Neil Sands
Labour says it will introduce sweeping controls over artificial intelligence (AI) if elected, including setting up a regulator to oversee online safety, safeguarding copyright protections for creators, and ensuring New Zealand households don’t foot the bill for power-hungry AI data centres.
Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said the policy, available here, would end New Zealand’s current “light touch” approach to AI regulation, which he said gave too much power to big tech companies.
“AI offers huge opportunities to lift productivity, improve public services, and help businesses compete. But we cannot leave it to a handful of big technology companies to decide how it shapes our future,” he said.
Responsibility for AI currently sits across multiple portfolios but Labour says it will establish an Office of AI within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) and appoint a senior minister to coordinate AI policy across the whole of government.
It also plans to set up an online safety regulator within the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) to combat growth in AI-enabled scams, deepfakes, non-consensual images and threats to children.
“We will identify gaps in New Zealand law and strengthen protections where needed, rather than only relying on technology companies to regulate themselves. These protections will include banning non-consensual deepfake pornography. We will also establish clear standards around the use of private information, such as health data.”
Labour also wants to expand an existing AI Expert Advisory Panel to include technical and legal experts, as well as representatives from small business, unions, the arts and iwi Māori. The panel will identify emerging opportunities and risks involving AI.
Copyright, power safeguards
One risk that has been well-flagged is the impact on the creative and media industries from AI companies using copyrighted content without permission to train their AI models, which Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher has described as “the biggest theft in history”.
Labour says it will develop a copyright framework to ensure creators are remunerated for their work.
“Not everything produced in New Zealand is up for grabs,” it said. “Writers, musicians, artists, journalists and other creators should retain meaningful control over how their work is used and should be properly recognised and rewarded for its value.”
Another concern centres on the huge renewable power demands of AI data centres, which Labour said should not be allowed to drive up electricity and water costs for ordinary households.
“We will require data centres to secure their own renewable energy supply, pay for their own connection costs, reduce electricity demand during peak stress periods, and use water efficiently.”
When Finance Minister Nicola Willis unveiled plans to slash almost 9,000 public service jobs earlier this year, a key element of the strategy was using AI to deliver more efficiencies in the bureaucracy, partly through automated decision making (ADM).
However, ADM raises questions about how much human oversight must be retained over algorithmic determinations affecting citizens, which Labour said it would address.
“A Labour government will establish clear expectations for human oversight and accountability in the public service, and review how existing privacy, consumer and employment protections apply to AI,” Hipkins’ policy document says.
“When the government makes a decision affecting someone’s access to a service, a person must remain accountable.”
Labour’s approach leans heavily on Australia’s plan to manage AI, announced in July, and the policy says a Hipkins-led government would keep AI standards and approaches closely aligned to our trans-Tasman neighbours.
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