1,400 Kiwi firms to join AI revolution

Kia ora! Welcome to New Zealand’s weekly roundup of AI news, events, jobs and AI education.

The AI world continues to shift rapidly. Anthropic's CEO predicted AI will handle 90% of coding tasks in 3-6 months (a shift already occurring in Silicon Valley), and Manus AI took the AI community by storm through bringing AI Agents to life.

Highlights from this week’s edition:
🚀 BNZ to boost Kiwi firms with AI
🧠 AI to change democracy
🔋 Auckland Uni fixes battery waste
👨 Mike’s personal AI stack
🎭 Hollywood stars join AI debate
🤖 The Manus AI hype

Massive shoutout to the subscribers who chatted about AI with me last week! The uptake was phenomenal and feedback much appreciated.

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AI ECOSYSTEM

🚀 BNZ AI Academy Boosts Kiwi Businesses

📣 Word On The Street: BNZ scales AI-driven Growth Academy to 1,400 Kiwi businesses after successful 250-company pilot last year.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Program combines hands-on workshops with AI tools that help owners develop actual growth strategies.

• Participants gain access to D/srupt's platform (a BNZ partner) that evaluates business opportunities, identifies growth potential, and helps with funding.

• Applications opened March 10 for the 12-month program spanning workshops and digital tools. Access online and in-person across 16 locations.

🏘️ Community Noticeboard: Our economy thrives when small businesses succeed. This program tackles NZ's productivity puzzle by democratising high-level planning previously reserved for corporates. When 1,400 local firms can access enterprise-grade AI without enterprise-grade price tags, we're looking at billions added to our collective prosperity through smarter decision-making.

AI CRIME

🏴‍☠️ AI Supercharges Kiwi Cybercrime Surge

📣 Word On The Street: Kordia report reveals 59% of NZ businesses hit by cyber-attacks last year, with AI becoming the new frontier of cybercrime.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Email phishing caused 43% of attacks, with AI enabling highly scalable tactics and personalised messages that mimic writing styles.

• Not a single cyber defence measure was implemented by 20% of businesses, despite AI lowering the barrier to entry for attackers.

• “Shadow AI” usage by employees accessing tools like ChatGPT without guidelines has led to 6% of breaches exposing sensitive company data.

🏘️ Community Noticeboard: Our collective cybersecurity posture directly impacts New Zealand's economic resilience and global reputation. Even the smallest Kiwi businesses now face sophisticated threats previously reserved for corporates, creating a widening gap between attack sophistication and our preparedness. Despite security tools never having been easier to access, appropriate training remains a critical missing link in our digital defence.

COUNCIL AI

🧠 Council Votes Yes to AI Working Group in Canterbury

📣 Word On The Street: Canterbury's youngest councillor champions AI working group to modernise local government and put voting power in citizens' phones.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Councillor Davies believes young voters will embrace democracy if technology makes participation easier through mobile applications.

• Five councillors will form a working group with AI experts by April 2, exploring how AI can improve council processes and citizen engagement.

• Not all councillors support the initiative, with concerns raised about AI's hefty energy consumption and cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

🏘️ Community Noticeboard: The real win would be revitalising democratic participation, especially among younger Kiwis who expect digital engagement but currently feel disconnected from council decisions. Rather than just moaning about rates bills, imagine voting on spending priorities through your phone. This could become a blueprint for councils nationwide, delivering faster services, transparent decision-making, and direct input on spending – making democracy more accessible.

🥝 Other Kiwi Bites

🏠 US Giant Acquires Kiwi AI PropTech Startup. ListAssist uses Natural Language Processing for property searches and was acquired by Inside Real Estate. Founder Chris McGoldrick proves NZ punches above its weight in AI.
3-min read.

🌿 Green Growth Opportunity. NZ's renewable energy advantage positions us to lead in sustainable AI, with data centres powered by clean energy that could tap into China's clean tech growth.
3-min read.

🔋 Uni of Akl Tackles Battery Waste. Experts are teaming up with German researchers to slash the 10-30% of mobile batteries binned before reaching consumers in a five-year partnership.
1-min read.

💼 FMA Tackles AI Risks. NZ’s financial regulator is getting ahead of AI challenges through enhanced governance frameworks. FMA’s Daniel Trinder outlined how the FMA plans to balance tech advancement with oversight.
4-min read.

🛍️ What’s Left On The Shelf

• NZ’s Hendrix partners with Aus’ Heidi AI medical scribe.
  3-min read.

• Akl Design Week conference: “It’s time to take the AI leap”.
  4-min read.

• Uni of Akl using AI to improve property valuation models.
  2-min read.

• NZ experts: Broaden breast screening age by 10 years, and use AI.
  2-min read.

• Reddit user is hunting for a Wgtn AI Automation Vendor.
  Get in touch.

• Why Nelson is becoming NZ’s AI capital.
  The Listener (paywall).

🦘 From Across the Ditch

🐨 Smart Cameras Save Wildlife. AI-powered detection systems are being rolled out across NSW to alert drivers to nearby animals.
30-sec watch.

🛒 Smart Trolleys Roll Into Coles. The Aussie supermarket giant is introducing AI-powered shopping carts with cameras and scales that scan groceries right into your bags while displaying a running total. Money saver or money drainer?
1-min watch.

🔍 Financial Firms Face AI Governance Vacuum. ASIC examined 624 AI use cases across 23 Australian financial licensees and discovered only 12 had policies referencing fairness concepts like inclusivity and accessibility.
4-min read.

🏥 Hospital Discharge Predictions Save Millions. A 28-day trial with AI tech at an Adelaide hospital saved nearly half a million dollars by optimising patient flow and reducing readmissions.
2-min read.

🖼️ Tech Colonialism Hits Indigenous Art. Adobe's platform hosts AI-generated "Indigenous Australian" images with random body markings that homogenise over 250 distinct language groups into meaningless stereotypes. This raises serious questions about how indigenous artworks are used to train algorithms.
3-min read.

🌍 The News from Global

💡 Tech's Climate Paradox. Global AI infrastructure investment soars, but so do energy demands. Can AI help balance power grid efficiency and accelerate discovering new materials that outweigh data centres' carbon footprint?
3-min read.

🧠 China's AI Head Start. Six-year-olds are learning AI as part of a national curriculum overhaul affecting over 220M students. Meanwhile, NZ educators still debate whether digital tech belongs in education.
3-min read.

🎭 Hollywood Celebrities Enter The AI Chat. Hollywood stars including Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt voice their opinions on AI and ChatGPT, bringing mainstream attention to tech that's reshaping creative industries.
2-min watch.

🔍 APAC Is The Region To Watch AI Adoption. New research shows APAC businesses are rapidly closing the AI adoption gap with North America, with mature companies enjoying 25% faster time-to-market using GenAI.
5-min read.

🌏 Tech Updates You Should Know

• OpenAI: Accuses DeepSeek of being "state-sponsored" while urging US government ban, claiming security risks; simultaneously enables enterprises to build custom AI agents for web searching and autonomous actions.

• Google: Advocates for weaker copyright laws in Trump's "AI Plan" submission, arguing for fair use of copyrighted training data; unveils Gemma 3 model supporting 35+ languages that runs efficiently on minimal hardware.

• Manus AI - “the Deep Seek moment for AI agents” (and it's blowing minds): Last week, a Chinese startup released Manus AI with all the classic hype mechanics – limited invites and influencer endorsements. Beyond the hype, here's an overview of Manus AI:

  • Manus combines Claude (from Anthropic) and Qwen (from Alibaba) models with browser control across 29 different actions, creating the first truly autonomous agent capable of taking over entire job functions – from managing 50 social media accounts (video below) to running complete business development operations. Its interface documents every step of the AI's thinking process with exceptional clarity, all without human intervention.

• Most mind-blowing of all: the Claude 3.7 model powering Manus reportedly created "Anus AI" – an open source version of itself – demonstrating how quickly these systems can replicate and improve themselves.

🎙️ Our Take: Despite the excitement, the tech community remains divided on Manus AI. Having watched numerous demonstrations, it's clear the tool isn't perfect – frequently stalling, crashing, and showing significant limitations. Yet in other examples, it operates brilliantly in the background, enabling users to focus elsewhere while it works autonomously.

All in all, this is a watershed moment in autonomous agent development. We're witnessing decades of progress at lightning speed.

📅 AI Events in New Zealand

Take yourself along to an in-person event (13 this week!) to trade ideas with other AI enthusiasts.

This week’s featured event:

• Wellington - Working for the Bots - CX in the World of AI, 18 Mar: Wellington tech minds explore who'll really control customer experiences when AI sits between businesses and customers. Free event.

💼  AI Roles Around Aotearoa

Picklist of 🌶️ HOT 🌶️ roles in AI.

• Computer Vision Analyst - Auckland Transport, Auckland

• Senior Manager Specialist Oversight (Models & AI) - ASB, Auckland

• Content Marketing Manager - Volpara Health, Remote

📚️ Levelling Up With AI

I've nearly completely ditched Google (I’m down to around 5 searches daily).

AI tools now handle 90% of my work. And the nine subscribers of The AI Corner that I spoke to this week all asked the same thing: "How do I use AI for daily tasks?". Especially for research.

My AI toolkit is dead simple, see the list here.

👉 Watch this 5-min clip on the different AI tools I use.

Still getting used to AI? Don't panic.

1️⃣ Start with only ChatGPT or Claude
2️⃣ Master it for a week
3️⃣ When ready, add one new tool to your arsenal from this list

🤦‍♂️ AI Fail Of The Week

We all love AI, but we all know it’s far from perfect…

That’s all for this week!

Email me here (or hit reply!) if you want to share any feedback, or let me know about a news story, event you’re hosting, or job you’re advertising.

Until next week,

👋 Mike