About 60 Great South guests were glued to their Kelvin Hotel seats on Thursday evening as the United Kingdom-born New Zealand nanotechnologist shared her knowledge and AI’s future impact.
Business needed to stay informed about technology so it could future-proof, she said.
The days were gone where the traditional five year business plan would be enough to futureproof due to the breakneck speed technology has been advancing.
Owners also needed to understand the importance of maintaining a customer-centric business or risk becoming quickly irrelevant.
"I care about that we have empty stores."
The number of legacy institutions closing was evidence of its model not moving with the customer. "Not being customer-centric is the biggest threat to business." Schools were another sector which needed to adapt to the changing world as it predominantly catered to produce an "average" student. "Nobody wants their kids to be average." Were AI technology to be implemented it could be used to develop personalised learning models while removing the stress-inducing and labour-intensive tasks from teachers’ workload. "Now you can be the best teacher you can be and stay in the field you love. "I don’t want our teachers to be burnt out, I want them to be excited to be teaching." In 30 seconds, new technology could now produce individualised 12-week teaching plans aligned to the curriculum, in both Ma¯ori and English she said. Agriculture was another sector to benefit from the developing technology.
Better crop yields and cost savings could now be achieved through localised soil and crop tracking information which pinpointed what fertiliser needs or moisture levels were required in specific sections of a paddock.
While AI was a problem-solving tool which provided outcomes on the information available to it, to work well, it still needed the creative ideas to come from humans, she said.
"People are the fundamentals of the future . . . and human side of why we do things should be at the forefront.
"We, as humans, make some pretty cool decisions that aren’t always based on logic."
Personal and commercial security had also become imperative now there was the ability to produce realistic "deep-fake" productions with videos and audio was about to hit us.
She urged families and organisations to have "safe words" that would not be present in deep fake recordings and allow family members or staff to identify fake from genuine cries for help.
"This is the stuff we need to be talking about with our kids right now."
Great South chief executive Chami Abeysinghe said Dr Dickinson’s presentation raised some "thought-provoking" questions for Southland’s business leaders.
She believed there needed to be discussions about how Southland could position itself to be at the forefront of tech-driven innovation.
"I think some of the points that she really raised was a good indication that we probably need to get a bit quicker at adopting and adapting.
"By the time we get around to thinking about it, it has already changed again." AI was able to process information and data in a fraction of the time humans did, but the technology did not come without risks and it was critical businesses protected their operations. "If we are going to use it, we need to be able to know that it’s secure." Information on ChatGPT entered the public realm that everyone could have access to and business policies had not kept up. "You absolutely have to have a [AI security] policy."
