Kia ora! Welcome to New Zealand’s weekly roundup of AI news, events, jobs and education.

Despite being 34-weeks pregnant, Erin’s joining me at the ElementX AI Hackathon next weekend: 48 hours to build something that’s good for society.

The brief covers some big challenges:

• Tackling food insecurity in a food-exporting nation,

• Improving digital accessibility for all communities,

• Upskilling for an AI-driven future,

• Fostering cross-border collaboration, and

• Honouring indigenous environmental custodianship.

If you’ve got a problem worth solving in these areas, or a creative idea that could make a dent, we’re all ears (👉 reply to this email 👈) before we lock in what we’ll build.

Let’s see what two days of collaboration, caffeine, and chaos can produce!

This week’s highlights

🎓 Kids say AI ‘feels like cheating’
🏫 Chinese families prep for AI era
🧑‍🏫 Minister backs AI marking rollout
💼 Kiwi boards lag on AI governance
💊 40% of GPs adopt AI scribes in NZ
🎙️ Nadia Ellis: Building AI Agents in NZ
💡 3 AI skills to master now for the future
📚 Uni ditches exams for AI learning tools
📡 Spark scales AI agents to speed revenue
🚀 GPT-5: Will it close or widen NZ’s AI gap?

Happy reading and listening ✌️

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HEADLINE STORY

📊 Education Minister Backs AI Marking Despite School Concerns

📣 Word On The Street: Government pushes NCEA replacement, and AI marking for new assessment system while educators demand infrastructure investment first.

🔍 Zooming In:

• AI already marks literacy tests with human oversight, proving "as good as" traditional methods

• Schools lack basic digital infrastructure before rolling out AI assessment systems nationwide

• New grading moves from NCEA to A-E marks with AI handling increased marking workload

🏘️ Our Take: AI could revolutionise how we assess our kids' learning, delivering faster and more consistent marking while giving families clearer grade transparency than the current NCEA system. Teachers would gain precious time currently spent on repetitive marking to focus on face-to-face instruction, relationship building, and personalised learning support.

However, the digital divide threatens to create a two-tier education system where well-resourced schools embrace AI advantages while others fall behind due to lack of devices and infrastructure. We risk losing the invaluable human insight teachers gain from marking student work, understanding learning gaps, identifying strengths, and adapting teaching methods accordingly. Ultimately, and critically, is that AI marking should augment, not replace, teachers.

The success of this transformation hinges on closing technology gaps first, ensuring robust data protection like Estonia's closed AI platforms, and maintaining teacher agency in the assessment process rather than replacing human judgment entirely. NZ has some of the lowest trust in AI globally, so building confidence requires small, transparent steps and clear communication about how AI is trained and used.

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💼 Business & Industry

Spark scaled Microsoft CoPilot from 700 to 2,400 staff with engagement climbing to 92%. Weekly training with Microsoft, Snowflake and AWS partners ensures role-specific AI skills rather than generic overviews. The telco's agentic AI now condenses 4-week SME processes into single client meetings, generating contracts and call flows in real-time for faster revenue recognition.
4-min read.

• Our take: Moving from AI assistants to autonomous agents represents Spark's evolution from productivity to revenue acceleration. When engagement rates climb during expansion, the cultural foundation for advanced AI deployment is proven.

40% of Kiwi GPs use AI scribes to transcribe patient notes, but only 66% read the terms and conditions. University of Otago research found 47% estimate saving 30 minutes to 2 hours daily, though editing AI errors often negates time savings. Health NZ endorsed two AI scribe tools - Heidi Health and iMedX - for clinical use in July 2025.
3-min read.

• Our take: When nearly half of primary care providers adopt unregulated AI tools without reading contracts, patient data security becomes a national concern. The productivity promise is real, but rushed implementation without proper governance creates unnecessary risks.

Kiwi boards recognise AI's impact but struggle to act on it. 62.8% of NZ directors acknowledge technology will reshape board operations yet only 25.2% focus on AI acceleration. Just 48.4% have assessed AI's impact on their organisations despite widespread cyber risk discussions.

• Our take: Early movers establishing comprehensive AI oversight will shape industry standards whilst laggards scramble to catch up with governance requirements. The governance gap also threatens public trust in corporate AI use, making ethical frameworks essential to prevent regulatory backlash.

🎓 Education & Society

Auckland's Chinese families are bypassing state schools to prepare children for an AI-dominated future. Primary school children now make up the largest group in private robotics programs, with parents comparing AI literacy to learning computers or smartphones. University of Auckland's Ho Seok Ahn warns students without AI skills will struggle to find employment.
5-min read.

• Our take: This educational divide risks creating two tiers of opportunity. Those who can afford future-ready skills and those stuck with outdated curriculums. Every family should have access to the tools their children need to succeed.

University of Auckland redesigned language curriculum to integrate AI tools, replacing memory-based exams with creative assignments. Associate Professor Danping Wang uses ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot to generate learning materials tailored to specific proficiency levels in minutes rather than hours. Beijing mandates 8 hours of AI education annually in all schools starting September 2025.
5-min read.

• Our take: When China embeds AI literacy nationally while we're still debating implementation, the competitive gap widens rapidly. Universities adapting curricula now position graduates for markets where AI fluency is already expected, not optional.

Kiwi kids say using AI "feels like cheating" as teachers struggle without support. 266 teachers surveyed reveal "dire need" for AI guidance in primary schools with most lacking policies. Between 55-72% of Year 7-8 students agree AI sometimes feels like cheating, yet nearly half have used it outside school.
2-min read.

• Our take: The ethical confusion amongst young Kiwis signals urgent need for digital literacy education before AI becomes embedded in their learning habits.

🎙️ Latest from The AI Corner podcast

This week’s guest is Nadia Ellis, founder of Curiosity.

Nadia shares how AI agents, curiosity, and human-centred design can transform Kiwi businesses. From a personal health pivot into the AI space to building her consultancy “Curiosity”, Nadia shares how she helps leaders adopt AI in practical, joyful, and sustainable ways.

Listen on Spotify or YouTube 🎧

Subscribe on Spotify and YouTube to be notified of new episodes.

📚️ Levelling Up With AI

1️⃣ GPT-5 is here. Will it finally close NZ’s AI gap, or lock it in? For some it’s just a speed bump upgrade, for others it’s the first time AI truly works. The impact depends on what we do next.
3-min read.

2️⃣ The 3 AI skills worth mastering from scratch. You don’t need to be a coder, just nail AI fluency, AI automations & agents, and scrappy “vibe coding” to move fast.
3-min read.

3️⃣ From dinner-table idea to thriving business without writing a line of code. Here’s how scrappy builders are using AI to launch fast, cheap, and global.
7 slides.

4️⃣ Could NZ’s generalist culture make us the perfect “vibe coding / marketing / analytics nation”? From building apps without code, to marketing, to analysing data by just asking, the vibe era could be our AI-powered advantage, if we grab it.
3-min read.

5️⃣ The hidden danger in NZ’s AI adoption: Rolling out Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini might feel like progress, but could it be the very thing holding us back?
3-min read.

🌍 The News from Global

⚡ Singapore's AI infrastructure explosion. The island nation has unleashed S$1B+ over five years for AI compute, talent, and innovation, while tech giants pour billions into GPU clusters and quantum computing facilities.
10-min read.

🇪🇺 EU compliance gets easier. The €9M ACHILLES project is helping organisations navigate the EU AI Act's complex requirements through an integrated development environment that simplifies compliance documentation.
5-min read.

🚁 Defence AI investment made. BAE backs Oxford Dynamics for military AI systems. Shows growing defence sector AI adoption relevant to NZ's security partnerships.
3-min read.

🇺🇸 Silicon Valley approach risks China gains. China unveiled plans for a World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO) to set international AI standards, while the US released its "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan" led by AI czar David Sacks. The analysis warns that America's commercial-focused strategy fails to connect technological excellence with global deployment, while China's practical application-first approach makes AI accessible to developing nations through "AI-in-a-box" systems and bundled infrastructure.
4-min read.

Tech Updates You Should Know

• OpenAI: Launched GPT-5 with enhanced reasoning, new “thinking” mode, improved coding and health expertise, reduced hallucinations to 4.7% error rate, and real-time router for complex tasks; released open-weight reasoning models gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b under Apache 2.0 license; won Kaggle AI chess final against xAI’s Grok 4 using o3; struck $1-per-seat deal with U.S. federal agencies for ChatGPT Enterprise; reported ChatGPT usage surge to 700M weekly active users and 5M paying business customers; in talks to raise valuation above $100B after $8.3B funding; considering splitting enterprise and consumer products.

• Google: Immersive experiences builder, Genie3, was released this week; launched AI features in Chrome, Search, and Google Photos, including store summaries, “Search Live,” Canvas study planner, photo-to-video tools, and remix features; updated NotebookLM with video overviews; debuted Opal no-code app builder; open-sourced upgraded wildlife-tracking audio model Perch; launched AI coding agent Jules out of beta with new pricing; Gemini took third place in Kaggle AI chess final.

• Meta: Acquired WaveForms AI for emotional speech synthesis.

• Microsoft: Integrated GPT-5 across Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Azure AI Foundry, and Edge “Copilot Mode” for tab search and history-based assistance; added smart mode to dynamically switch models per task; nearing long-term OpenAI deal beyond AGI milestone.

• Anthropic: Released Claude Opus 4.1 with advanced coding/research performance; nearing close of $5B funding round led by Iconiq Capital at $170B valuation; CEO criticized Meta’s talent poaching; facing AWS customer frustration over Bedrock rate limits.

• xAI: Open-sourcing Grok 2 model; launched Grok Imagine multimodal generator with NSFW “spicy mode” for premium X users and temporary free U.S. access to image-to-video tool; planning infra to scale to 50M NVIDIA GPUs by 2025; Grok 4 lost in Kaggle AI chess final to OpenAI’s o3; Musk plans to integrate ads into Grok AI responses.

• Amazon: Launched Automated Reasoning checks in Bedrock Guardrails for 99% accurate output validation; released MiniMax voice-cloning AI in 40 languages with emotional nuance; finalised multiyear NYT licensing deal worth up to $25M/year for AI training.

• Apple: GPT-5 tipped to come to Apple Intelligence in iOS 26.

• ElevenLabs: Launched licensed AI music generation model cleared for commercial use via deals with Merlin Network and Kobalt Music Group.

📅 AI Events in New Zealand

20 AI events are happening across New Zealand this week — from hackathons to community meetups.

This week’s featured event:

• AI Hackathon Festival, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, Dunedin & Online - All week: 48-hour hackathons tackling real-world problems from food security to workforce upskilling. Winners pitch at the Aotearoa AI Summit on 18 September.

📅  Promote your event with us. Reply to let us know.

💼 AI Roles Around Aotearoa

Picklist of 🌶️ HOT 🌶️ new roles in AI this week.

• Remote Sales Consultant, AI Automation Solutions, TurAIa - Remote

• AI Practice Senior Engineer, Xero - Remote

• Senior/Tech Lead - AI Development, Datacom - Tauranga

💼  Promote your job with us. Reply to let us know.

🤦 ️ AI Fail Of The Week

We all love AI, but it’s certainly far from perfect 🤔 …

👋 Mike & Erin