Published on the 06/06/2017 | Written by Donovan Jackson
Claims artificial intelligence is ‘world’s fastest-growing disruptive tech’…
We’ve got a feeling that NZTech is over-egging the pudding a bit with its unsupported claim that ‘AI is the world’s fastest growing disruptive tech’. ‘World’s fastest growing’ is generally a marker for ‘this seems like a newly popular thing and we need to talk it up’ and is routinely used to describe novel sports, also without evidence, and has in recent times been applied to MMA, UFC and roller derby. And padel.
In any event, NZTech has set up another focus group, this time the New Zealand AI Forum. While the headline of NZTech’s press statement carried the ‘world’s fastest-growing disruptive tech’ description, CE Graeme Muller amended that to ‘AI is the fastest growing impactful technology spreading the globe’. The organisation added that ‘dozens of New Zealand’s leading tech companies are joining the forum which has been initiated via a collaboration between NZTech, the government and AI tech leaders’.
Muller pointed to examples of domestic AI in use today including Air NZ’s Oscar. “The more you engage with it the better it gets at helping you. [The chatbot] is becoming more user friendly and more helpful the more it interacts. There’s no doubt that AI is the future, allowing travellers to better self-serve within their channel of choice, further improving the customer experience.”
Another example, he said, can be found on Harvey Norman’s website. Search that, and customers are ‘Actually using Christchurch-based search specialist firm SLI Systems’ embedded search software which uses AI to serve up even more relevant information.”
Muller noted that SLI Systems is one of New Zealand’s top 100 tech exporters, and has seen some e-commerce customers conversion rates improve by as much as 71 percent after they deploy their AI assisted search functionality on their sites and apps.
“New Zealand leaders Soul Machines and FaceMe have developed AI systems that have a human face that can respond to your body language and emotions. Their AI, Nadia, is being deployed across Australia as an assistant for disabled people.”
Muller said that as more and more start using computer systems that can adapt and learn, a ‘massive improvement across many services’ can be expected.
The forum is chaired by Stu Christie from the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund. Muller said this entity ‘is critical for New Zealand right across the economy in sectors as diverse as education, healthcare, retail and agriculture’.
“We are seeing so much AI appearing and changing our lives, we are committed to this coordinated approach. We’ll see big changes in our everyday activities this year and the next few years that many people cannot comprehend.”
Combined with a Ministry for the Future, who knows where the AI Forum could take us. Perhaps a computer somewhere knows the answer.
