Something a bit different this week. Instead of a video essay, I want to share the keynote I delivered at the New Zealand Economic Forum in Hamilton.
I called the talk “Choices for a Small Nation: Why AI Literacy is New Zealand’s Most Accessible Lever” and it covers something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. There’s a concept called the AI Capability Overhang. The tools have raced ahead. The capability is there. But most organisations, and most countries, haven’t caught up yet. McKinsey’s latest data shows only 1% of companies globally would call themselves “mature” in their AI adoption. One percent.
So the keynote walks through what that gap looks like at three levels: individual, organisational, and national. I share evidence from Harvard, BCG, Accenture, and others on what happens when organisations actually commit to building AI capability properly. And I make the case that for a small country like New Zealand, AI literacy isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the most accessible and powerful economic lever we’ve got right now to arrest and reverse our chronic productivity problem.
I also did a couple of live demos on stage, which was either brave or foolish depending on your perspective. They went well.
The full event was livestreamed and my segment runs about 55 minutes. The video above is cued to the start of my talk (the 7 hour 25 minute mark of the full stream). I’d genuinely love to hear what you think.
