It’s impossible to ignore Artificial intelligence (AI). In New Zealand, AI adoption is rapid – 48% of business leaders say they already use it within their organisation. And it’s not only business; everyone has access to AI. From Google Gemini to Apple partnering with OpenAI to integrate AI into their devices, it’s literally in everyone’s hands.
Read on to learn how it’s changing the shape of New Zealand’s tech sector.
The Rise of Everyday AI
It feels like every other day, there’s a new AI breakthrough that changes our response from “Hey, that’s cool!” to “Are we living in a sci-fi movie?” While it’s been around for a while, only recently has AI gained significant traction. It’s similar to when the iPhone debuted in 2007 – not the first smartphone, but its timing, design, and market readiness made it revolutionary.
Similarly, AI isn’t new, but it’s currently experiencing an upsurge thanks to tech advancements and increased public access. We’re already living with AI around us without realising it. YouTube recommendations, smart home devices, and chatbots are some examples.
Chatbots are a notable example. They’ve been around for what seems like a long time. Some complain about them because they’re not quite sharp enough, but with advancements, chatbots have become revolutionary for customer service. Let’s imagine that a new user wants to play a classic casino game at an online casino. When the time comes, they’re not sure how to withdraw their funds. It’s outside of traditional working hours so a human employee wouldn’t get to the customer’s email until tomorrow. A chatbot removes any waiting. They can answer the question and lead the customer to the right page to solve the problem. It promotes independence and speeds up waiting times.
What tools like ChatGPT or DALL-E from OpenAI do is distract us from these essential uses. However, ChatGPT and DALL-E are both cool and are understandable distractions.
Transformative AI Technologies
Several AI-driven technologies are at the forefront of AI innovation:
- ChatGPT is a sophisticated LLM capable of having natural conversations, solving problems, and pretty much anything you can think of.
- DALL-E is an artificial intelligence programme that creates original images from text prompts by combining different concepts and styles.
- Driverless technology improves safety for autonomous vehicles through driving condition simulation using artificial intelligence – although people are still questioning how safe it is.
- Deepfake Technology is what everyone is worried about. For some time, it was everywhere on social media. It reproduces personal likeness, voice and motion into artificial videos, raising potential and ethical concerns.
ChatGPT stands out as a game changer because, unlike traditional search engines, it provides specific, detailed outputs immediately.
Impact on Tech Employment
AI has the potential to completely transform workplaces across New Zealand. Through small applications, AI can cut down on admin work from what used to take days into minutes. That allows businesses to allocate humans towards more complex and strategic tasks. It’s what’s happening globally, not only in New Zealand.
Technical expertise will become more crucial in configuring and leveraging AI systems effectively rather than performing standard job roles – look online, and you’ll notice a trend of AI roles rather than standard business roles. Companies want to hire people who know how to manipulate AI.
Security
Security is always a concern when businesses store customer data, especially financial information. Already, AI has proved its worth in cybersecurity by identifying threats and vulnerabilities, but it won’t stop there. The IT security sector has always been an area where New Zealand strives for improvement – artificial intelligence can be used to build robust security architectures and methodologies that guarantee data protection while mitigating risks at the same time. Still, there are also concerns about the security of AI, so go figure with that one.
Still, AI can provide rapid real-time analysis of security threats and suggest ways to act. And even if a company doesn’t take advice on how to act, the information it provides about real-time analysis of threats is invaluable.
It is undeniable that artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the face of New Zealand’s tech sector. It doesn’t matter whether one works as a tech expert or business executive; being knowledgeable and adjusting well remains vital throughout such thrilling times for them all within their respective professions based on these developments around us.