New Zealand's AI governance gap - why the ALTeR Conference is wake-up call for legal professionals

Summary

• Who needs to be in the room
• The leading lights of AI research
• Procurement as power
• The case against light-touch regulation
• Regulation as a verb
• What lawyers will take away
• Five Years from Now

Originally published by NZ Lawyer. Republished with permission.

Alexandra Andhov doesn’t like to see a good crisis wasted.

She watched the 2008 global financial crisis produce sweeping regulatory reform across the developed world and drew a simple conclusion: meaningful change rarely arrives ahead of the disaster that makes it necessary. The question is whether New Zealand is wise enough to borrow someone else's crisis rather than waiting for its own, particularly when it comes to AI regulation.

Andhov, co-director of the Centre for Advancing Law and Technology Responsibly (ALTeR) and inaugural Chair in Law and Technology at the University of Auckland, will be driving home this point and more to the country's legal, technology, and policy communities at ALTeR’s inaugural "Law, Technology, and Government" conference, running 15-17 April at the University of Auckland. The conference brings together lawyers, policymakers, government officials, and technology companies for substantive conversations – and equips legal professionals with tools, insights and CPD credits to take back to their practice.

Crisis derived regulation on the back of technological advances is not difficult to find. Google's use of data harvested from students via school-issued Chromebooks triggered significant legislative debate overseas. The EU's comprehensive technology regulation grew from years of documented harm and market failure. New Zealand has the advantage of watching all of this unfold from a safe distance – and the opportunity to act on what it sees.

"One of the best initial sparks is often a scandal," said Andhov. "We might wait for that scandal to happen. But if you are smarter, you might learn from the others."

Closer to home, the My Health data controversy is already prompting urgent questions about New Zealand’s data protection frameworks, offering what may be an early signal of the kind of public pressure that tends to concentrate legislative minds. Andhov's view is straightforward: New Zealand should not need a full-blown disaster before it acts.

That urgency is what drove her to co-found ALTeR within Auckland's law faculty last year. Rather than a think tank that produces white papers and waits, Andhov is keen for the ALTeR centre to be a place that brings together exceptional lawyers, policymakers, government officials, and technology companies to have the conversations New Zealand has been deferring for a long time. It will also give legal professionals tools, insights, and CPD credits to take back to their practices.

"As someone who moved to New Zealand less than two years ago, I think that New Zealand has great international PR,” she said. But this image is quickly tempered by a its self-imposed constraint: the belief that New Zealand is too small to achieve much on its own.

"I would love us to set that aside and think, no, we are small but we are connected, and we are powerful, and we can get things done because there is a power in being small and agile."

Who needs to be in the room

Andhov is clear that tech lawyers are not the only ones who should be attending.

“This is not a typical academic conference. It is not about papers being presented. We focus on conversations, discussions and short and to-the-point keynotes,” she said.

“Thus, not only lawyers should join, but also policy people and government officials should be in the room, because one of the big themes that we touch upon during the conference is actually what is the role of the government and law in creating an innovative ecosystem."

Technology companies are also squarely in the frame. Their in-house legal teams, Andhov suggested, have a professional obligation to stay across academic and business discussions that may eventually shape the regulatory environment in which those companies operate.

The three-day structure reflects this breadth. Day one, on 15 April, features an expert roundtable on AI in financial advice run in partnership with the Financial Markets Authority, as well as Andhov's own inaugural professorial lecture on Big Tech's influence on democratic governance. The main conference days on 16-17 April cover the role of government and artificial intelligence respectively, examining procurement strategy, regulatory frameworks, creative industries, intellectual property, and online safety.

The leading lights of AI research

The speaker roster has been assembled to bring in perspectives that New Zealand practitioners may not routinely encounter.

Keynote speaker Professor Chris Marsden, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Technology, and the Law at Monash University, has been directly involved in drafting technology regulation in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. Ken Singer, Managing Director of the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at UC Berkeley, will address questions of innovation strategy, joining a fireside chat alongside a government minister and a leading Kiwi entrepreneur.

On the procurement side, Jessica Tillipman, Associate Dean for Government Procurement Law at George Washington University, and Matt Perkins, Chief Adviser Procurement at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, will examine how governments can deploy their buying power more strategically. Michael Heron KC, founder of Britomart Chambers, and Simon Martin, partner at Hudson Gavin Martin, represent the New Zealand legal profession among the speakers, alongside Kiwi entrepreneurs Sam Blackman and Bowen Pan, who have built successful ventures offshore.

"It was really the aim of this event to create space for meaningful discussions and hopefully meaningful change," Andhov said. "It's always good to have perspectives from abroad, just to be informed as to what was successful and what wasn’t. That allows us to learn from the mistakes of others and hopefully not make them ourselves."

Procurement as power

One key idea on the agenda is the use of public procurement as a strategic lever - the way government spends money shapes how markets behave.

"The ability of the government to buy is really powerful," Andhov said. "Many countries around the world treat public procurement as a strategic tool."

The practical implications extend in two directions. First, there is the question of which companies the government chooses to contract with, and whether preference for local technology firms might strengthen New Zealand's own tech sector. Second is the question of contractual conditions. When the government negotiates these agreements with international technology providers, the specifications written into those contracts, including provisions around data use, privacy, and security, can materially influence how those companies conduct themselves in the New Zealand market.

With ongoing questions about how the government manages a $50 billion spending programme, Andhov said the timing was apt. "I do think that we need to have this discussion.”

The case against light-touch regulation

On the question of regulation itself, Andhov is unlikely to be mistaken for a neutral observer. As a capital markets lawyer trained in Europe, she is frank about Europe’s formative influence on her views, and pushes back against the framing that regulation and innovation are inherently in tension.

New Zealand currently operates what she describes as a "very light touch approach to regulating technology," and she does not mince her words about the consequences.

"I do think that is incorrect, that is actually faulty and very harmful in the long run," she said. "If you look at developed legal systems, they all talk engage with regulation: the United States, Canada, the European Union, but also Japan, South Korea, Singapore. Developed legal systems recognise that we need to regulate new technologies, as any other industry."

The counter-narrative, she suggested, has been effectively promoted by large technology companies with a commercial interest in minimal oversight. "There is this narrative that is highly pushed by US big tech companies, which is that regulation hampers and actually goes against any kind of innovation. This is untrue."

The comparison to Denmark is one she returns to often. With a population roughly equivalent to New Zealand's five million, Denmark operates a regulated technology environment without, she noted, any apparent damage to its economy or capacity for entrepreneurship. Rather the opposite is the case.

"I don't think it's about small country or big country and resources," Andhov said. "We are living in a globalised world. If you have countries like Denmark or Finland, or any Scandinavian countries, what is the difference? I would argue that there's probably some other reason, not the lack of resources, that is stopping us from actually doing something meaningful."

Regulation as a verb

One useful reframe Andhov offers is a grammatical one. At an AI forum event several months ago, she proposed a shift in how the word "regulation" is understood.

"We should think of regulation not as a noun, but as a verb, something that needs to occur continuously," she said. "If you have a subject that is continuous, such as the development of AI or any other technology, you need to be much more agile."

The My Health data controversy, she suggested, may yet prove to be New Zealand's own catalysing moment. But her preference is for the country to act before the pressure becomes unavoidable, drawing on the hard-won experience of jurisdictions that have already been through the cycle of harm, public outcry, and legislative scramble.

"If you are smarter, you might not wait for that scandal and harm to happen," Andhov said. "Why not learn from the UK, from the US, from the EU, from Australia?"

What lawyers will take away

For legal professionals who may find the AI dimension of the programme daunting, Andhov offered a direct answer: come anyway. A session featuring LexisNexis Senior Director for Product Management Jo Wade and other technology providers has been designed specifically to address the questions that rarely get answered in standard product demonstrations.

"I know that lawyers are a conservative group, and rightfully so," Andhov said. "What I'm hearing a lot is questions around security and reliability, and whether the AI is actually saying and doing things correctly, or whether it's just making things up. Leading tech expert from LexisNexis will join and answer the hard questions about the technology which you don’t normally get the chance to ask.”

ALTeR is grateful for the partnership and support from LexisNexis in making this session possible.

The programme also includes a panel examining whether classical common law concepts - equity, trust, and fiduciary duties - can be applied to modern technology challenges, a question with immediate practical relevance for lawyers advising clients in an environment where statute has yet to catch up.

Five Years from Now

In an ideal world, where does Andhov see New Zealand in five years? Not waiting for a scandal to act. Not held back by its size. Not fearing to govern. And well past the preliminary conversation about whether technology governance is even necessary.

"I would like New Zealand to rightfully take its stage on the international podium," she said. “There is a lot to be offered by Aotearoa New Zealand. I would like us to move faster and be much less fearful."

The conference is intended as the beginning of that shift, with ALTeR planning to hold it either annually or every other year in New Zealand.

Register for the conference here.

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