NO ESCAPE

AI is already transforming many industries and will likely weave its way into all of them before long. Healthcare, education, travel, news and media, manufacturing, cyber-security, legal, real estate, entertainment and aerospace are among the industries currently implementing AI to varying degrees. Below are some of the different ways it is being used in New Zealand.

Facing facts

New Zealand company Soul Machines has created a virtual assistant avatar called Nadia, which is powered by IBM’s Watson, a computer system that is currently being used in 45 countries and 20 industries ( it is already diagnosing disease at a higher accuracy rate than human doctors). Nadia was built to help people with a disability navigate information on government services. Another prototype called Rachel helps people with their banking. The faces of Soul Machines’ creations are incredibly lifelike and via a device's frontfacing camera, the avatars are able to read the facial expressions of the human user and respond appropriately.

Feeling bot, bot, bot

Air New Zealand launched its chat bot Bravo Oscar Tango( geddit?)l ate last year in an effort to“offer a more personalised experience than searching a traditional Frequently Asked Questions section online ”. Oscar, as it’ s known, has had its issues and, as it uses existing language programmes, is still fairly rudimentary, but itis learning as it goes. Chief digital officer and former Google rAviGol an told the Herald he wants his chat bots to know how you feel.

"The vision is for the bots to move from gathering information to activities–changing flights and seats ,” he said.

Prediction power

Kiwi energy company Vector is using AI within its IoT energy platform (developed by mPrest, an Israeli software company), which Vector said will offer five benefits: making the energy market more accessible; monitoring and prediction through AI resulting in fewer power outages and faster solutions; higher efficiency leading to cheaper energy costs; smart home energy systems and energy that is more sustainable.

A robot in every port

Ports of Auckland is working on automating its currently manually-driven straddle carriers, which shift around the containers at the terminal. Set to complete in 2019, automating the carriers will increase the sustainability of the Port’s operations, lower costs by using up to ten percent less fuel and operate more quietly.