⏩🥝Monthly Aotearoa AI roundup - Aug 2024
Government *finally* begins engagement with AI, plus AI blueprint, hackathon and an ever-expanding futures map
Kia ora,
Here’s a roundup of developments in AI, emerging tech and futures going on in Aotearoa over the last month and what’s coming up.
🌿AI For The Environment Hackathon 8-11 August
The AI Forum NZ has done a good job pulling together this coming weekend’s AI For The Environment Hackathon being held in-person in major centres and also online.
Here are more details on some of the challenges:
(Unfortunately I will be in the opposite timezone while the event is happening but good luck to everyone taking part!)
📊AI Blueprint for Aotearoa New Zealand
Also from the AI Forum NZ, an aspirational publication laying out a new AI Blueprint for Aotearoa New Zealand:
The report aims for a more ambitious reboot of a national AI strategy. In particular, focusing efforts on quantitative, measurable outcomes, including:
“Achieve top 30 status in Government AI Readiness Index. We currently rank 49 out of 139 countries.
Achieve top 25 status in Global AI Index. We currently rank 36 out of 62 countries.
Achieve top 10 for productivity in OECD countries using AI. We currently rank 26 out of 37 countries.“
It focuses in on opportunities across 6 vertical sectors:
Agriculture
Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC)
Creative Industries
Education
Environment
Health
Overall highly supportive of the aspiration… but (from doing this myself for a while) cognizant of the execution/capability gap to be closed, given the stark reality of how far behind the country is internationally on AI capability. The report opens with this statement:
“Aotearoa New Zealand is a world leader in various aspects of AI. Our cutting edge research capabilities underpin an emerging technology industry, supported by New Zealand grown organisations and international technology giants.“
Unfortunately, (as per the metrics identified above) Aotearoa is not a “leader” at all, languishing in low-to-mid league table position and arguably falling... As I put it in my book, referring to the now-defunct Digital ITP which used similar language:
“As for the world "looking to Aotearoa New Zealand as a leader in...digital technologies": without sounding defeatist, fundamentally we have to ask the question: will these [aspirational Digital ITP] investments alone move the competitiveness dial if placed next to international technology developments in, say, generative AI, XR or cloud computing infrastructure? In my view, Aotearoa is now so far behind the frontier of global technology advancement in most of the fields that matter, perhaps we should acknowledge that up front. The strategy should be to try to catch up and keep up, not lead.“
To build capability will require years of focused capital investment, people investment, (open source) international engagement and continuous effort to build momentum. Good on the AI Forum for pulling again on the flywheel… but where’s that directed investment going to come from…?
🏛️Government *finally* engages with AI
After years of foot-dragging by both elected politicians and the public service, finally some signs that Government is beginning to seriously engage with the opportunities which AI presents. MBIE proactively released a cabinet paper from Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins outlining the proposed approach to AI:
Although it’s still pretty much a “plan to make a plan”, there are some in-principle decisions and directions which indicate that the focus is going to shift from an overwhelming focus on “AI Risk” to “Enabling AI Innovation”. Which is at least a meaningful vibe-shift…
The paper outlines five high-level “domains” for action, including aligning closely with the work happening at OECD-level:
Domain 1: Setting a strategic approach
Encouraging the use of AI to deliver results for people in New Zealand
Taking a proportionate, risk-based approach to AI regulation
Giving effect to the OECD AI Principles
Domain 2: Enabling safe AI innovation in Public Services
Domain 3: Harnessing AI in the New Zealand economy
Domain 4: Prioritising our engagement on international rules and norms
Domain 5: Coordinating with work on national security
The most important para IMO: Cross-Party support for AI adoption in Government. Put simply: Aotearoa is so far behind the play, there is ZERO room for party-political or ideology-driven stances on AI. The country needs a high-functioning, evidence-based approach to cross-party working groups which operate with a clear consensus on target outcomes for Aotearoa. Ideally, AI policy should be treated like trade policy: seen as a good thing for the country from all sides. Hopefully our politicians, for once, will be able to see the bigger picture here…
Two further questions arising:
Where is the investment going to come from…?
Even with enough money… can the byzantine Wellington machinery move at the speed required to start closing the gap on Silicon Valley (and even UK or Australia)…?
(Also of relevance: this week on the other side of the world, the new UK government has appointed technology policy advisor Emily Middleton to lead the design of a new Government Digital Centre).
One of my common strategy threads these days is what is the difference between “Digital Transformation” and “AI Transformation”? The latter is still nascent but potentially offers an opportunity to leapfrog long and arduous digital transformation initiatives… providing an AI-first UX to government services… definitely worth exploring what this might look like!
One early project I’m advocating for is an open-source, open-access national Aotearoa language model training dataset. Here’s my response to a thread about AoNZ copyright law being unclear on what should and should not be available for training LLMs:
“The flip side of this argument: if content *isn't* inside the training corpus for these models then effectively it's very likely going to be lost to history within a few short years... information discoverability will be gatekept by the largest LLMs (both closed and open source) via their training datasets and a massive tsunami of AI-generated content will flood every information space in between.
I would argue instead that Aotearoa needs to rapidly establish and curate an open-source national training dataset of all AoNZ-sourced public domain information (full Archives NZ, Maori oral and written traditions, domestic news sources, TV channels and public social media posts... so that Aotearoa culture is maintained and isn't just flooded out with AI-generated *crap* trained on US media and values...“
🗺️🔮Aotearoa Futures Map
Kudos to Victoria Mulligan for continuing to build and curate the interactive Aotearoa Futures map, visualising the futures ecosystem in New Zealand. Here’s the updated release for May 2024:
Plenty to explore in here… and if you’re involved in futures and foresight work, get yourself on the map!
📰Also in the news…
More AI and a few other things which have been jumping out of my feed…
😢Soul extinguished?
Early Aotearoa AI poster-child Soul Machines faces an uncertain future after raising a total of US$135 million (~NZ$225m). Co-founders Greg Cross and Mark Sagar recently stepped down as directors and a UK subsidiary filing indicated doubt that the group could continue as a going concern.
I remember seeing Mark demo “BabyX” 10 years ago at TEDxChch 2014… at the time it was completely amazing technology and by far the most advanced human avatar / brain emulation technology outside the lab… but as is often the case, that early first-mover advantage couldn’t keep up with AI investments behind international technology firms - now companies like Heygen and Synthesia are giving away far more lifelike avatar technology for a few $ per month - and OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model far exceeded any speech models Soul Machines built.
(More broadly, there’s the more fundamental question of whether there actually is sustainable demand for digital avatars for customer service… personally I’d rather just click a button than have a conversation…)
All the best to the Soul Machines team - look forward to seeing what you turn your focus to next!
🏗️Southland datacentre extension granted
As the world scrambles to build out enough datacentre capacity for (projected) future AI demand, Datagrid New Zealand, the firm building a new datacentre in Makerewa, Southland announced they had received OiO approval to extend the project to a total area of 49 hectares:
📉Inflation tracker
Not strictly AI news… but the Massey University team behind the GDPLive tracker launched a new New Zealand Inflation Tracker which provides more real-time indications of how the economy is faring… rather than the rear-view-mirror inflation calculations published by the Reserve Bank:
⚔️AI kill chains
Like it or not, autonomous weapons are now being deployed in international warfare. According to a story in RNZ (highlighted by former PM Helen Clark below), NZDF are involved in accelerating the technology. What do we think of this…?
⚰️Mortality working group
A comprehensive new report from the Australian Actuaries Institute “Mortality Working Group” (fun name) analysed excess mortality during the peak Covid-19 pandemic years of 2020-2023. Aotearoa by far the lowest globally:
🌙🚀In search of a better way to achieve moonshots
Finally, another excellent interview by Peter Griffin, speaking with Sally Davenport looking back at the decade-long, NZ$680M “mission-led” National Science Challenges which have now concluded: In search of a better way to achieve moonshots.
Also here is Sally in conversation with Peter on the Business of Tech podcast:
OK, that’s what I’ve been tracking this month… let me know what I’ve missed?
Ngā mihi
Ben