“We need to stop regulating the product and start regulating those who misuse it.” H-Hour #276 Tom Sherwood

For H-Hour perks, join the H-Hour Discord guild: https://discord.com/invite/KCb54MQNxd and follow H-Hour Hugh on X: https://x.com/HughKeir ****** "We need to stop regulating the product and start regulating those who misuse it." In this episode of H-Hour, host Hugh Keir interviews Tom Sherwood about his groundbreaking work with Sentra AI, an innovative technology aimed at providing mental health support for veterans and blue-light workers. They discuss Tom's journey from the military to tech, the challenges of tackling PTSD, and the role of AI in enhancing mental resilience and performance. The conversation also touches on data privacy, the resistance from existing charities, and the future of AI in mental health. Tune in for a deep dive into the intersection of technology, mental health, and the need for innovative support systems. https://getsentra.ai/ Tom Sherwood, a British Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sentra AI and a pioneer in trauma-informed, dual-use generative AI for mental health. Sentra AI is a 24/7 AI companion specifically engineered for acute psychological crises and long-term resilience, serving both defence and security forces and civilian populations affected by trauma.

This episode is sponsored by Sin Eaters Guild - sineatersguild.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome back to Hey Chour. Uh my guest today is Tom Sherwood, who we will we will we will uh we will um get into the podcast shortly. There is, if you are new to Hey Chower, there is a an episode before this one. It's called the Icebreaker. Hey Chour, Icebreaker with Tom Sherwood. Go on to the icebreaker, it's a good little uh lead into this, it's about 15 minutes long, and it's a QA session with Tom. Questions submitted by patrons on all sorts of topics from um from AI to what else did we cover?

SPEAKER_05 0:44

Safety, governments, governments, AI.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

We love the government, digital ID. Anyway, go back to that, listen to that. That was my suggestion, or you can just listen to this now and then go to the icebreaker after. But do consume both. Um enough of that nonsense. Tom Shird, welcome to the studio, mate. Absolute pleasure to have you here. Thank you for having me. Uh oh, I did want to move that mic, didn't I? God damn it. One one second. One second. It's not you, darling, it's me.

SPEAKER_05 1:13

Live and direct.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Do you know what it is? It's because where it was, I couldn't see your mouth.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

That seemed really close.

SPEAKER_05 1:22

No, that's all good. I did feel like I was in like a singing recording studio beforehand, though. I felt like I felt like John Motson.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Right. Let's let's get on with it. So um we're gonna, you know, I I I definitely want to hear about how you got to where where you are now. I want to hear about Century AI and everything in between. Um however, so you've been you've basically been working in tech for what 10 uh 2017 was when I first started at Spotify.

SPEAKER_05 1:52

Eight years. Eight years, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

2017. So man, yeah, and that was I'm just thinking of how crazy the evolution of the industry has been over that time for a bunch of different reasons. Like when did when did podcasts really go through the roof?

SPEAKER_05 2:14

That was sort of I'll tell you when it was it was when I was at Spotify because I hired because uh one of the roles that oh well one what I was responsible for at Spotify was um helping grow and hire the um content and editorial team was what I used to specialise in. So hiring people for who used to run the playlists and actually decide which artists would get on different playlists, and they made what they've referred to at Spotify as making bets. So each so each year, uh Daniel Eck, the founder and CEO of Spotify and the board, uh, as part of their strategies, they would make bets each year. So, okay, we're gonna bet $500 million on this part of the business. That's what they would refer to it as as a bet. And they bet on podcasts in 2017, 2018. Um, and then he did a head of podcasts for Europe. Um, and that was one of the roles that I hired. A guy called Rowan from BBC. He was head of content, he was content manager for like six music and that kind of stuff. He became highly recommended. And um that's when Spotify started acquiring podcasts. So I thought when did they acquire Joe Rogan? 2018, 2019?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Something like that.

SPEAKER_05 3:19

It was what 500 million, or it was an insanely big deal.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

I think it was 300 million dollars.

SPEAKER_05 3:23

Yeah, 300 million dollars. Um, and obviously off the back of that, they've bought a lot of other content as well. But they they bet big. Um and it's paid off. I think they started to realise that long form audio content was the way forward. Um, and because of the the the format of podcasts being that you could be sat in a living room with those people, it's very unstructured, uh traditionally, uh very very conversational, and you you feel like you can create a personal relationship with those people.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

200 million over three and a half years.

SPEAKER_05 3:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Well, on the I mean on the long form subject, right? And this is I'll ask you on your your opinion on this. Um obviously it's something I think about a lot, yeah. Uh, because of I do long form podcasts. I am I I am skeptical as to how how long I I I think I think maybe the bubble's not bursting, the trend is falling off now, I think, for long form. I don't know. I I and I'm that's not based on anything actually, apart from my own opinion that people's attention spans are getting shorter and less people are having to commute because more people work from home, and so listening to an hour and a half, two, three, four hours in some cases podcast is just there's less people who are able and willing to do it, I think. What do you think?

SPEAKER_05 4:48

I think it depends on how gripping the content is. I think, yeah, if you have a four-hour podcast, a four-hour weekly podcast on rugby, for example. I I listen to a lot of the like Rugby Union Weekly and those are ones that are 45 minutes long, and it's yeah, perfect commute, it's a recap of the weekend or whatever. Um, but when you've got a really interesting story, so I mean the longest podcast I've listened to is about six and a half hours.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Who was that? Was that Bellagi?

SPEAKER_05 5:14

No, it was Sean Ryan's podcast. Um with Jay Cal.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Oh, yeah, quite recent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:20

Yeah, the British SAS guy who got charged of murder. Um, I just saw the title, British SAS operator, Charge of Murder. I was like, I need to listen to that. And then yeah, it was six and a half hours long, but the narrative was really strong. So you actually like you for lack of a better way, you couldn't put it down if it were a book. Like you wanted to hear what was happening, and yeah, it was really, really well structured um podcast, and I ended up quite enjoying it. Um, listened to it over about three days, um, and it was kind of like a good book. That's good. I I couldn't wait to put my headphones back in and listen to the next bit of the story. Well, like a short audiobook length, actually, since that first exactly. Um, but also I think that I mean I I certainly do I listen to podcasts when I go to sleep. So I could not do that, yeah. But I'll I'll I'll listen to some obscure stuff. Um how obscure are we talking, Tom? Uh quantum physics, um, space, yeah, black holes, yeah, stuff that you really have to listen to, but is a subject that's interesting, but also on the on could be on the cusp of boring.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:24

Does that make sense? So I think space is fascinating. I mean they say that a lot of people when they get to the mid to late 30s, they put fiction down and start listening to non-fiction or reading non-fiction. I'm I'm kind of the same. So I listen to yeah, Brian Cox is books. Um, I've listened to um yeah, uh who's uh Stephen Hawking's book, I listened to it as a uh audiobook just to go.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Which one is in the book and fucking loads? Like well, it doesn't matter which one, but anyway.

SPEAKER_05 6:53

Brief history of time. Oh, the first one. Yeah, brief history of time listened to because you find yourself. I mean, I I've got an incredibly active brain, and if I just lie there in bed in silence, my I actually end up thinking about loads of random stuff. So I'm like, okay, how can I distract my brain into something that's also quite educational and that I have to focus on? So when someone's talking about the the formula of a subatonic particle, your brain starts to really get into it. Um, or yeah, it could be sport, and anything that's just kind of easy listening that I have to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

On the subject, off topic, on topic. On the subject of uh fiction, non-fiction, yeah. I did that. I did non, I went years doing non-fiction. Uh, but every so often I'll step back into fiction and realise, oh, there's a place for it. Yeah, I actually get something with this. And I've recently finished reading Project Hail Mary. Have you heard of this? No, it's by the same writer who did The Martian. Okay, the Martian obviously got made at the film, and Project Hail Mary's getting made at the film, it's getting released March next year. Okay, got Ryan Goslin in it, so I'm obviously I'm gonna watch that. Yeah, got a man crush on him.

SPEAKER_05 7:57

I think my wife would like that film.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

She's no interest in space, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but brilliant book. Space, so it's about it's about um it's about a cosmic event which causes a crisis on Earth, yeah. And this this non-astronaut but science dude has to go into space on a suicide mission.

SPEAKER_05 8:17

It's fucking fucking good luck. Who's who's directing it? Because um Interstellar is one of my favourite films of all time.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Do you know what? I used to think it was niche to say that, and apparently it's not. Everyone says the same thing. It is my all time, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:31

It is an absolute film. One of our all time favourite films.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Um Project Hail Mary Director. There's only one problem with uh Interstellar, and that is where he says that love is the answer. He says it's love, love is the connecting thing across space-time, but I'm like, oh no, didn't have to say that, but not need that.

SPEAKER_05 8:50

What he's very good at, Christopher Nolan, with the films that he makes is the ability to create that human emotion to it. If you think about Oppenheimer, he already had that.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

That's at the end of the film where he says the love bit.

SPEAKER_05 9:03

No, yeah. I mean, not everyone's crazy bastards like us who just want to see science and violence. Um, there is an element of emotion. Oh, I blog several times in that film, yeah. Exactly. And I I think it's a fantastic film. And I I know that they had a number of they've had a lot of physicists work on it to ensure they could get it as close to most recent theory as possible. So for example, when when they go to the other planet and they think it's a mountain range and it's not, it's actually a wave because of gravity, then they realise that uh, for example, with the soundtrack, every time you hear the click, the metronome that's actually a year going past on the spaceship. And the the actual links. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, so when when they're on the on the planet with the water, which is actually filmed in Iceland, I think. Um obviously they didn't go to space to film it, that'd have been quite impressive. Um, there's a metronome in the background just clicking, and that's uh that's every year that's going past. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Um I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_05 9:57

So yes, it's it's cool, it's a very, very clever film, and I it's it's a kind of film where you can watch it four or five times and just still think it's the best and the best. Every time you watch it, you go, it's really good. Yeah, um, same as me. Most of his films are simply amazing. I watched Tenet again at the weekend. Uh actually, I was just gonna mention that. I'm still struggling to get my head around it.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Well, I I I understand the first time I watched that film, the first two times I watched a film, I was drunk, right?

SPEAKER_05 10:25

Probably made more sense then.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

It did not. The first time I was like, what on earth? The second time I watched it and I was less drunk. The third time I watched it, I was sober. I still couldn't get my head around it. And I think the problem, I think the problem is because I'm trying to I'm trying to understand how this is happening. Like literally the space-time thing go, right? I need to I need to understand that this happens. So I'm trying to use logic to understand it. Logic has nothing to do with it, and like that's why, because I can't work it out. I think I just have to accept I'm not gonna work this thing out. Yeah, one because it's a film, it could just be at a toss, bullshit, like not possible in space-time, space-time possibilities. Technically, but you never know, or it could just be a case more likely that I'm just never gonna be able to understand it.

SPEAKER_05 11:07

Maybe it's just well above our pay grade.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That in that Project Hail Mary book, um, which apparently is uh is apparent is apparently super accurate in like uh scientifically, technically accurate from the Armageddon. Oh no, they're not gonna say Bruce Willis up to not like Armageddon, but is you know, there's there's references in there to uh the passage of time of someone who's traveling near the speed of light compared to someone who's back on the planet and all and the angles, angles you're moving away from each other, and how time will move faster or slower, depending on the angles, the the angles and that how close you are to be like and I'm trying to read the book, trying to work that out. I don't you don't need to work it out for the book, but I want to understand this stuff. I'm like, oh my god, this is mental. This is fucking crazy.

SPEAKER_05 11:58

The universe it's just a fascinating subject. One of um a good good good friend of mine is um actually involved in Centrum was was one of our advisors in our previous company. Um, his son is kind of a jack of all trades, but he's just about to do his A levels and he's um due to get four A's at A level, and he's applied to go to Cambridge to study quantum physics. Nice. And I'm just like it's just absolutely fascinating. Um, the whole leap to to quantum, and I was just watching something this morning around um the Chinese have claimed that they have a radar that has quantum radar, so quantum entanglement is done that way.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

I've I've read this last week, I think I read it.

SPEAKER_05 12:38

So all of the stealth technology that the West have will become redundant if quantum radar, yeah, quantum entanglement works. Um but we all know about paper tigers when it comes to other other superpowers. So we'll be we will see, but um yeah, the the whole leap forward of quantum and technology is absolutely fascinating. Um, and I don't think 99% of the globe population, myself included, have really got a heads around how powerful it is um and the theory behind it, and if it does actually happen, it's gonna change the world. I mean you you think AI is changing the world at the moment, quantum computing or is a whole nother level.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Well, who is it said who has it said this years ago? Maybe maybe four or five years ago. I think it might you know who Balagi know Balagi, um what's his surname? Well, these these crypt any call is the crypto guy, but he's not crypto. Balagi, Balagi, Balagi. Uh there's only one Balagi. Oh the heck is it? Balagi Sr. Balagi Srinivesen, uh uh co-founder of Council. Um anyway, so he he was saying a few years back, or said he's the author of Network, the network state. Have you heard of that book?

SPEAKER_05 13:55

No, no, okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Anyway, so he was saying a few like a few years back, there's a there's a convergence of there's like four major technologies which are all maturing around about the same time, as in within the kind of the same decade. And one, and he said the the convergence, the the maturing of any one of these would fundamentally change things for people, you know, just AI, for example. We're in you know, we're at the early stages of that maturing now, right? Um, but there's four convergence at the same time, the convergence of four at the same time. One was quantum, one is quantum physics, but quantum game computing, the other, one is AI, uh, the other is robotics, yeah. And the fourth, I think, was space travel or may have been something else.

SPEAKER_05 14:35

Could it be fusion? Because the eye the French last week achieved a massive leap forward with nuclear fusion. It wasn't fusion. Um because that would be essentially infinite energy.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yeah, uh the the it the amount of change we were undergoing in such a short space of time is fucking crazy. Uh and and I think I think I think we didn't we haven't handled, as in the human race, I don't think we handled the age of information very well. Like the coming about of the internet and then social media, yeah, those two things. I don't think we handle that very well, right? At all, in terms of adapted with it very well. Certainly our generation didn't, you know, I'm a little bit older than you, our generation didn't, I think, handle it very well, you know, in sort of understanding how it impacts us, how to work with it so it doesn't impact us in a negative way. And I think now we're seeing the same with AI. Like it's just go about that quick. Like you're saying on the icebreaker, you know, AI has been around for a long time, but the availability of it hasn't, and certainly not to this level, you know. Uh like it concerns me that how many people on a minute by minute in their day jobs or their lives, mainly in the let's say the day jobs, right, are using AI to do whatever, write an email, write a document, understand, give me the TLDR on this, right? And and all of a sudden doing that really overnight, they've gone through this process because it's easier. And my concern is how is that impacting others uh impacting us cognitively? Like what kind of cognitive skills and ability are we going to be passing down to the generation or two generators below us? Literally in genetics, because I'd say that someone who is now using AI for everything because they're being lazy for everything, and at their own detriment, then their ability to focus and or process or plan documentation or plan how to form words either verbally or written into an email is disappearing because they're outsourcing that effort and that think into AI. That has to be impacting their competitive ability, right? And that means what gets passed on genetically gets reduced. The quality of the the quality of the mind, right?

SPEAKER_05 16:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Um I think that's a real problematic, real problematic for people. It does concern me. Like I really think we're gonna get stupid you on average.

SPEAKER_05 16:57

I absolutely understand the theory behind that. I I think that human evolution is a fascinating subject in itself, but I think that the to that point around the four technologies and how we're about to experience a hot hockey stick moment. Yeah, I think everyone sort of the internet was a hockey stick moment, or they're saying AI is a hockey stick moment. I actually don't think it was. I think that's the bottom of the hockey stick. I think we're about to I think the actual true growth of technology, as you said, with the um combining of these four leaps in technology, when they all come together is going to be insane. Um to adding to that, as mentioned the nuclear fusion, uh unlimited clean energy is I think the the the restriction on uh innovation at the moment is to do with how much energy we can put into it. You think about data centers and it's literally where we don't have big enough data centers to deal with the compute of what these uh these um quantum or um AI is doing, but then if you had nuclear fusion where it had completely unlimited, infinite energy, and you could power all of these data centers. I mean, what one one of the things that I know Elon Musk is uh interesting character, but one of the um tweets I saw little X posts, or whatever you want to call it the other day, was obviously data centers are limited on on Earth. The big the big next step is to have data centers on the dark side of the moon because it's cool, it's obviously it's cool, it's um it's a very stable environment. Um, there's no chance of humans getting kind of blown up, etc. etc. You could literally have mass data centers the size of the Sahara Desert on the dark side of the moon and it's just in a consistent state, and then you can then obviously power the uh the the information back using various different technologies uh to do that. And that it sounds sci-fi-ish. And if you would have said 15 years ago there's gonna be a data center on the moon, people would have said that's Star Wars chat. But I think within the next 10 years it's quite a possibility, especially now that the the race and the moon is back on within the next 10 years, you think. I think but why why not? We'll be in we'll we'll we'll be uh we'll be on Mars in the next five to ten years.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

If you think I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_05 19:15

No, I think we're all I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

I don't know about that. I and the reason is people in the industry that I that are sort of knowledgeable on this think that what Elon is saying in terms of Elon's time is wrong. It's possible, but it's gonna take much longer. Just because people liken it to uh oh, we did the moon, so Mars is easy. Whereas Mars, because of the distance, like the the logistical requirements are fucking crazy. Yeah, but the moon makes it is it is the moon is the race of the moon back on, is it a hundred percent?

SPEAKER_05 19:50

Yeah, because obviously we we did it in what 1969 was the original moon landing. Did that happen? Apparently did it happen. I'm I'm I'm I'm convinced it did. I'm very and I know there's just obviously various theories around there's there's obviously more compute in your your iPhone than there was in the whole of Apollo 11, etc.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Um well but I mean yeah, I get I but that into me isn't an argument against you know I'm I I think it went to the moon.

SPEAKER_05 20:15

I mean, why I mean there's there is a really good um TV series called um For All Mankind on Apple TV, yeah, where it's the alternative history where the Russians actually get there first. Okay, that's that's worth a watch if you're into kind of that kind of stuff. But um, you know, I I think we did go to the moon. What's it called for all mankind? For all mankind. For all mankind, not on Apple TV Plus, um where it's alternative history where the Russians actually get there first.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

I I mean I never I I never questioned it. The moon landings, right? Um and I still now think, yeah, of course we did. But I also, you know, there's like one of the one one of the things with the the age of information on the internet, as he was I was just dismissively talking about, uh is one okay. The the problem with it is there's so much bullshit out there, so much misinformation, and that was before even AI videos and voice generation came along, right? Um, but also they we also have great access to information we didn't have access to before. And one of the in one of the really interesting things about the moon landing stuff to me is that I find hard to understand, is that they apparently lost all of the data that they gained from the from the performance of the vehicles and the space platforms to get there, and also all the plans that they went into to making those things. Now, we could quite easily do that stuff. I'd like to think we could quite easily do that stuff again, but apparently it's not that simple. And and also I find it hard to believe that it that stuff could be accidentally lost without being deliberately misplaced or it didn't exist in the first place.

SPEAKER_05 22:00

I th I think that's a fair argument. I mean the Artemis program, which is the obviously the the NASA program that's ongoing at the moment, I'm a little bit confused how that's taking so long. So if you've if you've done it once, well they claim to have been what five times up there? So then fifty years later with all the technology we've got to go, it's gonna take us another five years to get there. So well I thought you'd know knew how to do it by now. Um so there's there's definitely a a logical argument against it. I don't know. I mean.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

There was a lot of fuckery back then. There was a lot of fuckery back then. Yes like I I've just finished Watergate. Yeah, so much. I've just finished a book called The Cold War, and it's and and I I started reading it because I don't I know very little about the Cold War, seen some great films, enjoy that stuff, and and I want to learn more about it. And I learned so much in it, especially around especially around uh the fuckery, all three superpowers doing at the time, or the two major ones, Russia and America at the time, but the level of the level of deceit and lying, uh deceit that they would go to in a for in a comments the greater good, mislead their own people um for that for the greater good stuff. And and and when I after finished that book, the things like oh making up the moon landing seem more plausible to me. Now I'm gonna just full disclosure, I think on the balance of probabilities we probably we probably did go because it's so it would be so hard. Yeah, you know, the argument against uh the the moon landers being faked would be well that means so many people were duped with it, yeah. You know, or so many people are in on the light.

SPEAKER_05 23:38

Yeah, someone would have cracked, someone would have cracked, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Someone would have cracked for me.

SPEAKER_05 23:42

If it was faked, I'd personally feel quite annoyed because I feel like we lied to you. Yeah, I'd be like, I really wish they did. So I I think it was an amazing incredible in like interplanetary, but we left the atmosphere of our own planet and went to another thing in space and landed there. I mean, how cool that we we did that. Um, and to think that just 75 years before that was like the industrial revolution and it's it just the the leaps in innovation. I'm a forever an optimist. So to hear if it turns out we didn't go, I'd be really quite disappointed. Because I'm I think it's amazing for your engineering, and that's why I think now the possibility of having a small star base, as they call moon base, um, and having a data center makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

In fact, the other thing, the other argument against this one I I I recently remembered that I thought about against the moon landing as being fixed, saying oh they can't be fixed. Because I think if there was if if if they were fixed, China and Russia would be gobbing off about it, they would not stop banging on about it. And and it's and it would be hard to hide that, right? Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen Russia or China say bullshit, they never went to the moon. I don't think I've ever seen it.

SPEAKER_05 24:59

Because China have been of, I mean, they land they landed on the dark side of the moon, didn't they? Not humans, but they landed a craft on the dark side of the moon over the last few years. Um, but also I think for national security reasons, there's so much we don't know as well. So obviously the Americans claim to have gone to the moon five times, I think it was five times, um, which I absolutely believe, but have there been more? Like what else is still up there? It's all really good having secrecy to be like, was it covered up? Um, but then the secrecy of what did they do that we don't know about?

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah. Okay, I've just googled it, right? So has Russia ever claimed the moon landers landings were fake? Uh this is with uh some I'm I haven't Googled it actually. I'm using Brave, Brave's uh search engine. Right, yes, Russia and has had individuals and entities within its space program and government who have claimed or suggested the US moon landings were fake, though this stance has evolved over time. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union publicly denied denied being in a race with the United States to land on the moon, even though they had an active and secret lunar landing program. So they probably denied it, but they were uh would absolutely be in the world. They would just push it.

SPEAKER_05 26:14

Yeah, they lost, that's what I said it was fake.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Uh Soviet officials claimed the US was engaged in a one-nation race and criticized the Apollo missions as wasteful, framing as a propaganda effort to justify massive spending. This denial was part of a broader Cold War narrative. Okay, Cold War I don't care about. I want recently. Okay. Uh in July 2024, Yuri Borisov, the head of Roscosmos, publicly acknowledged the authentic the authenticity of the US moon landings, stating that tests on lunar soil samples provided by NASA confirmed their authenticity. He emphasized that the samples were analyzed by the Russian Academy of Scientists, sciences, lending scientific credibility to the Apollo missions. Thus, while past and some current figures in Russia have questioned or claimed the moon landers were fake, the official stance is that they were record they recognized and it was real. No.

SPEAKER_05 27:05

Yeah. So on the there was a podcast I listened to, which is a physics podcast, that there was a question about this about what they do with the return mission to the samples and they distribute them all over the world. So it's a different scientist. They don't just send them to NASA and oh yeah, this is all this is all our science, we can't share it. Yeah. Because all the whole point of NASA is for the advancement of human humankind, etc. They took samples and they sent them to universities all over the world and said, look, you research that you might see something different than what we're seeing. Um, because they wanted to ensure distributed benefit um of it, which would back that up.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Yeah, and there's there's no way to fake that. Yeah, there's no way because they did it's a mineral. Yeah, but and they didn't have the technology back then to send a spacecraft unmanned, land, collect sample, and blast back, didn't they? All right, I'm sold. There we go. Yeah, I'm sold. Yeah, I mean you think Russia it they they Russia would have nothing to lose if they could prove it was fake, but how would you prove a negative? How do you prove a negative, right? But they could still they could leave they could maybe prove that footage was fabricated or whatever. But anyway, okay, it's done. Right, let's get off that topic. Yeah, we've we've we've we've we've we've gone into deep space already.

unknown 28:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

It's think this is the thing, these days there's so much there's so much information new information around my fingertips. The conspiracy theories are rife everywhere.

SPEAKER_05 28:27

I think this is your you what you were talking about around um is AI going to make us dumber? And I think this is my counter argument is actually if you have a thirst for knowledge, it's gonna make you smarter. I'm learning more and so I have a very, very fast moving, flitty brain. I don't know if I've got ADHD. I might have. I was never diagnosed with it. Um, I'm not gonna self-diagnose, I'll just deal with it.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

I've just done an episode on this for the psychologist, actually.

SPEAKER_05 28:50

Um but it's I just have a very fast-moving brain. Um, so actually, things like AI allow me to get stuff done really quickly and learn really quickly. So if it was, yeah, right, let's do a 16-page plan. That because I didn't have AI, that would have taken me ages because I wouldn't be able to concentrate on doing 16 pages of a plan. Whereas now I can be blind with Gemini or whatever, blah blah blah. I'm gonna do a 16-page plan. And because it's reacting to me, I'm interacting with it constantly, I'll do a six, it might still take me a couple of hours to do because I'm going back and forth and making changes, but it's like an interactive experience, not just me one way typing this exactly what because then it's like okay, well, is that right? Is that not right? I want to change this. It allows the I can whereas now with Gemini, there's the one I'm using a lot at the moment, oh, I'm not sure about this. Can we change this? What about suggestion here? And I've used it as almost like a tit as a teammate, and I bounce off it and I collaborate a lot with AI. So for me, it's been a massive advancement. I I feel like I'm learning so much more, and my ability to digest knowledge. I mean, um Notebook LM for me is fantastic. So again, because of the work we're doing, there'll be a new research paper that will come out. The chances of me sitting down reading a 25-page scientific journal and actually being able to digest it is quite slim. The ability for me to drop it into Notebook LM and then it produces a 10-minute podcast, summarize AI podcast summarising that paper, it's just the ability for me to learn that that information in 10 minutes rather than spending two hours. You're not aware of this. Okay, so it's doing that? So Notebook LM is part of the Google Suite.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 30:26

Notebook.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

So Notebook LM.

SPEAKER_05 30:28

If you were to do deep research or anything, you could give it any any kind of um information, it will then turn it into a podcast of two hosts talking about the subject.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

No, yeah. Holy shit.

SPEAKER_05 30:40

That's that's how I digest a lot of see like very technical. So uh but within century, we've got Ollie, who's our clinical lead, um, ex-Royal Marine, but now he's a medical doctor. What's his name? Um Ollie. Ollie. Ollie Blackford. So yeah, he was a captain of the Royal Marines in 40 Commando, then left and put himself through med school. Um, the Marines refused to put him through med school. That's that's a whole nother conversation. Uh um, and then Martin, um, our co-founder, PhD in computational social science, absolute genius. Um, so they're both very scientific, very good academic papers. I'm not. They will find a paper, I'll put it through Notebook LM, and then literally within a couple of minutes, it will create a free. Uh, if you've got the Google Suite, yeah. I mean if you if you've got like Google Business Suite, which is what, eight pounds a user per month? Which is not pennies and a dollar. Um, yeah, it will produce a podcast of two people talking about the subject. And you that so that's how for my podcasting, that's how I learn. That is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Um, but what's it like? What's the quality? Does it sound like an authentic conversation?

SPEAKER_05 31:44

I genuinely think it's two humans.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Have you got any on your phone now? Yeah, yeah. Can you play a sample? Okay, right. I need this, I need this in my life.

SPEAKER_05 31:52

Yeah, so uh okay. Notebook LM for the camera, yeah. Uh it's the app. So but there's one here on veteran suicide. Okay, you can just hold that next to the mic. Uh let me just bring it up.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

So welcome to the deep dive. We take complex sources and well, we boil them down to what you really need to know.

SPEAKER_04 32:19

Giving you that shortcut to being informed.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

Exactly. And today we're diving into something incredibly important. Uh often quite hidden.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

The sacrifices personnel by veterans.

SPEAKER_04 32:32

And sadly, the tragic That's the general backdrop.

SPEAKER_03 32:36

Yeah. But how does it look specifically for veterans? Is the overall risk higher?

SPEAKER_04 32:41

Interestingly, the overall risk for veterans isn't necessarily higher than the general population, according to the study. But and this is a big butt. Go on. The risk is significantly higher, like two to three times higher for veterans under the age of 25. Both male and female.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

Two to three times higher for the other thing. Holy shit.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

That is frightening. So you mean you can I feel some people wouldn't realize that that is AI generated.

SPEAKER_05 33:10

It's amazing. That is amazing. And the fact is it's conversational, it's like listening to a it generates a podcast. That is amazing. And so using obviously the technology now, like things like agent um agent space on Google, where us non-technical people can use prompt engineering to create an agent flow. Um, you can you can literally create it. So each morning, um so I was at the Google Cloud event earlier on this year where you can create a flow where every morning it'll do the research from the day before all the data. So if you're say a CFO and you want to know all the information the day before the reporting, each morning at 6am, the agent will run all of your company documents, all of the data, produce that into deep research, turn it into a notebook LM podcast, and then email it to you for for 6am. So when you go out for your morning walk or morning run, you can listen to the previous days reports of your company. So um, and you can you can automate all that. So every morning you literally get your kind of deep dive each morning as a review, rather than having to sit there on the train with papers and emails, you can just summarize it into a conversational podcast. So for people like me, it's an amazing way to put in that is brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Yeah, it's good. I anything where anything that can convert well one medium of information into another and make it more accessible or palatable or just you know it just and to be really clear, I don't work for Google.

SPEAKER_05 34:31

Um I just think it's they're quietly going about their business, producing they're not they're not sitting there screaming from the rooftops like Sam Altman is, they're quietly going about their business and just doing some really, really good work.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

But but that in itself has some issues, right? So I uh I'm always I always dislike using Google for anything because they're always listening, and like I don't know how they're using my data. I just know that they are an absolute powerhouse, they have access to my information, they are a profitable organization. Yeah, they are definitely uh they are definitely um they have definitely been clearly ideologically influenced in the past and still are somewhat.

SPEAKER_05 35:20

Well, the original Gemini launch was an absolute car crash for them.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Oh, I remember that.

SPEAKER_05 35:24

That was the images and it was like an image of uh can you can you create an image of a of an English mid middle-aged king or like um for the middle ages? It was like it's a black guy. It was like okay, come on. Like I forgot about that. And I think when when OpenAI first started, when they first released GPT 3, there was issues around because it was obviously built in San Francisco, it was um uh what's worse, nuclear apocalypse or misgendering Caitlin Jenner. Yeah, yeah, yeah and literally answers saying misgendering Caitlyn Jenner was worse than nuclear apocalypse. That thankfully has been flushed out. Um yeah, I I to your point around the data, um, it's a very, very good point, but I'm not sure if you're aware, but about a month ago, Google signed a deal with the US government um to produce Palantir style technology for cloud hosting. Okay. There actually is now part of Google for national security.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

What do you mean palantier style?

SPEAKER_05 36:16

So is in hyper-encrypted for national security purposes. So whereas previously, it's one of the challenges we've we initially had with Centra is because it's going to be used and is being used by people with security clearance, deep deep vetting, top secret, etc., from various units all over the world, is we can't just have that on AWS because of the risk of um so we looked at can we deploy Centra on Palantir level infrastructure so it has the encryption level to be used for um particular military units so they could trust the the as the security of it, and obviously Palantir to deploy on their cloud is very, very expensive. Um very good, but very very expensive. So we were looking at alternatives, and then about a month ago, I was informed that Google have signed a deal um with US government to provide palantier level encryption, so it's all um airlocked, completely private cloud with the same level of encryption for Google pricing, not palantier pricing. Um and actually the the guy who runs the national or one of the senior account executives who runs the national security um team thought Google is a 20-year uh US special forces guy. Um I actually met him a couple of weeks ago. Um so that's how they've got so SOCOM and all those guys are now using Google for infrastructure because they know it can be trusted. Um so there is a part of Google that isn't harvesting your data. You obviously pay for pay to ensure that you are private um and in that in that secure environment, uh, but they you you can now get it.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Yeah. Oh that's good. I mean, I'm actually on a this is so this I'm on a Google pixel at a minute phone and not not by trying. I'm just gonna try to like explain better why why I'm concerned that I'm not I so my other phone, my previous phone broke, and uh I've gone got because I despair instead of going to spending hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of phones, like I'll just go to this because it phones a fucking phone, like dug out of the car dug out of the drawer. And it's literally listening all the time. And I mean I mean it is listening all the time. And and what I mean by that is it it even though I switched as much as I can easily access off its ability to eaver say from what I'm typing to what I'm saying, well, even when I'm not using the phone when the screen's locked, uh, to what I'm you know, watching or whatever. Uh I've done as much as I can and it's still listening. And I I know it is because the the clearest examples is that I will be shown adverts which are very obscure, related to something I talked about the day before or earlier that day, and I didn't have I wasn't using my phone, it wasn't in my hand. Yeah, there'll be some stuff we'll probably talk about on you, yeah, and I know on that phone later on I'm gonna get a fucking advert or something. What are the adverts? And I'll be like, could be yeah, but it's like what I wasn't I didn't even have the phone on. I'm sitting there listening and it's pitching me. So what what annoys me? Oh, so what the reason I have a lack of trust in Google, and it's not only Google, it's others as well, is because one, they make it too difficult for you to clearly and easily control how your data is being used and accessed, yeah, right, or how your interactions with the world are being listened to and and uh and recorded, yeah, or or manip or use to their their advantage, possible advantage, they make it hard to do that uh uh to control it, and to they don't make it clear when they're doing it either. You know, um Facebook do it as well. I mean they all do it, they all do it. They should and if they're not making it clear and easy for you to change, understand how it's being used, when it's being when it's accessing what you're doing, and how to change it, then it says to me they don't really give a fuck. Yeah, they they're making it hard, it means they don't want they there's there's a lack of moral principle there.

SPEAKER_05 40:14

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, but but data is the new oil, it's the new gold, it's it's the most valuable um commodity on earth. So and then you have to pay not it's it's ironic, isn't it, that they they get to use your data for free and make money off it. But if you don't want them, you have to pay them not to not to use it, even though it's yours.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:33

Um yeah. So yeah, if you think about a lot of the time now with any website, it's uh if you want to use our website, it's free with adverts. But if you don't want to see adverts or us to harvest your dates, you have to pay us not to harvest your data. I just think that that is just while I don't agree with it, it's just a social contract that we now have with technology. It's it is it is what it is. Um I think it's interesting it's just it's what technology you use, and it's kind of the lesser of two evils. Um I mean for example, TikTok, I've never used it, never have used it, never downloaded it. Um I use I open it up, I use Instagram, um I use X. But it's kind of like would I rather have I'd rather no one have my data, admittedly, but would I rather it be in the hands of the US government or the Chinese government? I know I if I had to choose, I'd rather the US government have access to my data than the Chinese government.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Um so oh god, I don't even I don't know. I don't know about that. I don't know, but that I mean what that what does that say about the state of the world, you know?

SPEAKER_05 41:34

Um it's just the reality, it's just the reality of it. I mean, if you think about the the superpowers, I mean we were having this conversation the other day around would you rather um the US be the world police? They get mocked for it all the time. But if if they weren't the world police, who who's gonna step into the void? The Russians, the Chinese? There will always be a power vacuum of who's gonna be the world police because you kind of need No, I disagree with that.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

Okay, um The US aren't the world police, they they've they they've been the self-appointed Middle East, North Africa police, not world police, yeah, you know. Um Russia and China could have had the run of the mill in Asia if they wanted, and doing their world and doing world police stuff there if they wanted. Yeah, but they they haven't been, and maybe that's partly well no, I mean obviously obviously we've got Western uh bastions of places like New Zealand and Australia and uh the Pacific Islands and some other places out there, yeah. But I think China and Russia could equally uh could be have been of equally as naughty, especially Russia, yeah. And they haven't been. This is a sort of separate conversation, yeah. Uh which I don't think we should get into, but um but how do we get on to that?

SPEAKER_05 42:50

Uh owning data. Uh owning data. So like there's owning data. There are well, there is an argument there's four superpowers that there's the US, there's China, there's Russia, and then there's actually Western innovation and money that in itself isn't is a superpower.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Um yeah, I've not heard that I've not heard anyone say that before. Yeah, totally makes total sense. It was said by um You could refer to it as capitalism, Western capitalism.

SPEAKER_05 43:12

Yeah, you could you could say that it was um so I heard it, I first heard it by a guy called Joe Moselman, who's the founding partner of a venture fund called Bravo Victor VC, um, which is essentially a venture fund for American exceptionalism and defence. Um they're doing some really cool stuff. So they have this um business that they're involved in called Union, which has taken Tesla style and SpaceX style manufacturing to produce one uh 155 HE shelves.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Sorry, one second. When you say Tesla and SpaceX style manufacturing, yeah, explain to me what you mean there.

SPEAKER_05 43:47

Very high tech robotics. Um in the process. Yeah, the actual manufacturing the process of manufacturing, the hard, the steel, that that kind of stuff. You think about how munitions have been made for hundreds. Of years, big furnace, old dirty factories, nothing's really changed in all those times. And also a 155 shell today is the same it was hundred years ago. And it is a piece of steel with explosives in the middle and it's got some rifling on the bottom. Um, but one of the big issues, I mean Ukraine's really highlighted this as much as there is technology and you've got drone warfare, old school tech old school artillery warfare is still happening. The millions of rounds being fired. And it's actually, if you think about the Second World War, the reason why the Allies won was because of manufacturing. I mean, America was the manufacturing superpower. They were producing, I don't know the exact data, but literally tanks every every hour. There was more and more of them running off the production lines. So what they've done is this company Union, which is backed by Briver Victor, and they've brought in um some really cool people. I think the head of engineering is ex Tesla, um, is use modern style technology to manufacture 155 shells. Um, and they're just ramping up production now in a 235,000 square foot factory in Texas. So I don't know how we got into this subject, but it does just show American innovation, an American can-do attitude, and the capitalism they have in itself is a superpower. Um, because in China, every VC fund, there's 2,200 VC funds in China to drive Chinese innovation. Every single fund has state money in it. So the Chinese state own every every innovation, whereas the American version is let's let capitalism do its thing and then allow the government to benefit from there.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

Yeah, the problem we've got the pro yeah, the problem with it is the so I've heard someone say recently to me, uh like democracy isn't working. And I've heard someone say capitalism is bad. I've seen that a bunch of times. Capitalism is bad.

SPEAKER_05 45:54

Were they saying that whilst on an iPhone, buddy chance?

SPEAKER_00 45:57

With a Starbucks in their hand. Uh well, the capitalism is bad. I actually saw that from someone I know on uh I was on Instagram. Uh so I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. Uh and the thing is, I democracy is good. I think capitalism is good. These are like look at what capitalism brought us, and look what the democracy's enabled in terms of lives, quality of life and and and um opportunity and stuff, right? The problem we've got, and when I say I mean I mean the West generally, pretty much all the major countries in the West, uh, is that we've allowed we've allowed capitalism to start controlling government and politics. The two are two they're they're they're they're intertwined, and capitalism is controlling politics on a global level, or heavily influencing politics on a global level and almost entirely influencing it on a on a on an individual state level, you know. Um so the problem isn't the the problem is our version of our capitalist democracies as opposed to democracy being a problem, capitalism being a problem. We haven't put the guardrails in place to stop to stop money influencing politicians.

SPEAKER_05 47:21

Could I flip that on its head entirely to say that government's actually trying to control capitalism too much?

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 47:28

So if you think about the reason why, again, it's completely my opinion, around yeah, US capitalists, obviously, Britain, the West in general, democracy and capitalism led to where we've we've got to today. But actually, you could say that over the last 25, 30 years, it's the size of the governments in these countries got bigger and bigger and bigger, more regulation, more red tape, more more oh, you can't eat this, you can't drink that, you can't build this, you can't build that. Actually, the reason why capitalist money is now going into governments is because governments have got so big that they're trying to they now know they need to influence the government to be able to let them carry on to do what they were doing. Um, so if you look at Argentina with um what they've been doing, literally just cutting up government, like stop this, stop this, stop this, and it's allowed the free market to do its thing, and now their economy is booming.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

Um is that what's happening?

SPEAKER_05 48:24

Yeah, so uh I can't this Miley is the the President Mile is the guy's name, was they had hyperinflation.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Um Argentina's been fucked for decades, they've got Argentine family, so yeah, it's it's it's a fascinating use case.

SPEAKER_05 48:36

Quite close to my heart of me melee um if that's how you pronounce it, his his background, he's not a politician, he's an economist. And he was like, government is too big. If you're price controlling, if you're if you're in if you're regulating too much, it means that actual capitalism doesn't work because you're not allowed to create without the government's permission. And essentially that's what happened. So he's taken all the restrictions off. It took a bit of balancing to get used to it now, but the economy now means the the midterms, he's just won with an absolute landslide. The polls thought he was going to lose, but actually the reality, I mean, that's a whole other question around polls versus reality.

SPEAKER_00 49:14

I just posted about that on X today, actually.

SPEAKER_05 49:16

Um but then you look at the actual reality, is the quality of life's improving, inflation's down, um, everything the um GDP per capita is improving, everyone's getting richer, everyone's getting happier. Um, and I think that one of the issues of what's happened in the UK, the US, I use those two main examples, and Europe as well, is that it's that classic when good times, when things are good, you produce soft people, soft people produce bad times, bad times produce etc. etc. I think the West have had it so good for the last 80 years, since obviously 1945, the end of the second world war. The West have had it so good that it's kind of like, well, we can do a bit more socialist policies, and so government's got bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, the the size of the government in the UK, I think over half of GDP is government spending. That's completely out of control. Yeah, it's completely out of control. Our government is absolutely massive. They realize it's that big. Yeah, the the the size of the civil service is absolutely enormous. And it's well actually it I I don't know the the full intricacies of it, but if we think about everything you do nowadays has some kind of government responsibility linked to it.

SPEAKER_00 50:27

Yeah, I don't agree with that. And and and yeah, certainly in the UK, it's gett it's it's only getting worse. Uh because obviously Labour struggled to hide their socialist leaning orientation. But uh they were sheep in sheep's clothing. Oh yeah. There's there's uh how I talk to this recently. Um so have you seen the recent thing on log burners? Where they want to they want to basically they want to stop, they want to drastically reduce uh people's wood burning ability, and they wanna they want to regulate to stop new homes being built with wood burners in.

SPEAKER_05 51:11

Is this also coming from the same government that claims it achieves its net zero target by burning wood pellets?

SPEAKER_00 51:16

But honestly, honestly, you got that one, and you've got the uh what was the other one? Uh what was the other one? There was another one recently where but on your point, it's like it's just over-regulation control, regulation on individuals, yeah. You know, and then 15 minute cities, look at Oxford, yeah. Another example, and then you've got the over-regulation on businesses, yeah. Um, but yeah, the polling, what did I put on X this morning? Oh, it was the poll, it was the polls about um Labour have slipped to like 14% and reform are leading, and the greyone else has done well, and and but and you'll know this, I I assume from you know, if you're involved in anything with it AI related, you need to understand data, right? And this is just basic statistics though. Like that poll, the the first person I would say don't pay attention to polls the bullshit generally was Dom Cummins, actually, who does some fucking brilliant articles on Substack. Highly recommend whether you like him or not. Anyway, this poll you said, Yeah, the ratings have slipped for Labour down to 14%, blah blah blah. And the first thing I do is go and look and go and look at the data of who was Servager, yeah, how many were there? It was like 2,600 odd people.

SPEAKER_05 52:23

Like, and then they'll model that off the back of that poll. I I saw the same poll, they then modelled a seat prediction off of that. That that that because of the way it would, even though it's only 2,000 people, they've somehow managed to look at a population of 70 million and all 650 seats and establish that Labour would have three seats. Which I did think was quite funny, yeah, because that'll be a lesson learned.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

But I mean it maybe right.

SPEAKER_05 52:51

Maybe if you want to win an election, actually do what you said you're gonna do and not do the complete opposite. But we can go into that another thing.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

Do you think AI should be do you think AI should be regulated as heavily as they're planning on it, or should it be let everyone do a free throw?

SPEAKER_05 53:08

No, there's a very, very fun balance, as I kind of said in the pre-questions um to this, that it's a s I use it's a similar thing as a knife, right? A knife is very, very dangerous in a criminal's hand, it's also a phenomenal piece of equipment in a chef's hands. And I think that we need to stop regulating the product and start regulating those who misuse it. So what I mean by that is allow people to innovate with AI. But if they then break the laws and like they then commit fraud with it, then that's a law that needs to be enforced.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 53:47

Don't say, oh, you can't build this in case you do do something bad with it. Because if you're regulating something that could potentially cure cancer, but also on the flip side could crack the UK banking system for fraud, what are you regulating here? Are you regulating the chance that someone could commit mass fraud or are you regulating the chance that you actually might cure cancer?

SPEAKER_00 54:12

So why do you think the regulation's happening then?

SPEAKER_05 54:14

It's populist. It's popular for governments because they don't understand it.

SPEAKER_00 54:18

Yeah. See, the skeptic in me thinks that it's in order to reduce the competition and restrict and put uh put a boundary in place, like a blo uh, what's the word, a um uh put make it harder for smaller organizations, uh lower wealth um entrepreneurs and bit and and potential leaders to get access into the industry in the same way they did with uh blockchain technology, right? So they basically made it so hard to get regulated by the financial authorities to get into to even just get into start an organ start a blockchain company for whatever reason. I'm not talking about fucking NFTs and shit, I'm talking about blockchain technology. Picture of a monkey crypto, yeah, and they made it so hard that it's it's it's virtually impossible to do unless you've got big money behind you to pay the tens of thousands of pounds, sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds it takes just to get the authorization to be able to start operating as a company. And and to me, that that's about uh minimizing the competition, reducing the access to the market. I think it's the same with AI.

SPEAKER_05 55:25

I think my counter-argument to that is if you've seen some of our politicians, do you think they're smart enough to actually be able to execute this?

SPEAKER_00 55:30

No, but the civil service are. And also I don't think the civil service are politicians, they're influenced by money, so they're not making decisions.

SPEAKER_05 55:38

We we had the conversation earlier around um in the in the uh in the warm-up around um the icebreaker, sorry, to do with AI and and uh digital ID. The government cannot organise a piss-up in a brewery, the civil service is completely bloated. Yeah, who's gonna be more capable? A private company with the most driven, well-renumerated people in the world or the civil service. I I actually think in general, we give governments and civil service far too much credit. I think they're absolutely useless.

SPEAKER_00 56:12

But they outsource the work to private companies are Capita and Circo.

SPEAKER_05 56:18

Yeah. I I just think that a lot of the when it comes to regulation, it they do it. I I don't think they're smart enough to do it for minute play to market control and to leverage bigger companies. I think they do it because if I turn around to my my my parents who are in their late 60s, early 70s, and say AI is gonna hack your bank and it's gonna ruin your life, they'll go, regulate it. Because they don't understand it. People regulate things they don't understand. Whereas if you actually sit down and explain to them this is what it is, it's essentially a math equation, et cetera, et cetera. If you've been using it for years and without actually realizing it, and actually it can cure cancer, they'll be like, okay, maybe we shouldn't regulate it. It's just education. And I think it's just you look what happened with when OpenAI first came out in 2022 and GPT-3 was released. Within a couple of months, it was banned in Italy. Italy just banned it outright. I mean, you can't use it. And then because it was fear, they didn't know what anything about it. They banned it. That wasn't doing market manipulation, that wasn't trying to protect the big boys, it was just because they were scared, and the population went, Oh, we don't like it. So the government went, We're the big brother, we'll look after you, we'll we'll ban it. When now it's completely free again, you can use it because they understood it. So I think a lot of the time it's it's for fear of unknown. Um that's why AI is such a big political football at the moment. Um, and I also find it quite ironic that we talk about regulating it so much as a Western society, yet we're also investing trillions into it at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 57:50

Yeah, I think that uh yeah, I I yeah, I mean it's gonna provide it it not provide it it it will it is already shaping who is going to be a super who is going to be the next the next the main superpower in the next five to ten years. And AI is shaping that mainly. And I think we're like we're in that race, right? And I think anything like that, the last thing you want to do is regulate it. You wanna you wanna deregulate it as far as you can, yeah. So you give as many people as possible, get as many brains on as possible, just taking it forward, taking it for taking the technology forward and see what see what amazing ideas and uses and developments crop up and then go fucking that works, that works, that works, that works.

SPEAKER_05 58:33

You know, that's my point is if you if you regulate it, you you restrict innovation. Simple as that. I mean, primary's armborne of more of a harder industry. Look at Germany, they've regulated nuclear power out of existence, but yet nuclear power is the cleanest form of energy, the most reliable cleanest form of energy we have. Yeah, it's what I mean. Yes, there has been issues in the past, but Chernobyl wasn't necessarily to do the energy, it was Soviet cost cutting and manipulation was the problem.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

Um Fukushima as well, right?

SPEAKER_05 59:03

Fukushima, yeah. Again, but lessons have been learned from that. And I just find it ironic that a lot of the Green Parties, which are obviously big fans of regulation, um, want to regulate this stuff, but actually nuclear is the utopia that they want. But yeah, they want to regulate it.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

Yeah, I I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure, even though you had those those two obviously headline accidents, I'm pretty sure nuclear as well is the is the safest industry. It's amazing. So it's the safest energy industry that we've got based on like people killed and accidents.

SPEAKER_05 59:36

Well, the yeah the the biggest user of nuclear power is the uh US Navy. Their aircraft carriers of nuclear reactors on, or their or submarines do, obviously, mini reactors, obviously the British submarines, the French submarines.

SPEAKER_00 59:49

Well, this is what's interesting about um they've been around since the 70s. This is what's interesting about electric energy, is that yeah, what the the the big the elephant in the rumor about that and going, oh let's go fully let's go fully electric and get rid of using fossil fuels is just as one example. Well, you can't do that with shipping containers, uh shipping tankers, yeah. Yeah, and and like and and which are like the backbone of international logistics transportation. You know, just this is just one example. You can't do it with that. You can't you cannot you cannot electric power those fucking ships.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:18

I'm not sure if you've seen there is one startup that have developed one with sales, and they were like they were like, we've we've we we've worked out green green green green shipping. Of course, yeah. We have electric sales, and everyone's like it's a break it's yeah, it's been around for like millennia, super efficient, yeah, super efficient.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:35

But you can power those things with nuclear, with nuclear, you know, totally feasible. Micro reactors, yeah, and a lot cheaper, a lot more efficient. Anyway, let's get off this. Yes. How did you end up what happened when you left the military that you ended up doing this? A developing an AI or an AI company. I think I'm not an AI company, but I think a company leveraging AI.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:01

Yeah, I if if I can like to actually go kind of a step further back than that and kind of the the journey for me pre that. So I said to a few people, 9-11 was actually a really important part of my life. So I was just about to turn 13 when it happened. I remember coming home from school and flicking on the TV and seeing the the second tower fall, and thinking, what the fuck is going on here? At first, I thought it was a film. I think obviously a lot of people thought it was a film, and then they flicked every single channel was was showing it. And I was at home, um, my mum was at work, and my my dad worked in anti-terrorism. So my dad works in the anti-terrorism branch for the Met Police um during that time. And obviously, as a 12, 13 year old, I was very kind of impressionable. And it was at that moment I decided, right, that's it. I kind of had my call to service. I was like, I need to do something. I felt like it was an attack on the West and told my parents that's it. I'm at 13. At 13, I hadn't, I was like, no, no, no. I was like, I'm gonna join the army, I I don't give a toss about college, I don't want to go to university, no interest. Which annoyed my parents because my sister's got an MBA, my dad's got a PhD, and I was like dumb of education. I was performing very, very well at school. Strong patriotism of that and I'm like, I am I felt like it was it was an attack on the West. And off the back of that, obviously got went went to Army Cadets, started reading all the books, um, classic Bravo 2-0, um, with three parasites of Falklands. Um, really, really good books. Um yeah, so I I joined the army, and it could that's all all I want. I literally had that singular focus, it's all all I wanted to do. Um, and then when I joined the army, I I had three goals that I wanted to achieve. One was to go to Iraq, one was to go to Afghanistan, and one was to play football for the army. And I did all three. And then when I came back from Afghanistan, I was kind of on that crossroads of I'm 21, just come back um from Afghan. What do I do? Do I go and do something more specialist within the military? I mean, I I worked in FST, so um doing uh joint fires in in Kajaki, there was really good fun to be honest. We kind of had free reign. There was no um, there was no hearts and minds in Kajaki. It was uh we we coined it precision guided influence, um, was what we did. Um, and I was at that point where, okay, do I go and do particular course? Like I go to Limpson and do commander course, do I go and do P company or whatever? And I was like, oh, or do I just quit and go and join the real world with all my friends who are leaving uni at exactly the same age? Um so I did that and then 24. So I started working in in the city, um, working in in recruitment for a big US company. Um, got into that job because the manager of the team that I joined, he was ex too light infantry. Um, so we mutual friends, and he then got into recruitment and done really well. And I got in but I got put in contact with him, and that's kind of how my career started. But then in 2014, I was diagnosed with PTSD. Um I wasn't in crisis, I wasn't suicidal, I just wasn't right. I was on the tube, hyper-vigilant. Obviously, there's a number of terrorist attacks happening in London at the time, and it was just that getting on the tube, just eyeing up everybody, like who is this person? It'd be if someone got got on the tube on the central line or the northern line, for example, how I used to commute um in the middle of summer with a heavy coat on, I'm getting off that tube. For me, it was that absence of the normal presence of the abnormal kind of um reaction that was kicking in. I'm like, I left four years ago, what is going on? Um, so I was able to get 12 sessions of therapy through Help for Heroes to deal with that. Within two sessions, I had a pretty good idea of what was going on with my brain because it was just learning about education of what why do I feel this way? Um, I then started working in talent acquisition within technology. So I joined Spotify in 2017, um, pre-IPO uh there did some amazing work, worked with some brilliant people, and really started to see how technology was fucking awesome to be honest. And I spent some time at Apple and Snapchat. Um, and then when I was at Snapchat was when the withdrawal from Afghanistan happened in 2021. And I don't know if you're aware of this, but during that two-week period that was obviously televised 24-7, um there was a 400% increase in mental health referrals to veteran charities during that time because anybody who'd spent time there and gone through hell were literally in front of their eyes being told it didn't really matter. It's something I'd be friends, family have been killed, you've got best friends who've taken their own lives, post-it, all of that bruise number I don't know the the exact the exact figures, but the the local population, civilians, what's half a million civilians, I think, in that kind of 20-year period. It's a horrific war for nothing. Um and I I off the back of that, I say, had a had a relapse. I was then diagnosed with depression and anxiety, and thankfully, because I was at Snapchat, they offered a very good um private medical package, uh therapy for all of that. But at that point, I started to realise is there something I can do? With what I'm now working or working in technology to kind of help that. And it was always in the back of my mind. Um, but I didn't really know it at the time. And then I launched my first startup, which was uh a deep tech business. So myself and Martin and one other, um, we developed a series of machine learning models to predict and understand uh emotion, behavior, and personality through speech. So analyzing linguistic and acoustic signals in speech, we could produce a full psychometric report in 90 seconds. Um somebody um we caught the tail end of the venture capital boom of 2022, um, early 23, raised venture capital money and made a lot of mistakes. We had some really cool tech, but we didn't really know what problem we were solving. Um then at the beginning of this year, 2025, we decided to shut that down. But as we were shutting it down, we started experimenting with what if we put those models on top of conversational AI? This was when conversational agents and things like Eleven Labs, so human-like speech, starting to become a thing. If we gave a conversational AI the ability to understand emotion and behavior, will it enhance the capability of the conversation? So most large language models as standard are one size fits all, two weight one I hear, make make make you feel good about yourself. Um very very kind of neutral and pleasant to you. But obviously, humans don't communicate that way. Every human is different, need to communicate differently. So we started experimenting with adding these uh models on top, and we engaged with um incredible guy called um Mikhail Kaczynski, he's a professor at Stanford who specializes in um psychometrics and and large language models. We started to see some really cool results around uh conversational AI with psychological um awareness produces better trust, better engagement, better communication than one without, which would make sense, right? Yeah. Um and I remember I was sat in the pub with Martin. We're about to shut the company down, and I was like, what do we do next? Because I really enjoy this journey of being entrepreneur and getting up each morning knowing that I'm not having to go and see a boss, but going, cool, what can we achieve today? Like I've got an idea, like it's like constant sparking of what can we do, what what what can we improve, what what what can we make better. Um, and I read an article of a university in China that had used it's a relatively small sample size, but the severity of PTSD could be predicted through speech. And we're like, well, this this is our book, this is this is our bag. We know exactly what we're talking about here. So very quickly, we decided to look at could we build conversational AI to deal with PTSD? Um and that was the the catalyst behind it. So fast forward a few months, myself, Martin, we brought in our third co-founder, um, Ollie. So Oli Blackford, he was uh yeah, Captain of the Royal Marines, um, was part of the Harrier, Harrier Force, and then um 40 Commando. Interesting anecdote about him. I don't know if anyone remembers when the boarding party got um taken hostage by the Iranians in 2006, 2007. Um they were they were on the Horn of Africa and a uh load of Royal Marines got captured. His team got sent as replacement. Um I forgot I won't steal his story um because you'll have to get him on. But there's some very funny points around that weekend was also the um Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and there was no military aircraft available, and they obviously had to send this boarding team to replace them in like matters of hours. Um so they ended up having to fly commercial to Qatar with the military, where the Royal Navy bases, but because it's the Grand Prix, every flight was full, the only seats available were first-class flights. So this group, this team of eight Royal Marines with a young officer was in charge, and it was yeah, first class. By the way, there's a there's some more um anecdotes who will tell you about that. Yeah, so um Ollie then uh left F Marines in 2011 um and retrained to become a doctor, so he's now a senior trauma registrar. Uh put himself put himself through med school. So myself, Martin, and Olli um started building Centra. So Centra in version one is a conversational AI um with all of the frameworks and infrastructure to deal with deal with trauma.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:28

When you say conversational, you mean you interact with the audio?

SPEAKER_05 1:10:31

Uh at the moment it's text, um, simply because it's easier to kind of build it and kind of build the architecture behind, but bring it into voice very soon. Um, and it's completely private, encrypted for you and you only. So we're talking about data ownership earlier. Um one of the big things about big tech is they have your data, but you don't know what they have. Whereas the way we've we've designed Centure is um every user has a knowledge dashboard. So everything we have, you have sovereignty over. So with so within your settings, you have your the user dashboard. And obviously, the more information we get, the better the experiences. It creates more personalization, etc. Um, but then within that, if you don't like something, you can delete it. So actually, I don't want that data about me. I don't want that data about me. So you have sovereignty over your data. We we don't we don't have it, you you have it, you you have control over it, which is one of the one of the reasons why people who've been using our platform have found that they can really open up to it. So we we ran a pilot earlier on this uh this year, uh where we had quite a small group. We we wanted to keep it quite focused. 22 users from uh the US and the UK of both active um blue light, military, um, and also veterans as well. So we had a DEA agent, like an active DA agent from New York, we had um uh special forces guys, we also had um veterans, and one of the veterans, um, I would obviously won't name her for privacy reasons. Um, she was a victim of military sexual trauma and had spent 14 years trying to get help for it and just couldn't get help. Going to see, she'd call up a charity, charity would go, Oh yeah, meet meet our therapist as next sergeant major, bloke. She's like, I'm not gonna open up to him because uh because it was a someone in in command who used to abuse me. So she started using Sentra and within five minutes started crying. She said it was the first time she was truly being able to get something off her chest. And at that point, we went, okay, there's something in this. Because one we spoke about it, this stigma of one of the massive issues around military mental health and men's mental health is stigma. Um, and technology completely removed that stigma because you're speaking to a machine, you're not speaking to a human. It can act like a human and treat you like a human, engage you like a human, but you know that that humor's not going to go down the pub and go, oh, you never guessed what this person taught me. Or you're not looking them in the eyes and saying, Yeah, this person touched me, or this is what happened, or I cry every night because I lost my friend. That's removed. Um, and there's and there's a lot of there's literally hundreds of papers out there um to do with the impacts of conversational eye on mental health. It categorically can have and does have a positive impact on mental health if used properly.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:06

Yeah, that makes total sense. It makes total sense. Um and I like that, so yeah, I like that there's an op it it provides an option there for people if they don't want to go and speak to a human, yeah, um, but they need to speak to someone and they haven't got the courage to go and walk into whatever is their local you know place they can provide support. Yeah, uh be that a charity or be that a hospital or be that availability as well. I mean availability of 24-7, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:37

But no also just wait the help for heroes or combat stress. You're looking at six to nine month wait list to get a one-hour therapy session.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:47

Yeah. I mean what one one of the uh I mean there's a there's a problem with the charity sector in general, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:13:53

Yeah, we'll come on to that in a minute.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:55

Um in fact, I'm gonna pop the toilet. Give me a second. Right, I'm back on my little my my old man's bladder's back. All right, so so uh yeah, so can you back off there?

SPEAKER_05 1:14:05

We're yeah, so uh one one of the important parts is that Centra is not designed to replace human therapy, um, it's actually there to enable better quality therapy. And what I mean by that is you definitely need human-to-human interaction, especially when you're in crisis, if you're in a dark place, there is some incredible people out there. And we're we're we're really fortunate to have um Tim Balton involved with Centra, and Tim's one of the leading voices within PTSD. Um, works with the UK government, US government, um, UN ex-commando pilot. Um, but he's one of the experts in this field and he's a massive champion. This and we need to ensure that humans are there, and Centra is there to fill that void. So it's estimated that globally 350 million people worldwide suffer from PTSD on a societal level. So you would, in theory, to be able to provide true, always available therapy, you'd need 350 million therapists to do that. It's simply not not achievable. So Centra is there to essentially fill that void. So even if you are in therapy, you might get one hour a week or one hour a day. Um, what about the other 23 hours in that day? What about when you wake up at 3 a.m. and your therapist asleep and you're going, fuck, you you're you're you're hyper-aware, your your heart rate's going through the roof, you're fast breathing, the ability to turn around to something and be like, I'm panicking, and it will just bring you down. You do a grounding exercise, do some breathing exercises, and you can trust it. That's really, really important. And that's essentially what it's there for. So phase one of Sentra is to essentially fill that void and to allow everybody in uniform, post or active and also post-uniform in the veteran space and blue light workers is to have their own completely private, trauma-informed conversational AI that they can use and trust 247-365. That's the that's the first point. Um, the second part of that is we also, and what's really important about AI is the safety part. Um, so one of the big issues with what open AI are having is I think it's about 60% of users use conversate or use chat AI for some kind of mental health support. Um, it's absolutely massive, but there's no safety controls in place. So we have as part of our development pathway, is we're developing Centra Pro. So Centra Pro is a dashboard for clinicians. So um Centra itself is not available to the masses. You can't just go on the app store and download it.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:32

Um, it is it is acquired and distributed via your your NGO, your charity, your unit, military. Um, for example, we're we're working with the Ruid Warrior project, one of our design partners. They've got 250,000 people in their in their programs. The Ruid Warrior project would essentially buy Centra and then distribute the licenses to all of their warriors, and then they have an internal dashboard called Centra Pro, which is managed by all of their clinicians. So they're therapists, psychotherapists, counselors, etc. And that's not for them to snoop on what you're talking about. There is at the conversation is completely airlocked. So the individual has that ability to remove stigma and then carry on using it. But there is a very important safety protocol. If you're using Centra and we have a series of models called PsySafe, which are open sourced, it's far too important for us to keep this to ourselves because we think AI safety is really important. That as you're speaking, if our models pick up a risk to self or risk to others, so homicide or suicide, uh, the model will identify that. The user will get a notification saying, like, you matter, here's a number for Samaritans. In that period of time, the central pro user, so the on-call therapist, all of these units, all these military and blue light units, will have a 24-hour on-call safety line. That user will get a notification that user X has shown significant um threat to life or individual, and they have the ability because they're a medical professional to break glass, essentially. They can they can intervene and contact that person directly, human-to-human contact. Tom, you're right. How's things? We're here for you. Where are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:02

How does it validate that that that risk then?

SPEAKER_05 1:18:05

So we we have a number of models to look at context, and that's what's really important. The issues that a lot of them, the standard uh conversation we eyes have is that they don't look at context, they look at the word, the question, and separate it. So one of the canary down the mine examples is if you were to go to go on open AI and be like, oh yeah, blah, blah, blah. I'm doing this work. Oh, by the way, I'm having a really shit day. I think I've had enough. It will go, oh, really, really sorry, are you okay? Oh, by the way, is the shard the tallest building in London? It will go, really sorry, I'm really, yeah, blah, blah. Yeah, the shard is 1008 feet tall. It's in this, it's in London Bridge. The context behind that, when you actually put everything in, is clear suicidal intent. And that's where a lot of these conversational AIs struggle. Whereas the way that our models work is it looks at the complete, um, the the complete conversation because context is everything. I mean, you can have that in every walk of life, context is everything. So that's how the model works. And we're we're running data at the moment where we have three classifiers. You have safe, so the conversation is completely safe, you have obvious risk, and then you have um human oversight. So this is why we're working with the Wounded Warrior project. We're working with the University of Kyiv in Ukraine as well, and also a number of UK charities, and we're in early conversations with the MOD as well around this of how do we find it's a very, very fine balance between privacy and safety. If you want to be completely safe, you'd have a human read every single message, but that would then defeat privacy. If you want pure privacy, human could never step in. So there's a really fine line to tread here, and that's why we're working with like the best experts in the world to find this line to ensure that yes, there will always be an edge case. I mean, Ollie and I were talking about this the other day, about so we're we're also in a unique position where we are actually trying to get medical um clinical device approval. So class, class two clinical device. Every almost every other um mental health app are trying to avoid medical approval because they can make more money if they're not clinical because it will cost them less. Whereas we want to be clinically approved, is you can't completely eradicate everything in medical terms. So, for example, I'll use sexual health. COMDOMS, they stop pregnancy. Well, technically 99% of the time they stop pregnancy. There's still that 1% chance you can. It's the same way with with what we're doing. There's no way, and I can't sit here and just bareface lie and say our models will stop absolutely everything and there will never be an edge case. Because there's always going to be an edge case, it's about how do you deal with that edge case. So that's why we have the human intervention of this is safe, this is not safe, this is a maybe. Let's get some human to oversee it and check it out. So, yeah, to answer a question, that's that's how we're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:43

Sorry, a question on it. Um, so uh who who provides the human intervention then? I'm assuming you don't have people sat in a customer call.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:54

No, so no, so this is what a really important part we're not third-partying it, outsourcing it is by the actual unit themselves. So Bruned Warrior projects have a whole team of therapists, the therapists themselves, because I mean my my background, I know that um well not my background, but the Royal Marines charity or the Royal Marines organization, they have a phone line, the 24-7, who is the the on-call therapist. Every unit has one of these people on on rotation, so that individual will have the ability to step in, or that unit will provide their own specialists. Because when we're talking of dealing with yeah, people of SOCOM, tier one units, you can't have Joe Blocks from uh from Indonesia being on call. You need someone who's got the security clearance to deal with someone at Delta, for example. So you so that's they provide it themselves. So what that does, that also empowers the organizations themselves to ensure that they're not outsourcing their safety to a third party, they they actually have their own safety, so it's a very, very tight circle to ensure that we can reduce that risk massively and that those who can help are the ones helping, they're not just getting some 19-year-old who's outsourcing.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:06

So it's like it's it's so would it be fair to describe it as basically a it's a level one uh sewage agent specifically for people uh with mental or potential mental ill health, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:22:29

Military, yeah, but also military. Yeah, it's it's it's anybody, and what's really interesting in the what the conversation we're having with the MOD is and also in the US as well, is around um performance resilience. So what we mean by that is I don't know if you're aware, the dropout rate currently in basic training is the highest it's ever been.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:47

People are going to Catarick, they go into um going to Harrogate, they're going to I've heard it's bad in the Navy, I've not heard anything else. It's only because I've got a friend who's bad across the board. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:56

Because there's no resilience. Um so they're looking at can we use technology to build resilience? Obviously, part of resilience, you and I would have experienced it, is getting thrashed, being three o'clock in the morning, you're in a in that you're in a harbour area. Well, and you build resilience through that.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:10

But we will we so why but but the question I have in mind is the no, that we you were we were more resilient than before we joined the Trinity, which is the problem now, right? Yeah, so where's so I've got go on?

SPEAKER_05 1:23:22

It's it's about understanding, it's about the ability to when you come off exercise. Obviously, you shouldn't be using Central whilst you're in your harbour area at 3 a.m. Um, because you shouldn't have your phone in your pocket when you're in a position to do it. It's to be like, I mean, I remember when I was in basic, there was definitely times where I was like, I'm I'm struggling. Um but in 2005 when I joined up, there was no there was no mental health line. I used to text my uncle, who's got a wicked sense of humor, being like, I'm really struggling. Can you send me a few jokes over text? Because there was no WhatsApp back then. And he would just send me, and that would just make me feel better. That was just that was my way of dealing with it. And I think that, and this is the conversation we're having is can we give it to people? I mean, my my utopia is that everybody in uniform has it from day one. You go to Catherick, you go to Limpson, you go to wherever it is, you sign in, you've got your your ironing board under your arm, you're in your ill-fitted suit, you go in, you you check in, you do your medical, you sign your paperwork, you get uniform, you get your central logins, and that becomes your companion the whole way through your career. Um, and it's the ability to go, oh, I'm I'm struggling, and it will educate you. Okay, cool. How can we get better? So it's it's there essentially your own mental health coach as as well. There is a theory, and I don't like the phrase um cognitive vaccine, but there is some theory around if you can start to potentially prepare the brain for potentially traumatic experiences, can it actually then mitigate the knock-on effects of trauma later on in life? We're also looking at that.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:50

Uh that sounds like a totally logical conclusion, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:24:58

Yeah, and that's the thing, there is there is research out there in there's a really interesting paper, again, a very small sample size, where when something traumatic happened, they gave individuals there was a very, I think it was about 25 people, so it's not as I said, it was not a huge data set. They gave half of them um Tetris and half of them a pub quiz on a phone to complete straight after the traumatic experience. Something in a car crash or witness a car crash, they sat in a room and went, try and play Tetris or try and play a pub quiz. Those who played Tetris over a period of time had lesser effects of PTSD than those who didn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:36

Why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_05 1:25:38

My logical brain is because you're working on compartmentalizing stuff, you're literally compartmentalizing bricks into squares, right? Yeah, and you're actually dealing with you're dealing with logic. Again, and this it this is a very, very small sample size, but there's research out there, and this is about 10 years ago. This research came out. So the potential we're talking about the the hockey stick of innovation, that's that's there, and it's a very, very exciting time, and yeah, we're working with fantastic partners all over the world to to do this. Um, and there's a real the Americans are more bought in than the British. We've come to no surprise, the Americans are more innovative than we are. Um, but yeah, there's a huge, huge potential for technology to start to deal with I say the mental health crisis. I mean, you could say it is a crisis when you've got, especially in the US, 22 suicides a day of veterans. Um that we can get better, or we we we can do better with a with a multi-threaded approach of different programs, resilience programs, physical training, um, yeah, technology. If all of these things combined increases the mental resilience and the uh trauma resilience and the mental health of individuals, then we've won. Or we're winning.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:50

Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, I mean I think there's a balance to be struck with providing the tools to overcome an issue. Uh overcome mental ill, understand mental ill health, or understand your situation. Because you mean you may not be mentally ill, you may have to be having a bad day, like everyone else. Uh there's a balance between that and not ending up in a situation where people are pathologizing something that doesn't need to be pathologized, or they are they instead of being introspective and trying to understand for themselves or having the opportunity to understand for themselves, why they think what they think, why they why they feel what they feel, that they they outsource that work. Yeah. And and prolong an issue or create an issue out of nothing.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:56

Yeah, I I I mean I'm trying to think of a good good example. So Yes, I I went to Harrogate when I was 17. I was 16, just about turned 17 when I went to Harrigo. And when you're that age, and it's just all very, very fast, everything's happening very fast, you don't really know. And you're getting a locker inspection, your locker's getting ripped out. You're like, why the fuck are they doing this? You're being a dickhead. Like my locker was immaculate. Why have you just ripped it all out and tied knots in my sleeves, et cetera, et cetera? They were clearly building resilience. They were learning, they were essentially teaching you to deal with shit and just get on with it. And I think that a lot of the reason why people quit training is because they're like, I'm sick of that. Like, why are they doing that? What a dickhead. But actually, when you're a bit mature and you look back, you go, I know why they were doing that. They weren't doing it to be dickheads. I went some of them were, they probably quite quite enjoyed it. And we definitely had instructors that probably got kick out of it. But actually, it was because it was getting you prepared that not everything's going to go right all the time. And I think, I mean, I'm sure you know Ben Reid from Redeployable. I remember Ben Wow. Yeah. So obviously, but his whole mission is that veterans are not just people with music up near your office.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:06

He's around here. He's obviously about veterans are phenomenal because they're because they're resilient, they're problem solvers, they're sort of an element of that, but it's just education, right? If if you've had a shit day and your locker's been ripped to shreds and you've got like three hours sleep and you're thinking and you're tired and you're missing home. If someone just explained to you, and you had or centres like they're doing this to make you more resilient. This it's for your benefit. Do you know what I mean? Someone just taps you on the shoulder and be like, it's alright, mate. This this is gonna pay off further in life. You're more likely to stay in it than quit.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:40

Yeah, there are people right now listening to this and they want to throw their phone out the window listening to it, and and and the argument will be um, well, they're not the right people for the job if they need to have that have that warm, warm, affectionate wrap around, oh, you're gonna be okay, this is why they're doing it. And uh and um I understand why that would be frustrating, but there is definitely you know, there is it there's been a shift in general with military training, right? Over the last since I left. I left in 2011, and there's been a definite shift, just what I've heard, don't leave from people, and and you can see it in the levels of um pass rates for certain courses, yeah. Is that um the shift away from making things as making things as hard as possible for the recruit or the trainee if they're if they're already serving, as hard as possible the course, to uh and have sorry, to having as a KPI the pass mark being re the the the percentage of passes, sorry, being really low, an indication of a great course because it's really hard to get in, to like the SES is prime example, yeah. As a and power edge you've done it as well, boot next probably have as well, I don't know. Like they are putting more things in place to help recruits pass the course. They haven't changed the standards of the course, they haven't changed the the standards of P Company, for example, the standards of uh the standards of um select uh Hereford selection, for example, but the pass mark, the the percentage of people passing is going up because they want more people to pass it, they want people to be fitter from mental rehabilitation, uh mental preparedness and rehabilitation and um uh to the physical side. You know, uh higher pass marks are better if the standards of the pass criteria stayed the same. It's not is right.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:27

Is is it a good thing in society that more people can run a sub 10 second, 100 metres now than previously? So of course it's advanced sports science, advanced in psychology. Yeah, you you really highlight it, right? There's I don't know the exact name of the guy, but about 10, 12 years ago they're having the issue at Limston um for the for the Royal Marines, and a guy from Paul, obviously Royal Marine, SBS, went back to become an instructor at um at Limston. I mean, how cool would that have been if you're a 19-year-old to go there and you're and you're and your uh your platoon sergeant's just done five years at Paul, that'd be pretty cool in itself. But he literally had that view. He was like, why are we trying to make people fail? Let's look at how do we get people to pass. And for the the stories that I've heard is when someone would fail it, it wasn't like your shit, blah blah. It'd be like, cool, this is why you failed. Let's put a plan in place you pass. How do we get you past that next? And guess what? The pass rate went through the roof. I mean, so I know that at Harriga, um, I can't remember the guy's name, I think it's Mike something. He was X One Para, um, who then did his um uh move to the RA job, yeah. The Royal Army Physical Training Corps, and he basically did his degree and his master's on um functional performance. And so what they looked at was the amount of because obviously doing P company as a 17-year-old, because it's pretty hard in itself, but they were just oh, you just put more weight and you just run faster. Mike Chabwick. Yeah, Mike Chabrick. Really interesting. And he obviously looked at the whole program of anybody who's at Harrogate who wants to go and do P Company, wants to do a diving course, wants to do the commando course. We actually need to change the training for them. We need to focus on core techniques, um, mobility work. And guess what? By not just thrashing them, but actually using constructive science, sports science, and psychology, the pass rate went up. And it's in in the US, I mean, why we're working with US investors and US businesses, especially with Centra around this performance resilience part, is there was a phrase that coined by a guy who's I won't say his name, he's yeah, exocom, who we're working with, who um said that the mental side and performance resilience is the last unless unfunded pillar of human performance. And what he was saying in the US now, even in boot camps or on all the different training courses, delta selection, ranger selections, etc., they don't just take you outside and thrash you. They will take you outside, you do mobility work, warm the body up, then they'll thrash you. Because they're like, we're taking guys out at two o'clock in the morning in three three degrees weather. Guess what? Hamstrings are going, they're getting injured. What are we achieving by battering their bodies when they're cold? Why don't we just do give them a warm-up, prepare their body, and then thrash them to uninch their lives? They're gonna get fitter, there's gonna be less injuries, and that benefits the whole organization. Like what what are we achieving by beating people down? It's the same from the mental perspective. If this is why there's so much focus on what we're doing around, yeah, fair enough to the people who are listening, and there's gonna be a oh back in my day, it was harder. Cool, but what are we achieving by not changing? Let's make people better.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:35

I agree. Yeah, I agree, I agree, and and you know, it it it uh it when you there's there's this sort of ingrained I don't know, yeah, this ingrained pride, emotional pride about stuff that you did before, and then you hear something's change and it sounds like it's easier and you go, fuck sick. Like literally when you were talking about when you were talking about a recruit having access to an app, and they can go, why is it so hard? And yeah, yeah, in the art, I was thinking, God damn it, well he shouldn't be in, or she shouldn't be in. Like, God, I know you know that's the initial thought. I'm thinking, actually, okay, I kind of because I was what I was thinking was, well, if they need a fucking app, I'm just explaining if they need a fucking app to make them feel better so they can get through the thing, how are they gonna cope on the front line? Yeah, right, but it doesn't work like that, yeah. Like when they get to the when they get to the unit, well their learning's done, they've got through, they've passed, and they're a different person. Yeah, exactly. You know, and when you get and and being being on the front line, you know, on a two-way range, yeah, is a totally different situation and pushing a totally different mindset to being in depot, but you've got an option, yeah. You've got an option to fuck off. Yeah, you know, you've got an option to just go and I was gonna say ring the bell then. That's a navy seal, can't you? You've got an option to disappear and VW yourself and not even VW or just leave. You don't have the front line. So you know, I'm I you know and so that you know that thought process I had there, I had probably the same as other people. But like you're saying, things change and and especially where especially so it's it is one of the benefits actually of a big focus, not a big focus, the change in attitude and the development of high performance culture thinking over the last 15 years, yeah, and more, and more. You know, it's uh there's absolutely a place for it. We were talking, I think we were talking of getting the coffee about it, you know. Um the the attitude of big corporates towards the health and well-being of their staff has changed a great deal in the last 20-25 years. Well, less than that, even more so, less than that, 10 10 years or so since you know, pre-COVID. Um, because they recognize a happier employee who feels better and they've got a nice place to work and they feel happier, it's more productive. Well, there's that as they make you more money.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:49

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:49

It's it's that literally that that that 1980s phrase, happy people sell, yeah, is literally happy people perform. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and it's just about I mean, I was down in Paul 18 months ago for an event, and it it was about was no two years, two and a half years ago for an event. And at first, I was like, holy shit, they literally have physios, psychologists, nutritionists, sports science, because they realize that these guys in tier one units are athletes, right? They are literally fitter than well, that there's that argument, isn't there, that if you're a you come off selection, you're as fit as an Olympic athlete, kind of thing. Um, so why would you not treat them the same way? That if they're fitter, they're stronger, they're smarter, they're they're gonna spend a million million pounds training someone to be in a tier one unit, don't treat them like shit. And then you can start to democratize that across the whole of the military, the whole of society. Um we've kind of digressed a little bit, but yeah, that's essentially where Centra comes in to allow the the kind of the enhancement. And then when when shit does hit the fan, Sentra knows about it and they can help you and it can make you better and it can kind of lead you. Obviously, mental health is a wave. You will go through ups and downs your whole way through your life. And the point of technology and the point of therapy is to stop you breaking through the ice and going to a really dark place. If we can keep you from going going through the ice and kind of make maintaining a steady head, then there's less chance you'll go into crisis.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:16

Um, how have you had much engagement with the charity sector on uh on this? Yeah, so it's a really it's a how's that going?

SPEAKER_05 1:38:26

I know a loaded question when I hear one. Um I think there's about 1900 military charities in the UK. Okay, and that's everything from Rounded Warrior that's everything from Help for Heroes down to ridiculous Bob's bits or whatever. So Bob's charity. And obviously a lot of the smaller charities end up getting kind of amalgamated into the bigger ones. Um I heard someone once say, I can't remember who it was that said that the whole point of a charity is to make itself redundant. A charity's done its job, it should be. It's it is it has removed the need for that charity to exist because it solved that problem or that kind of gap in society. There are a number of charities who are very, very good. So we're working with there's a charity in the US called Responder Strong, which were a charity that was set up to provide physical, mental health support and performance to um blue light workers, fire brigade, and they are amazing. We're working with them, they're very, very innovative, and and their point is we don't want to exist. We want to be able to provide the frameworks and the infrastructure to allow people to deal with things themselves. Um, if and then you look at Wounded Warrior Project, Wounded Warrior Project, 250,000 warriors are in their in their programs. Obviously, for those who don't know, Wounded Warrior Project was set up post-9-11 as essentially it's you could argue it's similar to Our Help for Heroes. It was the kind of global war on terror, uh, the the the modern charity. Obviously, in the USA, the VA, the VA, you could argue, even though it's a government organization, is quite similar to um yeah, to our poppy appeal, um, essentially, massively get government funded. Um the US charities have been predominantly really engaging with us. Um, as I said, we did why a project, absolutely massive, hundreds of millions of funding. They've like Mark Woolbrook does adverts for them to generate um revenue, and they want to work with us like how can we use technology to get better? How can we how can we use technology to innovate, to make our services better, etc. So that's been really cool. The UK some are very, very resistant to work with us, and that's not all of them. There are some very, very good ones. And um the Royal Marines Association, for example. I mean, obviously, as a as a breed, the Royal Marines are generally quite innovative anyway, and they're always looking for for new things. Um, but there are some others who have literally been like, well, what what one of the pieces of feedback we got was what if someone uses Central and kills themselves? And I was so my response was what if someone well people are currently aren't using Centra and they're still killing themselves. If you don't if you don't innovate, you don't look at options and try and get better, then you simply will never get better. And this comes back to the talk earlier about innovation and and regulation. And I think that there are a number of organizations I'm trying to be really careful how I put this, some charities are quite self-serving for the people who founded them. And it's very nice to be able to say that you you run a charity, you um you you raise X million pounds a year, you do dinners, you do newspaper articles, you make yourself look great. But where's all the money going? Is it actually going to those who need it, or is it going into administration? I mean, I think it was Mo Farrh's um Mo Farrh's charity, obviously not a non-military charity, but Mo Farrah's charity, I think it raised like three million pounds a year doing events and everything, but like less than 1% actually went to causes. It was just funding the lifestyle of everybody involved in charity. So there are examples of that. And I'm gonna be really clear, there are some brilliant charities out there. The ones that the ones that we are working with, the ones that we haven't. So, for example, Combat Stress, very, very good. They've got uh they've actually they're the only charity mental health charity in the UK that actually have clinical license to provide services themselves. They have in-house, whereas all almost all the others have to outsource their mental health. So they they they bring in licensed therapists who they then pay, whereas Combat Stress has has their own team and they are very, very good or organisation. Um yeah, I just I just feel like it's a charity where sort of it's a sector kind of similar to the NHS where you can't dare challenge it because it's almost like a cult. And actually, if you can't criticize something, how's it ever gonna get better?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:55

Yeah, no, I agree. Uh the the charity sector in general is ridiculous, and the military charity sector is even worse. Um and I'd say that uh I'd say that a huge percentage of charity charitable organizations or mil or charities military, um, we could probably say it in general, right? Uh are only that they're sort of partly to do with addressing most of them that get set up. Most most new charities get set up, they're not they're not plugging a gap, they're not addressing some new need. They are they get set up to provide and to provide a service that is or or address a need that is already been addressed by multiple other charities and you know other types of organization, and they are not needed. The new charity is not needed. Uh it's one of the things pissing me off the last last few years. I've just become more aware of it. You know, the first thing I think when I see a new charity get set up is what are what are you addressing here? What gap are you plugging? Are you doing anything you are you going to make a are you going to make a big difference? Yeah. So whatever you try, whatever you whatever you think you're trying to do is gonna be a big difference. No, you don't you don't fucking do it. You you are better off if you're gonna start. So if you were thinking, if you're an ex-military person, you think I need to start a charity for this, let's say it's PTSD charity, let's say it's a charity, I don't know, could be fucking anything. If there are other organizations and charities out there already doing it, yeah, don't do it. Do not do it. Yeah, you're much better off spending your time fundraising for that charity.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:44

And if you like Safa, like Health Heroes or your regimental or your unique charity, definitely, yeah, you do not set one up because you it is and it is unnecessary. And the money that you will raise for your own new charity that you set up, a proportion of that money will need to go into your own running costs to sustain the charity's operations, right? Well, if you didn't set up that charity and you raise the same amount of money, that could be donated straight to another existing organization which is more efficient than yours, yeah, which um understands the uh sector better than you, is not brand new at doing it, and and it has a uh and is proven in doing what it's able to do. Yeah, does that mean all the existing charities are fucking great? No, it doesn't. Does it mean Safra without fault, combat stressor without fault, uh Alpha Heroes, regimental unit charities? No, they are the problems that they exist already. Like the first and uh I see them starting up all the fucking, as you probably do all the time. I think, oh my god, what are we doing? And the other reality is that a lot of these charities, especially in the military side of things, a lot of the charities that get set up, there is a huge element of that, that motivation to set something up, which is purely self-serving for the person who sets it up. MBE hunting, yeah, or some other thing. That that that is the reality. And I'm sorry if like you as someone who is set one up recently and this is fucking hurting you, um, uh whether I know you or not, you know. Uh, but you know, have a have a good, long, hard think about if if if that is you, you know, if if you are someone who sets something like this up, and a real big part of it is because you want your ego massaged, or you're fucking MBE hunting or something, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a charity, it could be some other organization, you know. Um, then you need to have a think about things because that's not why they should be getting set up. And and it waters down this the sector as a whole and it compromises the trustworthiness and the reliability reputation of the sector as a whole to provide whatever service it needs to provide. I I truly think that there shouldn't really be any military charities other than those that are provided by the units. Yeah, so like a lot of people don't know, but you know, most of the regimental associations, let's talk about the army, most of the regimental associations out there or core associations or your artillery, um they are charities in their own right. You know, I'm ex-Para and the Parachute Regimental Association is a charity in its own right, and it and it's and it has a welfare arm to it. It's mainly for welfare, and it is fucking brilliant at what it does. Yeah, brilliant at what it does. Very glad it is. The RMA you mentioned as well, brilliant at what it does. You know, they should be the only requirement. There shouldn't be any need for charities anyway, but it's the way it's the situation we're in, right? Where in reality the government and you know and the and the emity, they don't provide enough support, right? And the NHS is fucking stretched. So if we're gonna have them leave that, I think they should just stop with the the military chart, the existing ones, go there. You know, there's a whole crossover amongst them all. Maybe have one or two of the big ones, but the rest is not needed, and and they all provide different levels of service, and most of them have major issues. Yeah, some of them don't fundraise very well, and a lot of the time, a lot of them, especially the smaller ones, most of the money is going into the operations of it, be that salaries, yeah, or be that um really poor, uh uh really poor um you know financial situations they've got because of the inefficiencies of the organization. Uh yeah, I I yeah, it was a loaded question. Yeah, but I I from talking earlier, I know you think kind of the same as me, the same as me, in that there's a problem with the charity sector. It's not just military. But the thing is our hearts are close to the military, obviously. Yeah, you know, and when you see just new bullshit get set up, and also being extremely resistant to change, and also being extremely resistant to running more lean, less uh you know, just reducing the chaff of the of people mainly that are in your organization. So Century I, for example, uh you talk about that, I think that could really make things cheaper to run for a mental health charity and enable them to provide a better service to more people, yeah. That it would mean reducing head count as well, you know, which can be a problem.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:17

Yeah, I'd I I think ultimately I think you've got to remember exactly why that charity was set up or why that person wanted to help. To your point, yeah, there is an element of MBE hunting or gong hunting, but also because they they put they they do they do care to a certain extent. Um that's an element of it. Yeah, there's an element of it is they do care, and it's like, okay, what's the best thing I can do for those who need it? Is it me setting up my own charity? Or like you said, is it actually giving to but they don't go as far as that question. No, but that's what I'm saying. They should. I mean, yeah, yeah. I think a good example. A few years ago, I'm gonna use Elon Musk again as an example of obviously he's the rich man in the world. I think he's technically the richest man's ever lived now, because he's more of a Rockefeller. And so almost like one week of Elon's money could solve world home. And he responded saying, Cool, tell me exactly how we solve it, and I'll transfer you the money right this second. And the person just went quite. It's like this is the point. It was like, you give me the UN breakdown, the exact strategy, distribution of how to solve world hunger, and I will pay you for every penny because I genuinely care. That person couldn't come back with a plan, and he went, You can't do it. Well, you can't, well, you're just saying that because you want to be a be a dickhead essentially. But I mean, yeah, but we can we're probably gonna rabbit hole here. But um, I think it's is it something like a trillion dollars has gone into Africa for water programs? A trillion dollars, and they're still not running water. Come on, there's gotta be some crashes over that.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:44

Well, there's it's there's yeah, I yeah, no, go on.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:48

We're not gonna go in a rabbit hole, but I think that that's probably you maybe should maybe you should get someone on from the charities commission.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:54

Well, one of the things one of the things that's a good it's a good uh it's a good Africa's a good case study, right? Now, one of the things you could suggest about Africa, for example, as an example, but you can the less this lesson or hypothesis could be said for other things. Is that maybe one of the reasons that they have not been able they have not developed to where we think they should or could develop to if we're judging that on Western levels of first world country levels development, if we're talking about third world countries in Africa, is because the more aid you throw at them, the less need they have to develop. Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_05 1:51:36

I'm that's yeah, no, it's it's it's completely completely valid point.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:39

We don't need to, we don't need to strive innovation and development if we are getting the resources we need from somewhere else. Yeah, you know, and and and yeah, and and that sounds like really harsh, you know. The the the Uber the the Uber proponents of that hypothesis would say cut off all aid and they'll develop pretty quickly. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure about that.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:03

Yeah, you there's an element of the stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:05

But there's definitely something there. And then the other aspect to it is the charity sector is very, very, very profitable people, especially when you send in, when you think about the the effort, logistics, the the money it takes to send aid of whatever type to somewhere else on the planet. Anyway, I digress. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:25

Yeah, it's efficiencies. Sufficiencies, yeah. Sufficiencies indeed. Yeah, but for example, uh cancer research. I really hope cancer research doesn't have to exist because they would have completed their mission, or they would have found a cure for cancer or a way to prevent cancer. If if cancer research is a very, very good charity that's in a that's doing the work to prevent and cure cancer, I really hope there's a day where there's no need for it. Because that would be that'd be the utopia, right? That they've actually cured can they've cured and prevented cancer, the charity wouldn't need to exist.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:57

I don't think a cure for cancer will be allowed to be developed.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:02

We're going back down these conspiracy theories again.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:04

No, no, no. I I think I I I don't think it well, I so alright. Human culling.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:11

Honestly, it manages the uh it it manages the the the head count in an efficient way.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:19

There was a QF okay, so so alright, so I have it on very good authority, very, very, very good authority, right? Yeah as an example of this, that a cure for AIDS was developed in France uh in the late noughties developed by French scientists and as soon as that cure was developed and validated, the French government, or may have been even been an EU EU body, but the French government at the very least took ownership of the of the data of the IP, the uh they took ownership of it and prevented the distribution of that or the the further the the commercialization of that cure. Um to the point where the scientists behind it were ended up locked basically in years of a legal battle to try and and this is all uh obviously suppressed from public knowledge, they were locked in a legal battle to be able to use what they developed and distribute for obviously very, very beneficial reasons for people who've got fucking heads, yeah. Uh and couldn't, and they tried through a back door to get the information to China, right? Who are not the Chinese are like, they don't give a shit about laws, right? Yeah, and we're not able to do it. And and I I was told that story by someone I would regard as having authority on the subject. Uh on the authority, uh yeah, on on the not on the beyond the subject, yeah. And uh and I believe it to be true, and and look and it I think it's the case because it's illness is profitable. The illler people are, yeah, or the more you can describe people as ill, then the more profitable it is for one, the pharmaceutical industry, right? Cancer, look how profitable cancer is. You know, if the the if the world was healthier on average that industry would do really badly. We'd do worse.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:50

I I I understand the the theory behind it. I suppose you could argue so why does Zempic exist? Fast the the fast fuel chains must be literally.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:59

But it play it play it it it links into what you're saying about you know charities. It is if a charity solves the problem like it was if a charity does its job properly and has no need to exist anymore, that's fucking brilliant. But then people lose money.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:16

Yeah. You know?

SPEAKER_00 1:56:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:20

Maybe I'm just too much of an optimist.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:23

Um very skeptical of things in general. Not in general, but when it comes to charity, the charity sector, I am oh god, I just it just breaks me. I can't I I I really struggle. And I am someone who's benefited from several charities, you know, in in I was gonna say in a good way, benefit is good. I've I've benefited them. Yeah, I have a huge respect for organizations who for the organizations help me out and organizations help other people out. I understand it. But there's just it just needs major reform. Just major. I mean, look at the problems you're having. Not problems, look at the experiences you're having, you know. You know, um, so how do you combat that?

SPEAKER_05 1:57:08

I feel like with most examples, if you're trying to work with organizations of you prove it works with other organizations, they have to step into line. So we're really fortunate to be working, you know, as I said, Brunner Warrior projects are the biggest in the world. We work with them, we we prove the efficacy and capability of Centra. We are going down to get clinical approval, and we're the only from what we know, I think I said this, we're the only mental health charity, sorry, only mental health technology that's actually being set up to be regulated, not to avoid regulation. I mean, I had a really interesting call with a member of the um UK Medical Regulatory Board last week, and she she literally is the manager, the program manager for uh mental health regular uh AI regulation. And she was saying that she spent her whole time battling with organizations who are trying to avoid regulation rather than to actually collaborate with them. Um, so they have a number of issues where, for example, like the a mental health app could literally say, This is a wellness app, this is not mental health, and they think they can get away with get away with it. Right. Um, whereas we are taking the hard road to get regulated. Um because if our technology is regulated and it's used, it's gonna save lives if you try and cut corners. It's ironic because I was talking about deregulation earlier, but some things for needs to be regulated and technology needs to collaborate with regulators, um, not fight against them. So yeah, the the the way that these charities step into line, I'll say step size, bad, bad, bad choice of words. Um these charities start to be open up to embrace technology is by when they see the success we're having with others.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:52

Oh well, the uh the Wounded Warrior Project is actually one charity I've benefited from in the past, believe it or not, uh an American charity, but the circumstance I was in and where I was just happened to be there. Um but uh and so so having them as an uh you know I wasn't gonna say advocating for you, but them being engaged with you is that is a huge a good indication of you know how promising the century is. And I think you know, if you can help organizations be more efficient uh in this kind of stuff, then then so then then good. Uh get this one. So uh Koch, one of the patrons, has just put in the live stream chat. Uh so as an example of um money and stuff, David Miliband. David Miliband earned his earnings as president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee. Uh so what do you think they were for 2022 fiscal year?

SPEAKER_05 1:59:56

Wasn't he wasn't he also involved with the Water Foundation as well? Well, I think you're less concerning and they're one of the um International Rescue Committee. Was it 400 grand a year?

SPEAKER_00 2:00:06

So his earnings were 1.2 million dollars, 983,000 pounds, which included a hundred and fifty three hundred and fifty thousand dollar bonus, a fifty thousand dollar housing allowance, and other compensation. No, I am someone who believes that I've got no issue with CEOs of things getting paid a lot of fucking money, yeah, because that is what you need to pay to get that late level of expertise.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:39

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:40

There needs to be a line though. There needs to be a line. I feel like there's probably better options out there than David Miliband to run the IRC, right? David Miliband could have done that for 150 grand a year. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:54

I think it yeah, it takes a piss take. If if if he cared, he would have done it for 100 grand a year.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:02

Uh yeah, if yeah, if if he could afford to, right? I don't know what in the financial circumstances. No, no, no, no, no. But I'm assuming he's pretty well off and it could do that.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:11

And my assumption is he doesn't he doesn't need 1.5 million a year to pay the mortgage, right? If you're ahead of a charity, your sole purpose is to drive the innovation or drive the quality and effectiveness of that charity. Could that 1.5 million have been better used in the charity or for him going on holiday?

unknown 2:01:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:32

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:33

For me, that's a prioritization question of the reason the reason why a private company CEO gets that money because they drive profit for the business, they drive innovation for the business. If you're CEO of a 4100 company and you have we use I'll use Elon Guess again because everyone knows who he is and it's the big, he's just signed this trillion dollar pay package. So he has the opportunity to earn a trillion dollars in stock and options if he hits certain thresholds. But what those thresholds are will actually drive six trillion dollars in value for other people. So he only gets a slice of what so if you're a CEO of a private company and you're getting paid $1.5 million a year, the chances are you've made the company $1.5 billion in that year. So actually you're getting remunerated in a fair amount. If you're a charity and you're paying your CEO $1.5 million a year, could that $1.5 million a year have resulted in better quality output for that charity? If it means that that CEO, that CEO couldn't have done that job without $1.5 million, then cool, justify it. But could they have done it for $150,200 grand a year? Again, personal situations and but bring the best people, yeah. You you you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. I I get that. But if that individual, if they cared that much about that charity, because the charity is about caring, let's be honest, it's about doing the right thing. Um, do they think that that money would be better spent reinvested into services that that charity provides, or for them to invest it or to go and on holiday?

SPEAKER_00 2:03:03

So that's just a question about big payback as a charity. It's uh like I've got I've got, like I said, I don't have I don't have an issue with someone in the charity sector, a boss, or even the the next level down, you know, all getting paid shitloads. Like like private sector level wages, you know, if if uh I I've got no issue with that if it can be if it is justified, yeah, if it is if it can be justified by the charity.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:30

If you need the skill set, if you're cancer research and you need the smartest brains in the world to deal with modeling of potential strings and you're competing with Blackstar Smith Klein, et cetera, et cetera, you can't just go, oh well let me we're only gonna pay 25 grand a year because we need the money, but Blackstar Smith climbed off you caught a million pounds a year. You have to pay the market rate, and I completely understand that. Yeah, um, but yeah, the market rate for a market rate for a CEO of a company, unless it's a FTSE 100 or SP 100, definitely isn't 1.5 million. 1.5 million a year. Um, and also you've got to bear in mind a lot of that time, if they're on 1.5 million a year at a FTS 100 or whatever, a lot of that's in stock, it's not cash.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:14

Yeah. Um, we're getting short on time. I know you've got a deadline, mate. Um, there's there were a few questions thrown in. Uh a few questions thrown in for the for the end of the pod, but I'm not really able to get through them all, so I'm gonna pick and choose you. Uh in fact, before we get onto that, uh we would because there's a bunch of AI questions in your. I'm assuming you've seen the film her. No. Oh, watch that film.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:41

I've seen X Machina, which is about Is it X Machina or X Machina?

SPEAKER_00 2:04:46

I call it X Machina, but I call it X Machina, but tomato tomato.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:51

Um phenomenal film um about the humanization of AI and I think that was so far ahead of its time.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:56

Yeah, brilliant film. Okay, so so her yeah is uh it's got Wackin Phoenix in it. Yeah, it's gotta be about 10 years old now, yeah. Maybe, and uh it is set in the near future, yeah. AI has been rolled very similar to now, AI has been rolled out, and everyone's got like this AI chat person available to personalized to them. Yeah, and and uh Wackin Phoenix falls in love with his. Yeah, it's an excellent movie. Yeah, um, highly recommend you watch it, and other people watch it because it's a reality. It's just a hundred. It has actually happened.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:28

There was an example of a teenager in the US who fell in love with.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:31

You we wait until robots become really lifelike, which is happening too. Yeah, and then you can buy it with the AI. Well, we've got one as prime minister. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:42

So this is a non-political conversation, but I think everyone can see what's in front of it.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:46

Oh god, good. We don't need politics at the minute.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:49

Chat GPT, prime minister.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:51

Right, so all right, here's the question. Has your has your mental health past influenced Centra AI? And do you use Centra AI?

SPEAKER_05 2:06:03

100%, yeah, absolutely. And I I use I'm I'm in a very good place at the moment, so I don't use it as much. But Ollie, um Oli, our clinical lead, yeah. As I said, he's a senior registrar for a trauma center. So he's he works on Centra when he has free time, but he's also working in mass casualty events in Coventry Hospital, and he uses it every single day.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:24

Good. Um, I wish we had more time, but it's all right, we can do it again sometime, and you're not too far away, anyway. So uh I like it, mate. I like it. Um, I like the entrepreneurial side of it, I like the AI side of it, as in great example of utilising AI for uh the greater good as opposed to um, I don't know, creating dodgy memes or videos or whatever. I've seen the memes.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:50

I'm hoping it was a deep fake, the one I saw of you anyway.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:54

Was it the one with the goat?

SPEAKER_05 2:06:58

It was it was the donkey. 2007, I think it was. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:04

In the desert. Um, but in all seriousness, good luck with it, mate. I'm I'm glad we made time for it. And I'm sorry if it took me so long to get around to getting you in here. All good. Um, but um keep in touch. And anything I can do to help out, let me know. Um, how can people keep a track of what you're doing and find out more about Central AI?

SPEAKER_06 2:07:23

Uh getcentra.ai is the website. Get centred.ai.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:27

Yeah, um, because centra.ai is about quarter million quid to buy the URL. Um it's owned at the moment by someone else. Um, we will buy it once we uh once we can afford to. Um yeah, LinkedIn as well. Uh myself, Ollie. I think talking outside, obviously, I was talking about the founding team, the three of us, but also just last just this week we announced that um we've just hired a new founding engineer, uh, Ben Ford. Um Ben final. Ben Ben Ford, uh phenomenal guy, uh, ex-Raw Marines. So now I'm outnumbered. Uh there's more Marines than there are army in Centra, which is I mean, they just wear dresses and go out on Thursdays. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so he was War Marines. He taught himself how to code um in the the bows of an amphibious landing ship on the way to Iraq 2003. Um, because obviously there's no internet back then. He literally had a laptop and a book on how to write code. So he taught himself to code using a book. Um, yeah, so he's now our founding engineer for software. Nice. Um, so yeah, really good group of people.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:27

Good, good. Well, congratulations what you got so far. Thank you. And good luck for the future, mate. And uh, let's do this again sometime.

SPEAKER_05 2:08:33

100%.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:34

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