2024: ‘Nadia: Politics | Bigotry | Artificial Intelligence’ Pre-Order Available on Amazon

This is the explosive inside story of Nadia, the world’s first AI powered Digital Human for Service Delivery

Nadia the book is available now on pre-order on Amazon.

For publication 16 February 2024, the anniversary of NADIA’S introduction, 7 years ago. Just imagine...

The Nadia story is of a magnificent achievement driven by people with disability; vilified by the Australian bureaucracy; not celebrated by Australia and yet recognised as one of the world’s most advanced projects in Artificial Intelligence.

This is the inside story of Nadia, the world’s first AI powered digital human for service delivery. Even more importantly, it was imagined, co-created and co-designed by people with disability. The story of Nadia is at once disturbing, yet magnificent, and this is the first time told. 

Nadia has been described as one of the world’s most advanced projects in Artificial Intelligence; with commentary describing the Nadia project as having helped kickstart the revolutionary global industry in AI powered digital humans. Global luminaries have spoken about the game changing application of the Nadia innovation in other fields such as healthcare and access to justice, and we get to meet some of these extraordinary people.

So significant is this revolutionary industry, that China declared an Action Plan to dominate the digital human field globally.  The stakes are high

So why was it feted worldwide, yet vilified and dumped by the Australian Government?

For years the international pursuit of the behind-the-scenes story has not abated. To the contrary, interest has intensified from all sectors globally, as the world enters the era of ChatGPT and Generative AI. I continue to be inundated with questions ranging across AI in general, co-design, the technology, the project and yes, the putrid bigoted politics. 

Requests to write, to speak, to collaborate by leading corporations and universities required more than me just telling the story. I have spent the past four years documenting all aspects of the Nadia project, and provide a detailed forensic timeline and hundreds of references in the book to enable current and future generations to guide their safe development and use of AI.

But the story itself needed to be told.  Disabled communities across Australia and indeed around the world want to know what happened. Their curiosity, their disappointment, their anger, needs to be heard and answered. They believed that they would finally have a level playing field when accessing government and other services. This was theirs. They imagined it. Drove it. They put their expertise, their experience, their hearts and souls into co-creating it, co-designing it, and delivering it. At the last moment, when hope was turning into reality, it was brutishly ripped from them.

These two ‘themes’ are not independent. I understand the academic and corporate interest in Nadia and the project itself; there are billions of dollars to be made in AI and everyone wants their share. But unbridled pursuit of AI denies citizens their human rights and can even lead to fatal consequences. 

Here told for the first time, is the coincidence and timing of the Nadia project and the unlawful and deadly RoboDebt program which would become a politically ferocious interplay.

In the fight to deflect attention from RoboDebt and shamefully protect itself, the toxic bureaucracy killed off Nadia, shut down innovation and shut-out the voices of people with disability who created her. 

This starts the process of acknowledging the 10,000 people involved in creating Nadia.

And will Nadia come back, the question I am most often asked - read the book to find out!

With that, a mic drop. I’m off to go hiking with #CardiacMan.

 Remember ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’.