The Human Rights Commission is calling for a human rights and te Tiriti-centred approach to artificial intelligence and digital technologies.
The commission’s new report, AI and Digital Technologies: A Human Rights and te Tiriti o Waitangi Approach, was released on Friday and said Māori data sovereignty and te Tiriti o Waitangi must be at the heart of how artificial intelligence was developed and governed inAotearoaNew Zealand.
No, I don’t know what “Māori data sovereignty” means either.
Rongomau Taketake Indigenous Rights governance partner Dayle Takitimu said Te Tiriti provided essential guidance for New Zealand’s approach.
“Māori, like all peoples, have the right to determine how data relating to their communities, interests and identitiesisare collected, used, governed and protected. As AI systems increasingly draw on language, knowledge and data, it is critical that Māori rights, interests and authority are respected.”
Actually, no. So long as copyright laws and terms of use provisions are met, AI models can collect whatever data they like.
[…] The report said artificial intelligence could bring significant benefits, including improving access to healthcare, education and public services, supporting people with disabilities, and helping revitalise te reo Māori and indigenous knowledge.
It also identified risks including privacy breaches, discrimination and bias, digital exclusion, a lack of transparency and accountability, job displacement and the misuse of Māori data.
Senior Human Rights advisor Sophie Bradwell-Pollack told RNZ those risks were significant for Māori, because data could encompass far more than just individual information.
“It’s not just ownership of basic facts about a person,” she said. “It includes taonga, language, culture, and so the wider implications of that and the impact on Māori sovereignty, te ao Māori, tikanga, and all of that are a lot wider than just the kind of general kind of the smaller lens of that dataisare just not being used or being used in a proper way.”
And how does this apply exclusively to Māori?
She said AI systems could also reproduce biases that already existed within society.
Large language models used huge amounts of data, but that data did not necessarily represent all communities equally.
Except AI models have been shown to be biased in favour of the left...
[…] She said a human rights-based approach – including transparency, participation and accountability – needed to underpin how AI was used inAotearoaNew Zealand.
The government is actively looking to increase the use of AI and digital tools across the public service, including as a way of improving productivity.
Bradwell-Pollack said human rights obligations did not disappear, when technology was introduced.
“Human rights and te Tiriti obligations apply,” she said. “They apply whether you’re writing on paper or whether you’re using a computer.”
Tell me, apart from privacy laws and the spread of harmful information against an individual, how do human rights and Treaty obligations apply?
“The reality of the situation is that they also provide a tried and tested framework that we can learn from to help guide us in this kind of endeavor to figure out how we’re going to govern AI for the good of everyone.”
She said, if AI was used by the government to make decisions about people, there needed to be transparency around how those systems worked and what datawaswere being used.
You mean like why someone’s cuzzie’s WINZ benefit wasn’t extended?
[…] “These are not decisions that are being made about us, without us, essentially.”
A spokesperson for Paul Goldsmith, the minister responsible for the public service and digitising government, said Goldsmith had received the report and “will consider its recommendations in due course”.
“The government will table its response in parliament.”
Translation: Yeah, nah.
[…] Because much of the technology was developed overseas and imported by businesses,AotearoaNew Zealand could not necessarily control how the technology itself was built, but it could decide how that technology was used and governed here.
From a te Tiriti perspective, she said that meant meaningful engagement and partnership, ensuring Māori understood how their datawaswere being used, and supporting iwi and hapū to exercise their right to self-determination.”
Your data isn’t anything special.
[…] “These technologies exist,” she said. “They are being used and, actually, there are just some things that we need to do to ensure that they’re being used in a way that doesn’t do harm.
“It’s not that this is inevitable. We actually have a voice and we should be using that.”
Imagine asking Gemini about the Musket Wars and being told, in not so many words, that it can’t help you because it’d make Māori look bad.
Make no mistake. This isn’t about human rights or “te Tiriti” It’s a blatant power grab.
