Dr Oliver Hartwich: NZ’s mixed-up electoral system threatens to blow results out of proportion

Here is a paradox that ought to trouble ministers more than any single threat named in the NZSIS’s 2026 Security Threat Environment report, released in August.

The New Zealand Government has never had more useful intelligence available to it than it does today. Yet it is not digesting that intelligence quickly enough to matter.

The problem is not what we know. It is how we decide.

Kevin: And Here We Go…

Imagine asking Gemini about the Musket Wars and being told, in not so many words, that it can’t help you because it’d make Māori look bad. Make no mistake. This isn’t about human rights or “te Tiriti”. It’s a blatant power grab.

 

The Human Rights Commission is calling for a human rights and te Tiriti-centred approach to artificial intelligence and digital technologies.

The commission’s new report, AI and Digital Technologies: A Human Rights and te Tiriti o Waitangi Approach, was released on Friday and said Māori data sovereignty and te Tiriti o Waitangi must be at the heart of how artificial intelligence was developed and governed in Aotearoa New Zealand.

No, I don’t know what “Māori data sovereignty” means either.

Dr Eric Crampton: The Americans are on the march! Will Wellington welcome them again?

Wellington has its share of urban legends, most of them false.

One of the more popular ones, and a recurring social media trope, claims that America’s Army Corps of Engineers was prepared to build a proper motorway between Wellington and Auckland after the Second World War. And that the New Zealand government turned them down.

A more restrained version claimed that the Americans would have built Transmission Gully to facilitate movement from their base at Paekākāriki through to the port at Wellington.

John Raine: Can universities recover their mojo in the AI age?

 

The Path of Cultural Re-Engineering 

The 2020s have been a period of cultural change in academia throughout the Western world. In countries such as the USA, Canada, the U.K. and Australia, where universities have been heavily captured by ideological agendas, we have yet to see a much loss of momentum in “progressive” left wing politics on campus.  

John Klar: Elon Musk Battles for Free Speech for Artificial Intelligence

Free speech champion Elon Musk is once again leading an effort to protect commercial speech from government control. His company, xAI, filed suit on April 9 against the state of Colorado, seeking to block the enforcement of a Democrat bill that regulates the content of artificial intelligence applications to prevent unlawful discrimination. xAI asserts that the anti-discrimination statute cripples business development and is discriminatory in itself.

David Wojick: AI may bring a cognitive renaissance to human thinking

By “AI” I mean the amazing chatbots that emulate reading and reasoning. There is a lot more to AI but that is how the term is being used these days.

There are a couple of reasons why these powerful AI tools may greatly improve human thinking. Simply put they can save a lot of search time and they find better stuff. This gives people more time to think and better information to think with.

Ani O'Brien: RNZ’s X/Grok political hit job is not a child-safety story

X is simply the space the managerial class can't control

I want to preface this piece with a concession that RNZ’s reporting has improved a lot lately. Their articles are more fulsome and usually present a variety of perspectives. Their online written reporting is on the whole very good, but unfortunately their radio content is not and hiring John Campbell will make things worse. Private media companies like Stuff and NZME regularly republish RNZ articles to the extent that I wonder why the Herald in particular doesn’t fire all of their journalists and just syndicate RNZ content.

The articles I discuss here are not good examples of the quality of RNZ’s reporting. They are indulgences in reflecting the meta-narratives of the leftist managerial class.

Professor Rod NcNaughton: NZ’s low productivity is often blamed on businesses staying small. That could be a strength in 2026

For decades, we have heard a familiar story about why New Zealand’s firms choose to stay small. Business owners prefer comfort, control and lifestyle over ambition, summed up in the old notion of the “bach, boat and BMW” being the height of aspiration.

The statistics show this pattern clearly. New Zealand’s productivity has lagged other advanced economies for years, with output per hour worked sitting below the OECD average.

Barrie Davis: Co-intelligence with Copilot on Co-governance

Co-governance by the Crown and the Maoris is presently being controversially implemented in New Zealand. Here, I work with Copilot to identify how co-governance is said to be derived from a principle of ‘Partnership’ in the Treaty of Waitangi and how that process of constitutional change involves and affects the people of New Zealand. I then advise our Government how that needs to change.

Peter C. Earle: Even Elon’s Techno-Utopia Won’t Make Money Meaningless

Elon Musk recently put forth a bold vision: that within two decades, AI will automate virtually all productive activity, work will be optional, and money will lose meaning. Coming from Musk, such pronouncements carry gravitas. And noticeably, the expressed vision unsurprisingly dovetails neatly with Musk’s admittedly exciting entrepreneurial visions.

Yet variants of those claims have circulated for years, usually without reference to economic theory, institutional constraints, or political risk. Rigorously examining those assertions is essential to decouple technological optimism from the practical realities that will shape the next two decades.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why are we resisting AI?

Time Magazine has just named its Person of the Year for 2025.

And it’s not a single person. It is "the architects" of AI.

The magazine says "no one" had as great an impact this year than the people “who imagined, designed, and built AI".

Damien Grant: Are we in the process of a new post-industrial tech revolution or is AI a massive hype-driven bubble?

Are we in the process of a new post-industrial technological revolution or is the Artificial Intelligence a massive hype-driven bubble that is going to collapse in dramatic style, carrying away billions, or perhaps trillions, of value with it?

If you were hoping I had the answer, well, I’d lose a stock-picking contest with a dart-throwing monkey so best not take investment advice from me. But someone who might know is Michael Burry.

Kevin: Yes Virginia, AI Is Coming for Your Job

 If you’re a middle manager, AI is coming for your job. Who is safe? Tradies and jobs involving some sort of human creativity or judgement beyond what AI can or will ever do. And we will always need people to work one step above AI. But overall, yes, AI is coming for your job.

Dr Peter Winsley: How can more young people enter careers and fulfil their potential

Many young New Zealanders feel that a social contract has been breached. This tacit contract is that, if students worked and studied hard, the government would maintain through its institutions the macroeconomic stability and microeconomic flexibility that allow people to succeed with decisions on study and career choices.

However, young people are now expected to enter a weak labour market under tight fiscal constraints and with high uncertainty over the information learners can draw on. New Zealand has inherited multi-billion infrastructure deficits. It faces challenges in funding growing retirement and health liabilities. Its low domestic savings rates favour non-tradeable sectors and property rather than knowledge-intensive, export-orientated businesses.

Ross Meurant: In Love with AI?

AI, short for Artificial Intelligence, is computer systems or machines that can perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, decision-making, and processing data to recognize patterns and gain insights. (1)

Hatched mid 1950s in the UK to the point now where AI poses a major threat to employment of humans, my first question was, “Follow the Money”. That is, who owns this evolving beast?

David R. Henderson: Free Markets Are Monopoly Busters

Competition does the work that regulators can’t—especially in a technological age.

In January 1969, two months after I had turned eighteen, I read that the last official act of Lyndon Johnson’s administration was to bring an antitrust suit against IBM for monopolizing the market for mainframe computers. I was angry. You might wonder why. Was it because the lawsuit would waste resources of both IBM and taxpayers? It did do that, but my anger was more fundamental. IBM had worked hard for its position, and it seemed to me that it was being punished for succeeding and for producing something that companies wanted to buy. “No one gets fired for buying IBM” was a well-known slogan at the time.

Ryan Bridge: are we taking it too far with AI?

The future's here. AI is taking over.

A team of robots kept alive in some giant warehouse with tonnes of electricity are right now whirring away, beavering away on the world's problems.

AI will soon be marking our students' exams. The Swedish Prime Minister overnight admitted he uses AI for a second opinion on running the country.

Dr Eric Crampton: Intelligence built on a library’s ashes

It is legal to buy books. Obviously.

If you buy a book, it is legal to read it. If you have read it, it is legal to answer questions about it, whether for free or for payment.

Copyright does not prevent you from doing any of this. If it did, academics would have a tough time. Imagine having to get pre-clearance from any author whose works you mentioned in seminar. It would not be workable.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Our fearful mindset may be AI’s greatest hurdle

On Tuesday morning, I attended a breakfast in New Zealand’s Parliament. The latest report from NZIER, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, to Xero, the online accounting software company, “Going Digital in 2025,” was unveiled.

There was much excitement about the potential for digital transformation to invigorate the economy. New Zealand’s businesses have long struggled to produce more value from the same labour and capital inputs.

Collin Bjork: Why universities must be wary of embracing AI-driven teaching tools....

Clones in the classroom - why universities must be wary of embracing AI-driven teaching tools

The university sector in New Zealand is at a tipping point due to chronic underfunding, shifting enrolments and increasing costs from inflation. In response, the government has established two working groups to assess the health of the sector and provide recommendations for the future.