Speaker 1: Kiotra.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: once something you'd only find in sci fi novels, it's
Speaker 2: now an everyday.
Speaker 1: Necessity for some.
Speaker 2: A new accenture report for Microsoft forecasts KIWI workers are
Speaker 2: set to save an average of two hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: five hours a year through generative AI adoption. Today on
Speaker 2: the front Page, Otago University's Center of Artificial Intelligence and
Speaker 2: Public Policy Director James McLaurin is with us to discuss
Speaker 2: the tech that's on everyone's lips. James, can you start
Speaker 2: by explaining what AI is in the most simplest terms
Speaker 2: if you can?
Speaker 3: Okay, there's not really an agreed upon standard definition, but
Speaker 3: there are simple ones. A good one is artificial intelligence
Speaker 3: is a system that does things that people do by thinking.
Speaker 4: That's a really old one from a go called Marvin Minsky.
Speaker 4: It's not much use.
Speaker 3: I mean, after all, in a sense of self opening
Speaker 3: door is doing that. And the reason there's not agreement
Speaker 3: on this is that really AI is a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of different technologies that we bundle together.
Speaker 4: Because it is taking some cognitive work away from you
Speaker 4: and I.
Speaker 2: It feels like it's a very hot new kind of topic, right,
Speaker 2: But really we've been using forms of AI for years,
Speaker 2: haven't we.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have, again, depending a bit on how you
Speaker 3: define it, but a good way of thinking about simple
Speaker 3: AI is it's built to do a particular job. New
Speaker 3: Zealand's been using that for ages, and actually people are
Speaker 3: very used to that sort of AI. You know, when
Speaker 3: you type in a question to Google and it gives
Speaker 3: you a page of links. That's an I I called pagering.
Speaker 3: That's you know, just doing that task. It's good at
Speaker 3: searching the internet, not for anything else. The thing that's
Speaker 3: got really exciting in the public's mind in the last
Speaker 3: couple of years, I guess for experts maybe over the
Speaker 3: last four or five years, is that now we have
Speaker 3: an that's much much more general. You know, we've always
Speaker 3: had general AI like Siri, but it wasn't really very good,
Speaker 3: wasn't good at answering questions, didn't know much, made lots
Speaker 3: of mistakes. Now, all of a sudden, we have things
Speaker 3: like chat GPT that are really good at solving basic
Speaker 3: problems for us, interpreting what we say, giving us the
Speaker 3: sort of outputs that we want, the sort of.
Speaker 4: Things that we can work with. Suddenly it's become a
Speaker 4: useful thing.
Speaker 2: Do you think people are concerned with A I say,
Speaker 2: like they were when microwaves or cell phones were invented.
Speaker 2: It's new, too convenient. Perhaps there has to be something
Speaker 2: wrong with it.
Speaker 3: I agree people have concerns about big new things. It's
Speaker 3: not surprising if I find it difficult to explain what
Speaker 3: AI is and my field. Then for lots of people
Speaker 3: it's a bit of a closed book. They don't know
Speaker 3: how it works. People seem to be using it for
Speaker 3: all sorts of things, and of course there are plenty
Speaker 3: of news stories out there saying, you know, it's biased,
Speaker 3: or it gets things wrong, which it does from time
Speaker 3: to time, or it's going to be used by bad
Speaker 3: actors to promote disinformation or something like that.
Speaker 4: So there are certainly lots of bad news stories. I think.
Speaker 3: The good way I think about AI is it's so
Speaker 3: general purpose. It's like the development of the Internet that
Speaker 3: is going to be used for good and is going
Speaker 3: to be used for bad. You know, That's what you
Speaker 3: get with these really general purpose technologies.
Speaker 2: An Accentua report has found AI could grow GDP by
Speaker 2: one percent a year and at about seventy six billion
Speaker 2: with a b a year to New Zealand's economy by
Speaker 2: twenty thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Does that sound about right to you?
Speaker 3: Sounds low to me, But look, the real issue is
Speaker 3: that it's early days yet. This is the first part
Speaker 3: of a long cricket match, so thinking about this is open.
Speaker 3: AYE has recently given us a little list of sort
Speaker 3: of waypoints in the development of artificial intelligence, and it's
Speaker 3: got five of these waypoints, and it thinks we're really
Speaker 3: only at the first one.
Speaker 4: So the first one is AI that's good.
Speaker 3: At answering questions, so that includes chatbots like chat GPT,
Speaker 3: but also things that can draw you a picture or
Speaker 3: make you a video, or that can give you advice
Speaker 3: about what to do, like something that's built into an
Speaker 3: autonomous car. The next step is things that can reason.
Speaker 3: And the difference between the chatbots and the reason is
Speaker 3: is that the chatbots are sort of following rules that
Speaker 3: are already there, and the reasons that are answering really
Speaker 3: difficult problems, so they're having to make up their own rules.
Speaker 3: The next step after that is agents, and you can
Speaker 3: think of an agent as being like an assistant. You know,
Speaker 3: I tell my assistant I want to go on holiday,
Speaker 3: could you do it for me? Now they know some
Speaker 3: facts about me. They know all sorts of things about
Speaker 3: going on holiday, the types of things you.
Speaker 4: Have to book.
Speaker 3: They then go out, go to all the sites, use
Speaker 3: all the tools, do all the things that are a
Speaker 3: really good assistant will do, and then come back to
Speaker 3: me and say, here you go.
Speaker 4: You go into the Bay of Islands, here's where you're
Speaker 4: gonna stay. We're gonna reach your car someone and so forth.
Speaker 3: The next step after that, which we really don't have yet,
Speaker 3: is the innovator that comes up with, you know, here's
Speaker 3: how we're going to cure cancer.
Speaker 4: There are systems that are being developed. There's something called
Speaker 4: the AI scientists that is just the start of work
Speaker 4: on this. And then the final.
Speaker 3: Step says open AI is ais that could do what
Speaker 3: a whole big organization did, like your whole city council
Speaker 3: or a whole company.
Speaker 4: We don't have anything like that yet.
Speaker 2: How long do you think it'll take us to get
Speaker 2: to each point?
Speaker 3: Science is this frustrating thing because it's a creative process,
Speaker 3: so it's really hard to predict. It is sensitive to
Speaker 3: some things, and one of the things that it's very
Speaker 3: sensitive to is lots of money. And there is a
Speaker 3: mountain of money being poured in many, many billions of dollars,
Speaker 3: hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into AI at
Speaker 3: the moment. Maybe a way that you could answer this
Speaker 3: is to say that there are surveys of computer scientists
Speaker 3: and experts and machine learning asking them when they think
Speaker 3: we'll get all the way to these super powerful AIS,
Speaker 3: and it's common for people to think that that might
Speaker 3: take ten years.
Speaker 2: What New Zealand industries could benefit the most from adopting
Speaker 2: AI like now?
Speaker 3: So in the world of people who study work, they
Speaker 3: talk about general purpose technologies. A general purpose technology is
Speaker 3: something like electricity, or the motive vehicle, or the production line,
Speaker 3: or you know, something that's got really open ended possible uses.
Speaker 3: AIS arenambiguously a general purpose technology, so you know you
Speaker 3: can use it pretty much everywhere. Maybe the best way
Speaker 3: to answer this to say, you know, what are the
Speaker 3: biggest problems for New Zealand. Things that are really expensive
Speaker 3: that are big parts of our national budgets, So things
Speaker 3: like health and education, productivity as a whole, all these
Speaker 3: things are things that will benefit Indeed, some of them
Speaker 3: are already benefiting from the use of AI.
Speaker 4: There's going to be a lot of use of AI
Speaker 4: in transport.
Speaker 3: We already know we're pretty close to autonomous vehicles. That's
Speaker 3: going to put it adjacent to lots and lots of
Speaker 3: the economy because lots of things have a transport cost
Speaker 3: built into them. Really good at sort of back office functions,
Speaker 3: administrative functions.
Speaker 4: One of the uses that people are putting.
Speaker 3: AI to at the moment is as a helper for
Speaker 3: doctors for GPS. GPS spend a lot of their time
Speaker 3: taking notes, So one thing AI is really good at
Speaker 3: is listening to conversations and writing out what happened in
Speaker 3: the conversation in a way that you tell it to
Speaker 3: write it up, and it gives it to you at
Speaker 3: the end, and then you just go through it and say, yes,
Speaker 3: I like that, I want to edit that. But things
Speaker 3: like that, you know, a huge help in domains where
Speaker 3: we just don't have an people at the moment, and
Speaker 3: you know, we're pressed for people to get medical appointments,
Speaker 3: things like that.
Speaker 2: There's been some backlash in some quarters for when AI
Speaker 2: is used.
Speaker 5: Marvel's new TV series Secret in Vision has a controversial intro.
Speaker 5: The animated intro was done using AI, which is angering
Speaker 5: fans and creators. The backlash against the use of AI
Speaker 5: traces back in parts to concerns about studios replacing creative
Speaker 5: workers with AI.
Speaker 2: Do organizations need to be crystal clear when they're using
Speaker 2: AI and is there perhaps a need to be mindful
Speaker 2: of using this technology too much? I guess in the
Speaker 2: place of human creativity, I.
Speaker 3: Think it certainly helped to be very open about when
Speaker 3: you're using it, if only because you know, if something
Speaker 3: goes wrong and you haven't told the public or your client,
Speaker 3: you know that you're using this tool, then you know
Speaker 3: that looks bad for you, that's going to hurt your reputation.
Speaker 3: So I think that sort of clarity really important. I'm
Speaker 3: pretty sure that there are domains where people won't like
Speaker 3: the use of it, you know, where people will prefer
Speaker 3: to deal with a human or want to know that
Speaker 3: it's a human, for example, creating this artwork rather than
Speaker 3: a machine.
Speaker 4: Something like that.
Speaker 3: That makes sense people are going to rebel against its
Speaker 3: use in general. I don't think so, because it's so
Speaker 3: general purpose that it would be like rebelling against the
Speaker 3: use of the Internet.
Speaker 4: But I keep saying it's.
Speaker 3: Early days yet, and as it is more disruptive in
Speaker 3: more hearts of the economy, we'll certainly see places where
Speaker 3: people will argue against its use. So in Hollywood, as
Speaker 3: you referred to before, screen writers have argued that it
Speaker 3: mustn't be used because it's taken away creative jobs and
Speaker 3: people want to have people, not machines writing their.
Speaker 4: Scripts for them.
Speaker 3: Legally, the end of that dispute has been that it
Speaker 3: is okay to use AI in this context, but you
Speaker 3: have to use humans as well.
Speaker 2: Technology Minister Judith Collins presented a paper to Cabinet called
Speaker 2: Approach to Work on Artificial Intelligence that was in June.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've read it cover to cover, but in it,
Speaker 2: she said, New Zealanders are often early adopters of new technology,
Speaker 2: but businesses are slow to adopt AI due in part
Speaker 2: to uncertainty about the future regulatory environment.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that, Yes, that.
Speaker 3: New Zealand is pretty good at being an early adopter.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. Wherever you get a transfer of technologies,
Speaker 3: it's a very fraught thing for businesses. Nice example of
Speaker 3: that at the moment is the move from internal combustion
Speaker 3: cars to electric cars. So, after all, making electric car
Speaker 3: isn't really very like making an internal combustion engine car.
Speaker 3: It's superficially like, but not under the hood. So in
Speaker 3: order to get industry is to you know, take the leap.
Speaker 3: They need a lot of information, they need a lot
Speaker 3: of support, They need to do quite a lot of
Speaker 3: work to think about what their industry looks like and
Speaker 3: what they look like as a company. And if they
Speaker 3: don't jump, is one of their competitors going to jump?
Speaker 3: And how could they do this in a way that's
Speaker 3: going to benefit them as a company and benefit their reputation.
Speaker 3: But we do this, you know, we have these big
Speaker 3: technology changes every few decades, and I no doubt news
Speaker 3: in and will achieve it. I do think that it's
Speaker 3: important for businesses to be proactive.
Speaker 2: It kind of reminds me of quotes from people who
Speaker 2: missed out, perhaps on buying shares in Google or Apple
Speaker 2: or Microsoft. Right, is that the same case with AI
Speaker 2: or is it okay to take a step back and
Speaker 2: make sure everything is above board before really diving in?
Speaker 3: Yep, you absolutely want to do your due diligence before
Speaker 3: you dive in. You know, everybody's using AI. This is
Speaker 3: some MAI, so let's use this. That's a very risky strategy.
Speaker 3: It might be that at the end of your due diligence,
Speaker 3: it's just not the thing that lots of companies are doing,
Speaker 3: doesn't work for you, and you make a judgment call
Speaker 3: that the tools aren't yet available or it's just not
Speaker 3: something you want to do. I'm not saying everybody's got
Speaker 3: to get out there and use it, but really everybody
Speaker 3: should be having a careful think about it, evaluating it,
Speaker 3: trying to find some expertise, get out there, do your
Speaker 3: own research, get yourself used to what it is and
Speaker 3: how it works.
Speaker 2: In terms of the regulatory framework, does that need to
Speaker 2: be set up right now?
Speaker 3: New Zealand has benefited in the past from regulations that.
Speaker 4: Were pasted elsewhere. You know, we're a little country.
Speaker 3: We don't have enough clout to be pushing around the
Speaker 3: Googles and the.
Speaker 4: Microsofts of this world.
Speaker 3: But there are places that regulate much more quickly. In general,
Speaker 3: regulate pretty well. The EU is a good example of that.
Speaker 3: So in the last wave of AI, the EU passed
Speaker 3: something called the GENPR General Data Protection.
Speaker 4: Rules that was pretty useful.
Speaker 3: We didn't pass mirroring legislation, I guess we could have,
Speaker 3: but New Zenader's got some benefit from that. The EU
Speaker 3: has just passed something called the AI Act. We will
Speaker 3: get some benefit from that.
Speaker 6: There are certain things which will be prohibited in the
Speaker 6: European Union. One of these is, for example, that you
Speaker 6: will not be allowed to do a facial recognition on
Speaker 6: CCTV live streams except for the authorities in very very
Speaker 6: restricted circumstances.
Speaker 3: Because this is such an expensive sort of technology to build,
Speaker 3: New Zenadors mostly are going to be importing this rather
Speaker 3: than building it here.
Speaker 4: You know, we import cars.
Speaker 3: We don't really make cars in New Zenand, but we
Speaker 3: import them and we get a huge amount of economic
Speaker 3: value out of having them.
Speaker 4: So the task for us is.
Speaker 3: To work out, right, how do we use the cars,
Speaker 3: what rules we want to have around you know, the
Speaker 3: cars that you can buy and how you'll be licensed
Speaker 3: to use them, and how often we want to check
Speaker 3: to see whether they're own worthy. So those kind of
Speaker 3: audit tasks I think are going to become very important
Speaker 3: for New Zealand. Whether in the end we pass regulations,
Speaker 3: I don't know. New Zealand's had sort of voluntary frameworks,
Speaker 3: the Principles for Sake and Effective Use of Data and Analytics,
Speaker 3: the Algorithmic Charter, things like that in the past for
Speaker 3: government use of AI, and they've worked pretty well. I
Speaker 3: think it's early days yet to work out whether or not,
Speaker 3: you know, we want to update general sets of rules
Speaker 3: like this, or encourage the development of regulations, or just
Speaker 3: in a sensible business rules in particular domains. I've been
Speaker 3: doing quite a bit of work with the Ministry of
Speaker 3: Health lately thinking about the use of AI in healthcare
Speaker 3: in New Zealand, and that feels like a good sort
Speaker 3: of level of granularity.
Speaker 4: So it might be a sort of thing that we
Speaker 4: go int by industry or demain by domain.
Speaker 2: Will we be the all losing our jobs due to AI?
Speaker 2: Or is that a bit overblown?
Speaker 3: Do you think automation doesn't very often take whole jobs?
Speaker 3: Automation usually takes tasks out of jobs, and the same
Speaker 3: is true for AI. I guess the thing we should
Speaker 3: say first is tools like I do two things. They
Speaker 3: both enhance individuals and sometimes they replace individuals. So think
Speaker 3: of a technology like a laptop that enhances me, makes
Speaker 3: me more valuable, more productive, whereas the baggage handling robot
Speaker 3: at the airport is replacing somebody, it's not making somebody
Speaker 3: more productive, it's just replacing them. So AI is going
Speaker 3: to take some tasks out of jobs. That's going to
Speaker 3: be fairly unpredictable for lots of people. It will be
Speaker 3: helpful and useful, and there have been plenty of studies
Speaker 3: done in the last year or two just of people
Speaker 3: being given access to chet GPT in their ordinary sort
Speaker 3: of daily workflow and told you can use this.
Speaker 4: You know, here's a bunch of tasks, try and do
Speaker 4: these tasks.
Speaker 3: There's pretty good evidence that it makes people more productive
Speaker 3: in general, that people quite like using it, that people
Speaker 3: feel that it's doing things that are much like doing.
Speaker 3: People report being a little nervous about, you know, the
Speaker 3: coming of AI in context like this, but.
Speaker 4: When asked did you like using it, most people say yes.
Speaker 3: That's not to say that there won't be jobs where
Speaker 3: AI changes the job in a pretty substantial way. We
Speaker 3: don't really have AI like this yet, but imagine that
Speaker 3: an AI comes along that can take the diagnostic task
Speaker 3: off your family doctor. Well, that's a very important, high
Speaker 3: value task that they do, So that would be a
Speaker 3: sort of negative change to their job. I'm thinking they
Speaker 3: would think it was a negative change to their job.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, think of AI that does legal discovery.
Speaker 4: For a lawyer.
Speaker 3: Legal discovery is just you know, the needle in the haystack,
Speaker 3: hunting for facts pretty trial.
Speaker 4: This sort of thing. Well, that's drudgery, that's boring work.
Speaker 3: So that sort of AI is making the lawyer happier,
Speaker 3: more productive, more successful. We're going to wait and see
Speaker 3: with the chips fall. I keep saying it's early days,
Speaker 3: but it really is. But you know, whenever people say
Speaker 3: is it going to take all the jobs, think about
Speaker 3: jobs that aren't being done that you would like to
Speaker 3: have done. You know people who are older, living in
Speaker 3: their own homes and worried they're not going to be
Speaker 3: able to.
Speaker 4: Cope in their own homes.
Speaker 3: Well, we can't have somebody in their home twenty four
Speaker 3: hours a day to help them. We might be able
Speaker 3: to have AI in their home twenty four hours a
Speaker 3: day to help them. So, you know, this might be
Speaker 3: an invention of a new task that's really valuable to
Speaker 3: some people.
Speaker 2: And like you said, it's early days, it's not all
Speaker 2: happening tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Is it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember headlines when someone asked an AI
Speaker 2: program to tell her how many ours are in the
Speaker 2: word strawberry, and it insisted there were only two. And
Speaker 2: we've also seen all those AI generated images where someone's
Speaker 2: got seven fingers and maybe one leg is twice as
Speaker 2: long as the other.
Speaker 1: It's not close to being at any point.
Speaker 2: Where it can comfortably replace us without people realizing it.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna happen tomorrow.
Speaker 3: There's an idea that's been promoted by an American academic
Speaker 3: called Ethan Moolloch, which is called the jagged edge.
Speaker 4: So if you think of AI as sort of.
Speaker 3: Gradually expanding out into domains that people work, and the
Speaker 3: jagged edge is this idea that it's not a smooth
Speaker 3: replacement of a job. These ais are bizarrely good at
Speaker 3: some things and bizarrely bad at other things in ways
Speaker 3: that it's a bit hard for human beings to.
Speaker 4: Wrap their head around.
Speaker 3: You rightly point out that maths is a real challenge
Speaker 3: for modern AIS.
Speaker 4: Generous of ais as they call them. It's not the
Speaker 4: end of the world. That is, after all a challenge
Speaker 4: for lots of us. But we just use calculators.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, the same AIS can pass
Speaker 3: chunks of of bar exams or medical practice tests much
Speaker 3: better than the average lawyer or doctor. You know, is
Speaker 3: it going to replace people? Is it going to come
Speaker 3: tomorrow in some domains. Yes, we shouldn't be too complacent,
Speaker 3: not in all domains, and we've got a lot of
Speaker 3: work to do to think about whether this domain or
Speaker 3: that domain is somewhere that's going to be affected quickly.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, James.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage.
Speaker 1: At NZ Herald dot co dot nz.
Speaker 2: The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sells with sound
Speaker 2: engineer Patty Fox.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
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Speaker 2: behind the headlines.