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Speaker 1: Now, sixty eight percent of small and medium businesses in

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Speaker 1: New Zealand do not plan to use AI. They either

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Speaker 1: don't understand it or they don't think it brings value.

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Speaker 1: This is according to a endz Ieer's quarterly survey of

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Speaker 1: a bit of business opinion now. Earlier in the year,

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Speaker 1: Spark did some research as well, and that found that

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Speaker 1: AI will in fact lift productivity way higher than labor

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Speaker 1: productivity alone. The head of Data and AI at Spark,

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Speaker 1: Matt Bain, is with us now, Hey, Matt, hey, Heather,

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Speaker 1: did it surprise you that this many businesses are not

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Speaker 1: going to do it?

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Speaker 2: I think if you look at March, a lot of

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Speaker 2: the US forty percent of US small businesses are using it.

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Speaker 2: And so while we're behind, I'm there's a good opportunity

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Speaker 2: for us to get get onto this trend. The new

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Speaker 2: genitive AI capability is democratize what used to do? You know,

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Speaker 2: big companies like Spark have been able to lean into

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Speaker 2: the stuff, but it's been not accessible for a lot

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Speaker 2: of smaller businesses. So all of a sudden it is

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Speaker 2: and we're really focused on how can we help educate

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Speaker 2: small businesses to make the most of it.

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Speaker 1: Why is it that they don't think that they need

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Speaker 1: to use it.

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Speaker 2: I think people don't realize how powerful it is. So

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Speaker 2: a lot of people think it's like Google and you

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Speaker 2: can ask it to create an image for you or

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Speaker 2: answer a question. But you know, I'm in marketing, so

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Speaker 2: it can write your marketing plan, it can create your advertising.

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Speaker 2: It can take your existing plan and act as a

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Speaker 2: consultant to tell you how to improve it. So it

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Speaker 2: can really help to a small business which is resource

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Speaker 2: constrained to do much better than it's currently doing.

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Speaker 1: But why don't businesses realize this? They're not fiddled with it.

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Speaker 2: I think there's some training required. So one of the

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Speaker 2: complexities is that these large language models are trained on

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Speaker 2: the entire world's information, so every book that can be read,

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Speaker 2: and therefore if you ask it a general question, it

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Speaker 2: can it can hallucinate or give you a weird answer.

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Speaker 2: So there's some training required to go how do you

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Speaker 2: give it the context required so it gives you the

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Speaker 2: right answer. And so what we're focusing on is how

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Speaker 2: do we train businesses and business leaders in this country

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Speaker 2: to get the most out of the platforms they have

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Speaker 2: access to.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you found this I mean, you

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Speaker 1: probably haven't because you seem like somebody who's quite o

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Speaker 1: fay with technology. But I found the whole thing quite fiddly,

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Speaker 1: Like I had to go in and log in, create

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Speaker 1: an account, which is not unusual, but then you have

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Speaker 1: to go into this like what it feels like quite

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Speaker 1: a complicated little platform to be able to ask the

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Speaker 1: single question. Like it just isn't as user friendly as Google,

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Speaker 1: do you know what I mean?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a little bit more complexity. So I agree

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Speaker 2: here that and that's why we think it's important that

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Speaker 2: we focus on educating businesses because once you do get it,

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Speaker 2: it's a very quick learning curve. So after a week

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Speaker 2: you can be really competent. But it's not quite as

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Speaker 2: simple as Google with a single search box.

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Speaker 1: You're right, okay, right, So if you get on board

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Speaker 1: as a smaller business enterprise, a smaller medium sized business enterprise,

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Speaker 1: how much can this actually help? Do you think.

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Speaker 2: It can? It help in every aspect of your business?

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Speaker 2: And so I think a good rule that I always

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Speaker 2: tell my team and small businesses I meet is you

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Speaker 2: should be using it ten times a day already because

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Speaker 2: there's a bunch of stuff you're doing. You know writing emails,

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Speaker 2: replying to emails, creating reports. That this thing can augment

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Speaker 2: your capability. You can do it much faster, so it's

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Speaker 2: really easy to get started on small tasks. There's a

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Speaker 2: lot more complexity you can get into, but really what

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Speaker 2: we're focusing on is how do you get started and

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Speaker 2: start to appreciate the value it can deliver really quickly.

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Speaker 1: I might have to get into it, Matt, Thank you

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Speaker 1: very much, Really appreciate it. Matt daan head of data

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Speaker 1: at ai OH Data and AI at Spart. For more

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Speaker 1: from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to news talks.

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Speaker 2: It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio