach, the amazing medical AI, is going to be making any more statements anytime soon. Unless Zach gets in contact with us. Via Andi Bishago, I assume. Well, they've both been to Mars.
00:23:47
Speaker
Or maybe he'll go and talk to Clearview AI. And so they'll have a thing where they can, you can upload a photo of your face and they'll transcribe your medical history based upon it. Cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer. I assume that's how it'll work, yeah. Yeah, precisely. So I think that's it. It is indeed. We'll be back next week with a news episode for those of you who are... And use Patreon. Because you are...
00:24:15
Speaker
I don't know why I said it for those of you who are patrons. Because you are if you're listening to this. Occasionally I do make the mistake of forgetting to put this as a patron-only broadcast via Podbend, so occasionally some people do get to listen to it outside of it. I apologise for...
00:24:31
Speaker
Podbean is this weird thing when you upload things to it. Sometimes when the upload finishes it resets a whole bunch of buttons. Which means you can have clicked patron only and then the upload completes and you don't notice it's actually gone to everyone. Which is basically made missing that I probably should spend more time looking at the screen rather than go, is it finished uploading it? Post.
00:24:54
Speaker
There you go, a little tantalising glimpse behind the curtain there for you. But next month we've got some humdingers of stories. We do actually, we've been saving up a few interesting ones. One of which is going to be quite surprising, especially given
00:25:11
Speaker
Given how early we'll be revealing the surprise. It will, yes. To say any more would probably give away too much. It's true. So keep on listening and you'll find out. But for now, I guess all we can do is say goodbye. Totally pip pip. And also goodbye.