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
Tech start-up Areto Labs noticed online abuse was stopping women from going into politics – so it did something about it. CEO Lana Cuthbertson and creative technologist Jacqueline Comer talk to The Spinoff about their abuse-fighting bot. “Imagine you have a job interview and every day, for a month, you have to walk down a … 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
The father-and-son team behind Zach, the medical AI that seemed too good to be true, have been found by Internal Affairs to have engaged in ‘serious wrongdoing’, with the trust providing ‘inconsistent, misleading and untruthful answers’. David Farrier looks at what went wrong, and tries to make sense of a very, very perplexing story. Read … Read more
In the sixth episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s monthly podcast exploring the effect Artificial Intelligence has on our lives, Russell Brown looks at the draft algorithm charter, the government’s commitment to transparent and accountable use of AI. Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below. To download this episode right click and save. In the … 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
In the fourth episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s monthly podcast exploring the effect AI has on our lives, Russell Brown speaks to Ana Arriola, general manager and partner at Microsoft AI and Research, about ethics and transparency in tech. Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below. To download this episode right click and save. … 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 third episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s monthly podcast exploring the effect AI has on our lives, Te Aroha Grace talks to host Russell Brown about the Iwi Algorithm. Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below. To download this episode right click and save. At this year’s AI … 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
In the second episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s new monthly podcast exploring the effect AI has on our lives, Russell Brown explores how aware machines really are. Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below. To download this episode right click and save. Here’s a thing to understand: artificial intelligence isn’t magic and machines … Read more
The rise of the machines will radically transform the way we work. Jobs will disappear. New ones will emerge. But what if the perceived threat of technology is really an opportunity to be more human? The machines are coming for our jobs, but we don’t need to freak out about it. Because, let’s face it, … 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
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
In the first episode of The Spinoff’s new monthly podcast, Actually Interesting, Russell Brown explores the world of A.I. and the way it’s already affecting our lives. Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below. To download this episode right click and save. When you hear the words “Artificial Intelligence” your … 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
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
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
The department has confirmed it will look into the charity status of Terrible Foundation, following revelations in the Spinoff around the strange story of a purported supercomputer-powered artificial intelligence revolution in Christchurch The Department of Internal Affairs has launched an investigation into the Terrible Foundation, the registered charity linked to Zach, a supposed pioneering artificial … 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
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
When it comes to understanding artificial intelligence, is science fiction just a pesky distraction from the real dangers out there? Microsoft’s authority on all things AI seems to think so, reports Jihee Junn. “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon,” declared Elon Musk back in 2014. “In all those stories where there’s the guy … Read more
Calum Henderson reviews this year’s pretender to the Hatchimals throne, a cool-but-rude robot called Cozmo. In the future robots will do just about everything. They’ll provide us with healthcare and drive our cars, they’ll do the washing up and if the movie RoboCop proves an accurate prophecy, keep our city streets safe from crime. Eventually robots will … Read more
Humans susceptibility to group pressure extends to pressure from a group consisting solely of robots, according to new research conducted by Dr Christoph Bartneck. Robots are changing the way we talk, and so the way we think. Don Rowe talks to Dr Bartneck and asks the question on everyone’s lips: is it time to freak … Read more