Artificial Intelligence Key for NZ's Future

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is developing everywhere today: as a virtual assistant on every new smartphone, a robo-advisor to help make investment decisions, driving autonomous vehicles on our roads, and in sophisticated algorithms underlying recommendation engines for many of the world’s leading web platforms.

New Zealand has a thriving AI sector working with AI technologies at all levels. The AI Forum New Zealand (AIFNZ) brings together New Zealand's artificial intelligence community working together to harness the power of AI technologies to enable a prosperous, inclusive and thriving future New Zealand. It shows who's investing in, working with and thinking about the effects of Artificial Intelligence in New Zealand and sets out to raise the level of awareness and capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Due to it's rapid development, AI technologies present major opportunities and challenges. New Zealand needs to actively engage with AI now in order to secure our future prosperity. The Forum brings together citizens, business, academia and the Government connecting, promoting and advancing the AI ecosystem to help ensure a thriving future New Zealand enabled by technology.

New Zealand needs to seize new opportunities in 2019 and harness new AI technologies to deliver positive social and environmental outcomes, AI Forum New Zealand executive director Ben Reid says. AI has found NZ and making giant leaps forward in our lives. We are seeing so much potential for AI to solve some of our grand challenges in New Zealand, too. For example, AI can be used to reduce road fatalities from more accurate analysis of accident hot spots and also from autonomous vehicles arriving on our roads very soon.

Emerging and disruptive digital technologies continue to converge and while many of us have heard of ‘Artificial Intelligence’, this rapidly evolving technology ecosystem and its potential for economic transformation, is poorly understood. (Carolyn Treman, Chief Executive Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment)

Artificial Intelligence is now an essential element in New Zealand’s journey towards being a Digital Nation. (Berry Sheers, Managing Director Microsoft New Zealand)

The AIFNZ defines artificial intelligence as: advanced digital technologies that enable machines to reproduce or surpass abilities that would require intelligence if humans were to perform them. This includes technologies that enable machines to learn and adapt, to sense and interact, to reason and plan, to optimise procedures and parameters, to operate autonomously, to be creative, and to extract knowledge from large amounts of data.

AI technologies will be influencing our lives today more than most people are aware of. Undoubtedly, AI will have major long term impacts on our business and economy, legal frameworks, ethics, environment, education, labour, productivity, social and justice outcomes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its complexity and rapid emergence, New Zealand’s understanding of AI’s significance is low compared to other issues with similarly wide-ranging effects on our society. New Zealand needs to act now, in a substantial, coordinated way, to increase it’s ability to remain competitive and adapt to changes brought about by AI.

Here are some examples of the impact AI could have:

• Reducing cancer deaths from melanoma by assisting doctors to identify cancerous moles earlier and more accurately (and helping to alleviate the shortage of trained dermatologists)
• Dairy Framing: Reduction of pollution – for example, by automatically identifying dairy cows which have strayed near waterways using machine vision on high resolution satellite images.
• Improve educational outcomes by providing students with a 24/7 AI maths tutor, making individual tuition accessible to everyone.
• Improve access to government services online whether via a simple chatbot on government websites or using AI to optimise digital customer journeys – enabling citizens to achieve what they want to do quicker and more efficiently.

The AIFNZ has published it's AI Forums landmark 2018 report which analyses AI impacts and opportunities for New Zealand's economy and society.

The AI Forum NZ is organising three upcoming events this year:
An AI-DAY conference in Auckland on March 27 and 28 includes international keynotes, presentations of industry experts and local trailblazers as well as panel discussions. Six practical 90 minute workshops with deep-dive into case studies, demonstrations and in-depth discussions are scheduled for the 3rd and 4th April 2019. Finally, a hackfest is held on 6th and 7th of April with up to 25 teams which will create, build and compete for supremacy.