Latest / Best of Business / Matt Bain: Spark Head of Data explains why Kiwi businesses are reluctant to use AI

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Matt Bain: Spark Head of Data explains why Kiwi businesses are reluctant to use AI · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Now. Sixty eight percent of small and medium businesses in
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand do not plan to use AI. They either
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  Speaker 2: don't understand it or they don't think it brings value.
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  Speaker 2: This is according to a ends ie our's quarterly survey
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  Speaker 2: of a bit of Business opinion Now. Earlier in the year,
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  Speaker 2: Spark did some research as well, and that found that
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  Speaker 2: AI will in fact lift productivity way higher than labor
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  Speaker 2: productivity alone. The head of Data and AI at Spark,
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  Speaker 2: Matt Bain, is with us now, Hey Matt, Hey Heather,
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  Speaker 2: did it surprise you that this many businesses are not
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  Speaker 2: going to do it?
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  Speaker 3: I think if you look at a Michael Lot the US,
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  Speaker 3: forty percent of US small businesses are using it. And
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  Speaker 3: so while we're behind, I'm there's a good opportunity for
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  Speaker 3: us to get get onto this trend. The new genitive
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  Speaker 3: AI capability is democratize what used to You know, big
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  Speaker 3: companies like Spark have been able to lean into the stuff,
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  Speaker 3: but it's been not accessible for a lot of smaller businesses.
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  Speaker 3: So all of a sudden it is and we're really
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  Speaker 3: focused on how can we help educate small businesses to
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  Speaker 3: make the most of it.
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  Speaker 2: Why is it that they don't think that they need
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  Speaker 2: to use it.
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  Speaker 3: I think people don't realize how powerful it is. So
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  Speaker 3: a lot of people think it's like Google and you
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  Speaker 3: can ask it to you know, create image for you
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  Speaker 3: or answer a question. But you know, I'm in marketing,
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  Speaker 3: so it can write your marketing plan, it can create
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  Speaker 3: your advertising. It can take your existing plan and act
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  Speaker 3: as a consultant to tell you how to improve it.
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  Speaker 3: So it can really help to a small business which
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  Speaker 3: is resource constrained to do much better than it's currently doing.
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  Speaker 2: But why don't businesses realize this? They're not fiddled with it.
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  Speaker 3: I think there's some training required. So one of the
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  Speaker 3: complexities is that these large language models are trained on
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  Speaker 3: the entire world's information, so every book that can be read,
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  Speaker 3: and therefore if you ask it a general question, it
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  Speaker 3: can it can hallucinate or give you a weird answer.
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  Speaker 3: So there's some training required to go how do you
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  Speaker 3: give it the context required so it gives you the
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  Speaker 3: right answer. And so what we focusing on is how
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  Speaker 3: do we train businesses and business leaders in this country
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  Speaker 3: to get the most out of the platforms they have
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  Speaker 3: access to.
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  Speaker 2: Matt, I don't know if you found this. I mean
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  Speaker 2: you probably haven't because you seem like somebody who's quite
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  Speaker 2: o fai with technology. But I found the whole thing
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  Speaker 2: quite fiddly. Like I had to go in and log in,
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  Speaker 2: create an account, which is not unusual, but then you
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  Speaker 2: have to go into this like what it feels like
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  Speaker 2: quite a complicated little platform to be able to ask
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  Speaker 2: the single question. Like it just isn't as user friendly
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  Speaker 2: as Google, do you know what I mean?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a little bit more complexity to it. I
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  Speaker 3: agree here, and that's why we think it's important that
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  Speaker 3: we focus on educating businesses because once you do get it,
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  Speaker 3: it's a very quick learning curve. So after a week
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  Speaker 3: you can be really competent. But it's not quite as
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  Speaker 3: simple as Google with a single search box.
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  Speaker 2: You're right, okay, right, So if you get on board
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  Speaker 2: as a smaller business enterprise, a smaller medium sized business enterprise,
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  Speaker 2: how much can this actually help? Do you think.
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  Speaker 3: It can help in every aspect of your business? And
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  Speaker 3: so I think a good rule that I always tell
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  Speaker 3: my team and small businesses I meet is you should
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  Speaker 3: be using it ten times a day already because there's
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  Speaker 3: a bunch of stuff you're doing, you know, writing emails,
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  Speaker 3: replying to emails, creating reports. That this thing can augment
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  Speaker 3: your capability. You can do it much faster, so it's
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  Speaker 3: really easy to get started on small tasks. There's a
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  Speaker 3: lot more complexity you can get into, but really what
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  Speaker 3: we're focusing on is how do you get started and
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  Speaker 3: start to appreciate the value it can deliver really quickly.
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  Speaker 2: I might have to get into it, Matt, Thank you
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  Speaker 2: very much, Really appreciate it. Matt Dane, head of Data
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  Speaker 2: at ai OH Data and AI at Spark.
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