What Happens When AI Listens to Sick Pigs for Six Days Straight?

I started looking at all the the English speaking countries that had student visas with an immigration pathway. My love for astrophysics that never kind of turned into the reality for me. Going back 9 years ago in 2017, when I used to ask people that exact same question, everybody without a doubt said the Terminator. The research showed the hippocampus, the part of the brain that's that's responsible for spatial relationships, physically shrinks in drivers that rely on Google Maps. So, it's kind of the sensors are like a trained human ear, and they've been trained to listen for signs of respiratory illnesses. We don't need cloud connectivity for our brain to work.

Let's go and do it and see what happens.

Ideas are worth like jack [music] [ __ ] absolute jack [ __ ]

If you can't execute, there is nothing.

Just take that initiative to actually take whatever crazy ideas that they might have and just try to [music] see what comes of it.

That would be a pride of ambition. Chase it, love it, wrap your arms around it, and [music] and shout it out loud.

These little ones don't know any better, and they will just get up and give it a shot.

That's why we were first to get to the top of Mount Everest. Go

to dream that ultimate dream. Like, what is it [music] that you ultimately want to do? And it's all achievable.

Great. Wassabi, welcome to Tech Meets. Great to have you. And I want to start somewhere where I think most people wouldn't start when interviewing you as an AI founder and as an AgTech founder is uh your company is named after a galaxy that is approximately 13 billion light years away from Earth. And it's you know, now the company name itself, I mean, there's you know, it's so it's derived from MACS J0647-JD, right? The farthest known galaxy in the Milky Way. Um and the your reasoning, I think, is that you want a genuinely kind of outside-the-box thinking. So, you need a box bigger than the Milky Way. So, like, what does it What does the name actually mean to you when you walk in the office every morning?

Yeah, so it's it's exactly that. The name and and I remember when I workshopped the name in my in my bedroom with like lots of sticky notes on the wall. And the thought process was having that culture of thinking outside the box. And and so this galaxy is the furthest galaxy away from Milky Way galaxy as of 2017, which is when the the name was coined. And so going into the office and having this mindset the conversation with the team when something comes up is always about how do we do it, not if we can do it.

Mhm.

And and I think that that's kind of like the core value that aligns with where the where the name comes from.

Mhm. Does that Do you feel like that puts a lot of pressure on the team or on you?

I think at the the time of kind of problem-solving, yes. But I guess it's it's a healthy amount of pressure. We are a startup after all. Pressure is what, you know, makes us do what we do. So, yeah, I think it does in in a healthy way. Hope that answers the question.

It does. It's very unique. I've never, you know, usually a company name kind of tries to signal what the company does. Yours

Yeah.

kind of signals that there's no limits to what the company does in some ways, right? Great.

Yeah, I want to take you back to the very beginning of your New Zealand story. So, you arrived in New Zealand in 2012. You were 22.

Mhm.

And Mark and I have moved countries many times. We know the feeling. But the first 6 months are always very chaotic, right? Like you're trying to figure out money, you're trying to figure out where to live, friends, social circles, all of that. What was the first year actually like? Give us the the real version of what 2012 was like for you.

Ooh, that takes me back like so far back that I feel like it's it's almost a different life, but yes, I I arrived in New Zealand when I was 22 after 6 years of living in India. And and I was born in Iran, so I had like two two completely different cultures behind me, and then I was in New Zealand, which is again another completely different culture. Different different language, different accents. I kind of felt like I had to learn English all over again. And yeah, that there was quite a bit of pressure because I came to New Zealand with a small amount of money, and then I kind of like promised myself that that was it, that I was I was never going to go back to the parents, I was never going to And I was not going to let this fail. So, it was kind of like success is the only way forward.

The biggest New Zealand Um so, when when I was in India, we were mainly my my mother, she's kind of the hero behind all of my stories. And and she basically was like, well, you know, India, you you can't stay. It's not a country that you can immigrate to, and you need to go somewhere to build a life. And I started looking at all the the English-speaking countries that had student visas with an immigration pathway. And and to be honest, at the time I didn't even know like where New Zealand was. I thought it was like this tropical island with, you know, warm sandy beaches. And I think it was about maybe just a few months before I came to New Zealand that I learned how cold it was, and and I had to go back to Iran for like a week to just buy warm clothes, so I had to bring them to New Zealand.

But yeah, I think it was it was I went to a student fair where all the universities come, and they present, you know, their courses and everything they offer. And then I came across this concept with a one-year course, which was a postgraduate diploma, which is level eight in New Zealand, which is kind of like the first year of your master, so you get a degree, but it's not masters, it's also not bachelors. And um yeah, so that that basically is what brought me to New Zealand. And then I think within 6 months of being here, I got hired by IBM. And and then yeah, I I stayed and now New Zealand is is home.

How long did it take you to make New Zealand home?

It took a few years, to be honest. Um Uh when when you immigrate and and you know, when you immigrate under the circumstances that that someone like me did, you know, in in India we could never call it home because it always felt like we were there temporarily. Because we always were on visas and we had to had to get extensions. And and then I think between 2012 to 2014-15 is Was it 14? I can't remember exactly until I got my my residency in New Zealand, it still kind of felt like I'm here just temporarily. And things may not happen and you don't know the future. And so anything that I purchased was around things that I could carry with me if I had to leave, rather than kind of settling in a place. And then once I got my residency, I remember This is getting a bit personal, but I was I was in a relationship at the time and then and then that didn't work.

And so I think by the time I kind of moved out and I became like fully independent on my own in my own little studio in Auckland on CBD. As as tiny as it was, it was mine and it was my space. And I and I no longer had to worry about leaving or having to leave. And that's when it started kind of feel like home. But really the turning point was in 2018 when my mother joined me in New Zealand and then 2021 when my brother joined me in New Zealand. And I was like, "Okay, now now family's here. And so now this is really home."

Wow. What did that What did that feel like Uh when you were in that studio and you felt like I had my visa, this is kind of now my home. What was that feeling?

Amazing. It was amazing. I didn't care that it was small. I did not care that it was nothing flash or luxury. I just cared about the fact that it was mine. Mine isn't like my space, you know, that I could feel it that I could call it mine. That I could call it my house. I didn't buy it. I I was renting, but but I could call it my house. I could call it like my stuff, my vacuum cleaner, my wardrobe. It's interesting. Literally, it's simple stuff like that and and I think until you you're in a position that you can't say those things for a few years, you don't know what it feels like. And then when you start experiencing them again, then then I think you kind of appreciate those little things that you have. And then now I'm I'm inviting my my friends to my house. And and yeah, that was that it felt amazing.

What What were you What were you doing in India? I'm also very curious.

Um we left when I was 16, my brother was nine, and um there there were a couple of things. So, the main thing we were doing there we were students. Um and there were two reasons why we left. Um going back to my mother's story, she was an electrical engineer in Iran for about 23 years, but she absolutely hated her job. She was excellent at that, but she absolutely hated it. Um and and she's a poet, she's a writer, she's a life coach now. And and she really wanted to uh go and and pursue what she loved. Um and so, that's one of the reasons why we went to India because she's she started studying at 48. She went back to university, you know, from day one of her bachelor's degree.

She did her um English literature class course, and then, you know, started like researching about Indian history and Indian philosophy and then got her master's and yada yada yada, but the best part of that story is her and I graduated on the same day. And she graduated from her second degree and my me from my first from my computer science.

That's a

So that was one of the reasons, but you know, the the other reason was also quite of leaving, sadly, leaving Iran. It was no longer the place for us to call home.

Yeah. So you you've had a very interesting and unique story of getting to New Zealand. So if you now built two companies here and won the APAC Innovator of the Year award, when you picture that 22-year-old who just landed, what does she think of where you are now?

I think given my expectations of myself are so high, she would probably be like, "Why aren't you any further?" Sometimes, and then and then my now version would probably just look back at her and say, "Love your enthusiasm, but life is harder than you think." But I guess the other version of me would would be proud. I I guess the much younger version of me would be proud. I I think and I and I say this to to some of my closest kind of family members sometimes. I'm like, "It's it's a good feeling to sometimes look at myself in the mirror and and see the image of me that I pictured as a kid. That's so that's a great feeling. But yeah, I think my 22-year-old self had a had much higher expectations of where I would be by 36. Probably because I thought 36 was you know, much further than it actually was.

[laughter]

Yeah, I think we can all relate.

Yeah.

I want to understand a little more how you became interested in the AI because that's quite an interesting origin story in itself. So from what we understand, you became interested in Stephen Hawking, specifically around his warnings about AI danger, and then that led you to write your master thesis about AI ethics um around the why behind the danger of AI, and then that led you to choose this company name, right? So, yeah, just love to understand a little bit more the kind of evolution of your personal AI journey.

Yeah, so it goes back to when I was I think 10 when I decided to be an astrophysicist, but truth be told I didn't know what astrophysics was. I just said I want to be an astronaut, but not the ones that go to space, the ones that are on Earth. And then I went through, you know, high school and I I remember I had a really bad mathematics teacher and that dream kind of shattered and but then years after when I went to to later stages in in my final high school years and found a really good mathematics teacher and I became like, you know, I I actually started teaching maths and then did computer science and all that kind of stuff. So, life kind of took a different path for me when it came to to choosing astrophysics versus then landing in computer science, which I absolutely loved. But it was around that age 21, 22 when I came across Stephen Hawking's book called The Grand Design.

Highly recommend everybody to read it. Uh and then uh and then yeah, so then that kind of led into, you know, other kind of books that I was reading and um and then, you know, the warnings about AI and Stephen Hawking's and Elon Musk's and all that kind of stuff and then, you know, that led to to my master thesis. But the the name Max All was particularly chosen because of my my love for astrophysics that never kind of turned into reality for me. And so, it's kind of like carrying that part of me that I always wanted to be that astrophysicist that never got to be. And then, yeah, that's kind of like where where we have landed now.

So, one of the questions I get asked sometimes about Max All is like, "Oh, you know, you're based in New Zealand, you've gone international, you know, too soon or you're kind of like are on all these countries and I kind of look at them and be like, yeah, but the earth is a small planet.

And New Zealand is a very small place.

Yeah, what are you talking about? Like my my dream is to have my sensory AI on on Mars, you know, discovering galaxies. Um but yeah, that that's kind of like the the full story.

Very cool. And what drew you to astrophysics in the first place? Where does this fascination come from?

It came from the first book I my mother ever bought me after I learned how to read and that was a book about, you know, our our solar system and the planets and then I learned that the sun was about to die, you know, in in a few billion years and I remember going to school in tears and me like, you know, the sun's going to die at some point and it's going to fry everybody on earth and so we have to get everybody out of earth and and that was a seven seven eight year old me and and everybody laughed at me at school and I was like, you can laugh but, you know, this is this is real and so I think they were kind of like, why are you so upset about something that's a few billion years away? And my mindset was, no, but we have to keep doing things for the future, for the future generations.

Like very unconsciously I've always had this thought of we need to build cer- certain things in in this life that is so fundamental to help the next generation and and yeah, that story just kind of like kept you know, getting bigger and bigger and bigger until, you know, turned into love for for astrophysics and then I've always been very curious about life. Where do we come from? Why do we exist? How does the universe work? Um you know, like I was my my flight my recent flight to France got rerouted to to Geneva and that would usually be a, you know, a a big inconvenience but I was like, I'm in Geneva, I'm going to go see the the CERN Science Center. Like bring it on. Thank you for for canceling my flight and sending me to Geneva. So, yeah, it's it's kind of like always that curiosity about life and the universe is is what led me to astrophysics.

Well, that's super interesting. We We see a lot of founders and they're like driven by something much bigger than themselves. And I'm curious where like different people it comes from different different places, but where does that that drive for you to want to create something that is bigger than yourself? Where does that come from for you?

I guess it kind of comes from this personality trait that I have which is I have a highly allergic reaction to to an unfair situation. All right? So, when something is is really unfair and obviously having been born in Iran from a very young age, I realized how unfair the world around me was. And and I guess it was always that feeling of I need to somehow fix this, you know? And obviously as a kid, I thought I could fix it and now as an adult I'm saying I can contribute to fixing it, but I think that's that's the main reason. Like when you grow up going around and like seeing, you know, buildings that have been drawing and your parents tell you like this is because of the war or you you, you know, you grow up with these like war stories cuz I was born 2 years after the Iran-Iraq War.

Um and I was born in a state that was a neighboring state with Iraq and you know, some of my my father's most of his his cousins had had passed away in that war. And so, when you grow up hearing all of these stories, you kind of sit as a kid and think, "What are adults thinking? Like why?" Like there's a lot of what's You know when you go through that phase as a child of why, you know, except for when you grow up in an environment like that, you don't ask, I don't know, "Why is the sky blue?" You kind of ask, "Why do we have war?" You know, "Why Why do people die this way?" You know, why are there so many funerals? You know, and so that I think the concept of the wise that you ask completely changes. Like, why do I have to wear a head scarf? You know, why do I have to be Muslim? Why am I being force-fed a whole bunch of like information that make no sense to me?

I Why are my parents different outside of the house than than they are inside? Why can't I be myself? You know, all those kind of like questions again and that also combined with just me being born that way of, you know, not wanting to to settle for what then makes sense.

And then you given given the situation that you're seeing now in Iran, how do you think about it now? Given that I guess yeah, you you sort of grew up in the in that country for a formal part of your life. Do you feel like it's just all hopeless or do you have some hope that eventually it can actually be, you know, a country like others based on democratic principles where you kind of, you know, the next the next sort of Sabah which is 5 doesn't ask all those questions and asks, you know, why is the sky blue?

Look, I think the way I the way I think about Iran right now is more driven by hope than it is by logic. So, I I hope that that happens and I hope that this regime goes and and um and I hope the world kind of sees them for what they really are. And I hope that they finally see the truth that we have been experiencing for 47 years or me for my entire life. Um will it happen? I don't I don't really know. I feel like when it comes to geopolitics or politics in general, I've lost so much hope and the people in charge that that it's kind of like very difficult for me to to kind of be sure about an outcome. Um what I have learned though in in in my life is that whatever is unfair and and evil would eventually die. You know, there's only so much that it can go further. The sad part of this entire thing was that until this evil actually dies, it's going to kill a lot of innocent people.

Sorry, that's a bit graphic, but it it's it's also true and it's it's a reality of what's been going on there. So, I hope it changes. Who knows? I always I always like when I talk to my friends, you know, we we start kind of like like this hopeful dreaming almost. Like hopeful like dreaming of how like, you know, next year this time, you know, we can we can go to Iran for our Persian New Year and you know, and we get to see, you know, those those monuments or we get to see our loved ones again and and, you know, they get to they get to be happy and not afraid anymore. So, and and I feel like if we didn't do that, then the kind of mental and psychological impact of whatever is going on there on Iranians and diaspora and and the ones inside Iran is going to be catastrophic. So, I guess we'll just hang on to this hope and see what happens.

Yeah, and I guess yeah, we all share that hope. It seems to me that you've always been very interested from very early on about the future of humanity in a very grand scale, but also on a smaller scale, how we live together right now and what's fair, what's not fair, what's ethic. You spend a lot of time thinking about AI ethics and I found or we found in our research that you did a competition where you had to compress your AI ethics research into like a 3-minute pitch that non-academics would understand. I don't know how much you remember of that 3-minute pitch, but what was that about and yeah, how do you how do you think about AI ethics in general? Yeah, if you still remember

Yeah, I know which one you mean. It was a it was a 3-minute competition, like a 3-minute thesis competition that at I can't remember the exact contents of that pitch because I've I've given so many since, but um yeah, I I I still kind of remember the kind of core part of what what my thesis was about, which is why is AI perceived to be dangerous technology. So, one is, you know, lack of knowledge of people who are um investing in AI, and the second is lack of kind of um I don't know what what the right word is. This this future kind of more holistic kind of bigger picture. Um or the ability to see that bigger picture by some of the engineers that are building AI, and then, you know, the rest is kind of a lot of that, you know, a lot of the advancements is is driven by profitability, and a lot of times governance and ethics slows down that profitability.

So, there is these are like some of the core elements, and then on the other side it was also like, you know, as as AI advances and we kind of hand over more mental tasks to it, we're going to kind of end up with this imbalance of intelligence with like natural stupidity and artificial intelligence. So, yeah, but but that was that was the core of of my my thesis, and and that 3-minute pitch was a yeah, that was I can't remember how many times I practiced that. So, it was hours and hours.

How do you feel about where we are going with AI now? Um obviously this has been a few years ago. Um things have accelerated quite a bit. I think the brand AI has really really decreased in popularity uh in the last 6 or 12 months. Are we on the right track or what's your feeling around AI ethics at the moment?

So, what one very interesting shift that I'm seeing in in people and and their mindset when it comes to AI, and and I I do this as an icebreaker in in the in a lot of my um kind of presentations and training is is I start the the the session by asking people when I say the phrase artificial intelligence, what's the first thing that pops into your mind? And right now people say chat GPT or Claude or LLMs and you know, um privacy issues sometimes comes up, terms and conditions, da da da da. And then I tell them, "We're in 2026 now. Going back 9 years ago in 2017, when I used to ask people that exact same question, everybody without a doubt said the Terminator." And so it's a very interesting worldwide yet very quick shift in people's mindset about how they think about AI.

That it has gone to change from something people are scared of to now to then something that they found quite convenient to now something that yes, they they've been bought off. Um where I think that narrative would fail, uh and I think where we have consistently failed as as humans when it comes to introducing new tools and technologies into the market is is we often do that without preparing the population for what's coming. We throw something out there and and we let it go wrong and then we reactively go and say, "Now let's put the safeguards because these are the places that we see it's gone wrong." And I feel like we're repeating that same mistake with AI. It's not about how quickly it's advancing. We've always known that this is this is how quickly it will advance and I and I think we're going to see even more acceleration.

My biggest worry is the lack of those safeguards and and the fact that the people that are developing these types of technologies are the the tech companies that are driven by profitability and and money, but historically the people that have put these safeguards in place are the governments that are often much slower, you you compared to the pace of technology. So that to me is the biggest risk that we're dealing with. But, on the on the other hand, the mistake that I think the tech industry is making and that the entire kind of core concept behind Maxo is to go against that narrative is that there's been so much investment in AI that is so human specific. So, you know, our productivity, our financial data, you know, marketing, you know, that sort of things.

You know, you have an AI that can read your emails and write your emails and you know, whip up a a presentation for you in in minutes. But, where we lack AI is now the rest of the world. So, we have this this amazing environment that we're living in and this amazing environment goes unmonitored yet impacted by our actions. And there's so many risks out there that if detected early can prevent major catastrophes. And the core idea behind the Maxo platform itself comes from the fact that if you look at AI and AI always basically replicates different intelligent behavior, right? So, we have our frontal lobe where our logic and our reasoning and our language processing is and and that's where the core of the current commercialized AI has been focused on. And what I said with Maxo is, well, what about the rest of the brain?

What about our sensory system that has helped us survive all these years? What if you could have sensors out there that could see danger, that could hear danger, that could smell danger, that could feel danger and then prevent bushfires, prevent deaths caused by, you know, bad air quality. Um and so, that was like the core idea behind behind And then, you know, the the use case that we're currently focused on is, you know, the disease detection in in animals which on its own is a is a huge kind of market with with a lot of gaps that we're trying to address. And and this concept kind of was formed around between kind of 2019 to 2021 and then 2021 is when Maxo was was kind of founded. And now, 5 years after, 5 6 years after, I'm starting to see people say, "What about physical AI? What about sensory AI?" You know, and I'm kind of like, "Hallelujah. Finally."

Like when we first started, we would talk about, you know, Maxo and it would go like people would be like, "What are you talking about? You're crazy." But now it's kind of like So, I think the next wave in in kind of like what would take off after the large language models is this physical AI wave. But anyway, going back to the ethics is we're putting too much focus on humans and releasing stuff without being ready and and not investing enough in the other side of where AI could actually really help. And that yeah, the policies and governance around it is is way too slow and way too reactive.

So, but whenever whenever I mean you were researching this, what like what was your I guess degree of confidence that we would actually get whatever you want to call it, Terminator or whatever, that level of AI. Whenever you saw ChatGPT at the end of 2022 come out, did you sort of say, "Oh, this is it." Kind of what was Yeah, tell us about what you experienced when you when you first started using some of what I'm just given your extensive research into it.

When I started using LLMs?

Yeah, yeah, like I guess first, did you believe cuz like like it's it's sort of still unclear, I think. A lot of people debate this, like whether you know, AI will sort of get to AGI, will plateau, like where's it going to go, etc. There's there's a lot of different opinions about this. Uh I guess what it back in 2017, 2018 when you were studying this, right? At the time it was super super early. Now we can sort of reason about it and you have some data points over a couple of years of how like how ones are scaling and how they're performing in benchmarks. Whereas before you didn't have any of that, right? So, what was your personal perspective on like any degree of confidence in where we would land?

Mhm. Interestingly enough as time goes by, I say this not having kind of gone back to that thesis for a few years, but still having that same mindset. As time goes by, I gain more confidence in what I saw back then. So, back then I wasn't as confident as I am now, is what I'm saying. The the the kind of core of my thesis was to take AI and then compare it with two other industries where, you know, things were put out there without safeguards and then they went wrong and then people put safeguards in in place. So, first first one was the healthcare industry with like medication and everything that, you know, the way things used to be tested before versus now. And then the second one was the the nuclear energy industry. And and I think based on the patterns that I saw in both, then I kind of like came up with this thesis this thesis of AI.

And and what I pointed out in my in my thesis was that the danger is actually a lot bigger than the Terminator. And and the reason why I say that is is is because, you know, people if you if you watch the movie The Terminator, people in the movie still had the smarts and the physical capability to come up with ideas to to fight this entity, right? And and my biggest worry is that the next generation, if they relied this heavily on AI and outsourced all of their mental capability to AI, that it's it's a real worry. I'm not saying they're bad. I think they also have the opportunity that if used correctly and if taught well to the new generation, they can actually make them smarter. But other what I don't see those I don't see those those safeguards and I don't see those trainings, um which is what makes me makes me super worried. That's the biggest kind of worry that I have.

But the other side is also the people

AI is going to pacify us through uh, cat videos and Instagram slop and uh, we're all going to become brain dead and hand over all our data to the big companies.

Yeah, I mean it it's it's a bit of that, but it's also a bit of, you know, it's it's kind of like what the Industrial Revolution did to our bodies, AI can do to our brain. So before the Industrial Revolution, you know, when we had people that had to use their physical, you know, muscles to like carry stuff, you know, whether it was like drawing water from the well and like walking kilometers and and um, but if you look at, you know, us now, there's like higher rates of obesity and there's higher rates of like heart disease and, you know, stuff that didn't exist before. Part of that is exercise, the other part is like processed food. Um, and then when it comes to AI, it's handing over those mental tasks.

Like there was one research done in the UK on the the brains of drivers and they they realized and this this this goes back a while ago, so I I need to find where this research was, but from memory, the research showed the hippocampus, the part of the brain that's that's responsible for spatial relationships, physically shrinks in drivers that rely on Google Maps too much. And that makes sense because if you if you look at us now, like like ask yourself how many times have you been from point A to point B using Google Maps, right? Now, Google Maps is amazing because it can save you time, but for me personally, now that I know this, once I go somewhere, one, maybe two, maximum three times, I try and teach my brain so I don't lose that cognitive map that I'm born with because how did we find our way before Google Maps?

So it's that same thing that I'm that I'm now starting to see in like the new generation shorter attention spans. Um you know, less kind of willingness for learning something in depth like wanting everything like bullet point bullet point using kind of clickbait or like very short Instagram videos as as facts without thinking without logic without reasoning and and that's I think is is one of the the things that makes me really worried about use of AI and I think I think with the right education we can change that.

I'm afraid that people are going to just go for the easy path and that we're all going to be doomed.

Then there's that. So take care of your children.

Yeah.

of your children. Yeah.

You already teased a little bit about what you're building with Maxo and we want to get there um but just to do go one step before. So you had a kind of like a corporate career for a number of years and where you were quite successful in that too. Um I think you you went to IBM, you were at Westpac for a while and then Microsoft. What was your internal conversation with yourself around, you know, in Microsoft you could have always obviously had a great career and you can probably could have done a lot on AI as well. How and why did you um transition out of that corporate career and went into becoming an entrepreneur?

Yeah, one of the things that made me personally and I'm not saying this is this applies for everybody, that made me frustrated or still does in my life is the moment I feel too comfortable, I start getting uncomfortable and and I think for me when it came to to corporate career you I became comfortable in a role too fast. Almost faster than I was expected to have a good CV. You know, they they always say like if if you change if you jump ship, you know, less than two years or so in a in a role, you you better have a good reason or something like that. And the only role that really challenged me for a good while, which I think that was also about 2 2 and 1/2 years, was the the transformation director directorship that I that I had at at Westpac. And I was working with McKinsey, and that really opened up my eyes to this new world of business and how you think about running a business.

Like before that, I was just computer scientist and and thinking about like tech. And then and I don't come from a family of entrepreneurs. Like entrepreneurship was never a path like a career path that I was exposed to until I met someone who who said he was an entrepreneur. And I remember cuz English is not my first language, that the first time I came across the word, it was so hard to pronounce. I had to go to Google and I had to listen to it like gazillion times. I still don't think I can spell it correctly without making a mistake a couple of times. But um then after that, I joined um Westpac Westpac Ventures for a short time. And then we started kind of like working with like a really cool team. I think it was the team that was really good. And then from there, I went to to Checkpoint, which was cybersecurity, and then Microsoft. But it was the same pattern over and over again.

So, I started every role with excitement. And as soon as I was useful for the company, like I had been trained and learned, I started getting bored cuz I was like, now I'm doing the work. It's routine. Now I need I need more. And one thing that happened that that changed my career path completely was actually COVID. So, before that, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting uh a fantastic woman named Anna Arriola, who was at Apple and then went to Theranos, and then and then she was at Microsoft heading the the AI team. So, she came to New Zealand and we had a conversation. Microsoft was going to set up a an AI ethics team, and and I went for interviews. I had to do them remotely. I was on an Iranian passport, couldn't get a visa to go to the United States for the interview. Um and then COVID hit and then they stopped all the the cross-country like hiring.

Um and then at that point I was like this is it like I'm done. Like I've had this idea of Max so far a while. I started Comfort AI back in 20 February 2022. Um with the intention of kind of bringing more education around AI to the market. Um and then I was like no, I can't I can't have a corporate job and try and test the waters and see how this goes. And so in 2021 when Bridgewaters and I had a conversation, I was like I know the next 6 months that's good enough. Let's jump in it with both feet and see how it goes. And it's been great because I never get bored.

Yeah. Um and I know Mark Mark is dying to speak about Max. So So Mark has a

so so so you said you had that you had the idea for a while. Where did the idea come from?

It was it was kind of the core platform I did that multi-sensory idea came from, you know, kind of looking at that gap analysis when I was doing my my thesis about like all these other parts of the brain that can potentially um kind of do a lot of stuff. What I really struggled with because again, I was kind of new to this whole like venture startup um world. What I really struggled with is how do I how do I start? Like what do I start with, you know? And and I am a computer scientist and but I had put most of my focus on on ethics and kind of learning the other side, you know, the business side and growing a business and I I didn't have like, you know, PhD in mathematics to sit and, you know, write some of these AI models and and I didn't have the hardware knowledge.

So and I didn't know the idea that I had was actually a deep tech idea which is, you know, super R&D heavy and and so when what what the role that the key role I would say that Bridgewaters played was to give that kind of first spark of this is where you can start and this is how you can start. You know, the funding from Cal Han and then Bridge West and so on and so forth. But yeah, the idea was there. It was kind of like vague. Like where do I go? But I talked to like as many people as I could about it. Like I wouldn't shut up about it.

So yeah, so what was what was the idea? What was the idea? What was the essence of the idea?

Well, it was it was so the the idea at at the time was this one company that does, you know, the education side and the consultancy side, but also does this multi-sensory platform. So that we have this this other part of the brain that's replicated using artificial intelligence that can they can see and they can hear and that it kind of uses this environmental data almost rather than, you know, the texts and the the financial data and and all that kind of stuff. Um but again, yeah, it it was quite it was quite vague. It was more like a how do I replicate the other part of the brain rather than how do I create a solution that can go out there and

But why like what did I say like was it just like a theoretical concept that you had or did you already have immediately like practical applications that you were thinking this would apply to?

No, at the time and and we're talking about 2000 the the period between 2000 when did I graduate? 19. Um 21, it was it was more of a a vague concept.

Hm.

Of like No, knowing there was there was a use, but not knowing where to apply it to. I think I looked at it more from a scientific point of view of what happens. You know, like, you know, the LLM started as like a a scientific idea. What happens if I replicate the way the human brain learns? So so it was it was it was that. It's what happens if we replicate this other side of the brain. Like what other gaps can we cover with this other side of the brain? But then yeah, within within 2 years was when I kind of met Birch Weston and kind of got pushed into thinking that these scientific ideas, cuz I'm curious about everything, right? And how do you then put that curiosity in into good use and then also become curious about how do you commercialize it and how do you how do you keep it like sustainable so you can actually grow it?

That kind of came after, you know, after that engagement and lessons learned over the last 5 years.

Mhm. Yeah, and I want to kind of understand like how did you I [clears throat] was thinking about that gap, like the gap between like what most people think, okay, like there's yeah, like I guess bits, right? Like you're processing bits or the large language models are processing like words, tokens. You you're sort of your idea was well, there's there's what? Just like vision vision models and like I guess other types of models that you can you could have for other use cases. How did you mean fundamentally yeah, you're still sort of there's there's still I think the the architecture is still in a lot of ways similar across what you're processing, right? What was it was it yeah, was it kind of more around application or were you like more just enamored with the idea of like there is this, you know, human body analogy of like the logical side versus like the rest of it?

It was it was a bit of both. It was me seeing um and then and then this is obviously before before chat GPTs of the world became this popular. Mhm. Um they just said back then. It was more seeing all these focus of where money was going, where money in AI was going. At a time about 33% so a third of it was going into human health and and health care applications and then there was a lot of uh focus on human productivity. You know, anything that that increased your productivity or anything that increased your revenue through marketing. And and you know, the thought process behind that was well, surely this is an all we can do with AI. And then kind of like really questioning and this is one of the reasons why there's so much debate about AI is is that the core concept that we are replicating called intelligence does not have a universally agreed upon definition, right?

And so when I looked at it and I was like well well intelligence is more than just logic. Intelligence is more than just this decision-making. So what else does it relate to? What else can we do with it? And so I kind of ran with these like the what's and the why's for about a couple of years and then as that idea started kind of getting a little bit more concrete about a sensory platform. But how do we now apply that sensory platform? This is like 2 years after my masters. So you won't see any evidence of this in my in my thesis. Um And and where do we apply it and how does that work, you know? And then came the spark of the idea of hey, what if we could listen to animals and see if they're sick. And I think that yeah.

Isn't Isn't Isn't that just like different inputs? Isn't it like all kind of like a function of like some kind of like you know, I don't know. Uh Turing machine like state machine to like that's Turing complete that just has like the inputs and outputs are different. You can sort of imagine like an ant is like yeah, certain inputs and outputs and there's like some kind of basic intelligence that runs an ant's sort of objective function, right? And like you just have different levels of abstraction on which you're running like the objective function versus like completely different types of intelligences.

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's it's Yeah, you're right. Like if you look at maybe the architectures of the neural network. Yes, we look we work with very tiny models compared to really large models. Um and so that's kind of like the the main difference between what the world's focus on now and where our focus is. But yeah, at the end of the day it's it's mostly the as my my tech team disagree with me, but it's it's mostly the inputs that are that are different. So, it was about I think in the core of it it comes with what kind of data are we feeding our AI? And like why are we feed so much human related data? Why not Why not feed it everything else in the environment? Why not Why not feed it sounds?

And why not feed it I mean there is vision, there's a lot of vision, but again it's all applied to to human related our own world our day-to-day world, you know, cameras and civil defense and safety and theft and all that kind of stuff. What about bushfires, you know? What about deep sea or, you know, space exploration? What about the rest of the environment? It was It was more kind of those abstract questions I would say those the two years following than the science of are the neural networks different?

You have some pretty big news that we wanted also to take an opportunity to announce together with you. So, yeah, why don't you Why don't we hand over to you as what's new in the company?

Quite a few things. So, on April 14th this year we celebrated our fifth year and it's a very kind of pivotal point in terms of the commercial traction that we've gotten. So, we've spent years and years collecting data, training models, running trials, proving to the world that this this technology is is useful and now we have some really good data to back it up. But, the major news was in December 2025 we signed a multi-year distribution contract with the world's sixth largest animal health pharmaceutical name Virbac, headquartered out of France, and they're going to distribute the solution in Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea. Um and then obviously at the back of all those trials, we then built additional pipeline with Australia. Uh we're talking to distributors now in the US.

And the plan is by the end of this year to have presence in all major pork producing countries with the exception of China. Um,

which is you know, huge huge milestone um for us and it kind of was like a bit slow slow slow and then it caught on like like really fast. Yeah, that's that's the major news and then obviously at the the back of that we we opened um a series A so collecting funds to kind of help get us to the next inflection point which would be you know, executing these contracts getting to to the next kind of level of revenue but also now trying to kind of look at how do we how do we extend this from actually we haven't covered what the solution does yet.

That's going to be my next question.

The current solution that's

Tell tell us about the product.

solution that's being commercialized which um is what Virbac is going to distribute as AI-enabled audio sensors for early for respiratory health monitoring in swine and respiratory illnesses because they are responsible for about 60% of swine death every year globally and an audio sensor because respiratory illnesses have audio signatures. And the the new kind of uh the generation two version of the device that's going out is it has audio temperature and humidity and the temperature and humidity would over time turn into us understanding whether environmental factors have any impact on respiratory health of the barn or vice versa when pigs get sick does something in the environment change? But yes, so so that's now being commercialized and that is what Virbac has signed up for to distribute for us in in those territories and then Australia and the United States.

So so basically you have a mic listening to pigs.

Mhm.

You're listening to pigs and you're detecting whether they're sick or not.

Yes. Yeah, so it's kind of the sensors are like a trained human ear and they've been trained to listen for signs of respiratory illnesses. And the very unique thing about our solution compared to the to the competitor, but also most other solutions that I've seen, is we are using edge AI. So, our sensors run two AI models on the sensor itself, and they're responsible for kind of like deciding the the noise that I'm getting, is it actually a sign of respiratory illness or not? Then, they transfer that data to a dashboard, and then on the dashboard we then have a few other models that would then decide, are the pigs healthy? Because, you know, I I got something, but it could be because of dust, or you know, is something about to go wrong? So, the devices have an LED kind of technology, so if they're green, that means everything's good.

If something is about to go wrong, so the system is not sure, but I am seeing a rapid increase in signs of respiratory illness. Something something doesn't feel right, then they go yellow, and they send a text message to the farmer, and then once it confirms that, yeah, no, you're you're actually dealing with an outbreak, because this is consistent over certain period of time, then they turn red, and they send another alert to the farmer. And then every time the pigs get worse, you know, they send another text message to the farmer, which is sign of either you haven't done anything, so don't keep ignoring, or whatever you're doing is not working, so you maybe get the vet back in and and change your medication strategy.

And whenever I first heard about this, I was I was I was very impressed by how original this idea is. Well, you're you're you're listening to pigs. So, how did you go from this idea of sensory AI and looking at different modalities to a specific solution of like putting microphones above pigs and listening to them cough, I guess, right? And breathe.

Yeah. So, the the so, which we call this the the AI respiratory health is kind of like the first solution the first proof point. It it came from that that conversation that I had with Bridge Weston in 2021. So, they had a Chinese-based semiconductor company, and at the time China was still dealing with African swine fever. The government of China went out to the tech companies and said, "Is there anything you can do to help us manage this outbreak?" Now, that sentence over a coffee is what kind of started this entire idea. African swine fever is not a respiratory illness, just a disclaimer for anyone from animal health industry who's listening to this. We know that now, but I guess that kind of like started that research into what all kind of respiratory illnesses, what is, you know, the types of diseases that causes the most amount of issues for the pigs.

And the reason for listening is we always say with this rule of thumb is AI can do anything a trained human can in 1 second, right? And so, the the best way to assess how or if AI can do something is to ask ask an expert, "How do you do it?" And so, for us, those experts were vets, livestock vets. And we asked them, "How do you determine if the pigs are sick with any types of respiratory illnesses?" And they said, "We listen."

Mhm.

And simple as that, then it became AI-enabled audio sensors. And then the Yeah.

And just so so we understand in commercial terms, how big is this problem overall and like what what do they currently do if there's an outbreak? How do they treat the outbreak? And yeah, where do you guys verb out basically interested in pushing this out?

Yeah, so the the first part of the question about how do they deal with it? Um they often because because we have all these like massive farms, and a um I don't know they did a survey that in as of 2025, I think 75% of the workforce is millennials and Gen Z. And and now we have a generation that can make more money faster with a ring light and a phone than ever working on a farm, right? So, there is this massive shortage of labor on these farms. But, also it's it's not feasible to ask humans to just be in one barn and just continuously listen or watch the pigs. That's just that's that's not a feasible solution. And so, what happens currently is basically they have at these stocks people that will go to the barn, you know, maybe maybe once a day and that may not be a good enough sample size for them to see if the pigs are sick.

And so, by the time those signs of illness becomes visible, that has turned into an outbreak because then now you can see it frequently or hear it frequently and you can hear it everywhere. What happens in that scenario is patient zero and when we're talking about patient in pig industry, we're talking about a herd, not an individual animal. So, patient zero dies, depending on the type of disease, but usually patient zero dies. And then what the farmer would have to do or what the vet has to do is medicate the entire barn and medicate them for potentially longer because they've had this disease for longer. But, what we do is because we're there 24/7, we detect it as soon as, you know, we identify those diseases and we've proven that we can detect it up to 6 days earlier than a trained human, that gives the the farmer the opportunity to save patient zero

Mhm.

and medicate a smaller group and medicate a smaller dosage, which not only saves them a lot of money, but also, you know, when you look at the entire kind of domino effect of this in the supply chain, that means the the meat that we would get in the end has had potentially a more reduced slash more responsible consumption of antibiotics.

Yeah.

So, that's that's what happens now.

Right. So, you're basically helping to reduce the number of antibiotics that we as humans consume when we when when we end up consuming pork.

We are trying to reduce the death rate on the farms to to begin with, but one of the things outcomes that we've seen is is yes, that over time it could result in reduction in antibiotic consumption because you're detecting them earlier and and not medicating as much. Um but that comes to your second question is why is Verbac interested in it? Um and so, most animal health companies are are now being asked and I'm talking about animal health industry in general, not just Verbac. They're being asked to come up with solutions for disease prevention. You know, and someone like Verbac or or their competitors, there's a lot of focus on vaccines because vaccines is the way to prevent you know, diseases and outbreaks.

That paired with this solution gives them a much stronger position in the market because one, they can sell it to other farmers that aren't necessarily kind of buying Verbac products and this applies to Verbac and other distributors. And then, they get to to show over time that, okay, you know, if you use my brand of pharmaceuticals, then your barn performs better and here's the data to back it up. So, it kind of becomes like a good proof point for for their own selves also. Um then, the other thing we we figured out and and this is how Verbac helps the industry. In the EU, there's these types of kind of regulations that are I don't know whether they've landed or they're coming, but I do know that, you know, vets are kind of like being asked to provide proof there was a need to administer antibiotics.

So, now they have to either do it using lab tests or subjective kind of recommendations. But when you have a tool like this and they have the data to back it up and that's why we say it will result in responsible use of antibiotics.

And now you have um this partnership with the back. You're going to be distributed across different continents. You just said you had a have a serious aid that we are part of and we are very proud to to back you. What's next for you? I mean you yeah, you're going to go from pork to I guess other other animals. Yeah, what's what's the vision for the next couple of years?

Yeah, so I guess that the next couple of years would include you know, having delivered you know, the the current solution to the market really well. Like I would I would want to see like a lot of happy farmers and a lot of good stories at the back of this this solution. And then you know, see this now being applied and then so two years from today we would be sitting here and be like, you know, Mexo is now with with pork is like everywhere in the world and and we're also kind of like in this one or the maybe this other two animals in in these other parts of the world and now we are kind of planning our road map for you know, companion animals or horses. And then you know, five years from now we'll be like, you know, we're monitoring every animal on the planet.

That's yeah, that's very exciting vision. We found somewhere in our research that you said something on a panel which I think resonated with a lot of founders that are probably listening to this. I think it's

[laughter]

you're a little bit worried. I think you said something like um having a company is like having a child. It's great to have it, but sometimes you just want to give it back. Um yeah, just kind of to I guess to to wrap up the conversation and um going a little bit into what it's like to be an entrepreneur at this stage where you you know, we were just chatting earlier. You're traveling the globe. You have all these big partnerships. Um you're really pushing the boundaries. What's the kind of personal journey of being a founder at this stage?

Yeah, that sounds like something I would say. Disclaimer, I do not have a child. So I do not know what it's like, but I've seen people with children and I kind of like feel like that's what it's like. Um

It is, for sure.

Yeah, so the the personal journey it's been extremely challenging, but also extremely rewarding. Um if I were to put that in one sentence, I would say becoming a founder was a great trust-building exercise with myself. And because you always hear these things like trust your gut feeling and you need to trust yourself and and do this and do that or you know, you're in leadership position and it's a very lonely place and and these are just like words and phrases that you hear until you're in that situation, you're actually experiencing it. And it has for me personally been a very interesting kind of growth journey. You know, the the um scenarios where I've had to force myself to um separate personal stuff that's going on, whether it was like loss of a loved one, whether it's like what's going on back home, um and not let that interfere with work.

Like especially like you would hear something like that in the morning and then you have an investor call that you have to sound so excited about what you're doing.

Hm. Yeah.

Or like having to regulate your your you know, my thoughts and emotions when you're going through these extreme highs and extreme lows of the company and then you know, one day during during one day, you know, I might wake up feeling like I can change the world then go back to why do I even exist to now I really got this to then you know, questioning my life choices. So there's a lot of these ups and downs that I've personally experienced. I don't know if every founder experiences that. I live this with a passion. Like it's it's an obsession for me at this point. It's it's I don't think it's it's love anymore.

So yeah, I I guess kind of like regulating and balance that balancing act has been like the the biggest challenge but also that trust building exercise of you know learning to trust myself to make certain difficult decisions and in situations and then if it works amazing and if it doesn't work just be okay with that just know that at that given point in time I made the best decision with the data that I had.

Yeah, I I really like that framing of um learning to trust yourself that that's really great. I mean I think what you realize as you as you go through this journey is that like there's nothing really that it all seems like very well the things seem very big or difficult but they can sort of like it's like how do you how do you eat an elephant like one bite at a time right it's like one of those things once you've gone through enough of those big big decisions big things you realize that you can do it it's just just a matter of time and grit and you sort of build confidence. I think yeah it's a big part of it. So well I love that framing.

Yeah and and I think one thing that really helped me and and I'll put this out there for any founder that's listening or anyone that's that's listening that could find this helpful. My coping mechanism is always storytelling. I love telling stories right and when when I'm going through the highs and when I'm going through the lows I always tell myself that without this the story won't be good. No one would want to watch a movie that has no down. No one would want to watch a movie that things didn't go wrong from every single direction and that everybody panicked and that everything was about to you know and that's kind of like my my mental way to coping mechanism when I'm going through those phases I'm like part of the story.

I would love I would love What's the story that you tell yourself?

What's the story that I tell myself about about the company?

Yeah. And about yourself? Yeah.

About myself the story changes on a daily basis on an hourly basis based on some of my mood but you know part of part of the story of the company that I'm that I'm very proud of. And I acknowledge that we're only 5 years in and we have we have a long way to go. Um This isn't me sounding proud. This is just me kind of acknowledging what has happened. As I said in in one of the other videos, um when we were talking about Bridge West, I was like, "The reality is we started the company during COVID, so a global pandemic. And when we had to raise our pre-series A, we faced a global recession. Um and then we nearly kind of came to the US in like '23, '24, and we faced a major regulatory change, which we had to then pivot the market to to different regions. Uh and now that we're taking the company global, there's a major conflict. Mhm. That's like impacting a whole bunch of things.

And then and then I just kind of tell myself that okay, if you've survived those, um unless there's an alien invasion, I don't know.

Well, they might they might actually they might actually ally with you because of the name of the company, right? They might actually come from Maxso.

There you go. Yeah. Maybe maybe they are from that Max 0467-JD. Um in which case I'll be winning. But um but yeah, so I think it's it's kind of like I I keep reminding myself that if I could overcome if the company and the team could overcome these obstacles, then [clears throat] then there isn't not that there isn't anything that they get they kind of gives me more confidence and and kind of like just looking at in the future and and what's coming. Or I remind myself of the survival skills every time I'm going through a very very rough patch. But yeah, at some point I kind of like sometimes envision the movie that's based on, you know, the company and

And so in your mind, how does that movie end?

In my mind, how does that movie end? So there's there's there's a way that the movie about Maxso ends, which is the vision that I've had and I that I put it on the website. And I don't know whether the movie ends with this or starts with this. Could start with this, but you know, one of those starts that's like the ending. And that is, you know, 100 years from now, which I always say now it's 95. It was 100 when we started. Someone that's like looking up the history of the company and the technology that we created, and they sit and wonder, in a positive way, what the world would have been like without us. And and that kind of like where it either ends or starts.

When I think about movie made about me, you know, it's it's you know, the technology has kind of kind of gotten like so advanced and it's now everywhere, that the movie ends with me being in like a NASA control room and just watching the data coming from like different galaxies. And it was, you know, the technology that this company, my company created that's out there, that's not giving us all this data. So, yeah, that's a bit of an ambitious daydreaming that I do.

You know, I mean, there's a version of this movie where, I mean, you you did your thesis in AI ethics, right? And like you're now an AI company, and I think part of the reason you have processing on edge is not to store data, right? And just from the privacy first. May maybe maybe a version of this movie is like um where you have to like succumb to the pressures that that um that the commercial side of having a business puts on you, or they must just put on you, that like at some point you'll have to go against your values, right? In creating an AI company and managing a lot of data and privacy and things like that. Um have you thought about that? Now, as I know it's very abstract, but um I think every single AI company now, I think they all had grand visions, right? I mean, OpenAI is called OpenAI because it was to be open source.

I think Dario at at Anthropic was also, you know, very focused on um kind of yeah, just just having a an ethic an ethical perspective and the use of AI Uh models and then now he's struggling with with the Pentagon and I think there'll be a lot of other struggles and people using their products for use cases they may originally intend for. Have you thought about that? And I I mean maybe has that even come up already where there's commercial pressures on the business that maybe go against your initial vision or how the company should be run.

Yeah, I mean we we've kind of pushed that kind of couple of defense related ideas that I I personally was was against. But again, acknowledging defense is is a huge concept. Like civil defense is okay. Um back to original point about you know, some companies being under a lot of pressure about like taking a different different route. Um could it happen? I would be very naive to say no, it can't. But one thing that I did learn and I I read this book called um uh Tools and Weapons uh by Brad Smith of Microsoft and um and there's a it's a really good book and I and I um you know, I I learned a lot of things from it. But one of the things was when you have the data then you can be forced to use it a certain way. But the way we are deploying this technology, so firstly we're focusing on good data more than big data.

So the type of data that we are collecting is collected in a controlled environment, very specific, 100% proprietary to Maxar. We will continue to do that. But once the technology is out there, there is no audio data that basically comes back to us that we can use for anything else. So then that puts us in a position of a company that can force us to do whatever, but we we're not going to cuz we don't have the data to do it. And a lot of those things when you see companies being forced to do it is is because they have the data, they're just saying we're not going to use it for this and that. But they have it, which means then and pressure kind of comes back. But then you don't have it from from the get-go. And when you've kind of been very intentional about the type of data that you collect and your use cases, then it will be a lot harder to do it.

Unless, you know, I don't know about the the future on this. Like something extraordinary happens and then, you know, all the investors be like, "No, redirect the company into this other thing." Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And and more of like a personal, I guess, question now. Like, you've obviously been very prescient about AI risks and thought I've been thinking about this for a while. But what is your I mean, there's constant of P doom, right? Sure you're familiar with. Um What what's your what's your your P doom value? Like, do you think it's Yeah. And even do you think it's even a real thing? Right? There's There's people who think AI is going to, you know, with a certain very high degree of probability eventually become AGI and serve humanity. There's people who think this is just another technology that we're going to absorb and um become better through as a species. What is your What is your kind of real personal opinion on that?

Do I think we will we will reach AGI and and then after that ASI? Yes. Yeah. I think we will. Mostly because we have a lot of smart people who want to. Do I think LLMs are the only thing that defines AGI? No. Because to me artificial general intelligence, the definition of that is an AI that can do everything a human do can. And and humans don't just generate language. They don't just solve mathematical equations. They don't just do certain things. Like, to me, and that's kind of goes back to that previous concept of we don't have a universally agreed-upon definition of intelligence and therefore AGI and therefore ASI.

So, that definition of intelligence that I have and AGI definition that I have, which is everything a human can do, That is not only covered by these like large language models and the advancements that are being made in this field as impressive as they are, but yes, I do think that at some point we will. Will it be good or bad? That really depends on how we go with the with the governance and and putting these like safety guidelines around. And I know there's some work that's being done by governments around the world. Um there's like policies that are being made about use of AI and autonomous weapon systems. There's you you're kind of starting to see um certain kind of like terms and conditions coming up. Like I I signed up to quote the other day and it said I need to consent that you're over 18.

Um so I can see like these types of things coming up, but again, my fear is that they're they're slower than the speed of the advancement of AI. So are we doing something? Yes. Are we doing enough? No. I think that that's going to be the danger.

one one thing that I that is like sort of underlying your I think your your perspective is that um the intelligence that we have is is actually like is valuable and it's it's important, right? And it it probably is, right? Because like just by definition of us being human, we believe that. But there are plenty of species like sort of adjacent to humans in in the evolutionary timeline that went extinct, right? With Neanderthals [clears throat] and and other sort of like I don't know all of all the different types. Some of them like actually shared some genes and then they bred with with humans and we see that through our DNA. Looking back, we can see parts of like Neanderthal DNA and other types of DNA.

But but a lot of them went extinct and I'm sure looking back people look at try to reconstruct and they see actually some of these species were healthier or maybe taller, whatever, had better genes in certain in certain um certain ways. And for whatever reason kind of humans survived and won out, right? It couldn't be that um yeah, I don't know. Just this question of like what intelligence is important. Like maybe maybe all these other intelligences and then and I guess yeah, ways that we process information are are not that important at the end of the day for any competitive environment. Are you worried about that?

Sorry, can you repeat the last part of your question again?

Yeah, like did you worry that like at the end of the day maybe some aspects of our intelligence is actually not that important for survival and and in the competition competing with either AI directly or people who are like enabled by AI? Um I'm thinking like, you know, some kind of merge scenario where like humans merge with with intelligence in some way and like, you know, humanity as we know it maybe goes goes extinct because it just doesn't compete very well.

Well, that's the reason for for my reaction is there's actually um a scientist that guy I can't remember his his name that he actually says AI is a next evolution. Um of humans and we shouldn't get in the way of it and we should actually let it happen.

Right.

Do I see that as as a risk of merging AI with artificial intelligence with with natural intelligence? I think the biggest risk of that would be let's say if if our minds were all kind of like connected to Microsoft data centers and then someone hacked it.

Um

And then someone polluted it with some kind of a virus or decided to right now our intelligence is edge based. Like human intelligence is edge based. Like we don't need cloud connectivity for our brain to work unless you you kind of like use washing techniques from early childhood, you cannot hack, you know, digitally into someone's brain and overnight like change their their thought patterns, right? So I guess we would then open up ourselves to a lot of the vulnerabilities that the machines currently face. So I think that would be a a huge risk if we decided to go down that path. As fascinating as that would be, I don't think I would be one that would sign up for my brain being connected to any sort of

So so

cloud? Is it necessary at the end of the day for the survival of our species is a different question. It mean that people like me who wouldn't want to sign up for that would go extinct. Whereas the ones that did it would survive. Um That's an interesting question to ask. I don't I don't want to give a definitive answer. It's not a question I've ever thought about before. It's an interesting one. I'm going to give it some thought.

Great. I want to move us into I'm sure we could have talked about this for another 3 hours or so, but I want to move us into a quick a quick rapid fire if you don't mind. So just a few kind of very quick questions and would love a very quick answer if that's okay. Cool. Mark, do you want to fire with the first one?

The last genuinely good piece of advice someone gave you that you actually used.

Oh, it's the psychology thing put on the spot. The last piece of advice someone gave me that was really good. There were so many. Why can't Why am I going blank?

That's all good. We we can come back to that one. Let me give you another one. What's the most wrong thing the AI industry currently believes about itself?

That the large language model bubble will never burst.

Cool. Mark. If Stephen Hawking could see what you built, what's his response?

It's a good start, but you're a long way away from where I want it to be.

What's the one thing you know now that you would have saved that would have saved you 6 months of pain in the beginning of Max or that you could do differently?

Being more realistic about my commercialization pathway.

Your motto is I'll find a way or make one. Give me an example of a moment where you generally did not generally did not exist and yet to make one.

It was the And this is one of the examples. The the regulatory change that hit us in the US when we were about to get our first order by a farm. It got cancelled and we had to we had the option to give up, but I said no, and I I went to Europe and and China, and then, you know, received closed closed Europe.

Cool. Cool. All right.

Yeah. Uh Saara, thank you so much for for joining us. One final sort of maybe question to leave it off. There is um you know, there's probably a 22-year-old who just arrived in Auckland um earlier this week. And um what do you think, you know, what what would you what would your advice be to her? Somebody who is just like you, who has the same passion, who has the same, you know, lack of tolerance for injustice, and wants to make a dent in the world. What kind of advice would you give her?

I would tell her no matter what, believe in yourself, because if you don't, no one else will.

Great.

Speculation.

Yeah. No, that that I think your story kind of speaks to it. So, um this is really great. And I think the other thing I really take away from this, which I think is great advice for all New Zealand founders, is that the earth and the the globe and other continents is just a very tiny place in the universe. Should definitely think big and think global. So, thank you so much, Saara. We're super excited to join you on this journey. And yeah, we we look forward to catching up with you again soon.

Thank you so

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