One meeting is not a Māori mandate on AI

Note: This article was first prepared for offline presentations when the reports it discusses were released. It has since been updated and published online on the date shown.

In July 2024, the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology published the Cabinet paper Approach to work on Artificial Intelligence, which set out the Government’s “light-touch, proportionate and risk-based” approach. After meeting the Data Iwi Leaders Group, the Minister wrote:

“There seems to be a common acceptance that the danger for Māori in AI is to be left outside of its ability to bring about substantial improvements in the provision of services for Māori.”

One meeting became a “common acceptance”. And that one view now sits in the Crown’s founding AI policy as the Māori position. So it’s worth asking who was in the room.

The Data ILG was set up in 2016 to secure iwi access to and control over iwi data, and it has done important work on census data and iwi data infrastructure. Its governance draws on seven iwi and iwi collectives: Te Arawa, Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-a-Apanui, Te Ranga Tupua, Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Korokii-Kahukura and Ngāpuhi.

That’s seven out of the more than 70 iwi in the National Iwi Chairs Forum, and many iwi, including Ngāi Tahu, are not part of it. Iwi-level representation also doesn’t automatically speak for hapū, as Ngāpuhi’s long-running mandate debates show. And the group’s purpose is data access and statistics. It was not set up as an expert body on AI risk, safety or regulation.

None of this is a criticism of the iwi involved. They have every right to speak for themselves. The problem is the Crown treating one group, set up for a different purpose, as speaking for all Māori on AI. Tino rangatiratanga sits with iwi and hapū. No single forum can give Māori consent on AI policy, and a Minister can’t record a “common acceptance” from one meeting.

The framing also matters. Defining the danger as missing out on AI’s benefits leaves out the harms Māori already face: more online harm, lower trust in how government handles our information, misidentification by facial recognition, and over-representation in the datasets predictive tools learn from. Iwi leadership sees those risks too. The Iwi Chairs Forum has set up a Pou Tangata for Online Safety, with Netsafe as technical lead.

If the Crown wants a real Māori position on AI, it needs to engage widely with iwi and hapū, bring in Māori AI and data expertise, and treat Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a constitutional threshold, not a single meeting noted in a Cabinet paper.

Source: Office of the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, Approach to work on Artificial Intelligence, Cabinet paper, released 25 July 2024, pp. 4–5.