Mark Laurence: 'Flabbergasted that AI hasn't become a political talking point'

Artificial intelligence (AI) should be a key election year issue especially given the technology has major potential to help improve New Zealand's productivity, says Mark Laurence.

Laurence, founder and CEO of Ten Past Tomorrow which is an AI consultancy and education business, spoke to interest.co.nz in a new episode of the Of Interest podcast.

"I'm kind of flabbergasted that it hasn't become a political talking point," Laurence says, noting AI "has become a really hot political topic" in the United States over the past six months.

He describes AI as "a general purpose technology."

"My focus is how does New Zealand, as a small, educated, economically prosperous and politically stable country, how do we become the best users of this technology where we as a nation, we're very skilled and very literate and know how to use it, know when to use it, know how to use it responsibly and ethically?"

"Because you can scale from the individual productivity to national GDP on a very clear line."

Laurence points out Singapore is spending NZ$1.25 billion over five years with the goal of tripling their AI practitioner workforce. The United Kingdom is investing US$500 million per year over the next five years with the goal of having 10 million AI literate workers by 2030. And Finland is spending €100 million per year for the next four years in AI readiness training.

So does he think getting a more AI literate NZ population needs to be government led?

"I do [think so] and I think importantly it needs to be non-partisan," Laurence says.

" Whichever party wins [the election], this needs to happen. It's like to me, it's that critical to New Zealand productivity challenges. And so yes, it absolutely needs to be publicly led."

However, he adds that in the countries making public investment he cites, private investment generally "floods in behind it."

"We [NZ] have an AI strategy which was released last year. It's pretty flimsy and really if you kind of read between the lines, it's basically saying at the moment we're leaving this to the private sector to kickstart. I do think the stimulus needs to come, the action needs to come, the motivation needs to come, from public sectors," says Laurence.

"Simply, this nation has an obsession with productivity challenges that we've developed in the last number of years. That's why I say sitting still is not a neutral option, it's a decision with consequences. The gap compounds [and] moves from being a gap to actually a chasm."

In the podcast audio Laurence also talks about how NZ businesses are working with and thinking about AI, AI training, education opportunities from AI, guardrails and regulation, the previous technological breakthrough he compares AI with, how the effect and harms of AI on children could be worse than social media, why he says "AI is going to
make lazy people super lazy and it will give dedicated people superpowers," and more.

*You can find all previous episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.