Yeah, excellent. We’ll have to find another opportunity for you. Thank you!

Yeah, great connection. I feel privileged to meet you. I’ve been reading about the work you did during COVID particularly and how you got everyone going. So that’s great.

Yeah, I appreciate your time. I think that’s probably covered everything I wanted to get across.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good connection. Nice. Thank you.

Yeah, that’s cool.

There is one element that’s on the government’s actual use of AI so that they are actually… There is one or two agencies that have got quite good at it, but then they’ve got trouble for data sovereignty, particularly with…

But it’s more about trying to actually work out where are the best focus areas for New Zealand. There’s so much you could talk about with limited time and resources. Where should the government be focusing its attention most? So, part of it is on…

Yeah, because part of NZ Tech is the AI forum and the AI forum is working with our Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which is the big policy arm for the government, on… We call it the AI strategy.

It might be nice to get someone from our AI community involved in that one in August just to see how that works. I’ll definitely take that back if I could get some more information about it.

Yeah, that’s really cool.

Yeah. That’s great, really nice. Is there anything I can do to help you or your team with connections to New Zealand or, I don’t know, probably nothing, but feel free to…

Yeah, it’s crazy. And I have a 13-year-old daughter, so I look at the world that she’s grown up in and it keeps me focused.

Because that’s where they make money. They wouldn’t make money if we were all going, that’s free, yay, I’m making you free.

Yeah, and the opportunity to get some of these technologies to actually solve some of these big problems is huge, but that’s probably not where the money is, right? In the same way with engagement AI through the social media, they sort of engage those AIs to make everyone happy ...

But my fear is with this AI stuff is… I love that fact you’ve signed that letter because basically we need to give pressure or an opportunity for the people running those big companies who are pressured by the share markets and who don’t understand this technology. Like the guys ...

Yeah, in New Zealand, the government introduced a wellbeing budget in the way the whole government infrastructure works around is not just investment on the money, but it’s got to also create societal benefits and environmental benefits. That kind of thinking really does change, actually having to put a model ...

You have to bring everyone along.

Yeah, and it automatically makes you balance. It’s not just a capitalist model all the time. It’s not about who makes the most money, because that’s not how our societies work.

Yeah, and a bigger place as well. A lot more brains.

Wow. That’s cool. We’ve got a lot to learn. I, crazily, when I came up here, I thought, we’re doing some cool things, I’ll be able to share some interesting things. But every time I shared something, it’s like “oh, we did that last year.”

That’s great. That’s really cool. That’s my first experience of seeing that happen, actually. Because it’s very difficult conceptually to get your head around that, but you just made it a lot easier to understand.

That’s amazing!

Wow, that is really cool. Would you like to talk at the New Zealand AI Summit about that?

You now have two bosses before you.

And it probably also helps the credibility and the job you’re doing.

Are you a programmer background or an IT person?

AI has been a big focus. Where does that sit with your digital affairs?

Exactly. Very good. And all of the meetings that we’ve been to so far,

Because I’m sure they could improve their algorithms and cut most of it out pretty quickly, but that would cut off their advertising revenue as well.

And I think the other reason they’re doing it, is a bit like the same reason the tobacco companies were doing those research back in the 1970s, is because they’re trying to also tell us how good they are, even though they’re sometimes good, sometimes bad.

I think particularly for this sort of technology, how fast it moves, legislation would struggle to keep up with it. A new problem would come, whereas as you say, you’ve got this group that can respond a lot faster.

They probably do it in other countries, but they make us feel special and say it’s just happening in New Zealand.

Where they’re actually, two things, publicly sharing all the information that’s happening, on what’s happening on their platforms in terms of how much of that bad stuff’s happening, how they are responding to it, and sharing it with each other, so that they can actually adapt their products. So, trying ...

And our Prime Minister’s response to that, created a very strong relationship with these big platforms, which has allowed us to try this other thing where they actually… they tell us that they’re not doing it in other countries.

For us it was, you may or may not have heard of the attack in Christchurch a few years back, the mosque attack where someone went around and they shot people, and they put that out onto the global platforms.

So, they can move faster than the government.

I was just interested in, I guess, your national relationship with some of these big platforms, and how that plays out into some of the work you’re doing as well.

So, misinformation is one, but also child exploitation, online graphic content, and a few other, such as online bullying. So, they share all that information and they set themselves improvement targets, and there’s a public complaint mechanism. If the public don’t have a good experience on one of their platforms, ...

We’re still getting other members. They have signed up to share transparently what’s happening on their platforms in New Zealand. So that they can all learn from each other and publish that information publicly in terms of a number of different things.

So, Meta with Instagram and Facebook, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Twitch, TikTok and Twitter at the moment.

In the space of online safety, we have just launched a self-regulating entity, called the Code of Practice for Online Safety. And we’ve been able to capture the big platforms.

And funded by the organizations, but because we are not just about the tech sector, we’ve also got banks and government agencies, and so a broad range of the economy as members. Over a thousand members now, and more than 10% of the New Zealand workforce. So, we’ve created quite ...

So, the sector ones like Agritech, Biotech, EdTech, FinTech. And then the technology ones like AI Forum, IoT Alliance, Blockchain Association. So, we help coordinate them all up into one sort of collective group.

That’s clever. One of the initiatives we’ve just tried and just launched in New Zealand is, I didn’t tell you about NZ Tech. So, it’s a not-for-profit. We are funded by members, and we support 20 technology associations.

But the other party, the National Party, is looking at technology. It’s considering a minister of technology. It’s looking at some of these interactions. So, part of my… I guess, as a guest of the Taiwanese government, I’m also trying to find that connection from an understanding. What can we ...

Yeah, it’s crazy. But obviously, also a good… So, we’re a couple of months out from a general election in New Zealand. And the opposition party is being quite receptive to this, the one that’s trying to become the new government. The Jacinda’s government has been very focused on social ...

You’re at a much pointier end of the cyber experience in New Zealand. We’re small, we’re quiet, we sit back over here. We’re kind of getting collateral damage, but not actually in the front line.

And basically, all the surgical appointments… but we don’t have this sort of department of cyber as well. It’s spread around. I think that’s another area to take from this.

Critical infrastructure. So that’s kind of where the government’s sort of focus on cyber is quite limited, but it hasn’t really grasped that. Everything’s so interconnected that if you have, for example, cyber terrorists or criminals shut down our second largest hospital for three hours.

Just as a little example. So yeah, we have a large cyber security conference each year and lots of the business, there’s a focus on nationally important infrastructure.