Te Kete o Karaitiana Taiuru (Blog)

Categories

Archive

  • NZ FTA with India – dangers for Māori

    NZ FTA with India – dangers for Māori

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    In 1907, the New Zealand Government passed an Act with a single purpose: to suppress tohunga and the traditional Māori knowledge and beliefs they held. It was not repealed until 1962. This was in addition to the Natives Schools Act, repression of reo Māori and culture and other systematic cultural erasure. I grew up seeing

    Know More

  • Replacing public servants with AI – costs to Māori

    Replacing public servants with AI – costs to Māori

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    The current coalition government has announced the elimination of approximately 8,700 public sector positions or 14% of the public workforce alongside NZ$2.4 billion in spending reductions over three years, with AI deployed as the replacement mechanism. The PSA has been direct in its assessment: AI is being used as a justification for politically driven job

    Know More

  • Māori Privacy Survey Findings

    Māori Privacy Survey Findings

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    The Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s 2026 survey on privacy concerns and the use of personal information tells a story that New Zealand policymakers, technologists, and public institutions would do well to read carefully. More than half of all New Zealanders, 52 percent say they are concerned about their individual privacy. Among Māori, that figure

    Know More

  • AI Agents and Legal Personhood in New Zealand

    AI Agents and Legal Personhood in New Zealand

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    In this article I extend my earlier analysis of Māori cultural perspectives on AI sentience and legal personhood to the specific and urgent case of agentic AI systems, those capable of autonomous, persistent, goal directed action across digital environments. I argue that Mead’s tikanga Māori framework that I have previously applied to static AI models

    Know More

  • Google DeepMind hires ‘philosopher’ to work on machine consciousness

    Google DeepMind hires ‘philosopher’ to work on machine consciousness

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    As AI systems grow more capable, companies appear increasingly willing to look beyond traditional engineering disciplines for guidance on questions that touch on consciousness, identity and what it means to interact meaningfully with a machine. On 13 April 2026, Google DeepMind announced it had hired philosopher Henry Shevlin to study machine consciousness, human AI relationships,

    Know More

  • Personal Māori Data Sovereignty

    Personal Māori Data Sovereignty

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    I am often asked by individuals how they can better implement Data and Digital Sovereignty in their home and whānau lives. Here are some immediate steps you can take that will protect your privacy and save you money. Primary audience is non-technically literate people using a Windows computer, who want to save money and increase

    Know More

  • Mana Without Mātauranga – Digital Ethics

    Mana Without Mātauranga – Digital Ethics

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    There is a pattern in New Zealand’s AI and data governance landscape that is rarely named directly, but it is immediately recognisable to anyone who has worked in this space. When organisations, government agencies, technology companies, universities, and research institutions decide they need Māori input into their AI and Data ethics frameworks, they do not,

    Know More

  • Human Resilience with AI

    Human Resilience with AI

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    I was honoured to be one of the 386 international AI ethics experts to contribute a short essay to the “Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the Age of AI: Experts Call for Radical Change Across Institutions, Social Structures” report and contribute a Te Ao Māori perspective to the Epistemic Vigilance: Discerning Truth, Illusion and

    Know More

  • Briscoes and Rebel Sport FRT with no visible Māori consultation

    Briscoes and Rebel Sport FRT with no visible Māori consultation

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    As facial recognition technology (FRT) is gradually being implemented across New Zealand’s retail landscape, a troubling gap has emerged in how one of the country’s major retailers is handling its rollout. With only internal notices, Briscoes Group operator of Briscoes Homeware and Rebel Sport has been trialling FRT across 18 North Island stores since September

    Know More

  • AI Bias with Māori in Job Interviews

    AI Bias with Māori in Job Interviews

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    The past few days we are hearing about AI and recruitment issues with you a young man who faced bias. I am increasingly concerned that the media is not giving Māori any consideration with their AI bias stories, relying on academics for opinions and for them to talk about us like we are not capable

    Know More

  • Meta’s Digital Ghost Patent

    Meta’s Digital Ghost Patent

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    Meta’s Digital Ghost Patent: A Te Ao Māori Analysis   IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR FACEBOOK AND META USERS On 30 December 2025, Meta was granted a United States patent that would allow its platforms to use Artificial Intelligence to construct a digital simulation of you, trained on your posts, messages, voice recordings, browsing history, and purchases and

    Know More

  • Iran War and Data Sovereignty in New Zealand

    Iran War and Data Sovereignty in New Zealand

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    For millennia, combatants have sought to cripple adversaries by destroying the infrastructure that sustains them, poisoning wells, burning bridges, bombing railways and oil refineries. In the war now engulfing the Middle East, data centres have emerged as a new category of target. The conflict has produced what analysts believe are the first publicly confirmed physical

    Know More

  • Governing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

    Governing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    Artificial intelligence is no longer an emerging technology on the horizon, it is here, transforming industries, reshaping workforces, and fundamentally altering how organisations create value. For New Zealand boards, AI represents both a profound opportunity and a significant governance challenge. Directors who treat AI as purely a technical matter, something to be delegated to the

    Know More

  • Kaupapa Māori AI Framework

    Kaupapa Māori AI Framework

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    I am excited to release, perhaps the world’s first Indigenous Peoples AI Framework for understanding and describing the nature of an Artificial Intelligence (AI). Drawing on mātauranga Māori, tikanga Māori, and te reo Māori, the framework is encapsulated in the whakatauāki :He Tangata, He Karetao, He Ātārangi” (A person, a puppet, a shadow). Each term describes

    Know More

  • Māori usage of the Internet and AI

    Māori usage of the Internet and AI

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    InternetNZ recently released their annual “New Zealand’s Internet Insights 2025 survey findings” report. The following extracted form the report looks at Māori usage and is largely unchanged data from 2010. The Artificial Intelligence remains the same as the previous year.   Internet Use Māori are heavier internet users than NZ Europeans — 54% spend 4+

    Know More

  • Facial Recognition, Algorithmic Bias, and Compounded Harm to Māori and Pacific Communities

    Facial Recognition, Algorithmic Bias, and Compounded Harm to Māori and Pacific Communities

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    A new paper I’ve written looks at Foodstuffs South Island’s facial recognition trial in Christchurch and raises serious questions about who bears the risk. The three trial stores sit in suburbs where Māori and Pacific populations are well below the city average. The stores excluded from the trial are in the suburbs with the highest

    Know More

  • Responsible AI in New Zealand

    Responsible AI in New Zealand

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    New Zealand has developed a comprehensive suite of AI governance instruments, including the Algorithm Charter (Stats NZ, 2020), Privacy Act 2020, Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Act 2023, Biometric Processing Privacy Code 2025 (Office of the Privacy Commissioner, 2025), and responsible AI guidance for both public and private sectors (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment,

    Know More

  • Māori AI and Unequal Futures

    Māori AI and Unequal Futures

    Karaitiana Taiuru

    The New Zealand Reserve Bank released a report “Assessing AI and Robotics Exposure in the New Zealand Labour Market Using Large Language Models“. The analysis finds that Māori workers appear to have lower exposure to AI and robotics than other groups. While this may initially seem positive, it risks being misinterpreted. In the report, higher AI

    Know More