As is well documented, New Zealand has experienced significant economic and productivity issues for decades, at the very least since the UK entered the European Common Market in 1973. But apparently, decades of worry and underperformance are about to miraculously end because New Zealand’s AI strategy proudly proclaims:
“For New Zealand, embracing AI is not merely an option, it is essential for maintaining our competitiveness, attracting global talent, and delivering the productivity gains our economy needs to thrive.”
This is despite being the last OECD country to publish an AI strategy, but don’t worry because “New Zealand’s strength lies in being smart adopters” and we will “create niche solutions that reflect our values and circumstances.” Sociologically speaking, it is clear that New Zealand, especially Government, has over decades been unable to develop and maintain any solutions that reflect New Zealand values and circumstances – or at least in any positive, productive, inclusive fashion.
While I understand that this strategy is directed at the business community (and with hope, to international investors) there is no mention of any possible societal and social impact of AI upon New Zealand – except that societies are being reshaped by AI “at an unprecedented pace”. For anyone who lived through the 1984-1991 economic change years, so much of this strategy sounds terribly familiar; only now the outsourcing and removal of “unintended and unwanted barriers” is not to human agency, it is to AI agency. But this also means this strategy is clearly and act of hubris by those who have drunk the AI Kool-Aid… But even more hubristically, have done so while seeing what other countries have experienced in terms of economic and societal (and educational) disruption, while believing our Kool-Aid is in fact a glass of 100% pure NZ water sourced downstream from a dairy farm.
We know New Zealand has suffered decades of low productivity, but don’t worry because “AI offers unprecedented opportunities to enhance productivity across New Zealand’s key economic sectors.” Our time will be freed up to concentrate on “higher value activities”, which of course we will continue to do in our usual low productivity fashion. But there is also no mention of all of those jobs and workers to be displaced, replaced, disestablished, and made redundant because of the use of AI across a number of “key economic sectors.” It’s also apparently a magic bullet for our under-stress (let’s just say, broken) health system as clinicians will be freed to focus on patients, despite our not having (and retaining) enough clinicians across the current health sector.
The strategy’s banality and lack of connection to reality is laid bare in this single sentence (as in the single sentence) on AI and education: “In education, AI tutoring systems can provide personalized learning experiences that can help improve student experiences.” Clearly no-one who wrote the strategy has been in contact with schools and school-age students, let alone universities, and been made aware of the collapse of reading, writing, analysing, critiquing and researching skills (let alone a concerted work ethic) that AI is rapidly and radically inflicting on a cohort of students who have little if anything in terms of a solid pre-AI knowledge base and skills-base for AI to augment.
What is staggering – and deeply concerning – from a sociological perspective is there is nothing on job loss and job destruction. Somehow there will be increased AI uptake with no associated job losses and reduction in hiring. In this New Zealand will somehow be exempt from what has happened and is happening in every other economy. Only a fool could believe that there will not be some negative impacts from the impact of AI, whether government endorsed and facilitated or not.
For example, it is unclear what the stated “future-ready workforce” that universities are apparently building for an AI future will be doing. Remember there are 43,000 graduates a year from the current New Zealand university system. How many graduate-level jobs will be lost to AI? How many of them, having AI-ed much of their degree, will be suitable employees? I’d expect a government strategy to at least acknowledge these issues and set out some planned responses, even if it is a thorough review of the education system and sector, increased funding for the unemployment benefit and superannuation (due to lost Kiwisaver contributions), increased funding for police, social workers and mental health support.
Perhaps the most concerning element of this strategy is the belief that, undoing decades of socio-cultural and economic inertia, limitations and attitudes, New Zealand will suddenly, overnight become “sophisticated adopters who can quickly identify, adapt, and deploy AI solutions to local challenges.” Remember, this is stated by a nation that is the last in the OECD to publish an AI strategy. At the same time, our underfunded and under-resourced tertiary system will somehow mean “we can develop expertise in AI governance, ethics, and application that positions us as thought leaders in responsible AI use.” This sounds like a role for a political economy of AI to be developed; the trouble is, to do what is required for successful outcomes (and to mitigate the unsuccessful ones) requires deep pockets; yet New Zealand will continue to rely on “pockets of expertise” while at the same time emptying the pockets and also removing them from areas in social sciences and humanities that can and should be engaged in such a political economy, ethics (and human rights) and social impact analysis of AI.
My fear, sociologically, and informed by New Zealand’s recent history, is that our response to AI will result in even greater socio-economic upheaval, disruption and long-term socioeconomic negative impact than the bungled ‘more markets’ approach of 1984-1991. Consider this concluding statement of the strategy and remember the warning that history repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce:
“Ultimately, however, it is up to businesses, not government, to see the opportunity that AI presents for them and to invest accordingly.”
Kool-Aid anyone?
