Christopher Luxon says he is “constantly overwhelmed” by the slow pace of adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technology by New Zealand businesses.
Speaking at the China Business Summit on Thursday, the Prime Minister was asked how New Zealand could catch up with China, which is “six years ahead” in the use of AI.
“I think there’s a lot of opportunity. I think New Zealand is missing a big trick when it comes to AI,” Luxon said.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on being great adopters of technology, and I think we’re on the same level. But when I go around business associations and chambers of commerce and ask people to raise their hands who are using some of the AI tools, I’m always overwhelmed by the fact that we haven’t adopted them.”
In recent years, AI-first companies like OpenAI and its spinoff-turned-rival Anthropic, as well as Silicon Valley veterans like Google and Microsoft, have introduced work-focused versions of their large-scale language model (LLM) technology.
For example, OpenAI, which started a rush to use AI tools with ChatGPT in 2022, has coding assistant Codex, Anthropic has Cowork, and Microsoft is building Copilot services into classic workplace tools like Excel and Word.
Luxon said governments should take the lead in introducing AI.
“We’re really stuck in the way it was in 1995. If a 32-year-old mother whose 9-year-old daughter needs glasses and she has an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old wants to know about your tax refund, why can’t she actually ask?” [than] Do I have to go to MSD, IRD, etc.?
“When you want to get a mortgage, you have to prove your identity and your income, so why isn’t that auto-generated like you expect in a company? … It’s not coming, it’s here, and it’s here for six, nine, 12 months.
“So we need to disrupt government and public services with a view to large service organizations that are customer-minded and leveraging technology to serve New Zealanders.”
He said China’s rapid adoption of AI was also happening in “Estonia, the UAE, New South Wales, Singapore and more” and represented a huge productivity opportunity that New Zealand may be missing out on.
“To give you an idea of the R&D landscape in New Zealand, we’re probably 19th per capita in terms of spending on R&D, but 46th in terms of commercialization. And I really hate it when I meet people and say, ‘Oh, New Zealand invented science.'” “That’s great, but who actually invented a $10 billion business?” And it’s probably an American or an Australian. ”
Luxon said the aim was to “brutally commercialize our scientific system.”
“The reason I want professors to become millionaires is because they are partnering with entrepreneurs to build businesses…The interface between universities, entrepreneurship, and government is all coming together, as we see in other parts of the world.”
Christopher Luxon says he is “constantly overwhelmed” by the slow pace of adoption of artificial intelligence technology by New Zealand businesses.
Andriy Onufriyenko
There is mixed evidence to date on whether the adoption of AI tools (including types of AI other than chatbot-style LLMs) improves productivity, with results varying by sector.
While some report reduced productivity caused by “workslop” (substandard AI-generated output that others have to spend time fixing), others, such as hospital departments, are realizing real benefits from this technology.
