Kia ora! Welcome to New Zealand’s weekly roundup of AI news, events, jobs and education.
Another short read this week, with the Southern Hemisphere in holiday mode. We’re back properly next week. This year, expect more of:
The return of an old AI Corner format 👀
Fresh content topics (and a few new series)
More specific AI use cases, step-by-step how-tos, and implementation templates you can copy, tweak, and ship
Happy reading and listening ✌️
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💼 Business & Industry
Kiwi farmer manages 300 cattle from Colombia with AI. Marcus Peacock shifts stock via smartphone using Halter's AI collars while holidaying overseas. The solar-powered virtual fencing tech has half a million units deployed globally across NZ, Australia, and America.
3-min read.
Our take: Remote biological management via sensors and AI isn't just farming anymore. Think aquaculture, forestry, even commercial property - anything with distributed physical assets just saw its playbook.
AI is eliminating the middle rungs of expertise. Research reveals professional development no longer follows predictable steps from junior to senior work. Dr Jayasuriya proposes "simulation labs" where workers fix synthetic AI errors to learn fundamentals that real jobs won't teach anymore.
3-min read.
Our take: Experienced professionals developed intuition by feeling where systems break under stress, context AI can't codify. Simulation labs can't replicate the organisational memory that comes from watching colleagues navigate messy client politics over years. Senior partners delegated complexity downward to test judgement before high-stakes decisions. When AI does the work directly, there's no proving ground for calibrating who handles what, and firms lose their filtering mechanism entirely.
Only two NZ Cabinet ministers admit to using AI. Just Erica Stanford and James Meager have disclosed AI use in their official duties. Stanford used ChatGPT once for a US investment tour speech; Meager's office runs eight Copilot subscriptions for summarising documents.
3-min read.
Our take: This is a shocking signal of direction and intent. Transformation starts at the top, and you can't learn AI through theory or headlines. When ministers won't admit to using basic productivity tools, it signals to every business waiting for public sector leadership that the Government isn't serious about AI adoption.
🌍 Tech Updates From Global
The selected top headlines from each major AI tech company.
OpenAI
SoftBank completed $41 billion investment commitment, giving the Japanese firm approximately 11% ownership stake.
Hardening ChatGPT Atlas against prompt injection attacks with continuous security improvements.
xAI
Launched Grok Business ($30/user/month) and Grok Enterprise tiers, entering the corporate AI market with data isolation features.
Acquired third data centre facility, bringing training compute capacity to nearly 2 gigawatts.
Facing scrutiny after Grok generated sexualised images of minors, acknowledging "lapses in safeguards."
Meta
Agreed to acquire AI agent startup Manus for over $2 billion to integrate autonomous task capabilities across its platforms.
Nvidia
Completed $20 billion licensing deal with chipmaker Groq for inference technologies, diversifying beyond GPUs.
Miscellaneous
iRobot (Roomba maker) filed for bankruptcy, marking a significant shift in the consumer robotics market.
DeepSeek published new research paper on more efficient model training methods, signalling potential R2 model ahead of Spring Festival.
California and Texas AI laws took effect January 1, 2026, establishing new transparency and risk management requirements.
🤦 ️ AI Funny Of The Week
We all love AI, but it’s certainly far from perfect …
How intelligent of you, GPT.
👋 Mike & Erin