ACT leader David Seymour doesn't see why AI shouldn't write government Cabinet papers

In the lead-up to November's election, Midday Report is speaking with the technology spokesperson for a range of parties about their biggest hopes and fears for artificial intelligence (AI) and the role of the Government in regulating the technology. On Friday, Guyon Epsiner sat down with ACT leader David Seymour.David Seymour says he can't see why AI shouldn't write government Cabinet papers.In an interview with Midday Report, the Act Party leader said he'd done dummy runs into what AI can do in government and said it should be aggressively adapted.Seymour said the Ministry for Regulation had issued guidance on using AI."One of the critical things it says is: 'Yes, we should be using AI in government, but keep a human in the loop'."We haven't, sort of, put the whole thing on autopilot. What we're doing is saying, okay, there's a whole lot of steps in this process. Everything in government is long. What if we just gave a part of that process and see if they can do it faster than the humans?"He said in the last few years every time there was a suggestion anyone in government was using AI there was an uproar."At the last election, a few people used some AI to produce their graphics on social media, and this was going to be the end of the world. I think generally the risk for New Zealand is that we're too slow to adopt this. The public sector was too slow to adopt this."Seymour said there were a number of dangers with AI."I read a couple of months ago about a guy in Sydney who had no real special training, managed to create a kind of CAR T therapy for his dog, which actually cured his dog's cancer. He used AI to develop that CAR-T therapy based on some tests of the cancer cells in his dog. Now, when I read that, I thought, that is possibly one of the coolest things I've read in years, but also one of the most terrifying, because what if he wasn't benign? What if he was a cat person? He might use it for evil. Luckily, he was a dog person."But the idea that AI will empower some lone wolf to do something truly awful. All technology has sort of been taking us in that direction."Seymour said the New Zealand government was "probably not" going to be the leader on AI worldwide."I suspect out best play is to be a fast follower as those debates play out overseas."I would make an analogy to the social media debate. The idea that the New Zealand government is going to change the marketplace for social media globally, maybe good political point scoring at home, but it's not realistic."What we should do in the social media debate is follow these American court cases, the most recent one, Alabama versus TikTok, and make sure that New Zealand kids get the same protections as American kids have, and I would make a similar analogy for the role of the New Zealand government in AI."He said ACT did not have a position on which department AI should rest in or which minister should be responsible."I think there should be somebody in government who is monitoring offshore developments and ensuring that we are indeed a fast follower."