How AI Is Transforming Everyday Life in New Zealand
AI impacts people’s daily lives worldwide, but those in New Zealand might be even more affected than the average person. Alongside the growing use of smart assistants in personal and professional lives, the country has several smart cities whose infrastructure leverages AI to enhance efficiency and sustainability. The country also supports AI initiatives across industries and invests in education in the deep tech sector. This article explores the multiple ways AI is transforming daily life in the country, from the convenience of AI assistants to the tools revolutionising the nation’s major industries.
Pexels
The Rise of Smart Assistants
Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are common tools for assisting with daily tasks, whether answering a question, setting a timer, or connecting to a smart home to control everything from lights to the oven. These tools rely primarily on natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to deliver answers and carry out tasks.
NLP and ML are branches of AI technology that have been integrated into our devices for over a decade. They tailor search results to each person’s request by considering how people ask questions to understand the intent behind a query. It’s how search engines like Google can tell the difference between listing restaurants or explaining what a restaurant is. They also factor in a person’s past behaviours, queries, and data like location to deliver more relevant results. For Kiwis, this means when they ask where to go for dinner, they can get a list of restaurants in their local region and not a list for other cities.
In more recent years, these tools have integrated generative AI into their operations, making them more useful for a variety of tasks. The development of generative AI has also launched a new array of AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini. These tools have many applications, from finding an answer to a specific question faster to streamlining workflows.
Personalised and Enhanced Digital Experiences
Through NLP and ML, digital experiences have become even more engaging by tailoring online platforms to each person’s preferences. From online gaming through casinos.com to catching up on the news, NLP and ML make personalised game, article, video, and post recommendations most likely to pique each individual’s interests. These technologies contribute to the ease of falling into social media rabbit holes, why online stores always show people products that perfectly align with what they want, and why Disney+ and Prime Video often make well-suited recommendations for what to watch next.
Smart Infrastructure Enhancing City Life
In New Zealand, the influence of AI moves beyond the digital world into the physical one in cities like Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, and Hamilton, implementing AI systems to support city infrastructure. The most prominent use is in transportation, where AI adapts traffic lights to traffic flow in real time, sends live public transit updates, and updates drivers on available city parking. These capabilities help reduce emissions and improve traffic flow, helping cities be more sustainable and improving people’s quality of life.
Beyond applications in transportation, AI plays a crucial role in monitoring water and air quality, managing city waste, and supporting crime prevention efforts in smart cities. In doing this, cities can adapt public health warnings and their operations to mitigate risks to people.
Revolutionizing Local Industries
Across industries, New Zealand is implementing AI to improve efficiency, drive innovation, and address social issues such as healthcare, food security, and sustainability. In the healthcare industry, diagnostic tools and telehealth services are improving patient outcomes and making healthcare more accessible to people across the country. AI enhances agricultural productivity by assessing soil conditions and environmental factors. This helps producers determine optimal locations and timing for cultivation, planting, and harvesting, improving yields and minimising waste. The country actively supports the development and enhancement of AI tools for agricultural needs through business grants and educational opportunities.
Challenges and Ethical Considerations
Despite AI’s benefits in New Zealand, its growing integration presents challenges, including privacy concerns, job displacement, and inclusivity issues.
Privacy and Data Security
AI collects information about users and uses this data to shape personalised experiences. However, this data collection raises concerns about how information is gathered, used, and stored. It’s hard to navigate how to gain the benefits of data collection, like personalised content recommendations and reduced crime, with concerns about privacy, data misuse, and excessive surveillance remaining complex challenges. These considerations necessitate robust, transparent policies from governments and regulatory bodies to protect people in every instance of data collection and use.
Job Displacement and Skills Shifts
As AI tools become more capable and efficient, people have growing concerns around job displacement and shifting skills, including the loss of skills. AI can take on repetitive tasks and even creative ones, changing the nature of many jobs or replacing them entirely. AI is transforming the job landscape across New Zealand and the skills people need to acquire employment. When it comes to creative work, even AI experts such as Victoria University of Wellington professor Heitor Gomes have expressed concern that AI’s growing capabilities may discourage young people from pursuing creative careers. Gomes has highlighted that these AI tools need to be seen and considered creative assistants, not creative replacements, saying ‘AI should be seen as a tool that can enhance their work rather than replace it’.
AI in the workplace is becoming essential to operations, and employees must learn how to leverage these tools in their daily work. It also makes assessing how to develop, foster, and maintain important skills difficult. Striking a balance in AI integration at work remains an evolving challenge.
Inclusivity and Equity
AI tools collect data and rely on existing datasets to deliver personalised information or to generate content, highlighting concerns about bias, inclusivity, and equity in AI systems. AI has the potential to reinforce biases, making it crucial for developers and users to recognise and address these risks to create a more equitable future.
Conclusion
In New Zealand, and globally, AI is becoming a powerful tool transforming daily lives. As AI technology is integrated more frequently, it’s important that people don’t lose sight of the challenges and ethical considerations it presents, even as they enjoy its benefits on their drive home or in completing tasks.
