Madeline Newman: AI Forum New Zealand Executive Director says NZ could be a world leader in AI

A blueprint's been released for New Zealand to be on the cutting edge of Artificial Intelligence development. 

AI Forum New Zealand is made up of members from Amazon, ANZ, Xero, and others who believe the technology can boost GDP and productivity. 

Their plan for 2030 focuses on investing in AI for six sectors including agriculture, creative industries, and education. 

Executive Director Madeline Newman told Mike Hosking that New Zealand has potential to be a world leader in AI. 

She says we already have some talented researchers and developers here, and have some great companies already in the works. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got a blueprint that lays out this country's AI targets.
This is from a committee made up of you know,
your Amazon's, your A and Z Zero's whole bunch of
others who think AI can boost GDP and productivity. AI
Forum New Zealand executive director Madaline Newman is with us medline.
Good morning to you, Good morning. I'm just looking at
your website. You've got nine thousand people working for you.
Everyone's on board. What's going on there?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Actually, you don't have very many people working for us
at all, but we do have a lot of a
lot of members. So we've got there made up of
probably about seven percent government, about seven percent academia and
the balancer businesses, so creators, implementers, advisors and users of technology.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
How many people in the group sit there and go,
you know what, this might just be more hype than
it is reality versus how many people in the group go,
this is going to take us to places we never imagined.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
I think that you join AI for them because of
the latter. You recognize the power and the potential power
of it to to help New Zealand become a world
leading hub basically for responsible AI for the benefit of
everyone and to help leak that productivity gap is.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
The level of individuality with an AI for us to
be world leading in anything versus everyone to be world
leading because we all recognize the same advantages no matter
where in the world we are.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, we've got some really globally valuable strategic assets that
set alongside them. So people often think that, for example,
that New Zealand's a bit of a back quarter, and
I don't want people to think that from an AI perspective,
we are really good at this stuff. We have some
absolutely excellent research and developers in this country and we've
grown some amazing companies across a number of different sectors

(01:48):
as a result of that. Some of those things, and
they're possibly that boring has hosted people to think about
but data. So we've got really nationally significant data sets
that are accurate, complete, reliable, relevant, timely that are super valuable.
I mean later this morning, but personal that this morning.
I'm going from mammogram. Now, our mammogram test results and

(02:13):
pictures have been used to train or are being used,
sorry to train artificial intelligence that can help detect cancer,
empress much earlier and much more effectively help our esteeent
radiongists to do their job better and faster.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
That's now, that's a very good example. Can it do
that now or will it be able to do it?
Or it might be able to do it.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
So there are working examples of both of those. So
Volpara is an organization out of New Zealand that recently
I think it's been it's been told, but I can't
remember to home which EXAC has done exactly that. There
is another one called Frontline Diagnostics again done that. It's
in clinical trials in the US.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Apparently do we know when this is going to hit us?
In a look at this? This is how materially different
it is or has it already?

Speaker 2 (03:10):
I think for some people that already has and for
others we're sort of staying well. Our key message is
get on board and take the productivity gains that can
it can potentially give you. And I talk to a
lot of teachers, for example. Now, the average for somebody
just using generative the usual tools that's sort of freely
available out there in a kind of way, the average,

(03:34):
according to Delute, is something like five point four hours
a week. You can save in time else we can
give teachers back five hours a week. How amazing is
that you know you've spend that time building bitter humans.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
What's what's the vibe on bad actors and how this
is going to go wrong? In some sectors.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
There are always bad actors, and our emphasis is on
the good actors. So if it's a fight between good
and evil, we want we obviously want more good actors
in New Zealand. We don't seem to have. There don't
seem to be terribly many homegrown bad actors, which is great,
But this is an international an international technology, so we

(04:14):
do need to be keenly aware of things so that.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Most interesting times go well. I appreciate it very much.
Medline Newman, who is the AI Forum New Zealand executive directory.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
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