Georgie

Why is AI helpful in diagnostics for pet health?

Jing Wei

When you're building this algorithm, researchers or developers behind the algorithm have access to a huge amount of data, which is very hard to obtain as a single vet or a single clinic. In China, people say there's no rare disease because there's so many people.

Jing Wei

So even a rare disease in a place like Australia, there's like 10,000 more people getting the same condition in China. So I think the same applies to the AI diagnostics. In order to train and upgrade them, you'll need a huge amount of data, which will really help to like balance that own bias or have more information to help diagnosis.

Georgie

Hello and welcome to In the Blink of an Eye. Where I talk to the brightest AI startups and innovators each week. I'm Georgie Healy, and this week I am speaking to Jing Wei. She's the lead AI engineer at Fetch, Fetcher backed by Australia's biggest VC funds, Airtree, and they're supporting vets and pet owners with insurance.

Georgie

They cover pet issues, even including the hereditary ones and don't know about you guys, but, uh, I've noticed a lot of people have pets, younger people have pets and vet bills are incredibly expensive. I've seen 10K ones and, uh, Jing even mentioned, you know, 6, 000 for dental issues. And if you're a pet owner, you know, your pet is like a family member, but maybe you can't afford these bills.

Georgie

They're using AI to quickly and accurately analyze large volumes of vet reports in all different formats. Like it could be a PDF file. It could also be a scribbled handwritten note by a vet so that they can support claims faster and for more people. In this episode, we chat about the rise of robot guinea pigs in China.

Georgie

We talk about AI used in diagnostics and what it's like working at a startup in an AI role. I would also like to apologize because I felt like attacking Cavoodles in this episode. I had like this weird rant about how I. I didn't like Cavoodles or any kind of poodle and frankly, it's not even true.

Georgie

I don't know where that came from. I might need to have less coffee before recording next time. If you're a Cavoodle listening to this, I sincerely apologize. I hope that you will let me pat you in future and I will never slam you like that in public ever again. Let's dive into the episode. So hey Jing, thank you for joining In the Blink of AI.

Georgie

I'm happy to be here because I've been listening to this podcast during my hard treadmill. I actually used to run on the treadmill. I think my years of running are starting to become behind me. But everyone is obsessed with the stair machine. Have you tried it? Because I feel like the girlies are obsessed.

Jing Wei

I find that it's a bit hard for me because my heart rate goes up really fast. Like it's 190. Oh my God. I don't want to risk my life.

Georgie

I don't want you to risk your life either, especially because Fetch can't really afford to lose their lead AI engineer. So, you know, stay safe out there. Yeah. Look, let's dive into the episode.

Georgie

You know, I would have done a bit of an intro about Fetch and yourself in the beginning, but I want to hear about it from you. Okay. Can you tell me what Fetch is and what your role at the company is?

Jing Wei

Well, actually we are a pet insurance company, but we are more like, I think it's called InsurTech. So we focus on technology.

Jing Wei

We build every platform we are using, and we are using AI to automate a lot of our processes.

Georgie

Yeah. Amazing. Insurance tech. So boring. Pets not boring and AI and pets and insurance tech genuinely really interesting. I'm sure we'll talk about some of the use cases in the show to come. We first met because you did the Google AI accelerator, which is where you started really thinking about how to implement AI into the product.

Georgie

But before we talk about that, you have a PhD. I would love for you to unpack a little bit about. When you first started playing with AI and how was it received when you were at uni?

Jing Wei

So actually I've done research since I was in my undergrad. So my research has always evolved around like things I'm interested in.

Jing Wei

So my PhD is about building proactive conversational agents. Well, you know, Google has the product Smart Home, Google Home. So my PhD is around that. I'm building an agent like a speaker can proactively talk to users and ask them questions and ask about their days.

Georgie

Wow. So Alexa, if Alexa cared even more about you, like that's amazing.

Georgie

What year was that though? Because you were a bit ahead of the curve, right? I started in November, 2019. Wow. before AI was what it is today. How did your professors receive it when you said that's what you were interested in doing?

Jing Wei

Actually, at that time, I think people were kind of crazy about this idea of a smart home.

Jing Wei

You know, you go home, you have the speaker and doing all these sorts of things for you. But there are a lot of limitations because at that time, speech recognition and a lot of algorithms aren't as good as nowadays. So I was facing a lot of challenges.

Georgie

Yeah, I remember the smart home internet of things era.

Georgie

Like everything was internet of things. You, you know, um, your fridge needed to have AI and so did your microwave. And everything needed to, to be connected to Wi Fi. It kind of seems. It's very passe now, right? It seems like old fashioned almost.

Jing Wei

Well, I would say, I think now with the new, like new AI technology, so we can definitely do a much better job than before.

Jing Wei

If you were to have the smartest home, what would it look like? Because my partner is very old fashioned, but, so my PhD supervisor, he actually spent more time automating his home rather than supervising me. So, at his home. If you have a cup of coffee, the coffee machine will greet you and say, enjoy your coffee.

Jing Wei

And it has a central controller, tells you when the best time to hit the washing machine, because it monitors the solar energy. That

Georgie

is incredible. Look, let's get to pets, one of my favorite topics. Um, and For this part of the show, I'd love to mix a bit of headline news and pets and get your take with your very deep insight and background.

Georgie

This I found fascinating. So there is a guinea pig called Boo Boo produced by Hangzhou Genmo Technology. I think this is out of China and retails for 1, 400 Yuan, which is 190. Did I say that correctly, Jing?

Jing Wei

Yeah, kind of. It's okay. Please correct

Georgie

me. Don't be too

Jing Wei

polite. It's, uh, it's pronounced as Hangzhou.

Jing Wei

Hangzhou. Because, uh, it's actually my hometown.

Georgie

You're joking. In China, right? Yes. Oh, amazing. Have you seen the skinny pig boo boo?

Jing Wei

I searched it up in one of the most popular Chinese social media apps and I watched a few, I would say, like, influencers doing the vlogs out of that guinea pig.

Georgie

It's, it's developed with children's social needs in mind.

Georgie

It's sold a thousand units. What do you think about it? It's saying it uses AI to interact with humans. What are your thoughts about BooBoo?

Jing Wei

Actually, I watched a few vlogs. I found it very interesting. I kind of want one myself. So probably one person commented saying they had two of BooBoo's. And if you interact with them, then each of them will behave differently.

Jing Wei

And one brought the, uh, boo boo to the flight, to a flight. And the attendant thought it was an actual pet. Asked them, how did you bring this up there?

Georgie

You're kidding, they brought it onto an aeroplane, and people thought they liked it. smuggled in. What a fun April Fool's. It's, it's 17th of February today.

Georgie

We could make this happen.

Jing Wei

No, but it's also very fun. You know, you see other people commenting, do you need to charge it? Then the person like, yeah, it can, the battery can last eight hours. So

Georgie

I used to have actual guinea pigs, um, anyone that was in my life in my early twenties will attest to the guinea pig obsession, which normally is for young kids, but I loved them, but then we see them messy.

Georgie

They that there's a lot. But there's a lot around guinea pigs that's probably not ideal. I would get this AI pet. The owners suggest that it makes their lives more enriched and happier. Do you, do you think there's any downside to having a robotic pet? What would you say, you know, maybe to consider before getting one?

Jing Wei

Actually, I think it's quite cheap, so probably worth it.

Georgie

Yeah, 190, that's um, that's really reasonable, right? But I

Jing Wei

do feel like the best way in life is kind of killing all the joy, you know, if you want a pet, you want to interact with it all the time.

Georgie

Yeah, yeah, kind of. If you're charging it because it just turns itself off, you very real, like, quickly realize that it's not actually giving you real affection.

Georgie

Social robots like Boo Boo are expected to grow to, by a factor of 7, to 42. 5 billion by 2033. Do you reckon they'll start to replace pets altogether, especially in, you know, these big cities where people are in apartments? I don't think so.

Jing Wei

But actually, when we talk about social robots, one thing I think that's promising probably provides some companionship.

Jing Wei

To older adults, actually seniors, because a lot of social robots have been developed to help like children, but they can actually bring a lot of, uh, comfort to older people, you know, because of all the aging populations and actually care about them a lot.

Georgie

Wow. I didn't think of the aging population because as a pet lover, yourself and myself.

Georgie

There comes a bit of a concern that if you get an elderly person, a dog or a puppy, and they have a long lifespan, then, then, you know, there's the implication that maybe they will outlive the, the person, um, and can they care for them and take them for walks? So I didn't think about robotic pets for the, for the elderly.

Georgie

That's really key. Would you get your great grandmother a boo boo?

Jing Wei

I'm not sure if she can understand the whole concept because my family actually installed camera So they can see she's safe every day, she unplug the camera every day, like she had to do this task and she unplugged everything.

Georgie

Yeah. Maybe, maybe AI is a breach too far for the current elderly population, but if, uh, you know, maybe in a few decades to come, I mean, I would love one.

Georgie

Um, putting that on my Christmas wishlist. One last question on the topic of robotic pets. I have a bunny. It's kind of the AI pod mascot at this stage because I have to let her out when I'm recording because she creates such a ruckus. And rabbits are really territorial and I don't want to get her a friend because she may kill her friend.

Georgie

But what about robots for pets? Pets for pets.

Jing Wei

Yeah, this question actually reminds me of all these videos, you know, they, they are like someone in Shanghai walking a robotic dog, and all the other dogs are like so surprised at this dog and are terrified of this, like, the robotic dog. I think it's possible, and because, you know, when I was doing all this, uh, my work, so I saw a case from, uh, history about a dog.

Jing Wei

depressed because there's not another dog on this whole household died, passed away, and the one dog just like became depressed. Maybe I think it might be beneficial if that's the case.

Georgie

Yeah, because, um, where I live in Sydney in the eastern suburbs, it's quite, you know, there's a lot of people that want a family dog, but it's quite populous and so I see a lot of puppy daycares.

Georgie

But it's not ideal, I would say, because, you know, you have to go to work and the dog stays at home and really the puppy daycare is It's a small space with other dogs, and I'm not sure that it's the perfect solution if, if you just want your dog to feel not lonely during the day.

Jing Wei

But to be honest, a lot of puppy daycares is pretty good.

Jing Wei

They have spa.

Georgie

What? They can get a manicure while you're working away. Okay, we need more robotics to actually implement the spa at home as well for our pets. The Washington Post discussed the rise of AI pet care. Why is AI helpful in diagnostics?

Jing Wei

I think it's because when you're building this algorithm, then I would say the researcher or developers behind the algorithm have access to a huge amount of data, which is very hard to obtain as like Uh, single vets or a single clinic in China.

Jing Wei

People say there's no rare disease in China because there's so many people. So even a rare disease in like Australia, there's like 10, 000 more people getting the same condition in China. So I think the same applies to the AI diagnostics. In order to train an algorithm, you'll need a huge amount of data, which will really help to like balance that own bias.

Jing Wei

Or have more information to

Georgie

help diagnosis. I love that there's no rare disease in China just because the data pool is so much bigger that it's no longer rare. Um, so data is really valuable when it comes to diagnosing issues for vets. And I guess a vet doesn't have to be an expert in every single topic because AI will help them with gathering information.

Georgie

Apparently you can buy AI devices that will monitor your pet. And, you know, keep track of them throughout the day. I think of people with like glucose monitors and things like that. Do you think it would help with vet bills and, and vet insurance if we could continuously monitor pets with some kind of a AI device?

Jing Wei

I think it's a bit of a tricky topic. There are insurance companies for home insurance that they can install sensors at your home so they can lower your insurance premium, which essentially is to get more data about whether you're going to go into a risky situation. So obviously we'll Pet owners, it's good to have, to know about your own pet's health, their habits, uh, daily, like eating habits.

Jing Wei

But on the other hand, you would also think about if it, is it worth it? It's just like company ask employee to wear a wristband so they can walk more steps every day, then they can reduce the insurance bill. Then you find it's a bit

Georgie

Dystopian.

Jing Wei

Yeah.

Georgie

I agree with you. Um, yeah, it's a little bit freaky. I mean, even for things like Fitbits and sleep tracking and things like that.

Georgie

For me personally, I don't, I personally don't like them because, um, if I'm not well rested, I kind of don't want to know. And if there's some like health issue, I'm sure I've got something. Don't really want to be reminded of it daily. I know the feeling. Okay. I'm going to get your hot take on a new app called Tably.

Georgie

It reads cat's facial cues. To assess, I guess, whether they're in pain, if they're feeling positive, and it uses AI crunch data, including ear position, orbital tightening, I guess that's something to do with their eyes, muscle tension, whisker positions, head positions, thoughts on this, do you think it's fake news or, or, or valuable?

Georgie

I

Jing Wei

think this series of research has been going on for quite a while. I'm not sure about the whole company's technology, but I think they're just commercializing the whole idea because I graduated from UNIMEL. So there was a, there's a research team at UNIMEL. They're doing very similar things a couple of years ago.

Jing Wei

So you can take a photo of your dog and it will tell you the

Georgie

emotion of the dog. Wow. I mean, I know this isn't, you know, really your specialty at Fetch, but I think this um, next frontier in understanding our pets, you know, people really, Uh, increasingly having, like, very personal relationships with their pets.

Georgie

They adore their pets like they would any other family member, and, you know, being different species, we do want to feel closer to them. Do you think AI can help us get to that? I definitely

Jing Wei

think it can, like a full normal. Like us, normal people like us, it's really hard to know. Wow, that's so flattering, Jing.

Jing Wei

No, no, no, I'm just saying, like, when you are doing dog training, a lot of time, for example, my friend's dog, she gets confused all the time, because us humans give her very ambiguous instructions, or makes her confused. So we have some technology to help us to understand where they're really thinking. It will really help us with training and not only make them a good dog, but also make the, the, the dog's life much more comfortable because there are a lot of, I think some owners actually suffering from.

Jing Wei

Like some misbehaved dogs, but I don't think that's essentially the dog's fault or human's fault. It's just like, we don't understand them.

Georgie

Yeah, if we could communicate in a way that they understood, we wouldn't get frustrated. They wouldn't get confused. Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I really don't think it's The pets generally love their owners.

Georgie

They're not trying to misbehave necessarily. They just don't know what we consider is bad behavior. They don't necessarily. So any weird and wacky ideas at Fetch that you decided were just too wacky and stayed on the cutting room table?

Jing Wei

I think we have way too many to name a few. Because currently we have a lot of data.

Jing Wei

And we just want to organize them in a form that we can, uh, make good use of. For example, when our agents process a pet's medical history, we essentially know what vaccines and, like, worming, preventative, uh, medication the dog's been received. So we are trying to figure out if we can, uh, give the owners all this information.

Jing Wei

And actually, one idea, I think eventually I will try to implement it, is, um, we have the weight of the dog, like, along their life. So some of our, some of my colleagues, they also own a dog, they would really like to have a a chart of how, like, the weight that their dog

Georgie

grows. This is very toxic, Jing, okay?

Georgie

This is very toxic body shaming for these animals.

Jing Wei

No, we just want to know, from a puppy to a grown dog, you want to see every step of this dog's

Georgie

growth. I understand now. I thought you meant just like Some breeds eat more.

Jing Wei

But

Georgie

the size of the animal matters, right?

Jing Wei

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think a lot of owners would like to see that.

Georgie

I think owners of micro pigs would really like to know that too, right? The promised land of a micro pig apparently just isn't, isn't real. Yeah, I

Jing Wei

know a lot of people are disappointed over that.

Georgie

Yeah, I know that we'll get into rapid fire spicy hot takes, but Is there any data about an animal that just remains elusive to you?

Georgie

Like a type of breed that you're like, we've got all this data on them, but you know, we still just don't get them. Like they're just an unusual animal or an unusual breed. Think

Jing Wei

of many, but the one breed. So, you know, poodle mix is always a mysterious breed.

Georgie

Everyone's got a poodle mix. Everyone's got a Cavoodle, Labradoodle.

Georgie

Yes, I've got you. Yes.

Jing Wei

And also, apparently, I didn't know this, but I only learned recently that cobble dog is also a poodle mix. Cobble, Australian cobble dog. It's one type of labrador, but it's a designer breed dog.

Georgie

Wait, how do you spell this? I need to look this up right now. I think it's C A O

Jing Wei

B B L E.

Georgie

Oh yeah!

Georgie

Oh see, I would have just called this a caboodle as well.

Jing Wei

I think it's a Labradoodle.

Georgie

Yeah, they all look the same to me. Can I tell you my hot take that will get me cancelled? Because everyone has one of these dogs. I'm just not a fan of a poodle. So if you add a poodle to anything, I'm like, you made it worse.

Georgie

And I know for the hypoallergenic and I know for all of those things, there's just, and I'm a big pet lover, but for whatever reason, I just can't do poodle mix.

Jing Wei

I, I know people like poodle mix, but I like poodles just for they are.

Georgie

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it's, I think I had a bad experience with one poodle that lived next door that was just so yappy, yappy, yappy all day that it just ruined it for me.

Georgie

I think they're beautiful looking, but it's just something I can't do a poodle mix. Okay. Let's get into. Okay. Okay. What you do day to day, which is building AI products. And I would love to know, you know, we, we have talked to researchers before, but how does being a researcher by background help you in your role now as an AI engineer, where's the research link that, that helps you?

Jing Wei

Well, I was at university doing research. I know my research is limited, and obviously I read others research articles and talk to other researchers to try to improve my research project. But I know I just need to say this project has certain limitations, but I do expand the whole knowledge a little bit, and that's good enough.

Jing Wei

But when I'm a company, I do something very similar. I read other research papers and I know what's like the latest technology. But I also know that I cannot tell my colleagues like Fu say, Oh, this algorithm has its limits. We may

Georgie

lose. Yeah. Fu's um, one of the co founders of Fetch. Yes.

Jing Wei

But I guess my research background makes me less terrified when reading, um, newest AI research paper.

Jing Wei

And I can also try different techniques that's like just being, let's say, published last week. Yeah.

Georgie

Yeah. Um, so your ability to understand a scientific paper and pull out what's meaningful from it, I guess, would, you know, in this very fast moving state of AI be very valuable. Um, where do you get your latest?

Georgie

News sources, your white papers, your research papers. Do you still try and keep on top of that? Or are you like, no, no, no, that was University Jing. I don't need to do that anymore.

Jing Wei

Sometimes I do. I don't even know. So for latest papers, they are usually published on archive. So it's a platform. A lot of researchers publish their non peer reviewed paper there, so that other people can check it out first.

Jing Wei

Because the field is progressing so fast, you cannot wait for like a 12 month cycle for a paper to be published. And another, I've only recently started to see is I know a lot of people hate Reddit, but I also do find a lot of people provide some very practical, uh, experience there. Uh, and also on Chinese social media, I'm keeping up with some other people's updates because a lot of people will share the challenges they face in their day to day AI work, which is actually.

Jing Wei

Very valuable because first I know like people are having similar issues and I'll maybe they'll share how they can tackle that. I can learn.

Georgie

Wow. So three key sources you shared there. One is obviously peer review papers, but in this really fast moving time. I didn't know it took a year to possibly publish these things.

Georgie

So non peer reviewed is a great source. How did you spell where you got that from? Oh, it's called Archive. Archive, okay. So Archive, Reddit, I'm a huge fan of Reddit as well, just for getting a sense, um, and a bit of a conversation around. You know, the latest AI news and Chinese social media, this might be a little bit outside of my understanding because I don't actually speak Chinese or Mandarin or any of the languages, but is there like a tech social media platform?

Jing Wei

No, it's just a media platform for everything. You can go there searching for how to do your makeup, but also people are there sharing AI technologies and AI news. In the meantime,

Georgie

this might be the most hot take of all what happened when deep sequence released? Because obviously in Western countries, it blew up Twitter X, whatever.

Georgie

We had someone come on the show rapidly to talk about it. What about. Actually in China, what was the on the ground? Was everyone really proud of it? Like, how did people, what was the sentiment in China? I

Jing Wei

think it's half, half there. I see a lot of people saying that open that doing much better job, but other people were like battling saying, I think deep security is really good.

Jing Wei

And then some people actually making money out of it. Yeah. They are selling tutorials on how to install, like, the smaller models of DeepSeq on your local machine. So that it doesn't track,

Georgie

um, your responses, or?

Jing Wei

Oh, no, it's, no, it's just like people teaching other stuff. That you are selling a, essentially, like, you're on Coursera, you can sell a course.

Jing Wei

Then they're selling tutorials on how to better use, like, download or installing.

Georgie

That's incredible. I, yeah, because I think at least the channels I've been seeing, um, everyone thought DeepSeek was just like superior in so many ways with the reasoning. Um, if people want to hear a bit more about that, you can check out our episode on it, but it's really interesting to see how China, you know, is also still kind of, some people are pro open AI still because, um, I would have assumed it would be just very patriotic and like, yes.

Georgie

Actually, no, I wouldn't say so. What do you think? Are you a fan of one or the other?

Jing Wei

Actually, I've been using DeepSeek quite a lot. It's a bit hard to say, but I sometimes ask for, uh, messaging advice in Chinese. That's actually much better than, say, ChatGPT, because DeepSeek is training on much more Mandarin datasets, so it sometimes provides better suggestions.

Georgie

And, uh, for messaging for specifically Chinese conversations you're having then? Yeah. That's really interesting. Wow. So in the back end, they're obviously translating into English before. Oh,

Jing Wei

actually, no, you know, so currently for a lot of reasoning models, because every company distilling other companies model.

Jing Wei

So you may see. DeepSeek is thinking in English, even though the input is in Chinese, but you may see other companies thinking like a really model thinking English, but sometimes the Mandarin might pop up.

Georgie

I have heard of this and seen this a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, incredible hot take. Thank you for that.

Georgie

Definitely couldn't have got that otherwise. So what do you consider when you want to use an AI tool? So like you gave the deep seek example of conversations and messaging, what's important to you? You understand AI so deeply, what do you look for when you're playing with AI tools?

Jing Wei

So back in 2019, when I first used GPT 3, I thought it was amazing.

Jing Wei

Um, I think this technology can be used by anyone because you can interact with natural language. But now we have so many new models. Then I realized sometimes some companies may secretly change parameters in the service they provide, and you only see the model name remain the same, but something may change in somewhere you don't, you don't see.

Jing Wei

I find that's very hard to control. So currently, I'm trying to find a way to use a more controllable model, for example, open source models, but at the same time, it's not everyone has a resource to host open source models. For example, you may download the smallest DeepSeq R1. Model to your local machine, but you cannot like host the real whole DeepSeek R1 model.

Jing Wei

It's the same for like Lama from Meta because I feel like when I'm using technology to make API calls, I know my inputs. Sometimes my output may change like one day or one week later. The output is totally different. I find it's very hard to control. If I want to build a tech product. That's based on AI entirely.

Jing Wei

I need to make sure the quality is consistent. But currently I find it's a little bit hard to control.

Georgie

And is that because the computer can't handle the, the compute or the size of the model and can't react accordingly?

Jing Wei

So for hosting a model, Usually on a, like a normal laptop, you can maybe host a very small model depending on the configurations of the laptop.

Georgie

And when you say very small, just like help, help me out here. Like I thought anyone could just get a Llama, you know, meta open source model and just kind of download it, play with it.

Jing Wei

Yeah, you can download a, like a 7 billion, uh, parameter, I think 7B, but that could probably require like two grand, three grand laptop, but that's usually the normal household will have.

Jing Wei

If you want to run a big parameter model, then you probably need to borrow some GPU resources. That costs a lot of money.

Georgie

And Jing, do you use a, a 2K laptop and use 7 billion parameter models? And what are you missing out in a 7 billion parameter model that you could get with the better ones?

Jing Wei

Oh, I'm only trying to, I'll actually just over the weekend, cause I want to fine tune some models.

Jing Wei

It's obviously not as good as a bigger model.

Georgie

Yeah, because the quantity of data that's input into the models must be smaller. Is that correct?

Jing Wei

It's just like the computer processing speed is super slow. We cannot wait for one minute to output one word. That's too slow.

Georgie

Understood. Yes. This reminds me, I, um, I created a image to video, um, just for marketing socials.

Georgie

And, um, It took an hour and I know that it's because I'm not paying and I'm sure my computer could handle more than that. But the number of times I just thought I can't be bothered. I don't even know if the output will be worth the wait. It reminds me a little bit of that. Like, yes, I could probably get something superior with a bigger model.

Georgie

But if it's that slow, I just can't be bothered at all. Yeah. So you, you've played with AI products, but you're also building AI products. What do you consider when you're building an AI product that is going to be in the hands of an everyday user that, you know, your fetch product is insurance and, and in the backend, you create AI models.

Georgie

Well, what do you consider when building them? How complex and, and what, what matters when you create them?

Jing Wei

So a little bit fun fact, I think the other day I saw a survey, you know, these days everyone, every company is talking about let's do AI start, AI product. I think there's only maybe like 20 or 25 percent of companies that actually have AI products in production.

Jing Wei

Wow. So I think that's a very low number because when you're building product that runs day to day, that needs to be very consistent. But just like my answer to the last question, sometimes the output, the quality is not the same. So I think that might be a main reason. And in our company, because the domain is in veterinary, and I'm only a PhD in AI, so I don't really know veterinary that much.

Jing Wei

So I need to collaborate, I need to talk to an expert, like our head vet. And also agents who use our products to understand their brains because I need to bring domain knowledge into the product and that's very difficult.

Georgie

Yeah, that's such a great point. Um, we had Harrison AI on the show and I spoke to someone with a, you know, medical background who was a doctor, but he's not building the AI model, you know, having that deep veterinary domain experience, you understand the pain points of being a vet and you understand the pain points of building an AI model.

Georgie

Um, I'm sure there's a lot of conversations around that. What are some big challenges with building AI models, like from a technical standpoint?

Jing Wei

I do want to say the biggest challenge is how we do a fancy algorithm. But actually the biggest challenge, to be honest, is all the documents. sent to us from vet clinics, you were saying PDF might be the most popular document, but there are maybe like a hundred other document formats that we need to handle.

Jing Wei

And that's very hard.

Georgie

So you're saying that, you know, you'd expect just the vets to upload these PDFs into a sanctual system, but you're getting handwritten notes too, and all sorts. And you have to manage that in your model.

Jing Wei

Uh, yes. We need to manage all sorts of inputs in our, uh, models and we also need to, even for PDFs, it's very different.

Jing Wei

PDF is so user friendly to human eyes, but it's actually very, very hard to computers.

Georgie

Yes. And, uh, I, I have to know what kind of AI technique is being used to see this image, PDF, you know, JPEG, whatever it is, PNG file, um, just, just a little bit of technical jargon, please. Uh, what is actually happening to go from that to a, you know, next step for you?

Jing Wei

Well, actually, technology is for Like doing text extraction is quite mature. We have OCR since decades ago, but like recent large ink remodels makes it much easier for us to taking natural languages and outputs in a more structured form. But for PDF, sadly, I don't have a good solution. And I was very surprised to find that out.

Jing Wei

There's no one. Like I'm on every Reddit forum, every Chinese social media. No one has a good solution. It's just very weird. It's, um, sometimes for some PDF document, you can just use the package other people's reading code to get all the text out. But sometimes, these PDFs might have images.

Jing Wei

Then I need to actually have another tool to analyze those images.

Georgie

Oh, yes, like Harrison AI have x rays, for example, to try and detect issues. Are you also receiving images? That's so tough. Yeah, of course. That's really complex, isn't it? Yeah, I can just imagine because even just It's doctors and vets in general.

Georgie

It's like they've gone to the school of bad handwriting and they have to make it as squiggly as possible.

Jing Wei

Recently, I learned that some clinics have bad practice. So you know, when you're, when you were for human doctors like GP, they have a template. In the digital records, right? Some vets may not edit anything in the template.

Jing Wei

So then the vet may say everything is normal, but then the dog actually went in for an ear infection or skin infection.

Georgie

Oh my goodness. And that would really impact you guys as an insurance company, because you'd be like, well, lowest cover possible. Actually, this dog has all these issues. Okay. Something I ask a lot of our guests, how do you reflect on the costs of managing an AI startup?

Georgie

Like, you know, I know you're the engineer, so you're building the model and maybe Costs isn't your number one priority, but I'm sure you're asked a lot, the cost of this compute that's impacting, um, our profits, things like that. How do you think about cost of compute?

Jing Wei

Um, so far we haven't really used much of this to like fine tune our models or to hold down service.

Jing Wei

But I did accidentally incur a 1, 000 cost on Google Cloud Platform accidentally and I didn't know.

Georgie

How? How do you accidentally spend 1, 000? I would love to accidentally spend 1, 000. It might be differently though.

Jing Wei

Because previously, uh, I want to host a model on Google's platform, so I just use one of the service and I test it out.

Jing Wei

I find it's not that good, so I just forget about it, but it just keeps running for three weeks straight.

Georgie

I've been there, I've been there with, uh, subscribing to sub stacks that I'm not interested in anymore and things like that. Look, Fetch is hugely successful in the pet space. What markets are you guys in?

Georgie

You're obviously in Australia, but I'm guessing pets worldwide have very similar issues. It's, it is, you know, health at the end of the day.

Jing Wei

Yeah, I think we're currently trying to be more prominent, like, be strong in the Australian market. But the company is definitely looking to other overseas markets.

Jing Wei

Because, like you said, everyone likes pets. Not that many people like children anymore.

Georgie

Children are really like COVID era, but we're moving on.

Jing Wei

Yeah, so we are definitely looking to expand to overseas markets, maybe Europe or maybe Southeast Asia. But as the, I think currently, We're also trying to, like, work harder in Australia to have a bigger market share.

Georgie

Like, really, really take a big market share in Australia before launching elsewhere. Sounds like a great strategy. And what pets do you insure at Fetch? We've talked about dogs. Currently, we insure both cats and dogs. Cats and dogs. I'm really triggered. Why don't you insure bunnies? They're

Jing Wei

expensive, because, uh, actually Fu's friend has a bunny, and every time the bunny is sick, you need to take the bunny to a specialist, because normal vets can't treat them.

Georgie

Can I tell you a story? I got my bunny, who's a girl, and the very important thing is, like with cats and dogs, is to de sex them, just makes their quality of life a lot better. I think their life Expectancy and things like that too. I didn't know that you needed to take them to a specialist vet and The vet I took them to said yeah, you had no worries.

Georgie

I can do that No worries, and my bunny repeatedly would pull out her stitches I needed to buy a baby onesie so she wouldn't pull out her stitches And she still did every morning and it was terrifying. And I was worried they were going to get infected. And finally I went to an exotic vet in Sydney and it cost thousands of dollars because they needed special stitches and they had to undo the damage that.

Georgie

The original vet did. Yeah. I

Jing Wei

mean, that's the reason

Georgie

she's doing great guys. Don't worry. She's fine. But that would be my hot tip. These small pets that, you know, capitally not intensive, you know, to buy a bunny, not expensive, but to look after and, and the ongoing close. Anyway, uh, what about any trends in the types of pets that are popular in Australia?

Georgie

Any breeds that you're noticing more and more are coming through your claims and insurance policies?

Jing Wei

I think you know the answer.

Georgie

The damn Cavoodles!

Jing Wei

Yeah, there are a lot of Cavoodles. Let's also put a mix out, see.

Georgie

I really do regret saying that they're not my favourite because, you know, I'm just putting everyone offside now.

Georgie

I think maybe I'm just being contrarian because I see so many. I'm like, I'm gonna choose to be different. Uh, what kinds of relationships do you need to have to make Fetch successful? I'm guessing vets? What other, what other partnerships are important?

Jing Wei

Oh, I think other vet health platforms. So we're currently doing integrations with some, I think it's called PMS, patient management system company.

Jing Wei

So we can get vet notes directly from the clinic. And we are putting a lot of effort building that integration.

Georgie

And, um, when you say vet clinic, this is something I actually don't understand. Are vets majority private practices, like are they owned by one person, or are there, like, franchises of vets?

Jing Wei

I think they are both.

Jing Wei

So, you can have, like, a mobile vet. Obviously, like, free soul, you just go everywhere, treat animals, like, mobily, but they're also franchised. So there's a huge one, I think it's called Green Cross. So we literally need to do a special template for them.

Georgie

Yes. Okay, that must make it easier to capture market share when that exists.

Georgie

I just realized how long we've been talking. I've been having the most fun. We are now at my favorite part of the episode, which is the rapid fire. So I've got five rapid fire spicy questions for you, and then you're free to go Jing. You've been very generous so far. What do university students that want to go into startups need to know.

Georgie

I think they just need to work hard. You're in for a, you're in for a shock, uni students. Um, are there any popular pets that you dislike? Now you're going to get cancelled as well as me Jing.

Jing Wei

I would say Dachshund and Frenchie because they're not very healthy.

Georgie

Yeah, okay. Well, that's actually a nice take.

Georgie

You're like, you want there to be healthy pets and you've seen the downside of having French Bulldogs and Dachshunds. Is, is the Dachshund issue with their backs? I hear that they're back.

Jing Wei

Yeah, yeah. They have some spinal pain, spinal issues.

Georgie

Um, okay. Will AI lead to more pet ownership? Why or why not? I think it's irrelevant though.

Jing Wei

Unless you're, we're talking about AI pets, maybe if we consider AI pet owners as pet owners,

Georgie

then probably more. Yeah, you're right. It's like AI could lead to more robotic pets, but will that impact actual pet ownership? Maybe, maybe not. Is AI capable of detecting health issues in pets?

Jing Wei

I definitely think so.

Jing Wei

And I'm trying to build that out, actually. What

Georgie

would be your Mount Rushmore of like pet issues that you'd want to solve? Like a health issue that you would really love to solve with AI?

Jing Wei

Currently with the latest AI technology, we can get some nuanced information extracted out. For example, if the owner say the dog's leg is weak months ago, maybe that could be a sign of potential future conditions.

Georgie

Oh, I see what you're saying. It's kind of an indicator of something else. Exactly. I really loved this chat. Um, is there anything you'd like to shout out to the listeners as well?

Jing Wei

I would say brush the teeth of your dogs and cats. Dental is very expensive.

Georgie

I have never brushed my cat's teeth. I have to brush its teeth.

Jing Wei

Actually, I'm not sure about cats, but I do know for dogs, dental costs tons of money. My friend has a border collie. She probably spends like six, seven grand on the dog's teeth.

Georgie

Oh my goodness. What, why do they need to be brushed? What's happening that, is it plaque? Is it, what is it?

Jing Wei

Calculus. Just like, like us.

Jing Wei

And if you have, because for dogs, you obviously won't do a dental implant and a lot of conditions can happen because a lot of infections can happen because the dog's like tooth fracture or like missing teeth and also bad breath.

Georgie

You might have just saved people thousands of dollars, um, with that one.

Georgie

Thank you so much. Thank you for being on the show.

Jing Wei

I'm happy to be here.

Georgie

Thank you for listening to In the Blink of AI. You can check out the show notes for anything discussed in this week's episode, and we will be back next week. This podcast was produced by Day One. With music by Dan Hanson and visual artwork by Sophie Tyrell.

Georgie

If you loved the episode, please tell your mates. And I love AI News. Please share your thoughts and suggestions to GeorginaRoseHealy@gmail.com.