New Research: NZ & Aus Falling Behind In AI

PLUS, How To Use AI For Research

Author

Mike Bayly
March 24, 2025

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

"In a nutshell, we're too slow".

Another week, another headline shows NZ and Australia falling behind in AI. Lenovo's new CIO Playbook exposes a brutal truth: 58% of ANZ companies have zero AI plans or are just beginning to think about it.

This is exactly why The AI Corner exists — to turn the tide on losing ground in emerging technologies.

Highlights from this week’s edition:
🧠 NZ AI Training Programme Surge
🚨 Kiwi Tackles Deepfake Porn Crisis
🚔 Smart Cameras To Catch Drunks
💊 $70M Aus Uni Startup Success
🔒 Current State Of Aussie AI Regs
🤥 AI Accuses Man Of Murder
📖 How To Use AI For research

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AI ECOSYSTEM

🧠 Kiwi Data & AI Training Boom

People in a training room.

People in a training room. Source: BNZ Media

📣 Word On The Street: Three training programmes plus an AI testing lab launch as Lenovo report shows Kiwi businesses will quadruple AI investment in 2025 and reveals only 10% of Australasian firms have fully adopted AI.

🔍 Zooming In:

🏘️ Our Take: Training initiatives couldn't arrive at a better time. Despite ambitious AI investment plans, Lenovo's report reveals data quality as our biggest barrier to AI success, with misalignment between IT and business leaders not far behind. With only 21% of ANZ CIOs having implemented AI governance policies and businesses aiming for a 3.6-fold ROI from AI projects, these learning pathways offer key skills development for businesses of all sizes, including critical modules focused on AI literacy and data governance.

MILITARY AI

🔫 NZ's Missing Voice In The Killer Robot Debate

A prototype of Palantir’s AI-powered truck for smart targeting, delivered under a $300m contract to the Pentagon.

A prototype of Palantir’s AI-powered truck for smart targeting, delivered under a $300m contract to the Pentagon. Photo: Palantir

📣 Word On The Street: As the Pentagon rushes to embed AI in warfare decisions, NZ sends mixed signals by calling for regulations while joining robot war games.

🔍 Zooming In:

  • NZDF has 30 personnel in California desert exercises testing "human-machine integration" with robots designed to "take the first risks" instead of humans.

  • Australia's Professor Toby Walsh says NZ, once a leader in arms control, is "not engaging actively" in crucial military AI regulation discussions.

  • While our troops observe US robots that "go ahead of infantry to surveil and kill," our government backed “voluntary restraints” over international bans.

🏘️ Our Take: The third warfare revolution is happening with or without our input. Our historical leadership in nuclear disarmament contrasts sharply with our minimal participation in AI weapons discussions, potentially undermining our credibility as a voice for ethical military restraint. While we continue participating in overseas military exercises with cutting-edge AI systems, the NZDF also plans to cut 374 civilian roles back home. The balance between maintaining military partnerships and leading on ethical guardrails around AI weapons will determine if we remain relevant in shaping how these technologies transform global security.

NEW ZEALANDERS AND AI

⚠️ Mind the AI Gap: Kiwis Cautious but Curious

Source: InternetNZ

📣 Word On The Street: InternetNZ survey reveals a whopping 68% of Kiwis worry about AI's potential for misuse while government regulations lag behind.

🔍 Zooming In:

  • Only 10% of Kiwis feel more excited than concerned about AI's rapid development in our daily lives.

  • NZ ranks a disappointing 40th on the Oxford University Government AI Readiness Index, far behind our allies.

  • 73% of us admit to knowing only 'a little' about AI, with 12% knowing nothing at all about the technology.

🏘️ Our Take: Our AI wariness reflects a trust deficit that's growing alongside the tech itself. Kiwi businesses face global disadvantages as overseas competitors embed AI with confidence while we hesitate. Our 40th place AI readiness ranking costs us economic opportunities across multiple sectors. The solution isn't slower innovation but faster regulatory frameworks that match technology's pace. Without strategic action, we risk becoming passive consumers in an economy where we should be active creators.

🥝 Other Kiwi Bites

🚨 Kiwi Takes On Deepfake Porn Crisis. Bloomberg reporter Olivia Carville's new podcast "Levittown" exposes how dozens of women had social media photos stolen and manipulated into pornography. Her Polk Award-winning work highlights growing AI threats affecting Kiwi social media users daily.
1-min read.

🔄 Big Kiwi Businesses Orchestrate AI Revolution. Fonterra, Air NZ, and Toyota Finance are integrating AI systems that learn from every interaction, creating self-reinforcing intelligence networks. Companies mastering this approach will write the rules for entire industries.
3-min read.

🚔 AI Cameras Target Speedsters Today, Drunk Drivers Tomorrow. Acusensus runs NZ's mobile speed cameras under NZTA's $100m contract while testing drunk driver detection in the UK. This evolution signals a major shift on the horizon for Kiwi road enforcement.
3-min read.

✈️ AI Takes The Cockpit At Air NZ. Our national carrier's five-year TCS partnership will overhaul 600+ digital applications with AI as a central focus to enhancing travel experiences for 15 million passengers annually and cementing NZ's spot on the global aviation tech map.
3-min read.

🛍️ What’s Left On The Shelf

  • Te Heke Mai launches Ruru: AI career coach for job-hunting Kiwis.
    1-min read.

  • Massey rolls out AI survey to shape NZ education digital future.
    Link.

  • Russian bots infiltrate Māori news site in Kremlin propaganda campaign.
    10-min listen.

🦘 From Across the Ditch

💊 Uni Side Hustle Hits $70M Valuation. Three Melbourne mates have built AI pharmacy software and landed a $17M capital injection—their platform digitally tracks controlled drugs like methadone and uses AI to send patients prescription reminders.
2-min read.

🤖 Aussies Launch AI Legal Helper. Australia's first AI-powered complaints platform "Hear Me Out" has processed over 400 grievances during a six-month NSW pilot, with plans to expand nationwide starting with Victoria.
3-min read.

🔒 Australia's AI Framework Still Developing. Despite lacking formal AI legislation, Australia has implemented a Voluntary AI Safety Standard with 10 key guardrails while mandatory regulations for high-risk systems remain in development until 2025.
2-min read.

🧠 Queensland's Health AI Blueprint. Australia's healthcare AI push takes shape with QLD establishing a dedicated AI framework featuring structured assurance processes, risk thresholds, and a centralised AI solution registry.
7-min read.

📰 Aussie Newsrooms Divided On AI Adoption. News Corp leads the pack with its new NewsGPT model while competitors cautiously establish boundaries—revealing stark differences in how Australian media outlets approach AI in journalism.
3-min read.

🚀 Australia's AI Boom. LinkedIn's 2025 Skills list shows AI literacy topping the charts among 16M members, with AI talent hiring surging a massive 240% over eight years.
1-min read.

🌍 The News from Global

🎬 Hollywood Pushes Back Against AI Giants. +400 creatives including Taika Waititi have signed an open letter urging the Trump administration not to weaken copyright protections for AI training of creative works. Google and OpenAI are seeking exemptions to freely use copyrighted works without permission or compensation, threatening a $229 billion industry supporting 2.3 million jobs.
3-min read.

🤥 AI Tells Bloke He's A Murderer. Norwegian man Arve Hjalmar Holmen was horrified when ChatGPT falsely claimed he'd murdered two of his sons and served 21 years in prison. Digital rights org NOYB has now filed a GDPR complaint against OpenAI, arguing personal data must be accurate.
2-min read.

🤖 Meta AI Hits Europe With Handbrake On. The social media giant's AI assistant is finally rolling out to 41 European countries, and the stripped-back version lacks image generation and creative features due to privacy regulations. This hobbled rollout signals to Kiwi AI developers that our own privacy regulations could similarly shape how international AI tools deploy in NZ.
4-min read.

🔍 Big Tech Faces AI Censorship Probe. Republican Congressman Jim Jordan has given 16 tech giants including Google and OpenAI until March 27 to hand over communications with the Biden administration about potential "censorship" of AI products. The investigation excludes Elon Musk's xAI, raising questions about how political alignments might shape the future AI landscape.
2-min read.

🌏 Tech Updates You Should Know

  • Google: Unleashes Gemini 2.0 with upgraded reasoning, 1M token context window, inline image generation and personalisation features, while facing criticism for search inaccuracies and broken URL citations.

  • DeepSeek: Chinese government imposes passport confiscation and travel bans on staff to prevent information leaks as they develop R2 and V4 models amid heightening international competition.

  • Apple: Delays AI-powered Siri features until 2026/2027 despite earlier promises, with internal leaks revealing staff frustration and consumer backlash over "ugly situation" and advertising missteps.

  • Baidu: The Chinese behemoth launched ERNIE 4.5 and X1 multimodal AI models at aggressive pricing - just 1% of GPT-4o's cost - whilst matching DeepSeek R1's capabilities at half the price.

📅 AI Events in New Zealand

Take yourself along to an in-person event (12 this week!) to trade ideas with other AI enthusiasts.

This week’s featured event - love to see it in the regions!

  • Whangaparāoa AI Basics, 25 Mar: Unpack artificial intelligence for beginners. Learn AI terminology, technologies, and ethics, no cost

💼  AI Roles Around Aotearoa

Picklist of 🌶️ HOT 🌶️ roles in AI.

📚️ Levelling Up With AI

ChatGPT is a mediocre Research Assistant.

Most people get stuck in this loop: upload report to ChatGPT, ask questions, upload another report, repeat the process.

It's slow. It's inefficient. It fragments your understanding.

Here's my proven AI research workflow:

1️⃣ Claude Sonnet 3.7: Create a chart of key insights to get the high-level picture.
2️⃣ YouTube & Google: Find other reports & interviews on the topic for more context.
3️⃣ Notebook LM: Upload multiple data sources to create a connected knowledge base to extract insights from all materials (simultaneously) and identify patterns.
4️⃣ ChatGPT-o3: Synthesise key findings while maintaining original phrasing.
5️⃣ Claude Sonnet 3.7: Final pass to refine and humanise the output.

👉 Watch this 4-min clip on how I use AI as my research assistant.

Here’s a link to the workflow I follow.

🤦‍♂️ AI Fail Of The Week

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

Now, that’s a crafty way to avoid a lawsuit with Chevrolet!

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