Wasting time on AI regulation and Sovereign AI in New Zealand (1 of 6)
- Tom Barraclough
- Sep 25
- 2 min read
A personal perspective, inspired by professional experience since 2012 in tech, law and public policy. Produced 100% organically.
In its AI Strategy, the New Zealand Government – as distinct from the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment – has taken an approach that emphasises potential for economic growth. Perhaps relatedly, New Zealand has taken a distributed approach to regulating artificial intelligence.
What this means is that we won't be deploying a dedicated, cross-cutting "AI Act", like the European Union. To be frank, I think that is a sensible decision, and a probably unavoidable result (more on this in the next post). Instead, we’re focused on how to adopt and deploy AI well. Again, I think that’s a sensible approach.
But taking that approach has consequences. One of those consequences is that even people wanting to adopt and deploy artificial intelligence are faced with a difficult task. If they want to understand what they can or can’t do, how are they meant to find out? What kinds of substantive support is available to drive adoption, even beyond self-help guidance?
A diverse range of regulatory material on AI is littered all over the place. I know this because I've played a role in collating it all in the NZ AI Policy Tracker. On top of that information problem, there are three other problems that undermine meaningful effort on AI policy. That leaves four high level problems in total.
An information problem. How are people meant to find the information they require?
A coordination problem. How are different groups and sectors meant to collaborate productively?
An economic problem. How do the financial and economic realities facing different sectors shape the information and coordination problems above?
A policy problem. What’s the overall guiding vision we’re shooting for, and how are we meant to coordinate initiatives by government, industry, academia and communities around this vision?
In a series of posts I’m releasing in the coming fortnight, I'm going to explain why I think all of the above means we're wasting time when it comes to AI regulation, to the possibilities and concept of Sovereign AI, and to the benefits and negative consequences of artificial intelligence more generally.
Some of what I say feels uncomfortable. I will clearly say at this point that I don’t pretend to be above the fray or immune to the factors and incentives I describe. But this series is intended to be descriptive and constructive, and in the final post I'm also going to explain what I've done and I'm doing towards resolving those problems.
If you’d like to be notified when the next post is published, you can sign up for the Brainbox mailing list (see page footer), or follow along on LinkedIn (me, and Brainbox). If you don't want to wait to read all the posts, you can reach out and get access to the whole series at once.
If you want a head start, you can find a presentation I gave on New Zealand's path in regulating AI in a global context below, released in 2024 - some of the shifts since then (particularly on the rules based international order and global trade) mean my conclusions require a little bit of refinement.
