AI skills to become the ultimate job security in NZ

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

China just claimed to host the world’s first humanoid kickboxing competition.

We're not sold that this was a real event, but in the wake of the world's first robots completing a marathon in China the other month, is robotic rugby be on the horizon?

Happy reading ✌️

This week’s highlights:

✈️ AI takes flight at NZ airports
📚 AI tool tackles literacy decline
🚨 Robot cops proposed for Hamilton
💰 South Australia commits $28M to AI
🛒 Foodstuffs facial recognition approved
📊 Aussie government launches AI tracker
💼 Welly startup scores Silicon Valley backing
🎙️ John-Daniel Trask: the future of AI agents

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AI ECOSYSTEM

💼 Despite weak job market, 2.1% of roles require AI-related skills

📣 Word On The Street: PwC analysis of job ads shows NZ leading sectors demand AI skills at unprecedented rates.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Health sector dominates overall employment at 18.5%, but lags in AI adoption below 2%.

• AI skills demanded for AI-exposed jobs (AI-exposed job: contains many tasks in which AI can be used) evolving 1.27x faster than non-AI roles nationwide.

• Professional services and manufacturing remain slowest AI adopters with under 1% penetration.

🏘️ Our Take: Despite economic headwinds reducing total job postings, AI-exposed positions show resilience with smaller declines than traditional roles. This trend suggests employers prioritise AI capabilities even during tighter hiring, making these skills increasingly valuable for job security and career progression. The data shows AI creating more opportunities than it eliminates, with augmented roles growing 71% versus automated roles at 61%. Kiwis in finance and education face the biggest AI skills shake-up, with job requirements changing 27% faster than traditional roles. These insights suggest we're building an AI-enhanced workforce rather than replacing humans, creating opportunities for upskilling across industries. To the points we made in last week’s edition, this revolution isn’t necessarily leading to instant job erosion, as reported by scaremongering headlines.

LOCAL COUNCIL

🚨 Robot cops proposed to patrol Hamilton streets after hours

📣 Word On The Street: City councillor proposes AI surveillance bots for CBD after seeing China's street patrol tech in action.

🔍 Zooming In:

• New Zealand imported its first security robot "Harriet" in 2018 but never deployed commercially.

• Singapore's Xavier bots pack 7 cameras detecting smoking, bike parking, and gatherings.

• Hamilton's CitySafe patrols end at 8pm when residents say problems start.

🏘️ Our Take: The economic and social case is compelling. AI surveillance costs $13-15 per hour versus $25-30 for human guards. Robots operate 20 hours before recharging. No sick days, fatigue, or mood swings. Other cities worldwide report 40% reductions in antisocial behaviour after deployment, real-time data feeds help police respond faster to genuine emergencies, and human security staff avoid dangerous situations.

Although, the privacy concerns run deep. Civil liberties groups call this the "dystopian world" pathway; facial recognition misidentifies Māori and Pacific people at higher rates; and false positives create harassment scenarios for innocent citizens. Also, algorithms trained overseas miss cultural context entirely. What counts as "antisocial behaviour" will become subjective programming.

Technology creep starts with good intentions. Today it's drug detection, tomorrow it's monitoring political gatherings. Hamilton needs genuine solutions for Garden Place safety concerns. But surveillance without accountability breeds different problems. Other councils across New Zealand will watch Hamilton's decision closely.

EDUCATION SECTOR

📚 Writers’ Toolbox AI tool reversing student literacy decline

📣 Word On The Street: NZ schools using locally-built AI see dramatic literacy gains while national results continue declining.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Homegrown writing programme reverses educational decline with 74% drop in struggling writers at local schools.

• Māori students at Thornton School saw incomplete sentences plummet from 47% to 4%.

• St Peter Chanel lifted Year 8 students from 50% to 83% writing at expected standard.

🏘️ Our Take: While most headlines scream about educational decline and teacher burnout, Writer's Toolbox drives a different outcome. The homegrown AI literacy programme transforms outcomes where traditional methods failed students, with the numbers speaking for themselves. The programme teaches literacy principles instead of providing answers, building deeper thinking skills that boost student confidence across all subjects.

The programme's success with Māori learners demonstrates how well-designed technology supports cultural equity, building essential skills for New Zealand's knowledge economy. Teachers have also reported increased confidence with clearer instructional pathways and students now enjoying writing with better task self-management skills.

We're diving deeper into AI education transformation in our upcoming podcast episode with an AI integration teacher, revealing how teachers can successfully implement these game-changing technologies.

🎙️ Latest from The AI Corner podcast

Our next guest is John-Daniel Trask, CEO of Raygun and Autohive.

John-Daniel Trask unpacks how AI agents could solve NZ’s productivity crisis, why tiny teams will win the future, and what Kiwi businesses must do to stay relevant in the AI age.

Listen on Spotify or YouTube 🎧

Subscribe to The AI Corner Podcast on Spotify and YouTube to be notified of new episodes.

🥝 Other Kiwi Bites

🥝 Kiwi AI conquers Aussie healthcare. Wellington-based Volpara's breast density software now screens 1 million Australian women annually, with new national guidelines validating their AI approach.
3-min read.

🛒 Foodstuffs facial recognition approved. Privacy Commissioner okays supermarket trial that scanned 226 million faces, but bias concerns for Māori and Pacific people remain.
4-min read.

💼 Wellington startup scores Silicon Valley backing. ProjectWorks raised US$12m from Ten Coves Capital, bringing total funding to NZ$25m as it builds AI burnout detection tools.
3-min read.

✈️ AI takes flight at NZ airports. Civil Aviation Authority rolls out smart passenger flow tech that predicts crowding, optimises staff allocation, and delivers real-time journey updates to travellers.
2-min read.

⚡ Smart traps deployed. New Zealand's AT520-AI uses artificial intelligence to photograph and eliminate specific pests across 25km networks. Breakthrough technology positions NZ as leader in automated conservation solutions.
3-min read.

🛍️ What’s Left On The Shelf

• 86% of Kiwi firms can't unlock AI due to immature cloud infrastructure.
  2-min read.

• 95% of ANZ manufacturers have already invested in GenAI.
  3-min read.

• Open Polytech launches Introduction to GenAI Micro-Credential.
  3-min read.

• Netsafe: AI use intensifying scams.
  2-min read.

🦘 From Across the Ditch

📚 Aussies get free AI teacher training. Microsoft and Education Services Australia launched free GenAI modules for teachers, targeting 1 million people across the Tasman by 2026.
4-min read.

🏛️ Aussie politicians clash over AI readiness. Liberal frontbencher warns Australia risks becoming "uncompetitive" while government sticks to "outdated thinking" on workplace transformation.
2-min read.

💰 South Australia commits $28M to AI. The state targets healthcare and policing with proof-of-value trials over four years, creating five new full-time positions.
3-min read.

📊 Aussie government launches AI business tracker. The National AI Centre's new dashboard helps SMEs see how competitors use AI, with free webinar demonstrating the tool on 18 June.
Webinar link.

🚀 Australia's first AI supercomputer incoming. Monash's $60M Maveric project aims to close the gap with global leaders, funded by their $308M surplus from international student fees and research revenue.
2-min read.

🌍 The News from Global

🇺🇸 America builds AI chip fortress. The largest foreign investment in US history gives America complete semiconductor independence through TSMC's Arizona facilities. Advanced packaging technology, once dismissed but now vital for AI processors, moves from Taiwan-only production to dual-continent manufacturing amid US-China tensions
7-min read.

🔍 China weaponises AI to hide history. Classified training manuals show Chinese platforms using machine learning to automatically flag and remove any Tiananmen Square content, including symbolic representations. The leaked documents reveal how AI chatbots like DeepSeek refuse to discuss the 1989 massacre, raising concerns about contaminated global training data.
5-min read.

📚 Kiwi university enters Chinese market. Chongqing's Ministry of Education approved University of Otago partnership alongside five other international collaborations from Russia and Germany. The focus on technology education aligns with China's aggressive investment in AI, smart manufacturing, and electric vehicles.
3-min read.

🌏 Tech Updates You Should Know

• Microsoft: Fundamentally restructuring Windows around hybrid AI architecture that dynamically routes workloads between local NPUs (Neural Processing Units) and cloud compute; established 40+ TOPS NPU benchmark for Copilot+ PCs.

• OpenAI: Imminent o3-pro model release confirmed to select customers; leaked internal documents reveal "super assistant" vision with T-shaped capabilities for managing calendars, booking travel, and navigating software; building proprietary search index to bypass traditional engines.

• Apple: WWDC 2025 expected to disappoint on AI front per Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, planning "gap year" strategy for stronger 2026 AI reveal.

• Meta: Launching AI-powered ad automation by 2026 that creates entire campaigns from product images and budgets; hit 1B monthly Meta AI users.

• Anthropic: Launched Claude Gov for US national security with modified safety guardrails; cut Windsurf's AI model access after OpenAI acquisition; upgraded Claude Pro (code and research).

• Google: Released AI Edge Gallery app enabling Android users to run AI models locally; Veo 3 expanded to 71 countries with massive demand; updated Gemini 2.5 Pro with enhanced coding capabilities; added public sharing to NotebookLM.

• DeepSeek: Released R1-0528 model achieving 87.5% on AIME reasoning test; faced allegations of training on Google's Gemini data.

• Perplexity: Hit 780M queries in May with 20%+ monthly growth; launched Perplexity Labs productivity tools for Pro subscribers; Samsung reportedly close to investment and smartphone integration deal.

📚️ Levelling Up With AI

1️⃣ ChatGPT hits warp speed: 400 million weekly users doubled to 800 million in just 60 days. That's 10% of Earth using one app. Sam Altman hints the real number might already be a billion.
Link to graphic.

2️⃣ Abstract Intelligence has arrived: John-Daniel Trask calls the ChatGPT moment a once-in-a-generation shift beyond normal tech evolution. Deep dive with one of NZ's leading AI minds in our latest podcast episode.
41-second clip.

📚️ AI Courses - Coming Soon 📚️ 

Your go-to guide for AI learning.

We’ve had a bunch of community members ask:“Where do I start with AI courses?”

We want to answer the call.

🎓 Running a course? Reply to let us know.

📅 AI Events in New Zealand

We're sitting at just 15 events this week — one of our quietest weeks in the AI events space. Quality over quantity though!

This week’s featured event:

• Dataiku Explorer Series: AI Agents - Auckland, Wednesday: Hands-on workshop builds real AI agents for business professionals, 9:30 AM-12:30 PM at Hilton Auckland.

💼  AI Roles Around Aotearoa

Picklist of 🌶️ HOT 🌶️ roles in AI.

• Head of AI, Mole Map New Zealand & Australia - Auckland

• Automation Engineer, NZME - Auckland

• Director, Data & AI, EY - Christchurch

🤦‍♂️ AI Fail Of The Week

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

That’s all for this week!

Got news, events, or jobs? Hit reply - we love spotlighting what's happening across Aotearoa!

Until next week,

👋 Mike & Erin