Weekly newsletter highlighting the latest AI news, with short video tutorials and copy/paste prompts you can use to improve your skills as an AI operator. As artificial intelligence moves from optional to operational, technical specialists no longer have the advantage. It is those who can supervise and coach AI to improve that will thrive in an AI-augmented future.
My Takeaways from the Aotearoa AI Summit 2026
(Please note - other than the illustrations, no AI was used in preparing this newsletter. I took notes by hand, the old-fashioned way, and manually typed them in. To see my takeaways from last year's Summit, click here.) More than one political party was invited to the opening panel at the summit - but only Labour MP Reuben Davidson attended to participate. Some of the answers he provided to questions from William Mace: “There’s a real range for what AI adoption looks like for small business. Helping businesses to navigate what’s available - government has a role in making that happen.” “AI can allow us to make better decisions, but we have to look more closely at those decisions.” “The conversation lacking at the moment is engagement from government. A conversation about wha AI means for the people of New Zealand.” “When the action plan comes out tomorrow, if there’s things you dont like, tell us. If theres things you do like, tell us.” “We need to see businesses supported to adopt AI well and responsibly. Just as important as the speed of adoption is the quality.” Martijn Verburg’s presentation focused on the trends he was seeing through Microsoft: “People are already seeing tremendous benefits from using AI. 1-2 person teams are making $10-15 million businesses overnight.” “The public sector has a duty of care for our society, which is why I’m glad to see them adopting it last.” “One of the trends we are seeing is moving from single agents to swarms, from writing code to directing it, from describing the world to simulating it.” “The software backlog is no longer gated by the wizards. We have quintupled the number of software developers with vibe coding.” “Is New Zealand ready for this? I would argue not. We are moving much too slowly. Among peer countries, we are dead last. When I go talk to my Microsoft colleagues in other countries, they are much farther ahead.” “AI is going to grow GDP globally, and New Zealand should have a part of that. AI could add $76 billion to NZ GDP by 2038.” Greg Davidson, the CEO of Datacom, gave an excellent presentation about what's happening now with NZ businesses and AI adoption, sharing the results of the latest State of AI Index. I especially appreciated his Sovereignty Scorecard - the 10 attributes are in the slide below. “An agent you cannot evaluate is a demo.” 7 things you need to evaluate an agent: “63% of failed pilots cite legacy system integration as the root cause.” “The unit price of AI has collapsed. Token cost has reduced by 67% and the fall in fixed-capability queries has decreased 280x - but we hqve seen +1000% in tokens consumed.” “Every discounted cost today is a lock-in for tomorrow.” “Measure cost per successful outcome, not price per token. Own your evals; earn autonomy by evidence. Decide what is non-delegable.” Six questions to ask of your data: 💡 Christchurch BoysWe had a few fellas representing our turf. Stephen Rainbow and Dayle Takitimu launched the new report from the New Zealand Human Rights Foundation ‘AI and Digital Technologies: A Human Rights and Te Tiriti o Waitangi Approach' “Are our political and ethical frameworks keeping pace with the extraordinary pace of technological change?” “Why is AI a human rights issue? It is often presented as a technical issue, but it is a human one.” “As an independent organisation, the Human Rights Commission presents a unique perspective focused on the human.” “Unless we address these issues, New Zealanders will continue to mistrust AI at the highest rates in the developed world. 1 in 3 New Zealanders distrust AI.” “One of the key recommendations of the report is the need for a national digital AI infrastructure. New Zealand’s government stance is light-touch, but it is also fragmented.” “Australia is coordinating AI Policy through the Prime Minister’s office, and we are not seeing that here, yet.” 🗣️ Lots of Panels“What we could build fastest & have the most capability for is innovation. Our ability to problem-solve in New Zealand is a huge advantage.” - Martijn Verburg “We are going to be dependent on frontier models, and that’s okay. We can be the maker in the middle.” - Nick Valentine “There is a difference between data sovereignty and residency. You can have your data here, but people from elsewhere could be making decisions about it.” - Megan Tapsell Peter Griffin also shared that OpenAI processes 10 million prompts per day from New Zealand. He said when he was in Australia, the level of sophistication MPs understand about AI, compared to NZ, is like night and day. “The easiest way to maintain trust - be trustworthy! 40% of people do not believe there is not bias in this technology.” - Emma MacDonald “Organisations need to earn that trust. There are three things they can do: 1) people impacted by the tool need to be in a position of influence. 2) organisations have a reaponsibility for very visible governance. 3) it continues. This is an ongoing responsibility.” - Amy Dove “Deliberate inclusion in design and delivery decisions is important.” - Dayle Takitimu “The principles are universal, but the implementation must be contextual, nationally.” - Aini Suzana Ariffin “Employees can’t just say ‘AI is taking our jobs’ - what are you doing to make sure that doesn’t happen?” - Yash Kapoor “Executives feel like they’ve given training and gotten to 60%, but only 20% of their workforce feels enabled.” - Stacy Pence “There’s a fine balance between allowing the innovation and coming in from the centre to regulate it.” - Jayne Foster “We need to support people to evolve the way they work.” - Amanda Veldman “AI is changing the workflow. There is more time and education required to understand what the future of work looks like.” - Nilay Rathod “What judgment calls do we make? Not just when to use AI, but when do we not use AI?” - Ana Ivanovic-Tongue “Technology is moving faster. We need to allow people time to learn, and to explore how to use AI.” - Louise Barrere “Getting an answer quickly empowers people to have more time to think deeply about a problem. Not just to solve the problem, but to prevent it in the future.” - Viveca Pavon, PhD “What is tomorrow’s problem that we might be able to solve today? Yes, we can improve productivity in our silos, but how do we actually solve the big problems?” - Hema Sridhar “A lot of organisations are starting with AI, but they have no idea where they are starting from.” - Stephen Elliott 🔍 Education RoundtableI had the privilege of facilitating the Education Roundtable, discussing the topic Shaping The Future We Want: Aotearoa’s Education and Skills in the Age of AI. “If what you teach is not going to be quickly done well by AI, then that’s the best thing to teach.” "It’s less about how do you use AI, it’s more like, how do you be better human in whatever skill you’re in?” “We need to put that power of questioning in the learner’s hands.” “Our classrooms have to be a safe environment for challenge. If students can learn to challenge their teachers, they will challenge a response from an LLM.” “The fiercely human skills - creativity, imagination, and intuition - will become more important to learn, and to teach. How do we teach them at work as well?” “No one wants to lose agency; they want to be empowered to do better what they know how to do.” "AI should be a complement to existing education, not replacement.” 🔥 Passing the TorchAfter a brilliant run, Dr Mahsa McCauley stepped down as the Chair of the AI Forum New Zealand. Replacing her will be the exceptionally capable Maria Mingallon, someone I've had the pleasure of collaborating with on a number of projects over the past year. Maria gave a fantastic and inspiring opening keynote on day 2 of the summit, when she said: “AI matters because if we use it wisely, it can empower us to solve increasingly complex problems.” Closing out the day was John-Daniel Trask from Autohive, and he gave us spicy hot takes that provided something missing from the conference until then - innovative, challenging points of view: “Do you have a Chief AI Officer? Totally fake job.” “If your CEO is not doing anything with AI, quit.” “We are missing out on ambition, leadership, and a willingness to take risks.” “I believe AI is going to be bigger than electricity. We don’t focus on electricity generation. Your Chief AI Officer doesn’t go out to lunch with your Chief Electricity Officer.” “You can scale your ambition with AI, without increasing headcount.” “AI allows us to remove the tyranny of distance. Our biggest industry, food, is not going to get rekt by AI. Out second biggest industry, tourism, is also not going to get disrupted by AI. The intangibles - software, services, and IP - can be developed onshore, and sold offshore. Bits don’t pay freight.” “An educated person in an adversarial situation has an advantage.” “The goal of AI: if you can describe the problem you want solved, AI will solve it. That’s what Autohive does.” “I don’t want to cause offence, but the longer we take on social licence, or governance, the more time we waste.” “Worrying about AI is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but you don’t get anywhere. That’s 80% of the AI rollout in this country.” Overall, it was a great conference. You can read my recap of last year's conference here: https://caelanhuntress.com/2025/09/23/my-takeaways-from-the-aotearoa-ai-summit-2025/ (You can also see the difference in quality of the image generators over the past year.)
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AI Coaching Newsletter
Weekly newsletter highlighting the latest AI news, with short video tutorials and copy/paste prompts you can use to improve your skills as an AI operator. As artificial intelligence moves from optional to operational, technical specialists no longer have the advantage. It is those who can supervise and coach AI to improve that will thrive in an AI-augmented future.
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