Cabinet Minister Judith Collins wants the government to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI), starting with the health and education sectors where it could be used to assess mammogram results and provide AI tutors for children.
“It doesn’t do the work for them. It says some things like ‘go back, rethink that one, look at that number,’ those sorts of things. What an exciting way to do your homework if you’re a child.”
Deploying AI in education and health would be seen as high risk uses under new legislation passed by the European Union regulating AI.
Using AI in those settings in EU countries must include high levels of transparency, accuracy and human oversight.
But New Zealand has no specific AI regulation and Collins is keen to get productivity gains from extending its use across government, including using it to process Official Information Act requests.
An OIA request by RNZ for a government Cabinet paper on AI was turned down (by a human) on the grounds that the policy is under live consideration.
“AI” for health is already known to be very problematic, and nobody wants to see a 10 years down the track commission of inquiry about why some women were not diagnosed correctly from their mammograms.
The chatbots Judith is talking about for tutoring children regularly hallucinate and come up with such stupid things as cooking recipes for petrol spaghetti and other reckless trash. Sounds like a fast way to destroy the education of a bunch of children, but all the rich kids will still be in their private schools with low pupil numbers and enjoying private tutors so why would Judith care.
