As recent headlines have made clear, New Zealand universities are in an existential crisis for a variety of reasons, including a sharp drop in international student numbers and chronic underfunding. But there is another crisis lurking – the disappearance of students from our classrooms following the pandemic. This was happening already, but with the COVID-related […]

In the modern splendour of Christchurch’s Te Pae Convention Centre, the tech sector came together to honour its most successful, impactful and inspiring companies and individuals on Friday. Against a background of fractious election campaigning, the crisis in our universities and the country sinking into recession, technically at least, the NZ Hi-Tech Awards struck a […]

When Cyclone Gabrielle tore through the North Island in February there was intense scrutiny of the telecoms providers as they scrambled to reconnect cell towers and fibre cables. Without communications, those in affected areas couldn’t contact emergency services, friends and family. Retailers in Gisborne couldn’t process Eftpos payments for much needed supplies. Confusion and disorganisation […]

Do we need a national conversation on AI?  After returning from 10 days of holiday without reading much tech news at all I attended the Digital Technologies Industry Transformation Plan Partnership Board meeting on Wednesday, a board I co-Chair, and one of the items on our agenda was AI. With significant industry leaders around the […]

Our nation is experiencing its lowest productivity growth in 60 years, according to the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia. And this downturn is reflected across most advanced economies worldwide [Ed: New Zealand’s productivity is notoriously low compared to the OECD average]. So it’s not surprising some see the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) […]

CyberCX, a cybersecurity firm operating across New Zealand and Australia, has issued a security update about Anonymous Sudan, which is alleged to have been responsible for at least 24 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Australian organisations in the aviation, healthcare, and education sectors this year. Microsoft has blamed Anonymous Sudan on attacks that […]

It’s full steam ahead on AI regulation in Europe with members of the EU Parliament passing the draft text of the Artificial Intelligence Act with strong consensus – 499 to 28 votes in favour. That clears the way for the world’s first law regulating the use of artificial intelligence and can serve as a useful […]

Thanks to everyone who shared the links in this post with me this week while I am on holiday, must say I have had less time reading than anticipated – more time swimming and sunbathing. This is also publishing a tad earlier due to timezones. Hope you enjoy this wrap of AI in the news, […]

Public cloud provider AWS has joined a handful of tech companies in offering digital access to STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) topics for low-decile intermediate schools. The Indigitech programme has already onboarded 5,700 students and 270 teachers from 33 low-decile schools across Auckland, Hamilton, Hastings, Mangakino, Northland, and Rotorua, according to AWS. Its launch this […]

The year is 1996, I am in Year 10 (then called Form 5), and I try to convince my mother, a full-time supermarket worker on minimum wage, that I needed a home computer. She was afraid. She had heard that you could access objectionable materials easily; she was convinced it was just a toy used […]