AI adoption in NZ healthcare & NZQA

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

Excited to see double-digit interest from people keen to be part of a NZ AI Digital Community per last week’s newsletter. Thanks for jumping in and sharing your thoughts—great to hear what you’re looking for!

Now comes the fun part: figuring out where we focus our energy next. More to come.

There’s tonnes of creative AI experiments popping up online. Undoubtedly our favourite this week was the below viral deepfake mocking Trump’s tariff promises about bringing manufacturing back to the US, viewed over 16 million times and spreading fast across US and Chinese social media.

This week’s highlights:

🌱 Smartphones help with pasture management
🩺 AI to transform Kiwi healthcare
🎓 NZQA trials AI marking in schools
🎲 AI scam targets Māori with deepfakes
🛡️ AI shields Jewish communities
✈️ AI reduces Jetstar cancellations
🗺️ NZ missing from global AI maps

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NZ HEALTHCARE

🩺 AI systems making their way into Healthcare

📣 Word On The Street: 65,000 patients stuck in four-month waitlists are about to experience a radical healthcare transformation.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Medow Health's AI co-pilot is being rolled out across NZ to automate medical reporting with scribe transcription technology, freeing doctors to see more patients.

• The Ministry of Health is developing a precision health AI strategy bridging technology and cultural safety to improve healthcare outcomes.

• AI-powered genomics tech will unveil genetic risk profiles in NZ, using machine learning to analyse and interpret complex medical and health data.

🏘️ Our Take: Our healthcare system is getting a smart upgrade. By reducing administrative burdens through AI, we could save millions annually in healthcare spending. For Māori communities, this isn't just about efficiency - it's about creating targeted health solutions that respect cultural perspectives and address long-standing healthcare disparities. AI isn't replacing doctors, it's giving them superpowers to deliver more targeted, efficient care for all New Zealanders, with a particular focus on providing equitable, culturally-informed medical support.

AI EDUCATION

🎓 NZQA trials AI to mark Year 10 writing tests

📣 Word On The Street: NZQA will use AI to mark Year 10 writing tests this May, while warning about students potentially using AI to cheat on internal assessments.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Trial with 36,000 students showed AI marking matched human accuracy at 80%.

• Humans will double-check 20,000 assessments near the pass/fail boundary.

• Results will be returned faster, giving failing students more prep time.

🏘️ Our Take: The double-edged AI sword is transforming our education landscape. NZQA's adoption of automated marking aims to deliver faster results for struggling students, while simultaneously raising important questions about whether we should shift more assessment to external exams that are harder to game with AI tools. The real challenge lies in how the system handles Te Reo Māori, Pacific languages, and cultural references.

PRECISION FARMING

🌱 AI turns smartphones into pasture measurement tools

📣 Word On The Street: Kiwi agtech startup Aimer Farming launches Vision tool that assesses pasture cover via smartphone with 90% accuracy in just five seconds.

🔍 Zooming In:

• AI-powered systems could boost farm profits by $400/ha, adding up to $80k annually for average dairy farms.

• The tech creates "digital twins" of paddocks to predict pasture growth up to 21 days in advance.

• After testing across 15,000 video scans in all seasons, the tool is now ready for national rollout.

🏘️ Our Take: This innovation directly tackles our dairy sector's biggest challenges – rising costs, labour shortages, and environmental demands. By turning ordinary smartphones into powerful farm management tools, Aimer Vision helps Kiwi farmers boost productivity without additional staff, keeping our agricultural exports competitive while building the world's largest pasture database.

🥝 Other Kiwi Bites

🤖 Douglas Pharmaceuticals robotic takeover. 13 AI robots boost efficiency at the West Auckland facility, processing 450 bin deliveries hourly and keeping 700 jobs.
MUST SEE 2-min watch.

🎲 AI gambling scam targets Māori. Jenny-May Clarkson warns of fake AI ads impersonating her, intensifying gambling risks for Māori, who are already 3x more vulnerable to gambling harm.
ALSO MUST SEE 8-min watch.

📋 AI enters Ministry of Social Development with controversial amendment. The Ministry plans to use automated systems for benefit checks, with advocates warning of potential marginalisation of vulnerable groups.
25-min listen.

⚖️ AI transforms Kiwi legal sector. NZ barrister Josh McBride says AI boosts productivity dramatically, giving small firms (90% of our legal industry) cheaper, faster, and safer legal services.
3-min read.

📝 AI boosts governance, not replaces it. Entrepreneur Ben Kepes urges Kiwi boards to ditch fear-mongering and responsibly use AI note-takers, but to tread carefully about considering it a replacement for human expertise.
3-min read.

🛍️ What’s Left On The Shelf

• Study on AI in cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer) diagnostics. Live now, closes May 9.
  Research Survey.

• AIApply backlash grows as spam CVs flood NZ job market.
  2-min read.

• Global AI study uses NZ tech to decode how kids write.
  3-min read.

• NZ Law Society partners with LexisNexis on AI research project.
  4-min read.

🦘 From Across the Ditch

✈️ AI cuts Jetstar cancellations. Jetstar uses AI to spot maintenance issues before take-off. That’s helped them stop 40+ cancellations and cut tech faults by 93%
2-min watch.

🚦 AI eases Adelaide’s traffic pain. Four AI-powered cameras now watch Adelaide’s busiest roads, cutting congestion and crashes by auto-tweaking traffic lights.
2-min watch.

💬 This AI helps fix therapy gaps. UpLift AI handles admin, flags risks, and fills the space between therapy sessions, supporting clinicians where the system can’t.
2-min read.

📊 Canva’s new AI, awkward timing. Canva’s latest AI suite boosts automation but the Aussie giant also quietly laid off staff who built the tech.
2-min read.

🗣️ AI kiosk handles council questions. Sunshine Coast Council is trialling ‘Laura’, an AI avatar in Maroochydore, trained to answer queries about bins & maintenance.
2-min read.

🩺 AI joins Aussie lung diagnostics. Lungscreen Australia is using Annalise.ai to help detect up to 124 findings on chest x-rays, speeding up diagnosis and supporting more accurate decisions.
1-min read.

🏃 AI scouts Olympic talent. Queensland launched an AI app to spot future Olympians through 12 at-home physical tests. It’s the first tool of its kind for para-athletes too.
5-min listen.

🌍 The News from Global

🛠️ Tariffs may drive AI acceleration. With US labour costs rising, companies may turn to automation instead of reshoring jobs, especially with robotics and AI now far more capable than in 2018.
3-min read.

⚠️ UN calls for AI guardrails. Leaders at the Geneva AI Security Summit say flawed military AI systems are already creating global risk, and without regulation, life-and-death decisions could be left to dangerously untested systems.
3-min read.

🛡️ AI security startup tackles Jewish hate crime threat. Rabbi Yossi Eliav’s NYC startup combines computer vision and live oversight, already securing nearly 100 institutions as Jewish communities face 60% of NYC’s reported hate crimes.
3-min read.

🧾 Shopify mandates AI by default. Teams must prove AI can’t complete tasks before asking for new hires, and AI usage now directly impacts performance reviews, in one of the strongest public stances yet on making AI core to operations.
3-min read.

💬 Meta takes aim at AI bias. It promises fewer refusals, faster responses, and minimal political lean, but restrictive licences and benchmark questions suggest it’s not as open as it looks.
4-min read.

🌏 Tech Updates You Should Know

• Google: Unveils Agent Development Kit to simplify building multi-agent AI systems, plus a new Agent-to-Agent Protocol for smarter AI collaboration. Gemini 2.5 Pro gets deep research mode topping OpenAI’s deep research capabilities. New Ironwood TPU hints at next-gen chip power.

• OpenAI: GPT-5 delayed; o3 and o4-mini dropping soon. ChatGPT gets memory to recall your chats (except in EU/UK). Countersues Musk in escalating legal saga.

• Microsoft: Copilot expands on iPhones, now handles browsing, booking, and real-time visual search, nudging into everyday assistant territory.

• Nvidia: Strikes deal to keep H20 chip exports to China, amid Trump pressure. Promises major AI data centre investment in the US.

• DeepSeek: Partners with Tsinghua University to develop advanced reasoning and gears up for its R2 model, aiming to raise the bar on open-weight performance.

📅 AI Events in New Zealand

13 events taking place across our cities and online this week. We’ve also noticed an influx of regional events that are popping up over the coming months, but unfortunately none taking place this week!

This week’s featured event - Our biggest museum jumping on the AI train. 🚆

• Online - Te Papa Experimental Projects with Generative AI, 17 Apr: Katie Cooper and Gareth Watkins share how Te Papa’s using tools like ChatGPT to reshape storytelling. Ideal for museum and culture pros. Free entry.

💼  AI Roles Around Aotearoa

Picklist of 🌶️ HOT 🌶️ roles in AI.

• Senior Strategist - AKQA, Auckland

• Senior Modern Workplace Engineer - IRD, Wellington

• Innovation Insights Analyst - Christchurch City Council, Christchurch

🤦‍♂️ AI Fail Of The Week

We all love AI, but it’s certainly 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