Te Kete o Karaitiana Taiuru (Blog)

Archive


  • Māori Data Sovereignty and the Fragility of Borrowed AI

    Māori Data Sovereignty and the Fragility of Borrowed AI

    Anthropic the company behind the Claude AI received with no warning or explanation, a directive directing them to immediately suspend access to their Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals in America and all non-Americans on the planet, . This included New Zealand who had access for several days prior. “Fable 5…

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  • Human Oversight in Automated Decision Making

    Human Oversight in Automated Decision Making

    The New Zealand media continue to report on AI harms from a western, academic, middle-class perspective while continuing to make invisible communities silent and ignored. This is a te ao Māori perspective of the recent MSD automated Decision Making law that was passed, delving deep into community harms for Māori. I have spent years documenting…

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  • Ministry’s AI Guidance- wrong Māori advise

    Ministry’s AI Guidance- wrong Māori advise

    The Ministry for Regulation’s Responsible AI in Action guidance (May 2026) represents a credible foundation for regulators engaging with Artificial Intelligence. However, the guidance contains a significant and consequential gap: its treatment of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Māori data sovereignty is underdeveloped, incorrect, outdated, and structurally undermined by the absence of Māori voices in…

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  • Replacing public servants with AI – costs to Māori

    Replacing public servants with AI – costs to Māori

    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…

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  • Māori Privacy Survey Findings

    Māori Privacy Survey Findings

    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…

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  • AI Agents and Legal Personhood in New Zealand

    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 argue that Mead’s tikanga Māori framework that I have previously applied to static AI models…

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

    Google DeepMind hires ‘philosopher’ to work on machine consciousness

    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,…

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  • Mana Without Mātauranga – Digital Ethics

    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 decide they need Māori input into their AI and Data ethics frameworks, they do not,…

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  • Human Resilience with AI

    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 and contribute a Te Ao Māori perspective to the Epistemic Vigilance: Discerning Truth, Illusion and…

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  • AI Bias with Māori in Job Interviews

    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 academics for opinions and for them to talk about us like we are not capable…

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  • Governing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

    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. Directors who treat AI as purely a technical matter, something to be delegated to the…

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  • Kaupapa Māori AI Framework

    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 whakatauāki :He Tangata, He Karetao, He Ātārangi” (A person, a puppet, a shadow). Each term describes…

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  • Responsible AI in New Zealand

    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 responsible AI guidance for both public and private sectors (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment,…

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  • Autonomous AI Governance Guidance for New Zealand Organisations

    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 AI agents such as OpenClaw represent a material shift in organisational risk. Unlike conventional AI,…

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  • Māori likely to see graphic or extreme content

    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 of extreme or illegal content among various age groups and how it affects the population.…

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  • Māori views of Digital Credentials

    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 style phone or device app and present online or in person. This includes your digital…

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  • Will the AI bubble burst?

    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 history tell us about technology booms, busts, and the real value that emerges afterward? AI…

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  • NZ specific AI and Generative AI Policy template for education

    NZ specific 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 AI to plan lessons, and admin teams are experimenting with AI for reporting, analytics, and…

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