Speeches just the start of Collins’ AI mission
Judith Collins has been using ChatGPT to help her write speeches. And she wants people to better understand the coming benefits and risks of artificial intelligence.
“I’m one of those people who is something of a relatively early adopter of technology. It’s just my mindset is pretty much like that, and I love picking up new ideas and things,” she told The Post.
The minister for Digitising Government – among her defence, intelligence, and other tech-related jobs – has recently resurrected a cross-party group of MPs interested in artificial intelligence (AI) as she seeks Parliament-wide support for a framework for AI use in government.
The collection of MPs, who will meet later this month to consider the framework, include those who have concerns about AI’s potential harms, and others who consider themselves the uninitiated.
Labour MP Helen White said she was “very keen” on reaching consensus on such a critical issue. She also thought MPs should launch an inquiry into AI and small business, and inspect the threat the technology posed through foreign interference, as the Australian Senate has.
NZ First MP Andy Foster asked Collins for an invitation at a parliamentary hearing earlier this week, while confessing he “may not have great AI skills”.
“We want people who know more, but we want people who want to learn about it. I’m not the expert, I’m just someone who’s really passionate about it,” Collins said.
“It would be great to have consensus. I don’t know whether or not we’ll get it.”
Collins’ interest in AI and the global scramble to set up rules and regulations for its use have coincided with the development of large language models, such as ChatGPT, which set alight both fascination and concern at the technology’s development when the tool was made public in late 2022.
At the time, Collins said, it became apparent to her that AI – already working behind the scenes in Google Maps and banking apps – was crucial to digitising government services. She travelled to New South Wales to meet its minister of customer service and understand the state’s efforts to digitise.
“It’s like any technology or any tool – almost anything, within the hands of the wrong people, and with the wrong purpose, it could bring about destruction,” she said.
“So why should the good actors of the world, us and others who don’t invade other people's countries and don’t try and surveil our citizens to the nth degree, shouldn’t we be the people who actually come up with good frameworks and say, ‘This is how we're going to use it for the citizens’ benefit’?”
Collins may be effusive about technology, but she’s not an evangelist. Her own use with the technology has proven that “it’s not the answer for everything”.
Her Cabinet papers aren’t written by ChatGPT – that’s done by ministry officials – but for speeches she delivers at electorate events, she has made use of it, though its output requires scrutiny.
“Do I think Cabinet papers should be written with the aid of AI? Absolutely ... obviously not for security matters, obviously not for very secret matters.”