NZ adoption of AI - are kiwis fast, or slow?

“AI adoption is not just about the short-term gains. Organizations need to invest in the efficiency of the design, deployment, and integration of AI solutions to their operations that enable tracking of the impact.”

- Fan Ho, ED/GM of Solutions and Services Group, Lenovo Asia Pacific

Hello Reader,

As an immigrant, I have an outsider's perspective on New Zealand.

(I recently received my citizenship, making me the Newest Zealander!)

During the first workshop of the AI Training Programme I teach through Agentic Intelligence, I always ask, 'Does New Zealand adopt new technology fast, or slowly?"

I am fascinated by the variety of responses.

Many local kiwis will point to EFTPOS as evidence that Aotearoa adopts new technology quickly. While much of the world was still writing checks, banks in New Zealand rolled out electronic payments, pioneering tap-to-pay years before other countries.

Others will note that the banks joined together, to roll this out to NZ as a test market. (Many global campaigns are tested here, to measure how a populace adopts a new technology or a new movie, before a larger global roll-out.)

They will point to the tardiness of New Zealand removing lead from their fuel until 1996, decades after other countries had banned it.

The 2024 Ipsos NZ AI Monitor found New Zealand to be the second-most hesitant country regarding AI (out of 32 countries analysed) tracking only behind Ireland.

The story New Zealand likes to tell is that we See Tomorrow First. But do we take active steps to get there?

The kiwi of the future could be AI-powered, or playing catch-up. It's time to turn our future vision into future action, so we can get to tomorrow first, not just see it first.

🎙️ TechWeekNZ Panel Replay

I had the pleasure of interviewing 4 native kiwis (and 1 other immigrant) about the latest advances in Generative AI, and hear about practical use cases describing how New Zealanders are implementing this technology, right now.

Click below to listen to my conversation with:

Bradley Fraser of Agentic Intelligence
Cowan Henderson of Avocado AI
Hannah Hardy-Jones of Contented AI
Dr Elsamari Botha of the University of Canterbury
Tim Ackroyd of Caitlyn AI

🛠️ (1:25:55) TechWeek Panel Replay: Latest Advances in Generative AI

Watch Now

📰 New AI News This Week

Salesforce launched Agentforce 3, which adds a Command Center that provides deeper observability on agentic tasks
Manus released Scheduled Tasks, for repeatable agentic workflows that start on autopilot
Anthropic stress-tested 16 leading models, to identify potential security threats from AI agents

The Future of Intelligence is Agentic

I've been leading training workshops for Agentic Intelligence, where I have recently joined as their Head of Learning & Enablement. You can see some of the workshops I lead here: https://agenticintelligence.co.nz/training

Reach out if you'd like to discuss an in-person workshop in Christchurch, or a webinar series for your team.