Speaker 1: Hey, it's been here at the top, letting you know.
Speaker 1: Peter and I talk a bit about the share market
Speaker 1: in this episode, but neither of us are financial advisors,
Speaker 1: so please don't take what we say and run with it.
Speaker 1: Go and get proper financial advice before you make any
Speaker 1: investment decisions. Now onto the episode.
Speaker 2: This week on the Business of Tech, powered by Two
Speaker 2: Degrees Business, we catch up with one of the countries
Speaker 2: leading science communicators on the state of STEM education, the
Speaker 2: personal toll that speaking out on controversial topics can have,
Speaker 2: and the need to demystify AI.
Speaker 1: If you haven't taken your kids to a Nano Girl
Speaker 1: show or seeing doctor Michelle Dickinson hosting international stars like
Speaker 1: Neil deGrasse Tyson on stage, you've probably seen her on
Speaker 1: TV talking about emerging technology, stem education, or a few
Speaker 1: years ago aspects of the big science related issue of
Speaker 1: the moment, the COVID pandemic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Michelle has had incredible cut through with thousands of
Speaker 2: kids in newscas and engaging them with science, tech, engineering
Speaker 2: and maths related topics and nurturing the next generation of technologists.
Speaker 2: But as Nanogirl points out in this week's featured guest,
Speaker 2: interview Steam Education and our TAIROA is in crisis.
Speaker 3: Sadly during this government psycho, we have cut existing programs
Speaker 3: that we're doing great things. It's like the whole system's
Speaker 3: been shut off. And the consequences, I mean, it's easy
Speaker 3: to see what the consequences up for that nobody's going
Speaker 3: to come to New Zealand for our high talent pipeline,
Speaker 3: and nobody's going to be trained here for the jobs
Speaker 3: that need to.
Speaker 1: Be trained here. Much more on that and Nano Girl's
Speaker 1: latest AI related project coming up shortly, but first a
Speaker 1: brief dive into the big tech stories of the week.
Speaker 1: And we're starting this week with the turmoil and the
Speaker 1: US markets and what it says about the valuations of
Speaker 1: the big tech companies that dominate those markets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we record this on Tuesday, being we've seen
Speaker 2: relatively big drops in the magnificent seven, those big tech stocks,
Speaker 2: which now include Nvidia, Tesla's in there, and then the
Speaker 2: other usual suspects like Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and they have
Speaker 2: taken by a large five to ten percent cuts in
Speaker 2: their market capitalization, which is significant. But you know, these
Speaker 2: companies have been on a tear, you know, on a
Speaker 2: real bull run since twenty twenty or so, So really
Speaker 2: is it that much of a problem. People in the US,
Speaker 2: in particular are worried because some of the signals out
Speaker 2: of the US economy are looking a little bit worrying.
Speaker 2: And that's the job data and also last week the
Speaker 2: manufacturing data, and we had some of these big tech
Speaker 2: companies report their earnings and their revenue in late July,
Speaker 2: and that sort of has spooked some analysts and Americans
Speaker 2: in general who are looking at it going wow, you know,
Speaker 2: are these running out of momentum the great run of
Speaker 2: growth that they've had. Then we had Warren Buffett sell
Speaker 2: down a massive stake in Apple, seventy odd billion dollars
Speaker 2: worth of Apple stock. So I guess that's not a
Speaker 2: great sign for a trendsetter like a Warren Buffett in
Speaker 2: his mid nineties now sort of saying I want out
Speaker 2: of Apple it's running out of growth. Not that he's
Speaker 2: actually said that, but there's clearly a reason why he
Speaker 2: is liquidating a big chunk of Apple stock still has
Speaker 2: a lot but once out. At this point, he is
Speaker 2: a guy who is notorious for picking the market very accurately.
Speaker 2: A lot of people are just saying something's not right here,
Speaker 2: what is coming?
Speaker 1: I think you would be remiss if you didn't consider
Speaker 1: the fact that every time a sector of stocks goes
Speaker 1: up and up, eventually it has to go down as well.
Speaker 1: What goes up must come down, right, That's the old
Speaker 1: adagets is true I think in the share market, and
Speaker 1: it may not always go down by as much as
Speaker 1: it's gone up, but the market correction is something that
Speaker 1: is spoken about all the time, and we've just seen,
Speaker 1: like with in Nvidia, for example, that stock went out
Speaker 1: of control. It it went way higher than I think
Speaker 1: it probably should have, and we saw that it returned.
Speaker 1: I think an interesting one is probably Intel. That we
Speaker 1: saw a massive drop in the share price of Intel
Speaker 1: after they announced a bunch of layoffs and some tightening,
Speaker 1: and they're clearly really struggling in this world of arm
Speaker 1: processors and GPUs to try and keep up with the
Speaker 1: new technology. So I think that you can look at
Speaker 1: as an example of where there has been a real
Speaker 1: downturn for a stock. But I think overall, I probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't say this is, you know, the end of tech
Speaker 1: stocks as we know it. It's just that they are
Speaker 1: reaching their new normal and mediating out a little bit, maybe.
Speaker 2: Year fifteen thousand jobs going globally. At Intel, which has
Speaker 2: sort of been in crisis mode really since the rise
Speaker 2: of Invidia and its dominant in AI related chips. It
Speaker 2: supplies eighty nine twenty percent of the market for the
Speaker 2: chips that go into data centers to process workloads, large
Speaker 2: language model training and the like. Now and Nvidia is
Speaker 2: actually facing US Department of Justice action and investigation into
Speaker 2: complaints from its competitors that it may have abused its
Speaker 2: market dominance and selling those chips that power artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: So we're seeing this on a number of fronts. When
Speaker 2: we're about to talk about the big one this week,
Speaker 2: which is Google after four years of Department of Justice litigation,
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice basically saying, Yep, you're a monopolist
Speaker 2: in the search game and we have to do something
Speaker 2: about it. So it seems between the unease about whether
Speaker 2: the US, which it's sort of done well in the
Speaker 2: last couple of years, is starting to face the same
Speaker 2: sort of hard landing that we did coming out out
Speaker 2: of COVID and we're paying the price of that now.
Speaker 2: Has the US just been pushing that down the road
Speaker 2: through injecting money into the economy through the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 2: all that money that has gone into things like semiconductors
Speaker 2: and manufacturing, pumping out all this money for infrastructure that
Speaker 2: Biden's been doing. Is it just a delayed reaction now?
Speaker 2: And are we going to see a few hard years
Speaker 2: for the US? So? I guess there's that, But also
Speaker 2: people looking at the Stella run in tech and going
Speaker 2: are we ready for that sort of correction we saw
Speaker 2: in the late nineties and two thousand with the bubble bursting.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's going to be that, but clearly
Speaker 2: between regulation and the hollowness of AI at the moment
Speaker 2: where the revenue isn't coming, but the expenses there from
Speaker 2: the likes of Microsoft and NVIDI and all that, a
Speaker 2: lot of people are going, we knew this already there
Speaker 2: overinflated in priced, but we're going to take some money
Speaker 2: off the table now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the shine is wearing off. I saw our Business
Speaker 1: Insider piece early last week and talking about a pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: company that had five hundred seats I think it was,
Speaker 1: and upgraded them all to co pilot for another one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year and then just
Speaker 1: said it just wasn't worth it for them.
Speaker 2: We'll linked to that Business Insider piece. It was really
Speaker 2: good because it was quite refreshing to see your company
Speaker 2: sort of say, yeah, look we in good faith, we
Speaker 2: implemented it across the business, and we're pulling the plug
Speaker 2: because we're just not seeing the returns. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: good to see that. You talk to Microsoft and it's
Speaker 2: going gangbusters. Everyone's seeing mental productivity gains and frankly some
Speaker 2: of the analysts are sort of saying that as well.
Speaker 2: But actually getting that tangible, independent feedback is great.
Speaker 1: It was just the evidence that it's about specificity, not
Speaker 1: on mass application, isn't it. And I think that's what's
Speaker 1: maybe causing a little bit of downward turn in these
Speaker 1: tech stocks as well, that there was a lot of
Speaker 1: excitement and that was reflected in those prices for a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's have a look at this Google case that's
Speaker 2: been running for over four years now with the Department
Speaker 2: of Justice. So they just ruled this week turner it.
Speaker 2: In seventy seven page ruling, Judge Ammett Metta basically said
Speaker 2: that Google has made these massive payments to Apple and
Speaker 2: Mozilla to make the Google Search Engine the default on
Speaker 2: new devices, and including that they did this with Samsung
Speaker 2: and others as well, paid billions of dollars to other
Speaker 2: companies to ensure that the first thing you see when
Speaker 2: you boot up a new device is the Google Search Engine.
Speaker 2: So they basically said that after having carefully considered and
Speaker 2: weighed the witness, testimony and evidence, the court reaches the
Speaker 2: following conclusion. Google is a monopolist and it has acted
Speaker 2: as one to maintain its monopoly. The consequences of that
Speaker 2: is that it's charged advertisers higher prices than they would
Speaker 2: have in a more competitive market. And that's why we
Speaker 2: see Google with ninety percent of the search market and
Speaker 2: being and others scrambling for the crumbs off the table.
Speaker 2: That has a tangible impact on how much a business
Speaker 2: pays to advertise on the Google search engine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, by keeping the Google Search engine as the main
Speaker 1: search engine that ninety eight plus percent of people are using,
Speaker 1: that means that they can continue to sell ads on
Speaker 1: that search engine. They know everybody's going to go there,
Speaker 1: and they can put the prices up on those ads.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you've ever spoken to a
Speaker 1: small business person in New Zealand. Talk to them about
Speaker 1: advertising on Google. They always have that same thing. There's
Speaker 1: just nowhere else I can go. It doesn't matter. I
Speaker 1: have to pay if I want to get those leads
Speaker 1: through Google. And you know we're not talking small change,
Speaker 1: it says in the article Apple got an estimated twenty
Speaker 1: billion dollars from Google in twenty twenty two. It's in
Speaker 1: one year just to make the search engine the default
Speaker 1: on Apple devices. Why would Apple need a twenty billion
Speaker 1: dollar incentive to have that? If everyone want to Google anyway,
Speaker 1: That's a really big and interesting question, and I think
Speaker 1: why the courts have decided the way that they have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the question is what happens now. And a lot
Speaker 2: of the commentary on this is that it will literally
Speaker 2: take five years to sort this out, minimum because Kent Walker,
Speaker 2: the company's president of global affairs, has come out today
Speaker 2: and said, we are going to appeal this. It's great
Speaker 2: that you think our search engine is so fantastic, thanks guys,
Speaker 2: but we don't like the monopolist aspect of it as
Speaker 2: well that you're accusing us of being. So we are
Speaker 2: going to appeal this. So it we'll go through court.
Speaker 2: It will move into a new phase where they will continue.
Speaker 2: They will start hearing arguments now in court about what
Speaker 2: remedy should be implemented to address this monopoly that the
Speaker 2: court has decided is monopoly. So nothing's going to happen
Speaker 2: in the immediate future. But some of the things that
Speaker 2: could potentially happen is what has happened in Europe where
Speaker 2: they've the EU Court action near decided a similar thing,
Speaker 2: which Google has monopolistic properties there, and sort of what
Speaker 2: they've done there is this what they call a ballot screen.
Speaker 2: So when you boot up a new device there, you
Speaker 2: get to choose what search engine you want, say a
Speaker 2: new Android phone, it will give you a list of them,
Speaker 2: including the Google search engine. But apparently it's had negligible
Speaker 2: effect on the company's market share in Europe, so people
Speaker 2: are still in that mindset of Google is the best,
Speaker 2: Google is the default. So what will actually make a difference.
Speaker 2: Will it have to go to structural separation where they
Speaker 2: sort of break up Google, And how do you even
Speaker 2: do that without killing the effectiveness of its search engine.
Speaker 2: It is renowned for being very good, so how they
Speaker 2: actually fix this problem will create another sort of headache.
Speaker 2: They're going to have to work through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of rumbling, slow movement.
Speaker 1: I would say in some certain places online about complaints
Speaker 1: around the Google search engine. And I've read articles saying
Speaker 1: that the Google search engines saying there are one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand results is a lie and you can't actually get
Speaker 1: if you keep clicking through it's not those are not
Speaker 1: actually there, and that it will only ever display those
Speaker 1: has a very strong recency bias, and all of these
Speaker 1: kinds of criticisms of the Google search engine that are
Speaker 1: slowly growing. So maybe that movement, in conjunction with the
Speaker 1: ability to select, with new search engines potentially coming out
Speaker 1: with new technologies underpinning them, we don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: there could be a step change, a shift in consumer
Speaker 1: mindset around the corner when it comes to search. It's
Speaker 1: hard to see because Google is so all consuming it
Speaker 1: is a verb at this point, but perhaps we will
Speaker 1: start to see a shift, if you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: all empires fall at the end of the day, don't they.
Speaker 1: I don't think digital ones are any different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did well twenty five years and it would
Speaker 2: be great to see three or four players with twenty
Speaker 2: percent market share between them, so they're still profitable. They
Speaker 2: still have a lot of money to invest in search,
Speaker 2: and as you said, you know these new technologies like
Speaker 2: AI generated search results and conversational AI could change the
Speaker 2: game and give new entrants more of an opportunity. So
Speaker 2: we'll see how this play out next week. We do
Speaker 2: have an expert on search advertising, paid advertising and that
Speaker 2: and how some of these changes are affecting what businesses
Speaker 2: will need to do when it comes to trying to
Speaker 2: find an audience. That's Ryan McMillan from Atlas Digital. So
Speaker 2: that's on next week's episode. But just finally on news
Speaker 2: this week, being some interesting commentary about Spotify, and I'm
Speaker 2: no longer a Spotify user. I bailed out of Spotify
Speaker 2: a long time ago just because it was a better
Speaker 2: deal to do YouTube music, because I get bundled in
Speaker 2: the ad free experience on YouTube, which as a super
Speaker 2: user of YouTube, I really appreciate. And there are real
Speaker 2: fanatical loyalists to Spotify, which I remember being a bit
Speaker 2: sad to leave it because it was a great discovery
Speaker 2: machine for new music. But increasingly we're seeing commentary a
Speaker 2: big piece in the New Yorker that's got a lot
Speaker 2: of attention. Another one in the Guardian, people going what
Speaker 2: is up with Spotify? It's not showing the music I
Speaker 2: want to discover anymore. It seems to be recycling all
Speaker 2: the same big name artists. To me, are they paying
Speaker 2: behind the scenes to have this stuff featured? And it
Speaker 2: turns out it's not as simple as that. But what
Speaker 2: is going on is this new discovery mode, which effectively
Speaker 2: allows an artist to forego some royalties to be featured
Speaker 2: prominently in parts of the Spotify app, which effectively gives
Speaker 2: them more exposure to people, encourages people to follow them
Speaker 2: and start listening to their music. So the argument is
Speaker 2: that by manipulating that discovery mode, they're favoring some artists
Speaker 2: and it's why people like you've been are seeing more
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I still am a Spotify user, and I
Speaker 1: think it's mainly I did try to bail out into
Speaker 1: Apple Music not long ago, but I just couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out how to get my playlists over, which is just
Speaker 1: a huge thing, like I don't want to lose all
Speaker 1: of the work that I've put into following those particular
Speaker 1: songs that you know that I have over the years.
Speaker 1: That also is an interesting area to look at for
Speaker 1: monopoly and consumer data right kind of approach there in
Speaker 1: terms of who owns the data around my preferences. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely have noticed over the years that Spotify stops
Speaker 1: serving up unexpected everything I hear. Now it kind of
Speaker 1: fits within these kind of expected realm of music that
Speaker 1: it keeps serving to me. And I have fairly broad tastes,
Speaker 1: so it's nice to just hear some new random stuff
Speaker 1: every now and again. That could be completely terrible, but
Speaker 1: when you're actively looking for new music, it's okay to
Speaker 1: have terrible stuff, well, stuff that you think is terrible
Speaker 1: put in front of you, because it's kind of part
Speaker 1: of the fun to.
Speaker 2: Go, oh, what's this crap? Turn that off?
Speaker 1: You know, oh this is quite interesting. It's all part
Speaker 1: of the joy of it, rather than just aiming for
Speaker 1: homogeny and just having bland. But where you have an algorithm,
Speaker 1: you will have gaming of algorithms at the end of
Speaker 1: the day. I think that's the reality of it. And
Speaker 1: now Spotify, with all of its podcasts and all of
Speaker 1: its kind of pretty terrible approach to audio books, to
Speaker 1: be honest, there's a whole new level of kind of
Speaker 1: trying to get through the user experience, and the New
Speaker 1: York A piece talks about how hard it is to
Speaker 1: find stuff that you're looking for, and it's absolutely right,
Speaker 1: like trying to find a playlist, and yeah, so it
Speaker 1: feels like it should be split into a few different
Speaker 1: apps Spotify podcasts, Spotify audiobooks, Spotify Music, and then you
Speaker 1: can kind of go where you want to. But by
Speaker 1: trying to shove what they want in your face, it
Speaker 1: speaks to that kind of inification trope. And if you
Speaker 1: have successfully moved from Spotify to Apple Music, let me
Speaker 1: know how you did it. Until all your playlists with you,
Speaker 1: that would be great. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Now. Our guest this week is an engineer, entrepreneur, and
Speaker 2: former academic, Michelle Dickinson aka Nanogirl. Michelle grew up in
Speaker 2: Hong Kong, the USA, the United Kingdom, did a PhD
Speaker 2: in Biomedical materials engineering at Rutgers University in New Jersey,
Speaker 2: worked in the tech industry, and eventually found a way
Speaker 2: to Auckland, New Zealand, where she set up the country's
Speaker 2: first nanotechnology testing lab.
Speaker 1: And so that's where she gets the nano and nanogirl
Speaker 1: and Michelle is fascinated with the science of small stuff,
Speaker 1: manipulating individual atoms and molecules to come up with cool
Speaker 1: new materials and technologies.
Speaker 2: But she's also got her teeth into some big issues
Speaker 2: over the last decade or so, including the skill shortage
Speaker 2: in the so called STEM subjects as science, tech, engineering,
Speaker 2: and maths. She co founded OMG Tech to address that issue,
Speaker 2: and later Nanogirl Labs, which is her vehicle for bringing
Speaker 2: STEM to kids here and around the world.
Speaker 1: She really is a science communication dynamo, which we really
Speaker 1: need as a country. But it hasn't been smooth sailing
Speaker 1: in recent years for Michelle or other high profile science
Speaker 1: communicators like Susie Wiles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, COVID wasn't just bad for business for Nanogirl Labs,
Speaker 2: at least for a while. It unleashed a lot of
Speaker 2: toxic sentiment towards scientists, which Michelle had to deal with.
Speaker 2: So here's Nanogirl on all of that and her take
Speaker 2: on artificial intelligence and what it means to the next
Speaker 2: generation of STEM graduates and the workforce in general. Michelle,
Speaker 2: thanks so much for being on the business of tech.
Speaker 2: So good to see you again. It's been quite a while,
Speaker 2: haven't caught up with you recently, but I think our
Speaker 2: relationship goes back over a decade. Related to the Science
Speaker 2: Media Center. We were working together on the Cydeblogs platform.
Speaker 2: You were a big contributor at the time to the
Speaker 2: commetary that we were putting out to the media. At
Speaker 2: the Science Media Center, you went through our Science Media
Speaker 2: Savvy course, and it's just been incredible watching your science
Speaker 2: communication journey, going from being an academic that didn't do
Speaker 2: a lot of communication to being on stage with Neil
Speaker 2: de grasse Tyson doing a Q and A with him
Speaker 2: at spark Areen in front of tens of thousands of people.
Speaker 2: What's that been like? What was the key really to you?
Speaker 2: Sort of coming out of your shell and really building
Speaker 2: communication into your career?
Speaker 3: You were the key, Peter. I always say people go,
Speaker 3: how did you get air? And I was like, there's
Speaker 3: a man called Peter Griffin that I met, Not the
Speaker 3: family guy, the family guy you, I mean, you really
Speaker 3: are in the Science Media Center that you were running
Speaker 3: at the time. Is the reason why I'm here. It
Speaker 3: opened my eyes to something that I didn't know exists
Speaker 3: did I was a nerdy, socially awkward academic doing nanotech
Speaker 3: in my lab and frustrated that a lot of the
Speaker 3: false and the misinformation I was seeing at the time
Speaker 3: around the field I was in wasn't being corrected. And
Speaker 3: then saw a course and managed to get the scholarship
Speaker 3: to go on the course, and then was like, hold on,
Speaker 3: I could be the person who talks about this and
Speaker 3: I had no skills in it, right, I was painfully
Speaker 3: shy and it was awful. But the Science Media Center
Speaker 3: and the media Savvy course I went on that you
Speaker 3: led showed me that there are different ways to communicate,
Speaker 3: and there are different platforms, and actually it's really important
Speaker 3: for scientists to have a voice when it's about things
Speaker 3: that you know, the public just don't know where to
Speaker 3: get good, solid, evidence based information on. Then I've also
Speaker 3: seen a need for it as I've got deeper into
Speaker 3: science communication around you know, different pockets of the community
Speaker 3: that really don't get this. So yeah, you you, Peter,
Speaker 3: you where I am here?
Speaker 2: Well, that was a stepping off point, but then you
Speaker 2: did so much more to take that to great heights.
Speaker 2: What process did you go through to get to the
Speaker 2: point where that's sick and nature to you?
Speaker 3: I would never say that I don't have nerves even today.
Speaker 3: I think all good people who should be nervous. It's
Speaker 3: a good feeling to have. It means you're doing something serious.
Speaker 3: And I don't think people realize how much preparation goes
Speaker 3: into even a two minute interview live on TV. I've
Speaker 3: met extroverted communicators who can really, nearly on the fly,
Speaker 3: just come up with something that's not me. So the
Speaker 3: amount of work that I will do behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: the research, the memorizing soundbites, the things to make myself
Speaker 3: confident is massive, and maybe people don't appreciate how much
Speaker 3: work happens behind there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at short notice when a major issue is
Speaker 2: going down, you know that takes dedication and carving out
Speaker 2: the time to do that preparation.
Speaker 3: And yeah, all night usually if there's a breaking news.
Speaker 3: And usually you'll get the call from the media the
Speaker 3: night before at eight pm and they'll be like, can
Speaker 3: you be on at six thirty eight. I won't sleep
Speaker 3: that night. I'll have read around the subject. I'll make
Speaker 3: sure that I've got my soundbites. I write them on
Speaker 3: post it notes, I'll start memorizing them. Often you'll see
Speaker 3: I've written on my hand before I've gone into the
Speaker 3: studio right before we're live, I've just chucked my hand.
Speaker 3: So it's in my brain like there's lots of little
Speaker 3: things that I do at least to make sure I'm prepped.
Speaker 2: And it's great. We saw this cohort that really around
Speaker 2: the same time as you were building your science communication skills,
Speaker 2: others were doing it as well. Richard Easter, Sean Hendy,
Speaker 2: Michael Plank, all these people, and a lot of them
Speaker 2: became very prominent during the COVID pandemic, most notably I
Speaker 2: think Susie Wiles, who went through hell really with her
Speaker 2: own institution and recently won that employment court case against
Speaker 2: the University of Auckland, was a great communicator for the
Speaker 2: university and in her own right didn't get to support
Speaker 2: that she needed. For you. You were at the University
Speaker 2: of Auckland. I think you said you've sort of had
Speaker 2: to put up with that as well then going out
Speaker 2: on your own. I guess the freedom that gave you,
Speaker 2: but also no safety in it, no institutional support at all.
Speaker 3: Look, academia is a really interesting place. It was a
Speaker 3: place that I learned, you know, early on, but I
Speaker 3: didn't quit it early enough that I didn't really fit
Speaker 3: for that. There's lots of people there who are a
Speaker 3: type personalities, who believe, and they often are the best
Speaker 3: in their field at what they do academically. And so
Speaker 3: when you've got what I call lots of egos in
Speaker 3: a room, you can feel like there are lots of
Speaker 3: fifdoms everywhere. And so when communicators like myself and like
Speaker 3: Susie come along, where our craft is not just our
Speaker 3: academic knowledge, but our ability to get information out to
Speaker 3: the layperson, to the public quickly. It's a really a skill,
Speaker 3: and I think people think they could do it but
Speaker 3: don't understand that actually it's a skill that has to
Speaker 3: have work. So yeah, there was a few more, probably
Speaker 3: more times that I want to admit that I was
Speaker 3: told that my communication was a waste of time. I
Speaker 3: remember winning the Prime Minister's Science Communication Prize and I
Speaker 3: literally got off the plane and I went straight to work,
Speaker 3: went to my office, put the it was this massive trophy,
Speaker 3: it was amazing, it was so heavy, put it on
Speaker 3: my shelf and I was so proud. And within three
Speaker 3: minutes an academic in my department walked into it, picked
Speaker 3: it up, looked at me and said, well, it's not
Speaker 3: like it's a real reward, is it. And then walked
Speaker 3: out and I just went, why would you take that
Speaker 3: from me to elevate yourself Like it's crazy. But that's academia, right.
Speaker 3: It's just filled with lots of quirky people. And that's
Speaker 3: the amazing thing about academia. And that's when I realized
Speaker 3: that great, that it's not a space that I probably
Speaker 3: want to stay in. But I've come from other places,
Speaker 3: so I sort of had to think to compare it
Speaker 3: to But during that time became great friends with Richard
Speaker 3: Easter and shown Hendy and Susie and sort of became
Speaker 3: this amazing communication cohort where we could bounce ideas off
Speaker 3: each other and talk about what we were doing. And
Speaker 3: then COVID and so I had left the university by
Speaker 3: that point, and I had my own business, and so
Speaker 3: I was also asked by lots of people, including the government,
Speaker 3: to help communicate things around COVID, and I think the
Speaker 3: difference is when you run your own business and you
Speaker 3: don't have academic freedom to protect you. I made choices
Speaker 3: about what I went into or one I didn't, and
Speaker 3: what I said and what I didn't. So as a communicator.
Speaker 3: I turned down lots of lots of media when they
Speaker 3: said can you do this? And I was like, do
Speaker 3: you know what, No, I feel like it's too high risk,
Speaker 3: especially things that are aligned with telling people what they
Speaker 3: should do. I never once said you should do this.
Speaker 3: I said, hey, here's the evidence that we know right now.
Speaker 3: This might change tomorrow because it's coming in thick and first,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to tell you what to do, but
Speaker 3: this is what the evidence says. And I never aligned
Speaker 3: myself with any sort of political party. Labor was obviously
Speaker 3: in at the time, so I went, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: these are the people who are in. This is what
Speaker 3: they're saying, this is what the evidence says. But I
Speaker 3: had to be really careful because I have stuff, and
Speaker 3: if it all goes horribly wrong, it doesn't just go
Speaker 3: horribly wrong for me. It's the livelihood of all of
Speaker 3: the stuff that they have, who have mortgages, you know,
Speaker 3: that depend on me bringing an income in to the organization.
Speaker 3: So I had to think about those people. And I
Speaker 3: think if I was an academic, I maybe would have
Speaker 3: taken on more things, hoping that academic freedom would have
Speaker 3: protected me. And I saw that, you know, Susie was
Speaker 3: able to do that. Sean Hendy was able to take
Speaker 3: on more things, or at least they thought they could. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and obviously it went pretty horribly wrong for them. And
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that I didn't have issues too. So
Speaker 3: my home address, photos of my home were taken, pictures
Speaker 3: places that you could shoot me from the easiest as
Speaker 3: a gas station across my old house. I moved, actually,
Speaker 3: but it did the same with Susie, you know, taking
Speaker 3: picture of a cat outside a house, posting her address, saying, well,
Speaker 3: do what you want, this is where she lives. And
Speaker 3: it was a really awful, frightening time. And then she
Speaker 3: had a public workplace right that people could and they
Speaker 3: did go to and confront and I think it was
Speaker 3: a really scary time because people were just a little
Speaker 3: bit unhinged. I think everybody was super stressed and you
Speaker 3: just never knew. And the challenge with being in the
Speaker 3: media spotlight is people know who you are and you
Speaker 3: don't know who they are. And being recognized in part
Speaker 3: is a double edged sword for sure, because if they're
Speaker 3: a friendly, it's great, But if they're a foe, let
Speaker 3: me tell you, they'll come up to you personally and
Speaker 3: tell you what for. So watching what happened with Susie,
Speaker 3: I mean, she's so brave for taking on the university
Speaker 3: and luckily being awarded the win. And I think it's
Speaker 3: I hope it's better for academics to be able to
Speaker 3: come out and talk about things that might be a
Speaker 3: bit hairy. But in the meantime, we've lost I'm an
Speaker 3: amazing communicator. She's, you know, a shell of herself. She
Speaker 3: doesn't come out anymore to talk about the things and
Speaker 3: she was at the top of her game around communication,
Speaker 3: and it's been really distressing to see that. So you
Speaker 3: do take more risk as a communicator. I do it
Speaker 3: because I really see I really feel the benefit of
Speaker 3: the work that I do, because I do get people
Speaker 3: saying thank you for that. I just didn't know. It
Speaker 3: really helped me navigate choices in my life, and those
Speaker 3: can be choices, big choices that people you know are
Speaker 3: trying to make because they don't have great science literacy.
Speaker 3: And that's the challenge. Our population has terrible science literacy
Speaker 3: in general. And so where do you go when you're
Speaker 3: an adult and you're trying to make a good informed
Speaker 3: decision about something When Google says anything you wanted to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you still do a lot of that sort
Speaker 2: of communication aimed at the population in general on often
Speaker 2: contentious issues. But your real focus in recent news has
Speaker 2: been nanogurl Labs. It's an online platform, but it's live events.
Speaker 2: You go to schools, you do big shows, lots of
Speaker 2: special effects and that to get people engaged. And it's
Speaker 2: what's that journey been like? Leaving academia, setting up on
Speaker 2: your own steam and having to navigate some hard years
Speaker 2: when you couldn't do live events because of COVID.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I you know, anybody who owns a
Speaker 3: business knows that you don't get it in it because
Speaker 3: you want to sleep more or you want to make
Speaker 3: more money. You do it because you see a problem
Speaker 3: that you think you might be able to help, at
Speaker 3: least not solve, but go in the right direction and
Speaker 3: be part of a cohort. So those who don't know
Speaker 3: my background, I was not great at school. I didn't
Speaker 3: grow up with much money. I didn't grow up with
Speaker 3: educated parents, so even going to university was never something
Speaker 3: that was on my radar. I think, you know, having
Speaker 3: fallen into lots of lucky situations and lots of grown
Speaker 3: ups at the time who helped me becoming an engineer
Speaker 3: in the end, and then having an academic career and
Speaker 3: having a career in tech in the US. I just
Speaker 3: I always, every day felt so grateful that I was here,
Speaker 3: especially when I look back at the kids I went
Speaker 3: to school with. Granville Harvey I went to school with
Speaker 3: is in prison for attempted murder, no surprise, but he's
Speaker 3: the guy I shared my textbooks with. You know, we
Speaker 3: were rough kids, And I go, well, it was only
Speaker 3: a hot for me not following in his footsteps. Right,
Speaker 3: So how am I not in jail? How do I
Speaker 3: have this amazing career? And how do I make sure
Speaker 3: that kids like me, who through no fault of our own,
Speaker 3: just not living in areas with lots of tech, not
Speaker 3: having those ecosystems where academia is promoted, how do those
Speaker 3: kids get to do this? And so I always had
Speaker 3: this inner fire to go how do I get that
Speaker 3: to happen? And when I worked at the university, and
Speaker 3: even when I worked in sort of the tech space
Speaker 3: in the US, it became very clear to me that
Speaker 3: the people I was working with and the students we
Speaker 3: were bringing in our privileged students. That's privilege through education.
Speaker 3: That's privileged through Often parents are academic or would push
Speaker 3: them into that system. And the kids who weren't making
Speaker 3: it through are those kids you expect not to write,
Speaker 3: those growing up in poverty, those growing up in rural
Speaker 3: those growing up with parents who aren't in this sector
Speaker 3: and don't know it exists. I said, well, how do
Speaker 3: we because diversity is so important in tech, especially because
Speaker 3: otherwise all we have is a bunch of Caucasian Silicon
Speaker 3: Valley nerds inventing tech for us, and that doesn't represent
Speaker 3: our problems. And it became very clear to me that
Speaker 3: even our academic system shuts off so many students based
Speaker 3: on grades, and the grades these kids getting might not
Speaker 3: be the top because their school doesn't have a physics teacher,
Speaker 3: because there's so many things that affect our young people
Speaker 3: because of their postcode. And so I'm still on this
Speaker 3: mission to go, how do we help more young people
Speaker 3: who come from diverse backgrounds to realize that STEM is
Speaker 3: a place that they should be, They should be welcomed,
Speaker 3: and we have to figure out how we get them
Speaker 3: into it when so many doors are closed because the
Speaker 3: system's been the system for a long time, and then
Speaker 3: how do we then keep them in the system and
Speaker 3: help them to think through problems that nobody else in
Speaker 3: the field is really thinking about. And we've just rewritten
Speaker 3: the high school curriculum for four Pacific island nations, which
Speaker 3: has been such an honor, and we've shown that those
Speaker 3: students who now study It was a year ten program
Speaker 3: and now fifty percent of them are now staying on
Speaker 3: to study science at year eleven because we did localized context.
Speaker 3: Right now, they're being taught by a non science teacher
Speaker 3: and they're being given a free New Zealand or Australian
Speaker 3: textbook to read from right, And that's just how we've
Speaker 3: dealt with the Pacific And so we wrote this amazing
Speaker 3: program that was I mean, it was amazing that you know,
Speaker 3: they could look out of the window and suddenly see
Speaker 3: the context of what they were doing. The examples were
Speaker 3: local to them, and it's I mean, it's not brain science,
Speaker 3: like it's not rocket science. You just go, hey, yeah,
Speaker 3: make kids understand why we're doing this'll stick with it.
Speaker 3: So for me, yeah, I have this inner burning desire
Speaker 3: to help increase diversity in STEM and that's been a
Speaker 3: big part of what we do, and it's been a
Speaker 3: rollercoaster because funding keeps getting cut. So covid obviously happens
Speaker 3: our in person stuff. We were about to do a
Speaker 3: big global tour. We had just opened our California office
Speaker 3: in February twenty twenty. We shut it in March twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: I think, with the shortest New Zealand company ever see
Speaker 3: having built up all of that stuff setting up a
Speaker 3: Delawes c or like all of the work that goes
Speaker 3: into setting up your American office and then hiring a
Speaker 3: GM there, only to have to let them go, like
Speaker 3: it's a huge spence and it's a huge learning curve.
Speaker 3: So it's been rookie. But what I've loved is being
Speaker 3: able to build all these communicators. So we currently have
Speaker 3: thirty five science communicators in New Zealand. They're all students,
Speaker 3: usually graduate students doing their musters who also are Nana girls.
Speaker 3: They all have their own superhero names and they're local
Speaker 3: to their communities and they go out and they do schools, parties,
Speaker 3: mall shows, public performances under the Nanogol brand. And I go, well,
Speaker 3: this is also how we get to sort of create
Speaker 3: the next generation of science communicators and show young people
Speaker 3: that there's an amazing young female scientists in their neighborhood
Speaker 3: and this is what they're doing. And we've got everything
Speaker 3: from jumping spider experts to music physicists. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: just incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's such a compelling proposition the STEM subjects,
Speaker 2: I mean, the careers that people can have, the salaries
Speaker 2: that people can earn from Maria and Pacifico who are
Speaker 2: underrepresented in the STEM related industries. It's really tough for
Speaker 2: STEM organizations at the moment. Funding has been cut. In
Speaker 2: real terms, a lot of them are barely holding on.
Speaker 2: It's ironic, isn't it that as any government that is
Speaker 2: in power at the moment is all about we need
Speaker 2: to diversify our economy using engineering, science and technology. But
Speaker 2: we're not backing it up with that commitment at the
Speaker 2: early stages.
Speaker 3: I think worse in that. I think sadly during this
Speaker 3: government cycle, not only way not backing up, we have
Speaker 3: cut existing programs that we're doing great things. I'm going
Speaker 3: to give you a list because I've been writing it
Speaker 3: down because it's been depressing. So OMD Tech obviously that
Speaker 3: I co founded with Born rosel from then back ten
Speaker 3: years ago, they were the main national digital technologies education
Speaker 3: provider if you wanted to learn anything about coding robotics,
Speaker 3: and they had a massive MADI and PACIFICA Group two
Speaker 3: making sure that they were doing it bilingually and trilingually.
Speaker 3: It was amazing. So they have just closed down. So
Speaker 3: that means it's going to be really hard now if
Speaker 3: you're a teacher to do PD development, to learn or
Speaker 3: upskill in tech. But that's just one of them. So
Speaker 3: we lost the Curious Minds funding now that's one point
Speaker 3: six million dollars a year. That has a significant effect
Speaker 3: not only on cool projects that spun out of it,
Speaker 3: but also it was where Comet, which is the big
Speaker 3: South Auckland STEM group got all their funding from. Now
Speaker 3: they're independent and I think it's going to be really
Speaker 3: hard for them to do what they used to do
Speaker 3: with that. So they are obviously downsizing and trying to
Speaker 3: figure out who they are. Otago Museum, who do amazing outreach.
Speaker 3: Curious Minds funded all of their communicators to go up
Speaker 3: to schools and do those programs. They have cut all
Speaker 3: of those programs now because they've lost that funding. The
Speaker 3: Wonder project, which is an incredible program by Engineering New
Speaker 3: Zealand where they would go into schools and so my
Speaker 3: finger dab into that is I helped to build that program.
Speaker 3: And what I wanted to build was a long term
Speaker 3: relationship with engineers and scientists with school so they would
Speaker 3: go in for nine to twelve weeks every week and
Speaker 3: help kids build a rocket. And they had a project
Speaker 3: from start to finish. They've lost a million dollars a
Speaker 3: year of Callahan funding, which is basically their big breadwinners.
Speaker 3: So who knows what's going to happen to them. House
Speaker 3: of Sciences. You may have seen City and Upper Hut
Speaker 3: Council stopped their funding. That was access for fifteen thousand students.
Speaker 3: Now Chris luckily has managed to get enough because she's
Speaker 3: worked hard on raising some funds till twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: But then what and I just go, oh onn this
Speaker 3: is nuts. This is on top of all of the
Speaker 3: academic jobs that have been cut and the knee were
Speaker 3: in the CRI jobs and so the jobs have gone,
Speaker 3: and the training and the funding has gone, and teachers
Speaker 3: now don't have anywhere to go to learn this stuff.
Speaker 3: It's like the whole system's been shut off and the
Speaker 3: consequences are I mean, it's easy to see what the
Speaker 3: consequences are for that. Nobody's going to come to New
Speaker 3: Zealand for our high talent line and nobody's going to
Speaker 3: be trained here for the jobs that need to be
Speaker 3: trained in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got our Science Minister are out there championing
Speaker 2: the space sick difference. It's our first Minister of Space,
Speaker 2: which is all well and good, but where's the pipeline
Speaker 2: of future space engineers that are going to feed this industry.
Speaker 2: If we don't nurture them at those early stages, we're
Speaker 2: going to be relying on people coming to this country
Speaker 2: to fill those positions.
Speaker 3: Hundred percent. It's got to be immigration. That has to
Speaker 3: be the solution, because we are not building that talent
Speaker 3: pipeline right now, and that talent pipeline is a long
Speaker 3: lead pipeline. You can't go oh, when they've picked their
Speaker 3: unique subjects. That's when we're going to do it. Because
Speaker 3: what we've seen around innovation, So David diet Downs and
Speaker 3: I wrote a book called Number eight Recharged where we
Speaker 3: studied our top big companies, including Rocket Lab and Peter Beckham.
Speaker 3: What those journeys are of those top people, and it's
Speaker 3: not academics. It's experience, it's trying things, it's being hanging
Speaker 3: out with people who are diverse to you to solve
Speaker 3: those problems. And if those people aren't getting into the
Speaker 3: system and being able to test some things out, we're
Speaker 3: not going to build the next whatever it is. Rocket
Speaker 3: Lab is a great example, and we seem to go, oh, well,
Speaker 3: once you've got your degree dot dot dot, you can
Speaker 3: do this, but the evidence shows you that the degree
Speaker 3: has very little to do with it. It's those types
Speaker 3: of personalities having good systems around them where they can
Speaker 3: access funding, where they can access information, where they can
Speaker 3: just try something, fail and try again, and with that
Speaker 3: comes confidence and with that comes your ability to when
Speaker 3: you I mean, if you talk to Peter Beck, he's
Speaker 3: a rocket scientist because when he was eleven and Invercargo,
Speaker 3: he was building rockets in his shed with his dad,
Speaker 3: like that sort of stuff. Having kids building things in schools,
Speaker 3: trying robots, trying coding to build that confidence young is
Speaker 3: how they make it through the system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we do have a real problem to address here,
Speaker 2: and it can't just be philanthropic money. We don't have
Speaker 2: enough of it. It can't just be TICH companies because
Speaker 2: they have their own spin on the technology stack. They
Speaker 2: want you to invest your time, so it does need
Speaker 2: to be government funding. Another thing I really admire you
Speaker 2: for is how well you engage with the business community
Speaker 2: around technology and working with companies to encourage them to
Speaker 2: explore new technology. The technology of the moment is generative AI,
Speaker 2: which you have been scoping out and are heavily involved
Speaker 2: in as well. Just last week, you spoke at Gartner
Speaker 2: and Sydney at their big annual conference. Rewiring for the
Speaker 2: Future was the theme of your talk, So you've obviously
Speaker 2: been looking at this technology. What's the message that you
Speaker 2: were giving to people who went to the Gartner conference
Speaker 2: about what this technology means for the workplace, about skills
Speaker 2: and what they need to do to make the most
Speaker 2: of it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: As a science communicator, and I guess as a tech communicator,
Speaker 3: my goal is to help demystify some of the jargon
Speaker 3: that's involved around highly technical or fields, to help democratize tech,
Speaker 3: to help people to make good decisions for them. That's
Speaker 3: always what I've done as a communicator. I don't tell
Speaker 3: you what you should do or what you shouldn't do,
Speaker 3: But I will help you understand what is probably hype
Speaker 3: and what is probably going to be very expensive. And
Speaker 3: with businesses, it's all about return on investment and AI actually,
Speaker 3: if you're going to build your own system in house,
Speaker 3: is a lot of financial commitment, and so businesses are
Speaker 3: feeling the pressure to throw all this money into something
Speaker 3: that they really feel like is a black box right now.
Speaker 3: So my goal is to help people understand, Hey, what's
Speaker 3: already out there? What does it mean. There's all of
Speaker 3: these terms, you know, like large language models, neural networks,
Speaker 3: and they all sound so insanely technical, and I actually go, hey,
Speaker 3: here's what it is like. This is what it does,
Speaker 3: this is what it can do, this is what it
Speaker 3: can't do. And my philosophy, whatever age you are, has
Speaker 3: always been come play, because when you play with whatever
Speaker 3: it is, you learn, whether I'm giving you a self
Speaker 3: driving robot and you're learning how to code it to
Speaker 3: go around in circles, or I'm giving you some AI
Speaker 3: tools to play with that are fun, that are silly.
Speaker 3: My favorite one is there's a website called bored humans
Speaker 3: dot com and in there is a marriage simulator and
Speaker 3: you can get your virtual AI husband or wife and
Speaker 3: you can argue with them. And I love that because
Speaker 3: suddenly you went you out of your work environment and
Speaker 3: you're playing with an AI system and you're arguing with it.
Speaker 3: You'll realize that humans are way better at insarting than AI. Right,
Speaker 3: So it just takes that intimidation out. And I've had
Speaker 3: lots of people go, I don't know where to get started,
Speaker 3: and so credit a YouTube series to help people not
Speaker 3: only demystify the jargon. So in three minutes unless you'll
Speaker 3: learn about whatever the jargon is, hallucination or the difference
Speaker 3: between traditional AI and generative AI, that's easy. But then
Speaker 3: Joe Crib came to me and said, can you just
Speaker 3: help me actually get started practically? I don't know where
Speaker 3: to use this, and so I'm building a YouTube series
Speaker 3: basically use AI to heck your life that she's following
Speaker 3: and writing up and in the Sunday Star Times every Sunday,
Speaker 3: but actually is free for everybody to go. Hey, So
Speaker 3: the one that's this week is how do you use
Speaker 3: AI to help you take the mental load off figuring
Speaker 3: out what's for dinner every day? So we have a
Speaker 3: simple one which is recipes by AI. Just look in
Speaker 3: your fridge, type in what you've got and it'll give
Speaker 3: you dinner for tonight. But the longer version is you
Speaker 3: can actually take that meal planning away. So I'll give
Speaker 3: you some prompts and jet GBT and just explaining that
Speaker 3: prompts are instructions, and I have a way that I
Speaker 3: write my prompts a really simple formula that gets a
Speaker 3: good result out and then you literally go, hey, this
Speaker 3: is what my family looks like. It's winter in New
Speaker 3: Zealand and we're budget conscious, so only you seasonal things.
Speaker 3: My kids don't eat, bean, speech, treat, whatever it is.
Speaker 3: Give me a meal plan for the week, and also
Speaker 3: write me a grocery list with everything in order that's
Speaker 3: in the grocery. I also, I'm not having to find everything,
Speaker 3: and then you can just print it out and go
Speaker 3: and you've suddenly taken away all of that mental load
Speaker 3: of what's for dinner? What are I need to get
Speaker 3: from the sharps, blah blah blah. And the goal is
Speaker 3: just to give people time back in their life, in
Speaker 3: their personal life. And what I've seen in AI is
Speaker 3: the big hype, especially around the media, is it's going
Speaker 3: to take all of our jobs, and everybody's petroviied, and
Speaker 3: I just try and sort of show people how you
Speaker 3: can really push it to its limits in ways that
Speaker 3: you're not afraid of, like doing your grocery shopping or
Speaker 3: picking what's for dinner, and then see what it's greater
Speaker 3: and what it's terrible at, and learn when it lies
Speaker 3: to your faith through hallucinations like how many hours are
Speaker 3: in the word strawberry, and how it tries to convince
Speaker 3: you that you're wrong as a human and that's okay
Speaker 3: because that's just genera to AI. That's what it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Gartner has its infamous hype cycle, and at the
Speaker 2: moment appears GENAI is sort of on the trough of disillusionment.
Speaker 2: And I think that's really that it was hyped up.
Speaker 2: A lot. A lot of money has gone into the industry,
Speaker 2: and the initial adopters of this, who maybe gave copilot
Speaker 2: to everyone in the organization, are going and paying thirty
Speaker 2: dollars extra a month. I'm not getting the the productivity
Speaker 2: boost that I was promised to you. So we still
Speaker 2: have a bit of work to do, don't we Until
Speaker 2: we do see productivity efficiency, But also new product generation,
Speaker 2: new ideas coming through in businesses that these tools are enabling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's so much happening so quickly, like every day,
Speaker 3: you know, like now matters coming out with that, Like
Speaker 3: everybody's trying to launch the next new and big thing.
Speaker 3: And I think it could be really confusing as to
Speaker 3: what should you use and what's the best and how
Speaker 3: do you find it? And I think what happens is
Speaker 3: businesses productize the system, so you just have to wait
Speaker 3: a little bit and somebody will find a good solution
Speaker 3: for you that will be great for solving your problem.
Speaker 3: And AI has been around for a long time, obviously,
Speaker 3: I think it's just the jargon of saying, Hey, what
Speaker 3: people are talk about is generative AI. That's great, this
Speaker 3: is what it can do. This is where it gets stuck.
Speaker 3: You've been using AI on your Spotify or on Netflix
Speaker 3: for a long time. You don't even think about it.
Speaker 3: So let's not stress about the big scary words that
Speaker 3: are being thrown down. If you want to understand them,
Speaker 3: here are some videos just be a way and rewaring
Speaker 3: the brain. The talk that I give is about, hey,
Speaker 3: you don't have to be an expert in everything, but
Speaker 3: just be open to. If you hear something new, just
Speaker 3: dabble in. What is it? And do you think that's
Speaker 3: going to be the next big thing? And the easiest
Speaker 3: way to tell is ROI like, does it have huge
Speaker 3: economic potential? If the answer is yes, great, it's going
Speaker 3: to be big. But we've been through the cycle through
Speaker 3: you know, blockchain and NFTs, like I feel like there's
Speaker 3: always something on the cards and what succeeds is the
Speaker 3: thing that has huge economic potential. So just go can
Speaker 3: somebody make lots of money out of this? If the
Speaker 3: answer is yes, keep an eye on it. If the
Speaker 3: answer is no, keep an eye on it too. But
Speaker 3: don't start trying to move your whole business to incorporating
Speaker 3: something early. And we all know that early adopters are
Speaker 3: never the ones that actually succeed. I think it's good
Speaker 3: that New Zealand's a little bit behind sometimes because we
Speaker 3: just get to sit and watch everybody else throw money
Speaker 3: into something and then we go cool that one would
Speaker 3: let's go with that one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I really love that message of experimentation. And
Speaker 2: you can do that safely without putting all your company
Speaker 2: information into the large language model, so you know, have
Speaker 2: some governance around that, and there's some great tools out
Speaker 2: there now from the AI Forum and others around how
Speaker 2: to do it safely, but experimentation just finishing up back
Speaker 2: on in the classroom in the STEM environments. For years,
Speaker 2: the mantra was we've got to get more kids coding
Speaker 2: in that. What do you think the implications of AI
Speaker 2: are for coding? We've got GitHub Copilot, we've got increasingly
Speaker 2: automation off the coding process. Are you still recommending kids
Speaker 2: go and learn how to code?
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. And there is a being is
Speaker 3: that you still need human checks and look, I have
Speaker 3: loved generative AI for coding, like it helps me to
Speaker 3: be a better coder. I think if you're going to
Speaker 3: learn anything, if you understand data and you understand Python
Speaker 3: right now, you are probably the most sought after person
Speaker 3: in industry because that's sort of what the AI field
Speaker 3: is looking for. The thing about learning coding is it's
Speaker 3: like learning any language. I don't care what language you
Speaker 3: actually learn to code in. What you're understanding is the
Speaker 3: process of how do these systems work? And that I
Speaker 3: think is the most important thing. It gives you confidence
Speaker 3: around tech. It allows you to turn something that wasn't
Speaker 3: moving into something that does something. And I think having
Speaker 3: digital literacy is really important. So if you're learning to
Speaker 3: code at the age of eleven, like, it's not going
Speaker 3: to harm you. You're learning about language, you're learning about
Speaker 3: order and structure. And also if your AI coding system
Speaker 3: has a bug, you can see where it is, and
Speaker 3: that's the most important human side. AI is not going
Speaker 3: to replace us. What you need is a good human
Speaker 3: to overview the AI to know where the bugs might be.
Speaker 3: And to do that you have to be proficient in
Speaker 3: the language that it's speaking. And so that's code, that's
Speaker 3: understanding how things work in sequence, that's understanding brackets, that's
Speaker 3: all of the nerdy stuff. And I think if you
Speaker 3: do that young, you just have a confidence throughout that
Speaker 3: you can, even if you don't know the language that's in,
Speaker 3: you know the process of that language, and then you
Speaker 3: can sort of debug it. So I'm still an advocate
Speaker 3: because I don't see any harm in it in having
Speaker 3: our kids learn how to Even if you're just coding
Speaker 3: a self driving robot that drives from A to B,
Speaker 3: go through that sequence and you'll never lose that skill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you look at the Titan New Zealand at
Speaker 2: the moment. But the bit's paying jobs is still paying
Speaker 2: great money for coding all those sort of languages like
Speaker 2: Python you were talking about, still a great career to
Speaker 2: be in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a career where you can work remotely now
Speaker 3: and be working if there's no money in New Zealand,
Speaker 3: working for an American or as Singaporean company and still
Speaker 3: being a kei we I mean, it's flexibility. It's best
Speaker 3: with an amazing paycheck. And you know, if we can
Speaker 3: help New Zealanders to get on a road to a
Speaker 3: job that actually gives the security and finance, security and
Speaker 3: housing security, why wouldn't we want to build that?
Speaker 2: Here?
Speaker 1: Lots covered there, lots of really fascinating stuff. I think
Speaker 1: the thing that stuck out to me most was when
Speaker 1: she was talking about the needless their education and reaching
Speaker 1: people who were not reaching, and she made the point
Speaker 1: that what we need is more of these people who
Speaker 1: are super passionate and excited and will just take something
Speaker 1: and run with it like you're Peter Beck. That was
Speaker 1: one of her examples, but I think Peter Jackson is
Speaker 1: another example, Edmund Hillary and Kate Shepherd. But the thing
Speaker 1: about those people and a lot of people is that
Speaker 1: they are generally from families that have the privilege of
Speaker 1: kind of giving them space to be able to do
Speaker 1: what they want. And you know, she talks about the
Speaker 1: creating a new curriculum for PACIFICA students and putting it
Speaker 1: in a context that they understand or not they understand
Speaker 1: that suits them, I should say, And it's always going
Speaker 1: to be the case that if you have kids who
Speaker 1: are coming to something and they are having to understand
Speaker 1: a new context for it as well as the new content,
Speaker 1: they're going to be doing double the mental workload. So
Speaker 1: being able to make it more accessible is not just
Speaker 1: about taking the same curriculum and putting it in front
Speaker 1: of new kids. It's about finding new ways of engaging
Speaker 1: them and then giving them wrap around support so that
Speaker 1: they can try and fail and explore and create and
Speaker 1: build in all of those kinds of things as well,
Speaker 1: Like just restructuring the school curriculum in minor ways is
Speaker 1: not actually going to make the major shift that we
Speaker 1: might need.
Speaker 2: No, And I was just blown away. I knew about
Speaker 2: OMG tech winding up, but when Michelle was sort of
Speaker 2: listing off all of those other organizations that have wound
Speaker 2: up or have had massive budget cuts. It's really worrying
Speaker 2: if we want to build this high tech workforce, all
Speaker 2: of these opportunities, whether they be with Mari and Pacifica
Speaker 2: or just in general in schools, a lot of that
Speaker 2: stuff is not going to exist anymore. It's the same
Speaker 2: with digital equity stuff around subsidizing broadband for poorer households.
Speaker 2: A lot of that stuff is getting cut as well.
Speaker 2: So I think we're at risk, and times are tough
Speaker 2: across the economy, but we're at risk of really taking
Speaker 2: a step backwards in terms of having those opportunities for
Speaker 2: people to really get exposed to STEM subjects and therefore
Speaker 2: want to pursue a career in those topics. But great
Speaker 2: to see what Michelle's doing and nanogirl Labs, and we'll
Speaker 2: be seeing a lot more of her, including on our
Speaker 2: YouTube channel around artificial intelligence as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great to have people like that. It's a
Speaker 1: pity to see all those cuts and to see less spaces.
Speaker 1: A central city library has this awesome maker space, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the suburban libraries don't have those kinds
Speaker 1: of things, or if they do, they're not really that
Speaker 1: well known. We could be doing so much more as
Speaker 1: a society to provide these amazing spaces in communal areas
Speaker 1: that don't require huge expense for people to just go
Speaker 1: and try and be well.
Speaker 2: We could be our Central Library in Wellington's a shell
Speaker 2: at the moment, it's going to cost hundreds of millions
Speaker 2: of dollars, so there's no getting away from experience there unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's true. Well, that's it for the Business
Speaker 1: of Tech this week. Thanks so much to Nano Girl
Speaker 1: Michelle Dickinson for coming on the show. We've put links
Speaker 1: to her various ventures, including her Ai Life Hacks YouTube
Speaker 1: series in the show notes.
Speaker 2: The Business off Tech is on all major podcast platforms
Speaker 2: as well as iHeartRadio, where you can stream every episode.
Speaker 2: Show notes are in the Tech section on the Business
Speaker 2: Desk website. Leave us a review and share it with
Speaker 2: your friends and colleagues.
Speaker 1: Get in touch with your feedback, ideas, topic and guest suggestions.
Speaker 1: You can email me ben at business test dot com
Speaker 1: dot ben Z. We'll find both of us on LinkedIn
Speaker 1: and x and.
Speaker 2: You'll find the next episode of the Business of Tech
Speaker 2: in your podcast app bright and early next Thursday.
Speaker 1: Until then, have a great week.