Dr Karaitiana Taiuru regularly composes blog posts on topics relating to Māori and Artificial Intelligence, Data Sovereignty, Safety, Cultural Appropriation and other related topics. Please subscribe to the RSS feed http://www.taiuru.co.nz/rss to keep up to date.
All posts
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AI Agents and Legal Personhood in New Zealand
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…
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Google DeepMind hires ‘philosopher’
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…
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Personal Māori Data Sovereignty
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…
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Mana Without Mātauranga – Digital Ethics
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…
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Human Resilience with AI
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…
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AI Bias with Māori in Job Interviews
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…
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Meta’s Digital Ghost Patent
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…
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Iran War and Data Sovereignty in New Zealand
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…
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Governing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
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.…
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Kaupapa Māori AI Framework
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…
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Māori usage of the Internet and AI
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.…
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Facial Recognition, Algorithmic Bias, and Compounded Harm to Māori and Pacific Communities
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…
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Responsible AI in New Zealand
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…
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Māori AI and Unequal Futures
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.…
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Autonomous AI Governance Guidance for New Zealand Organisations
This document provides governance guidance for New Zealand organisations considering the deployment of autonomous AI agents. It is not legal advice. It is written by a practitioner with governance experience in New Zealand and expertise in international AI governance. Autonomous…
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Māori likely to see graphic or extreme content
The 2026 Online Exposure: Experiences of Extreme or Illegal Content in Aotearoa report from the Classification Office provides a comprehensive look at the prevalence and impact of extreme or illegal online content within New Zealand. This report examines the experiences…
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AI blackface – Is te ao Māori next?
A social media wildlife expert called a First Nations version of Steve Irwin drew a large following that The Guardian exposed the account as an AI-generated character. A South African content creator reportedly ran the operation from New Zealand. Indigenous…
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Bias in Health AI
When Clinical Algorithms Don’t See Us. Māori Data Sovereignty Approaches to Detecting and Mitigating Bias in Health AI The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic decision support in health systems is unfolding within long standing patterns of inequity…
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Māori Forensic Deceased Data
Tikanga Māori Perspectives on Forensic Data: Dr Angela Clark on Digital Governance for Tūpāpaku in Aotearoa New Zealand Emerging forensic technologies, high-resolution imaging, 3D reconstructions, and AI-assisted analysis are rapidly changing how data from tūpāpaku (the deceased) is created, used,…
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Māori views of Digital Credentials
In New Zealand, a digital credential is a secure, digital version of something that proves who you are or what you’re entitled to, for example your identity, age, or role in a business that you can store in a wallet…
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Will the AI bubble burst
Is the AI Bubble About to Burst? Understanding the 2025 Market Wobble Recent headlines warning of an “AI bubble burst” have dominated tech news as AI-linked stocks experience significant volatility. But before we panic, we need to understand: what does…
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AI and Generative AI Policy template for education
An AI & Generative AI Policy in education isn’t optional anymore. Schools and tertiary institutions are already surrounded by AI, whether they have a policy or not. Students are using ChatGPT style tools to draft essays, teachers are turning to…
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Māori Health Data Sovereignty realised
For the first time, the rohe of Te Taura Ora o Waiāriki (Te Arawa IMPB) will have access to a dashboard built from data specific to their people recognising mana motuhake and Māori data sovereignty. . This is a powerful…
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Risks of AI Agents to Māori
AI Agents are to Māori what Captain Cook and his Endeavour Ship and crew were. If Māori understood the challenges and intergenerational colonisation they were capable of, the historical outcomes would be very different. Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents are rapidly…