Reflections on artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and their implications for people and society.
Perhaps artificial intelligence does not lack senses. Perhaps we lack the imagination—and the humility—to recognise as sensing anything that does not arrive through a body like ours. For a very long time, humans told themselves that we had five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. It was a tidy little list. It was also
When Human Senses Become the Measure of Intelligence Read More »
What a cutting-edge distributed AI proposal might tell us about renewable energy, regional prosperity and the next frontier of digital inclusion What if some of the most valuable infrastructure of the artificial intelligence age did not sit only inside enormous overseas data centres, but was also distributed through ordinary homes, businesses and community buildings? And
When Energy Becomes Compute: Who Benefits in Whanganui? Read More »
Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about the way many New Zealanders view the digital world. We’ve entered a period where mistrust has become almost instinctive. Whether it’s social media, online harm, misinformation, or the rise of artificial intelligence, the first response for many people is simply to recoil. And after
Softening the Ground: A Kinder Way Into AI Read More »
From fear to self-regulation: habits that make AI safer and more useful. Alignment: This post and Digital Inclusion Whanganui’s AI First Principles align with the OECD AI Principles, UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI (2021), NIST AI RMF 1.0 (2023), ISO/IEC 42001, and New Zealand’s Algorithm Charter. Lately I’ve met more
AI is as good—or as bad—as we let it Read More »
This morning, as I scrolled through LinkedIn, a headline immediately caught my attention. Craig Young, CEO of the Technology Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ), had shared a significant conversation he’d recently had on the NZ Herald’s Front Page podcast. The discussion centred around international moves towards rigorous age verification measures for online content, raising
Safeguarding Our Future: Navigating Online Age Verification in Aotearoa Read More »
Here is a write up about machine learning with images and a great Webinar run by TUANZ recently. Unsupervised machine learning has become highly influential in our lives and needs to be more widely understood. Here are some descriptions of some of the key concepts involved, discussion about the implications of its use, plus commentary
Machine Learning with Images for ALL Read More »
THE HUMAN AND THE MACHINE: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE CHANGING WORLD Congratulations to Auckland University of Technology (AUT) for hosting this excellent event. What a fantastic opportunity it was to hear such impressive and thought-provoking presentations by outstanding academic experts about how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming our lives. The Symposium investigated AI’s impact across
