The Whale hunt
Claims involving a young tech whizz, his human-like super computer and multimilliondollar company are under the mircoscope. Charlie Mitchell investigates.
For nearly a year, a multinational company run by a young tech genius – a company that claimed to have millions of customers and the lofty goal of ending world poverty – was headquartered from a carpet shop in Christchurch.
Today, it is based in a small, dingy room above a bike shop, despite claiming $450 million in assets and a regular stream of income from savvy business deals around the world. Its founder is virtually unknown in the tech community, but claims to have an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can communicate like a human.
Such is the trail of Alberic Whale, a high school dropout touted as a tech wunderkind, about to change the world with his supercomputer, Zach.
Whale has appeared intermittently in the media – including The Press – with bold claims about his supposed worldchanging technology; the 56 cars he owns (despite being unable to drive); and his popular telecommunications company, which has millions of customers around the world.
But amid questions detailed by David Farrier on The Spinoff website about whether Zach is what Whale purports it to be, an investigation into Whale and his practices show a pattern of inconsistencies and unverifiable, implausible claims.
Zach was publicly unveiled in August last year at CoCA, an art gallery in central Christchurch. Mayor Lianne Dalziel had intended to give the keynote, but could not make it; city councillor Deon Swiggs spoke in her place. It was cold, dark and sparsely attended.
The pitch was for Zach, touted as one of the world’s most powerful super computers, to be housed in a restored heritage building in central Christchurch, to be called the Terrible Discovery Centre. It would contain digital classrooms, and allow the public to engage with Zach, an AI that would speak with them.
‘‘You rarely hear of super computers in the southern hemisphere but we will have one in our city, accessible to multiple organisations, both within the city and nationally,’’ Swiggs said in his speech.
‘‘This investment is a huge vote of confidence in the city.’’
Discussions for such a centre, at the time, were supposedly well advanced. At the unveiling, about a dozen people watched as Dr David Whale, Albi Whale’s father and co-trustee, talked about Zach while his son quietly watched on.
A local doctor, Robert Seddon Smith, had been testing Zach in his Hei Hei office, ‘‘training’’ it to respond to commands and translate patient notes. He said he was amazed by Zach’s abilities, which included distilling patient consultations into brief understandable notes automatically.
Over time, Zach could be in every hospital in the country, the pitch went, changing healthcare as we know it.
I sat in the back of the room, watching this odd presentation.
Its lack of professionalism was clear – it ran late, the projector briefly didn’t work, and few in attendance seemed to know what was happening – but it had an air of plausibility.
Several of those involved had advanced degrees; the mayor was supposed to be there, and news stories had been written about the Whales. My story was largely unquestioning.
But as The Spinoff described, there are inconsistencies, which were not revealed in the presentation. Some of Zach’s notes contained spelling errors, for example, and every action had at least a 20-minute time delay. The medium used to communicate with Zach – email – is clumsy for an AI, and experts were deeply sceptical, if not completely dismissive, of its claims.
At the event, David Whale used a line to describe Zach, which stuck in my mind and which he later repeated in discussions with The Spinoff. Quoting author Arthur C Clarke: ‘‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’’
‘‘You rarely hear of super computers in the southern hemisphere but we will have one in our city, accessible to multiple organisations, both within the city and nationally.’’
City councillor Deon Swiggs, at a public unveiling for ‘‘Zach’’ in August last year.
Afew years ago, a young man walked into Carpet Plus, a shop on Blenheim Rd in Christchurch, offering a phone plan.
The company claimed to be called Red Dog, and the man behind it was a man in his early20s named Albi Whale. The store’s owner, Kirk Findlater, signed up, primarily to support a young entrepreneur, and the shop started receiving phone services.
At some point, Red Dog became Terrible Talk, a telephone provider owned by Terrible Foundation, a registered charity.
The relationship was friendly, but Findlater didn’t know what to make of Albi Whale: he walked everywhere, and spent a strange amount of time in his shop.
‘‘I was told that Albi had got involved with someone from a vineyard and developed the systems there, or something,’’ Findlater said.
‘‘He’d come into the shop on so many occasions and say he owned a jumbo jet, he owned printing companies – he had all the staff believing that he did. To this day I’d have no idea if he did or he didn’t.’’
When Findlater decided to cancel the account and move to another provider, Terrible Talk sent him a bill for around $19,000, citing a breach of contract, Findlater said.
He paid some of the money so the claim could be dealt with in the Disputes Tribunal. In the hearing, Terrible Talk claimed Findlater had signed a contract, agreeing to an early cancellation fee, but Findlater could not recall signing such a document.
Terrible Talk provided a photo of the contract, which Findlater and an acquaintance, a communications expert, were concerned about. They had reservations around the validity of the software and metadata. Albi Whale, in response, said he had received an advanced beta of the software through an associate who had a partnership with Apple. The tribunal could not determine if the contract existed, and the claim was dismissed, the decision, seen by The Press, shows. Terrible Talk’s services were five to six times more expensive than those of Findlater’s new provider, it noted.
It was a long, strange saga for the carpet store owner, which put him under a lot of stress, he said. He appeared to be one of Terrible Talk’s only customers.
Much of the dispute over the contract was carried out via email, between Findlater and a man purporting to be someone named Scott Johnston, acting chief executive of Terrible.
In one of the emails – some of which have been seen by The Press – Johnston (whose name was incorrectly spelled Jonhston in the header) changed the name in his signature to Chuck Norris. Other emails contained similar name changes, and consistent spelling errors.
At one stage, Carpet Plus started receiving mail addressed to Albi Whale at its physical address: it had been registered with Charities Service as Terrible Foundation’s office, without Findlater’s permission (Terrible Foundation says permission was given).
‘‘The web was so well spun ... I tried to explain [to the tribunal] that they’d used my business as a registered office. To try and explain everything that had happened made me essentially look like an idiot,’’ Findlater said.
‘‘He [Albi] must lie in bed at night and dream up what he can do. They’re very, very unusual people.’’
‘‘The problem with anything in the digital space is it’s digital, so we can’t see it ... Nobody believed Google when it started.’’ David Whale Terrible Foundation trustee
Zach, the AI, is directly controlled by Terrible Foundation, according to its latest financial statement. The foundation was founded and is now led by Albi Whale: his father, David Whale, is a trustee.
The charity has full shareholding in several Terrible companies, including Terrible Talk, the telephone provider.
The idea behind Terrible Talk, Whale has said previously, was for it to be a charitable company: It would not take a profit, and instead fund charitable causes through the Terrible Foundation, with the ultimate goal of eradicating world poverty.
Terrible’s website details the many causes it supports: among them are climate change adaptation, internet freedom, and the Time’s Up movement against sexual harassment.
But four years since the foundation was registered, there is scarce public evidence of charitable giving. Its financial reports show it has paid around
$227,000 in grants in four years,
$200,000 of which was in the last year. It does not identify who that money was paid to, or for what purpose.
In early marketing material, the company said it would donate money to international charities such as Oxfam. Terrible’s supposed relationship with Oxfam has been repeated several times, including in this Stuff profile, the first major public appearance for the Whales.
The company did indeed donate to Oxfam, but far less than it had promised. Its agreement with Oxfam, which began in 2014, was cancelled the following year after the promised ‘‘significant contributions’’ did not arrive, an Oxfam spokeswoman said.
Terrible Foundation donated a total of $1280 to charities during the year of its agreement with Oxfam, from income of around
$200,000. After cancelling the agreement, Oxfam told Terrible to stop referencing the agreement.
Some of the descriptions of Terrible’s favoured causes, listed on its website, are in large part copied word for word from other organisations: its section on reforestation, for example, is copied verbatim from the World Land Trust. Even its vision statement is largely plagiarised: from the Oxfam website.
Albi Whale and his father have said Terrible Talk has nearly 6 million customers worldwide, which would make it bigger than Spark and Vodafone combined, but there is scarce evidence of its existence.
Its social media pages have many followers, but little engagement. The Terrible Facebook page has been liked more than 13,000 times, but according to Facebook’s ‘‘people talking about this’’ feature, which counts engagement after a page’s content has been shared, shows six people are talking about Terrible,
0.04 per cent of its fans. Stuff’s page, for comparison, has 700,000 likes and 150,000 people talking about this, a ratio of 20 per cent.
Another red flag: An analysis of Terrible’s 13,000 likes shows nearly 9000 accounts are from Bangladesh, and nearly 3000 are from Indonesia. Less than 100 of its likes are from New Zealand-based accounts.
How Terrible Talk actually works is also a mystery.
When Findlater asked the company about this, in an email to the person purporting to be Scott Jonhston (sic), they wrote: ‘‘I do not see the need to address how TerribleTalk implements the services provided. In short we provide and customers pay for
services. The infrastructure used is immaterial.’’
An IT expert with knowledge of the situation told me the service is almost certainly resold using a ‘‘white label’’ service, allowing it to rebrand the service it sells. They laughed when I said Terrible Talk claimed to have nearly 6 million customers: ‘‘It’s more likely to be in the tens of customers’’.
Terrible Foundation’s registered office has changed numerous times in recent years, including three times in one week, its Charity Service filings show.
In July of 2015, it changed its address from 250 Blenheim Rd, to Unit 1/250 Blenheim Rd, to Unit 1/251 Blenheim Rd – the latter being the correct address for Carpet Plus.
For nearly a year, Terrible Foundation was registered to the carpet shop. It was then changed to Kensington House, in central Christchurch, where a shared workspace called The Collect is based.
Much like the carpet shop, Terrible Foundation was not based at The Collect, either. A manager told me The Collect had been in discussions with the Terrible Foundation for a workspace for one person, David Whale, but a deal was never made.
She said it would be incorrect to say the foundation was based there, which is what Terrible reported to Charities Services.
Terrible was then registered to Palmdale, their family home near Lake Ellesmere, incorrectly spelled ‘‘Plamdale’’ on the filing.
The pattern is unusual, given Terrible Foundation claims to have extraordinarily valuable assets. Its most recent financial report claims the charity has more than $450m in current assets: In the three years prior, it had claimed less than $1m in assets.
Other details appear to contradict this type of wealth,and the claims that various small investments around the world were collecting an income. A company in which Albi Whale was a partner, Luminous Group, went into liquidation in late 2015.
In search of assets to pay the company’s creditors, liquidators found the following: a bank account containing $2.55, an iPhone, two laptops, their respective chargers, and a fish tank. They were all described as being in ‘‘poor’’ condition, and the objects sold for a combined $50 at auction.
After the auction costs were taken into account, the liquidators were left with $41, and most creditors were not paid.
This all forms the background to Zach, the supercomputer. A company half-owned by Terrible Foundation, called Omega Health, is looking for investors relating to Zach: its share prospectus values Zach at $19m, and says it could have 45,000 enrolled New Zealanders in 2018.
Its other half owner is Robert Seddon-Smith, a doctor trialling Zach.
Zach, however, is not the only AI-style service being offered by Terrible Foundation. ‘‘Hustle’’ is the version of Zach that can make and understand legal arguments, which has been pitched to lawyers, as reported by The Spinoff website.
‘‘SideKick’’ is a lifestyle management tool described as ‘‘an assistant that can do (literally) anything’’. ‘‘Tempus’’ is described as ‘‘intelligent business automation, assistance & aid’’ on its Twitter account, the only apparent evidence of its existence.
Among the lingering questions is whether any public money has gone into Zach, a system that has impressed public officials and members of the medical profession but does not verifiably exist in the form that is claimed.
The Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB), which Terrible said it planned to approach to trial Zach, said no: ‘‘[We have] not endorsed the project or invested any public monies into the AI venture known as ‘Zach’.’’
The Christchurch City Council similarly said it had nothing to do with Zach: ‘‘The council has not given money towards the Zach project or the proposed Discovery Centre,’’ a spokeswoman said.
I requested comment for this story from both David and Albi Whale, laying out a series of detailed questions via email. After some time, David Whale responded, asking me to meet both Whales at his office – a small, dingy room above a bike shop in central Christchurch.
Imet Albi and his father at the shop, of which a small, mezzanine style room apparently serves as their office. The room is almost completely bare, with one large, thick wooden table pushed against a wall, and two old couches.
A complicated code, which Albi Whale says is the Queen’s Puzzle, is drawn in marker on the window. It is humble quarters for an organisation claiming to have $450m in assets, and a series of savvy investments around the world. ‘‘We wanted something indiscreet, and this is indiscreet,’’ Albi Whale says.
We spoke for more than an hour. For much of the time, Albi Whale sat cross-legged on the table, talking animatedly, while his father sat quietly on a couch, occasionally interjecting. Long story short: They offered an explanation for everything. I start with his charity, which went from declaring less than $1m in assets to $450m in the space of a year.
‘‘We bought a few things, got given a few things and have natural attrition in wealth,’’ Albi Whale says. ‘‘So basically some of our investments are worth quite a bit more money than they used to be. We were given the hardware and the buildings which harvest bits of that machine.’’
‘‘But $450m is quite a lot,’’ I offered.
‘‘Yes, I agree,’’ he replied. ‘‘It’s lots of stupid things that happened and I always knew when we did it that it would look really weird ... There’s no benefit to having it there, it’s a number on a bit of paper. I could have written $500,000 or $900m, it would make no difference.’’
The location of the buildings and the computer cannot be revealed due to non disclosure agreements, he says. If I wanted to see it, I’d have to sign documents and get on a plane.
David Whale tells me they are currently being audited by the IRD, a process being carried out by a local accountant. I ask for the accountant’s name, but they don’t give it to me: ‘‘We don’t want other people dragged into a mess not of their making.’’
This comes up again when I ask about Scott Jonhston (sic), the acting chief executive who misspelled his own name and changed his email signature to Chuck Norris. I’m told he’s a wealthy importer/exporter living in Taupo¯ with a low profile, who, again, would not want to be dragged into this: ‘‘He’s a very, very rough, socially disconnected sort of person,’’ Albi Whale says (the electoral roll lists only one Scott Johnston in Taupo¯ , who is an electrician).
I move on to the charitable giving, for which there is little public record. They say the foundation has given to three causes – Oxfam, Living Springs, and the Emergency Care Foundation.
The Oxfam deal was cancelled, when the money promised did not arrive. The Living Springs grant was on hold due to a ‘‘mistake’’, Albi said. That leaves the Emergency Care Foundation, which is a local charity run by Dr Martin Than, a doctor. He is referenced in the Omega Health share prospectus as an ‘‘advisor’’, and is the only apparent recent recipient of money from the Terrible Foundation.
The Whales say much of their charitable giving is through Terrible Talk itself, which is not a charity and does not have public records. The donations are not made in Terrible Talk’s name, but in the name of its customers.
I ask how much they’ve given to charity in total through Terrible Talk – ‘‘I’d have to dig you up a figure, but I don’t know what it is,’’ Albi Whale says.
I move on to the shifting addresses, including Carpet Plus and the address at The Collect they never paid for. Albi Whale says the carpet shop situation was ‘‘perfectly legitimate’’ at the time (Findlater disputes this), and they registered the address at The Collect intending to move in, but later changed their minds.
He says he never wanted to pursue the claim against Findlater, but was obliged to on behalf of the trust.
Terrible Talk operates officially in five countries, unofficially in 12, Albi Whale says. In some countries they use a different name: I ask for examples: ‘‘Fantastic. Telecom. If you google them you’ll have to use Google Translate because they aren’t in English languages, which is why they don’t have the name.’’
He pauses. ‘‘I think one’s in Maldives, or something?’’ he says, looking at his father.
Terrible Talk, as the communications expert told me, is indeed a resold service. It goes through Vocus, formerly known as CallPlus. I ask if Zach is some sort of mechanical turk, a person disguised as an AI, which they categorically deny. They cannot, however, prove it exists.
‘‘It’s a bit like asking us to prove a negative,’’ David Whale says. ‘‘It’s just a rack of computer systems. The problem with anything in the digital space is it’s digital, so we can’t see it...[It] looks like any other data centre.
‘‘Nobody believed Google when it started,’’ he adds.
The computer, they insist, will be in Christchurch in six to nine months time, in a restored heritage building they cannot identify due to a non-disclosure agreement, they say.
I mention the other Terrible projects that sound similar to Zach. SideKick, he says, is a different thing entirely (I registered my email to trial SideKick, but did not receive a response in the 48 hours specified.). Hustle, the programme for legal services, ‘‘never actually went anywhere’.’ Terrible Tempus, for which there was only an obscure Twitter account linking to Terrible’s main account, which claimed to be a business advisory service: ‘‘You’re gonna think I’m mad now ... Tempus was a pet project I abandoned to motorize a sofa. It’s not a business advisory service, that’s for sure,’’ Albi Whale says.
The claim that he took a photo of a contract from an iPhone with software that Findlater was concerned about? ‘‘I was given access to a beta software by an Apple partner because I was doing a bit of work with them. The partner, not Apple,’’ he says. And, finally, the oddities around Zach – the spelling mistakes, the unusually long processing time – are all intentional, he says.
‘‘It’s a system called the enigma layer. What it does, in essence, is go, this is how the person has written, and this is how they’re going to need the response, because this is how dumb they are or how clever they are. That is what makes it make mistakes.
‘‘If I write to it with ‘hello, my name is Charlie,’ and I spell Charlie wrong, it will think that’s how I need to respond.’’
After the interview, they promise to send me a rebuttal of the points raised in The Spinoff’s piece, which I received just before 2am.
When I left their office, walking past the indecipherable code on the window in the barren room above the bike shop, David Whale tells me one last thing.
‘‘We’re straight up as we can be,’’ he says. ‘‘We’re just perfectly normal.’’