Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Dr Ju Zhang, CEO of Formus Labs. Hip and knee replacements are fairly common surgeries, but you’d be … Read more
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Greg Cross from AI company Soul Machines. Earlier this year, news came out that local company Soul Machines … Read more
Tinder became the world’s most popular dating app by promising serendipitous connections with online strangers. But there’s nothing random about the way it works, explains Matt Bartlett. While most leisure activities were throttled by the Covid lockdown, others thrived – just ask any of your friends who did Yoga With Adrienne. Another unlikely winner? Dating … Read more
Richard MacManus meets Aimee – the digital assistant with a human touch. For years we’ve been worried about robots taking our jobs, but in fact it’s “digital humans” that are increasingly joining the workforce. At least, that seems to be the case in customer service. Southern Cross Health Society, New Zealand’s long-time and leading health … Read more
In the fifth episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s monthly podcast exploring the effect Artificial Intelligence has on our lives, Russell Brown discovers that maybe AI has better musical taste than humans. Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below. To download this episode right click and save. I am a middle-aged man and suddenly my … Read more
In the fifth episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s monthly podcast exploring the effect Artificial Intelligence has on our lives, Russell Brown speaks to Ben Reid, executive director of the AI Forum, about the role of government in embracing and regulating AI. Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below. To download this episode right click … Read more
Earlier this week, a Twitter thread demonstrating the power of new face-swap app ZAO attracted tens of thousands of retweets. The user behind the thread, Auckland artist and game developer Allan Xia, explains what ZAO is, and what it means for your rights over your own likeness. Last Friday, a face-swap app called ZAO went … Read more
Sixty years ago Volvo invented the modern seatbelt then gave it away free to the world. Now, to celebrate that anniversary, they’re doing it again – this time with millions of dollars of hard-won safety research. In a steel tunnel in Sweden, a giant rubber moose is in trouble. Watched from every angle by high-speed … Read more
In the final of our series on the loss of faith in free market economics we ask New Zealand business leaders how they’re grappling with the almighty power of a technology that barely existed 20 years ago. Hands up who’s read the Financial Markets Authority’s website. Come on, be honest. No, of course you haven’t. … Read more
Ana Arriola has made a career at the forefront of product design. Arriola, who is speaking at the Future of the Future presented with Spark Lab on August 15, has helped create everything from the first iPhone to the infamous Edison blood testing machine. Now she has turned her eye to harnessing the potential of … Read more
The Lightbulb asks innovators and entrepreneurs how they turned their ideas into reality. This week we talk to Arash Tayebi, co-founder of Kara Technologies which uses AI and digital humans to translate content into sign language. First of all, give us your elevator pitch for Kara. Kara translates different materials – books, audio, video – … Read more
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Vaka Interactiv CEO and co-founder Jesse Armstrong. This week’s Business is Boring podcast talks with an entrepreneur who … Read more
In the future personal technology will be so seamlessly built into our lives it will be almost invisible. Claire McCall spoke to Ivy Ross, the woman in charge of designing Google’s hardware, ahead of her appearance at the Future of the Future conference next month. Ivy Ross doesn’t see the future. She feels it. It’s … Read more
Standing in front of a wall of wine bottles trying to find something that you’ll like can feel futile. One online wine retailer is using artificial intelligence to help find what you’re looking for. It can take a lifetime to truly become an expert on wine. There are subtleties and hints in each bottle that … Read more
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Angela Lim, co-founder and CEO of a … Read more
One of the most powerful tools of the 21st century is being allowed to operate with impunity and it’s hurting humankind, according to a silicon valley-based New Zealand AI expert. Artificial intelligence expert Sean Gourley is in the business of creating machines that can read and write. The Kiwi is the founder and CEO of … Read more
Five years ago, Mark Rickerby crafted code to analyse the full text of the Whaleoil blog after Dirty Politics. That experience, and the unveiling this month of a language model trained on internet text that can generate startlingly coherent prose, offer a profound warning of the dangers of allowing AI innovation to be controlled by … Read more
An artificial intelligence bot called Zach is creating a stir in the medical community. A doctor in Christchurch is teaching it to write patient notes. An Otago professor has it interpreting ECG results. But AI experts are not convinced. David Farrier goes in search of Zach. This post was originally published 6 March 2018 Last … Read more
Sensors that turn the city into a ‘body’ which can detect its own workings. ‘Digital twins’ that are new improved versions of the original town. The sprint for the urban environment of the future is on, writes Mark Thomas. In his recent book The Fourth Age, technology entrepreneur Byron Reese says we will see more … Read more
A Kiwi startup is at the cutting edge of a technology that knows what you put in your shopping basket, eliminating the need for checkouts and queues. Aucklanders are about to get their first taste of a shopping revolution that is gathering pace around the globe. If you thought the demise of single-use plastic bags … Read more
Trusting machines to predict citizens’ need for targeted resources can be damaging and increase bias. New Zealand has no choice but to get onboard. When you think about it, a lot of the services the state provides are ones that you might not wish to be party to: criminal prosecution, incarceration, tax investigation, deportation, and … Read more
ANZ’s latest recruit is a virtual assistant designed by hi-tech New Zealand company Soul Machines. Intrigued, Jihee Junn decided to give her a whirl, chatting about film, literature, and “closing the pod bay doors”. First she was Rachel, then she was Sophie, and now, dressed in a light blue shirt and thick-framed glasses, she’s Jamie … Read more
Every week on The Primer we ask a local business or product to introduce themselves in eight simple takes. This week we talk to co-founder of Reobot, Jason Lovell, whose IBM Watson-powered chatbot allows you to practise conversational Māori via Facebook Messenger. ONE: How did Reobot start and what was the inspiration behind it? I want to … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Immigration NZ’s racial profiling algorithm slammed by critics, showdown at Select Committee over Radio NZ meeting, and the Christchurch re-repairs cost gets even bigger. Immigration NZ has been piloting a data modelling programme to identify groups of overstayers “who are likely to commit harm in the … Read more
Earlier this week David Farrier lifted the lid on the very strange case of the Christchurch AI that would supposedly revolutionise global medical practice. What has he discovered since? Since writing about Zach, the AI that increasingly appears to be neither Artificial nor Intelligent, all the main players have fallen strangely silent. Associate Professor Pickering … Read more
An artificial intelligence bot called Zach is creating a stir in the medical community. A doctor in Christchurch is teaching it to write patient notes. An Otago professor has it interpreting ECG results. But AI experts are not convinced. David Farrier goes in search of Zach. Last week I heard murmurings that a New Zealand … Read more
Avatars, chatbots and virtual assistants are getting smarter by the day, and the AI that powers them is helping customers get more of the right content at the right time. But humans will remain as important as ever. Nigel Piper looks at how (wo)man and machine can work successfully in tandem. The artificial intelligence (AI) … Read more
Deepfake software has been used to create pornographic videos using the face of celebrities like Emma Watson, Natalie Portman and Gal Gadot. But in the age of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’, the deepfake problem could get a lot worse, explains computer graphics professor Neil Dodgson. Over the past few weeks, a large number of … Read more
While AI has gotten very good at things like talking and listening, it’s yet to come close to human levels of intelligence. But as the hype around AI continues to grow, Jamie Peterson argues that it’s giving the public unrealistic expectations about the progress of the industry, cultivating an environment of suspicion and constant disappointment. … Read more