TERRIBLE FOUNDATION (NZ)

& OMEGA HEALTH

8th March 2018

A fact-check to the points made in an on-line article that appeared in The SpinOff -
https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-best-of/06-03-2018/the-mystery-of-zach-new-zealands-all-too-miraculous-medical-ai/
and paid for by The Spinoff Longform Fund

Background.
Terrible New Zealand Charitable Trust, also known as Terrible Foundation (NZ), is a New Zealand registered charity
(CC50738). Interested readers can explore information about the charity by following this link, or simply visiting the
Charities Services website - https://www.register.charities.govt.nz – and searching for ‘Terrible’.
We note the selective use of publicly accessible information to support a proposition rather than an honest, objective
representation.
Omega Health is an independently operated company in which the Foundation has a large shareholding.

In the article there is little separation of these legally separate entities.

In what follows we have taken the points made and responded to them. If additional information is sought please
consult any public references given or contact the author.
Assertion
“Maybe he also does actually have a collection of 56 The writer makes out that John McCrone was negligent in
vintage Minis as an investment even though he hasn’t got researching this statement even though it is offered simply as an
a driver’s licence,” unsubstantiated claim.
“the money started pouring in”. Thing is, there is no
record of any current or former shareholder or director in
New Zealand or the UK with that name, nor are there any
obvious contenders for a business called Red Dog which
fits the description. In fact apart from the Stuff article, the
name “William Kreuk” returns no meaningful results in a
Google search. Nor does Bill Kreuk, nor Billy Kreuk, nor W
Kreuk.”
“his New Zealand business, Luminous Group Limited, was
put in liquidation by the High Court.”
“I checked, and Terrible Energy and Terrible Ideas were
the only ones ever registered.”
“It was on a broomstick my brother screwed to the side of
the house. My mother was infuriated.”
“In 2014, he established Hannah Group Ltd”
45min conversation with Dr Rob Seddon-Smith
Reply
Mr Whale does own a large number of minis, most in various states
of disrepair. The majority purchased from scrap yards. Currently 2
are drivable and the rest are targets for restoration or donor cars to
those restorations. You do not require a driver’s licence to own
vehicles in the UK. It is simply a hobby/passion for pre-Leyland
minis.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Kreuk does not need or want an on-line presence and fits in an age
bracket with a low uptake of internet access. He was not a founder
or involved with Red-Dog. Red-Dog was a trading name. The Press
article was in error with respect to both the money earned and
Will’s involvement. In hindsight we should have sought a correction.
Luminous Group was liquidated by White Fox and Jones. You will
note that the details of the debt were never uploaded to the
company’s office – the relevant document being this one.
For a sum much less than the cost of liquidation (High court
liquidation proceeding are costly upwards of $5,000), it is our belief
that a 3rd party was involved.
TaaS operates as a partnership rather than a limited company.
Legal and trading names are often different, e.g. Vodafone, Spark,
WebDrive, Franchise Operations and so on.
Mis-reported as a cell phone tower but was in fact a cell phone
interceptor. A school boy project (was 15) which he wanted to screw
to a barn.
Chaley Warne established the company. Mr Whale was a silent
partner, offering advice when sought. Hannah and Hedgemo were
ventures into an intelligent recruitment software product.
For a 45 minute conversation there is highly selective reporting.
Rob was talking from the Omega Health perspective, i.e. the
medical application of the machine; not from the Foundation’s
perspective.
As the resource provider the Foundation currently does not charge
for research work aligned with its charitable objectives. However, to
contain costs research work generally operates at a low priority.
The 20 minute delay is from the user’s perspective, i.e. Omega
Health, and was simply an indicative estimate of the elapsed time
before information was processed; it could be anything from 0-20
minutes.
Given such a fundamental mis-understanding we are not surprised
at the responses he received from the ‘AI community’. No effort
appears to have been expended in understanding how you interact
with the system.
Lack of knowledge of us within the AI community
“have never ever heard of David Whale, or Zach, or
Terrible within the AI community,”
The Foundation approached the executive director of the New
Zealand AI Forum with respect to becoming involved. It was clear
from that meeting that the Forum’s objectives and ours did not
align so we have remained independent.

“Email? You just email it?” I say. The system was built to interface with people not other machines
per se.

Email is an incredibly versatile transport mechanism that is

ubiquitous. Essentially it is an XML/HTML (text) stream of
information. How that information is transcribed is the key. We
could release an API but why?

Note the use of email is not unique, see other platforms such as
‘x.ai’

“It’s unlikely Whale could have solved a problem that Totally agree and Dr Whale has never claimed to have done so
large teams of researchers ...” either on his own or at all. As correctly reported last year it was
purchased by Terrible Foundation.

In the Stuff story, he speaks of an AI system called Project Artemis was a codename for a project where software was to be
Artemis which will soon take over management of deployed to run particular project(s). It was mis-reported as being
Terrible. intended to run Terrible but in fact was never started.

Albi was going to demonstrate Project Artemis in 2015 at
the Epic Innovation Centre in Christchurch,
“occasionally had bad spelling”
Mr Whale has no recollection of this and the Artemis codeword was
not in use at this time.
The machine may make errors simply because it learns language
phonetically but also because the occasional error made it appear
more human. This behaviour is optional.

We ourselves make mistakes, typically because of our frequent use

of dictation software. Many of our senior staff would qualify for
Gold Cards.

We note there were several typos in the original story.

“When I told Pickering that it had crossed my mind he Dr Pickering has asked that we clarify that this was not how he
might be emailing back and forth with a person, he recollected the conversation.  Dr Pickering states that he intimated
responded by asking if I was a conspiracy theorist. I told that the idea that there was no machine, merely people at the other
him I wasn’t.”  end of email, sounded like a conspiracy theory and he asked Mr
Farrier if he’d spoken to any of those people.  He indicated that he
hadn’t.  Mr Farrier chose to use Dr Pickering’s academic title and to
identify him as employed by the University of Otago.  That is true. 
However, this particular project is not part of his University of
Otago work as some on social media have assumed.

“I am allowed to tell you that the firewall that we are Cray was an option, but there are alternatives. Yes it will act as
installing consists of multiple Cray XC50 supercomputers” firewall but also entertain a range of other tasks. Dr Rob Seddon-
Smith was advised that this was the case but misunderstood the
fact that the specific machines were not finalised and will not be
until the build of the centre itself is underway.

As for the man supposedly behind all this, I was unable to Given the manner in which this has been handled, it is hardly
talk to Albi Whale. He never responded to my requests for surprising that Mr Whale was not interested in being interviewed. 
comment, whether on email or via Facebook. -  On the one hand he is criticised for not having a large internet
footprint but on the other the work is subjected to ill-informed
ridicule.

Mr Whale received his first email from Mr Farrier today, the 8th
March
“Yes. There will be a share offer for Omega Health A share offer was planned for Omega Health and we note a copy of
the draft, wholesale share prospectus has been provided via
targeted at small investors. Discussions with the new
Pinnacle Health. This is an entirely legitimate approach to raising
administration are at an early stage. We will approach the
working capital for a new business. No such offer has yet been
Christchurch City Council with respect to our proposed
new Centre in the central city. This centre will be an launched and probably won’t be.
educational resource, a place to interact directly with A location for the centre has been found and an agreement to
Zach, incubator, commercial leases etc. It will be one of purchase made. Be patient an announcement will be made soon.
the largest computing resources in the world. Available in
2019. It will attract huge interest international.

David Whale finished his first email with a request that I
remember they are “first and foremost a charity. I would
appreciate a chance to comment on anything you write
before publication. I have been as free as I am able with
information and would not like to see any
misrepresentation.”
List of links - From what I can tell, those links are literally
everything that exists about Terrible, Zach, David and Abli
Whale in its entirety. Read it all, please, and let me know
what you learn. I have read it all, I’ve sought to speak to
everyone involved, and what of real substance have I
found out about this thing?
Terrible Foundation is indeed a registered charity.  We exist to try to
improve equity in society.  We do not feel it is unreasonable to
request the opportunity to comment and correct before publication;
the benefit of this is evident when you consider the misinformation
that ended up being published.
We would suggest people follow the advice and read the links. They
are neither authored by nor promoted by the Foundation, Omega
Health or Mr Whale. They are people’s experiences and as valid as
any other material on the internet.
We have not hidden but neither have we made ourselves obvious.
This is in part because of fear of precisely this kind of
sensationalistic response.

“There is a scientific paper, being reviewed, that
describes the natural language processing capabilities in
the medical arena.”
Apparently access to this was denied. Not so. Scientific papers go
through a review process prior to publication. This process is still
underway and we expect to hear from the editors’ in the next
month or so. In the interim draft copies are available, on request,
and strictly not for distribution or publication.

We thank Mr Farrier for pointing out that material from the Ford Foundation appeared on this page - terrible.ngo/
foundation/focus. A youthful individual included the material as the Ford Foundation allow free re-use of their
content (it is licensed under Creative Commons). Nevertheless, we do not think it acceptable and have instigated an
internal review and had the offending content removed.

There are many ill-informed comments associated with this story. In particular:
• that we have received millions from the government, and
• we have mis-handled patient information

The Foundation has never sought nor received any funds from any government to support its operations. In
New Zealand it does not even have donee status. The Foundation has to earn what it spends and gives away.

The medical trial referred to was a simple pilot study to test the quality of output from the machine and to
determine whether or not further work might be worthwhile.
Participating patients gave their consent and no patient identifiable information was ever used for the study.
Recordings were not retained either by Dr Rob Seddon-Smith or by Zach.
We are confident that at all times good medical practice and the highest ethical standards were adhered to
and are disappointed by the insinuation that this was not the case.

There are frequent references , in social media, to Mr Whale as some sort of con-man. Mr Whale has never
sought payment for himself in any way. Nowhere in the story is there any suggestion that he has sought
personal reward. What is in it for him? It is suggested that he is simply following the same path as he has set
the Foundation – challenging inequality to make the world a better place.