Māori Data Sovereignty and the Future of AI in Aotearoa

Mark Smith 0:24

Hey,

Welcome and introductions

Mark Smith 0:25

welcome back to the show. I'm here with Lee Timu Timu. Highly recommended. My wife cannot like she just accolade after accolade about what you've done, Lee, across uh New Zealand from startups to uh AI transcription apps, I think she said in the healthcare space, amazing, uh, amazing, amazing stuff. Um, last year she was at an uh an awards ceremony where you, I think, got the highest accolade in New Zealand in the tech space. And so, Lee, I always like to start with food, family, and fun.

Lee Timutimu 1:00

What

Food, whānau and community service

Lee Timutimu 1:01

did that mean to you? Yeah, Kirumark, and it's good to meet you. And um, thank you for the invitation to Korero. Hey, um, food, pretty much anything that my kids eat. I have four children, uh 21, 20, 13, and my baby is eight years old. So, uh, and that for me is really just far no uh comfort food. Um, it's probably not good for my waistline, but that's fine. Uh, family already um shared a little bit about about my family, but I am married uh to my wonderful wife, Holly Tafiao, and our family lives here in Kitikiridua, also known as Hamilton. Um, and for I guess for fun, I think was the third one. I don't really get much time to do much fun, to be quite honest. So I wear a number of different portoyo hats, roles, and responsibilities, um, which I don't take lightly as I guess as a leader in the Maori technology community. Um, but I think one thing that um always gives me energy is um giving back to my community uh in service to my community, and it's just such a big part of who I am. So I guess not so much fun, but it's certainly something that energizes me and keeps me going because there's a lot of it, if I be really quite frank and honest. Um there's a lot of leadership responsibility, but I take it in my stride, and it's something that I really enjoy and love.

Mark Smith 2:22

You know, I'd never heard the Maori name for Hamilton till you said it then.

Lee Timutimu 2:26

What does it mean? Kitikidor, um it's it was the traditional was the name, it is the original name of a of a sandbank that is prominent, uh, and it's still here, still there today on the banks of the Waikoto River. Of course, Waikoto River is the longest river in New Zealand, um, and it is certainly the ancestral river or the main uh ancestral river here in the Waikoto uh region. So Kirikiti Rua, from my um understanding and from my recollection, speaks about the the long the Roa is long, uh and Kitikiti uh as I understand it is a descriptor of the sandy uh shore, so long sandy shore. Um but that's certainly what we call uh uh Hamilton. Uh obviously Hamilton is a uh is a colonial uh marker. Um and kiti kiti roa just sounds so much more um uh easier on the air.

Mark Smith 3:23

It's funny, you know, as an outside observer, I find that with so many Maori words, they they just sound amazing um and elicit so much more than just the word, I feel.

Lee’s view of AI’s rapid shift

Mark Smith 3:37

And uh yeah, yeah, yeah, just just totally awesome. I w I want you to uh think back of the last six months, just since January 2026, where I personally have found AI has taken a massive different direction for me. I'm doing things that I never thought was possible last year around building software solutions using, you know, multiple teams of agents and the such. What have you, what's your observation in the you know, the first half of 2026? What's your observation been in the work you do in the AI space um across the country?

AI literacy and Māori communities

Lee Timutimu 4:13

Yeah, I guess that's the million-dollar question. And I think um I'll I'll probably answer this in two kind of spheres of influence. Uh the first one is my community sphere. Um so I'm a I'm a very passionate digital equity, digital inclusion advocate. Um, I do a lot of work in that space, particularly on behalf of our Mahdi communities, so Farm No Hapurai. And I still see there being a gap in terms of AI literacy. Um if we think about the digital divide, uh, one of the challenges that we face with the digital divide here in Altero, New Zealand is um the lack of digital literacy skills. So uh our communities, and this is not just Maori communities, by the way, Mali, Pacific, Lower Socioeconomic communities, um, are there's a real uh gap in terms of their understanding of what AI is. So just from a very basic foundational level, and that concerned me concerns me. It's concerned me for some years actually, and so I've really tried to put my hand and energy to things that will help to, I guess, improve uh basic information and education on at a community level, right? So um I guess my first comment is it's still very this that gap still very much exists in our communities, and um, but what I can say is six months into the year, we've done a lot of work, I guess, as a community, in terms of um helping to build uh

Māori AI Wānanga and a community vision

Lee Timutimu 5:47

support mechanisms and even frameworks that we feel uh as a collective anyway will support the ongoing and continued education of our people on the ground. And one good example of that is um I co-founded, founded, sorry, a another uh movement, if you will, another Kobapa at the end of last year that we've named Maori AI Wananga, and in fact, your wife uh Meg uh Meg Smith came down to um to the second Wananga that we held or second get-together gathering for conversation, and that was in Wellington only two month two months ago. Now, what that's all about is the whole movement is about how can we as Maori practitioners in the in the realm of AI come together, collectivise, collaborate, and formulates uh what we're calling a draft vision statement.

Mark Smith 6:38

Nice.

Lee Timutimu 6:38

Now, it's a vision statement not for ourselves as practitioners because we live it, we breathe it, we're in it, we're working in it. It's a vision statement that will support our community again, coming back to community, that will support our communities on the ground at flax roots level, Fa no Hapu Murai, because again, that is where we feel as a collective where it needs that's where it needs we need to support our people on the ground. Because it's one thing to uh understand what artificial intelligence is, even at a foundational level, but if you do not understand what that is, then you you obviously then cannot make better informed uh decisions to help you navigate through this through this unprecedented time and um and um you know AI is moving such at such high velocity, um, even for for ourselves, uh for practitioners like ourselves, it's really difficult to keep up with. So how can we expect our people and communities at um groundroots level to keep up with that change? And how can we expect them to understand what the challenges are that face them, what the issues and concerns are, but on the flip side of that, what the opportunities are as well, right? So so I guess that's one example of where um myself and our community have tried to just rally around uh again a movement to try and create and design a vision statement that we hope will provide not a North Star, but a South Star, because we're not up in the Northern Hemisphere, a South Star to support and assist our people that need it the most. So that's my kind of community response. Now, on the other side, let's say it's the

Tuhi, the Māori-created AI scribe

Lee Timutimu 8:20

entrepreneurship kind of corporate commercial kind of um sphere. Yes, um, a little bit about my um side hustle businesses um increasingly becoming more um prominent. Uh I'm putting a lot more effort into um what one of those businesses, Over Digital. Our Digital was engaged three and a half years ago to develop um the in-house AI scribe tool for Health New Zealand. Um, and that was a very big undertaking for a Māori-owned technology uh company. But you know, it was a pretty amazing opportunity for us. We we poured three and a half years of our blood, sweat, tears, energy, um, you name it, into this product called Tohee. Uh, Tohi is the Māori word or a Māori word for uh to write, describe, uh, to note. Um, Tohe AI is available out there in the New Zealand health system. Um, unfortunately, um it's kind of been shelved by Health New Zealand, which is incredibly frustrating. But I think for those of us who have an association or are working

Partnerships and lessons from Health New Zealand

Lee Timutimu 9:25

uh in that New Zealand uh in the health system, particularly with Health New Zealand, it is uh it has been an incredibly transformational time. There's been a lot of uh restructure, there's been a lot of change, right? So, particularly over the last three years. So we've spent uh quite a bit of time um building what this described tool. What I will say about that, I guess, experience is that um relationships, and this is really from a partnership relate uh partnership perspective. We as uh Tungatafenua owned company, so um indigenous-owned company, indigenous to this uh country, in partnership with a New Zealand Crown agency, Health New Zealand, that really shows me that sometimes those relationships can can be uh one way and they shouldn't, we shouldn't be in that position, particularly with a foundational document, with a founding document like the Tiditio Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi, since 1840, that has provided us with a partnership uh framework, I guess you could say. And I'm not gonna deeply dive into that. But coming back to partnerships, it really showed me how um, you know, the importance of uh establishing a trust relationship with the government agency, what that process looks like for us as an Indigenous company. And I have to say, what we didn't really come out of

Lee’s work in insurance and agentic AI

Lee Timutimu 10:48

that um uh partnership um faring very well. Um so the importance of trust relationships. Um and then just a little bit I'll add on to that commercial sphere. Um currently we've pivoted from health, and we're now this is amazing. We are now um um working in the insurance sector uh here in here in New Zealand with a very successful, successful and prominent uh MGA uh in the insurance sector here, um, helping to build their um new delivery platform across uh which will help them to do their business across Asia Pacific, uh Auckland, Australia, Singapore. And the exciting part about that is two things uh from an AI perspective or through an AI lens, AI governance, supporting them with the development and design of what that means to their business and uh particularly their board, ELTM board, amazing challenge, and I've really enjoyed that. And the second thing is we're when we're also supporting and assisting them to build their agentic AI harness, which is it's kind of new for us, but it's very exciting, it's very dynamic. Uh, there's high risk, you know, it's high risk, it's got all of those uh the traits of uh entrepreneurship where you're you're trying to problem solve, you're trying to pivot, you're iterating, and all of these things that make entrepreneurship to me anyway really exciting and challenging. So yeah, I did say quite a quite a quite a lot there, Mark, but I think that kind of just gives you the the the spectrum of or I guess of work that I'm involved in, both as a community uh leader, but also as a um as an entrepreneur

Who controls healthcare data?

Lee Timutimu 12:26

too.

Mark Smith 12:26

I want to unpack a bit the transcribe tool and and some stuff that you said there. Um yesterday uh Meg took our boy uh Nico Manaki to get his hairs checked at the local hospital and they said is it alright if we transcribe this? We have a tool called Heidi. And I was like, tell me more, which is obviously an Australian transcribe tool and that was mandated from the powers at be. And I've been in business long enough to know how business is done up at the top end of town with um deals that are let's say off paper, um, that are done. It blows my mind that this situation could come about when you developed an amazing tool specifically for this country and then the powers that be going bring in an imported product, which probably speaks Australian, which just rubs me in a whole different way again. Um what are the lessons learnt from how you can have a government come in and just pull the rug out from under you and what was agreed, as you said, what what was you thought was a two-way relationship became a a what a lopsided relationship, one taking, and and I'll give you a couple of a bit more reference to why I'm thinking this way. I've recently worked with the Maori Language Commission, Meg and I doing work with them, and they were involved in the translation of Maori place names to be pronounced correctly in Google Maps across New Zealand. And there was some excitement about what else could we do with Google, and I said to Meg afterwards, it's a one-way relationship. Google ta like they don't see this as anything commercial beyond a good PR message, great, but if they're not selling millions of this to somebody, their relationship, though very cordial, doesn't go further than that. They are after monetization at scale, that's how they work. And so you can have these feel goods, but you've got to understand their perspective around monetizing or decisions that are made way above the people's pay grade that you're perhaps engaging with, who will just unilaterally just go, no, this is why it's gonna be. And we're not even gonna justify why, right? What's your lessons learned so that shit doesn't happen again?

Lessons from building Tuhi

Lee Timutimu 14:58

Yeah, there's a lot to um kind of un unfurl in in that in that question, but it's all I guess it's it's all relevant to particularly to the journey we've experienced in the last six years, uh six months, sorry, and then of course the longer journey back to the beginning of this um engagement with Health New Zealand. Firstly, um, you know, we've always we we as an Indigenous owned business, I will say this multiple times because I feel it's an important uh thing. Uh and it is also a unique uh value proposition, I feel, in this uh Um absolutely um so my day and age. Um but as an Indigenous-owned technology company, um, you know, it's really important to us again to establish a reciprocal and mutual relationship. Now, I have to say that that we did not start off on that balanced footing at the very beginning of the engagement. In fact, we were made to sign over the IP for the product that we were um, yeah, that we were building, that we would build for them and that we would spend three and a half years building for them. And so, you know, at the time I kind of weighed it up myself. Obviously, the lawyer, our lawyer's like, no, well, you can't sign this, why would you sign this? And so I'm like, yeah, I hear you. For me, it was a mid-to-long-term game in in terms of okay, how can we use this um Health New Zealand government kind of network to scale um and get to where we need to get to within it within the time that we need to kind of effect uh scale uh impact, sorry, across internal New Zealand. I should say one very important thing. From our perspective, it's never been about um money, it's never been the commercial gain opportunity. For us, it has always been, and this should come to no surprise to any other Indigenous uh tech founder that might view this podcast, but it has always been about how can we um effect positive impact at scale and therefore um positively uh affect Māori Health outcomes. It has always been that for us. So with that framing, um that's why we agreed to sign over the the IP. But you know, that's really just is is is probably the biggest red flag that you give at the beginning of an engagement, right? And you tell me who would sign a who would sign a deal like that? Not many people would, right? Um especially if it's if you're looking at it through a commercial lens. Anyway, that's the foundation of where we started the relationship.

Mark Smith 17:29

You say that, but most people using AI these days are doing exactly that.

Lee Timutimu 17:33

Yes.

Mark Smith 17:34

Right? What Alex Carp from Palantir calls your alpha. You're giving that over to somebody that's gonna own it beyond your use of it.

Lee Timutimu 17:45

Indeed. And I guess um we kind of just um we we put a lot of energy into and our heart, actually, we we we put it into this product too. Uh we spent a lot of time um, you know, testing it. It's been tested across five different hospitals, I think 400 plus, you know, kind of permissions. We got we got some really good validation, obviously,

Testing Tuhi and Māori data sovereignty

Lee Timutimu 18:09

iterated a couple of times over that period. Um, really got some good solid feedback. Now, the other interesting thing about this uh about this product is that we we built everything on top of existing Health New Zealand infrastructure. Now that's that's good for for for for for several reasons, but from a data sovereignty perspective, well, firstly, one caveat. I do not believe we can truly achieve um 100% Māori data sovereignty today for them for the reason that we do not have control over any of the cloud providers currently. 100%. Right? And not even the ones that are not even the ones that are local to New Zealand, and I won't name them. 100%. Right? So you know that's Mark. Um so so so that I'm just gonna pin that.

Mark Smith 18:56

Most people don't understand that though.

Lee Timutimu 18:58

Okay. I'm gonna pin that. However, from a data sovereignty perspective, utilizing existing infrastructure that is uh integrated with the existing New Zealand health system, um, that's a far better proposition than let's say let's put our data into um um um Heidi, most likely AWS in Australia or good. Most of our data is in Australia anyway, get it. Yep. Um they don't really have a good understanding of what data sovereignty, uh Mori indigenous data sovereignty, sorry, actually means, what that actually means to um Mori patients. Okay, so I'm just really trying to like bring things up, build a little bit of a picture. So um coming back to Health New Zealand infrastructure, um, I felt like that was a really good uh kind of architect architecture, really, to roll out this um again Maori um created um scribe tool, right? Obviously, we use RAG as well for Tereo Maori. Um, you know, specifically because we are of Fuck Papa Māori, we have uh Maori people ourselves, so we put that prioritization ourselves into it. Um pretty simple to do, all good. Um so yeah, where we ended up um was we built this product for Health New Zealand on top of their existing infrastructure using cloud and also models, obviously, that are largely Australia-based. Um some of the models um we we run on um within that, I guess, platform are in the NZ North um uh I think it's only 4.0 at the moment in in Auckland. Uh so you know, we've done all that. Cool, awesome. Um, but all the while, because we're we are indigenous ourselves, there's always that, you know, you you I always we always have in the back of our mind what will happen to our people's data. Now, coming back to your experience, I have had several people reach out to me with exactly the same experience. Now, one of those people I know, she actually pushed back on her GP. She refused to use Heidi because she wanted she asked one question, and that question was, what are Heidi's, what are the vendors' um commitments to Mari Dharasov? And I thought that was a wonderful, wonderful way for her to express her uh tenoranga tira tanga, her, her, her self-determination, right, within that moment. So what am I trying to say? All I'm trying to say is that, yeah, I think

Building trust and protecting sensitive information

Lee Timutimu 21:39

we we we did really, I feel like we built something that was really something to be proud of. We built something here in New Zealand, homed in New Zealand, um, by uh a New Zealand uh tech company. Uh we're in a very small company. Uh we built it, I'll be honest, we built it on the smell of an oily rag, man. We put in so much time and effort. It was uh woefully under under um underinvested. But I'm not I I try not to um I I'm really about try I try to be optimistic, I try to be positive, I don't I try not to um dwell on on on these things um because it really does me no good, both personally and mental, well-being-wise, but also for my communities as well. So um yeah, I've said a lot. There's so much more to say, but I I hear what you're saying. What would you do differently?

Mark Smith 22:32

What would you do differently? Like you do you talked about working in the insurance space, which I find another interesting space. Yeah. Meg um jumped on a call with uh after leaving when she left Google, right? Google covered everything from an insurance perspective. Um I have white teeth because of that. Google insurance has in every amalgam taken out, etc., in the time Meg worked there. When she left, right, insurer gets in touch and says, Hey, let's put your health cover in. The problem with that is um the guy goes, Oh, it's a Zoom call. Can I record this? She was like, You're asking me all this personal information. Zoom has said themselves that they're using this to train their AI on all my personal information. No, I don't I don't want the risk of every bit of detail about all the PII information being recorded in Zoom. And the guy was like, Oh, like he had no thought about it because it wasn't his he's just using whatever tool is available to him. But there's a lot of this disconnect between what's there, the minute I give over my voice, my words, my data, whatever, where is it going after that point? Who's using it? Who's owning it without my consent? And what are they using it for? And am I, you know, are they one hack away from, you know, being exposing all that data, like we've seen in Australia in the healthcare system, where a heap of their uh people had to go renew their passports because of the data that was leaked. Um, and you know, women with their abortions and things like that was all in the public domain because they got hacked. Yeah. It raises questions. You you talked about, you know, um Auckland North, you know, that's a a Microsoft-owned data center which is under the law of the US government that can reach in based on their laws into those data centers if they deem fit to, because that's already been proven in in case law out of the US across uh in this there was big issues in accessing data centers in Ireland at the time. As you say, we're there there's no control. You might have a sense of control, but there is no control, and and I think that that awareness is not there. With what you're doing now, how does you know, I said with Dan before that there's co-pilot in Microsoft has run out of the Singapore data center? There's very little AI even from the Australian data centers just because there's a massive GPU sorted, but at the end of the Um absolutely um so my day, you're working or your data's going to American companies under American law. And how do you know, is there a space where you see open weight models becoming something that if we can get them on our own silicon in the country, that gives us a much higher sense of control? Um, how are you thinking about these things and the lessons that you learnt from being shafted, feel free that you won't do again or that you'd do differently, or there'd be danger here, and therefore, what would you recommend to others around not being shafted?

Resilience, pivoting and the Māori digital equity claim

Lee Timutimu 25:47

Yeah, you know what? The answer to that question is what would I do differently? I honestly we I would not do anything differently. I would let it allow it to play out exactly as it played out because I learnt a lot through that process. Um albeit not good for us, albeit negative. I did you learn. I did, I learned, I learned, right? And um but what backstory, we were ready to chuck it in at the start of this year. Yeah. We had no um they had shelved to he, um, the Minister of Health had had flatly rejected it, and then on top of that, he had um greenlit for piloting um offshore products, right? And you know, what what do you do with that? You really don't have any um um um there's no opportunities, no option, sorry, you know? So I was very, very close to to just chucking it in. Um and and fortunately we didn't do that because we were uh extended a lifeline by a very close and trusted friend of mine, um, and hence why we are now operating in the insurance sector. Um really speaks to the importance of trust relationships, I have to say. Um and we were and we live again, right? Uh and not only that, we've pivoted into an entirely different uh industry, which is um which is amazing. I wouldn't change a thing about the process that we went through, um, to be quite honest. Yeah. I think it really taught me a little bit more about myself, um, certainly extended or increased the resilience levels, which you know got a lot of that. And um but yeah, it really did um uh teach me a little bit about how or whether you do engage with and then um work with government agencies, right? Um I should mention that I'm also the Lee Claimant of uh the Maori Digital Equity Claim that's currently in front of the Waitangi Tribunal by 3311. I'll give that a shout out because it's very relevant.

Mark Smith 27:56

Tell me, tell me more, I'm not aware of it.

Lee Timutimu 27:59

Yeah, so um in 2023 um I was faced with a decision as to whether or not I should register a claim with the uh contemporary claim with the Waychecking Tribunal Um to highlight um some of the areas that Maori are um are experiencing digital equity across government procurement was one. Yeah, yeah. Ironic. Um uh government procurement, um, uh education uh and support mechanisms within the education system, and just more broadly um from a digital equity, um, connectivity uh and the like. So it's uh it's it's kind of uh all-encompassing uh but um umbrella um kind of issue is um yeah to highlight uh where digital equity is impacting on Māori communities. So I do encourage you to check it out when you have time. So um the fact that we as a Māori owned tech company were engaged through a master services agreement with Health New Zealand and then did everything that we said we would, and probably more if I were quite biased, uh got to the end. Uh we're supposed to roll it out, um, then got shafted, basically. You know, so I I mean how that's probably the best evidential data that a community could could hand me as the lead claimant of uh of that particular claim. So all good, that's fine. Um hey, one of the things that I did forget to mention is that one part of the deal, and which I absolutely 100% signed off on uh when we first started out with Health New Zealand, part of the deal was that this product that we would build would go f would be offered free of charge to all public health users. So why? Again, that to me was a really simple way of scaling up this positive impact, right? Yeah, you make it free to public health the public health system, easy. That's one barrier removed. How would we make money? What's the business model? Obviously through private

Sovereign AI, open-weight models and local infrastructure

Lee Timutimu 30:16

um the private health system, and that was kind of my my game plan. So there was that as little thing as well, which is actually quite a big thing, I feel. Um, but no. Um in all the in all his wisdom, he he decided against that. Um, sovereign models, um, open weight. I am putting a lot more thought into that. Um, and I know you probably would have touched on that with Amber, uh possibly Amber Taylor, possibly Dan Walker as well. But I am absolutely thinking what about what that looks like in the very near future. I feel that we will have sovereign digital infrastructure um in place and implemented before the end of this decade. Absolutely. Um I'm party to many multiple conversations on this. So not just sovereign AI, uh open way, uh, but also sovereign uh cloud as well, sovereign data storage. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, because they all uh that's both in the community kind of in the community sphere, but also in the commercial sphere as well. I feel that um if I just put my business owner commercial hat on at the moment, especially the way that um especially the way that the price, the business model is is headed with the big AI um um models, the big AI systems tokens, I think went up on the 1st of September. Yeah, crazy. Yeah, a couple of days ago, right? It will not be very cost effective to remain on um on these uh big technology platforms. Um and there will be there will come a time where we will uh I feel like ironically we will we will likely revert back to um and by the way, I started in the era of IT where on-prem was a thing, cloud wasn't. Me too. We right and we

Community-owned micro data centres

Lee Timutimu 32:08

will I can see it. I can already see it happening. We will go into on-premise, local models, open weight, open source, you know, inference costs will come down because we m control that ourselves, cloud costs will come down because we control it. Now that I know that I understand that that presents a whole host of other kind of local infrastructure issues. Cool, but if you I'm starting to kind of stack up and compare the numbers now. Like, you know, it's it's really I can not see any other future aside from us, you know, creating these local um models, local infrastructure, you know? Or even on a country uh at a country level, I mean France, um, Denmark, Germany are already doing these things, right? We know it's happening. So I don't think it's I just think it's a matter of time. And I am certainly party to some of those conversations. So that's where I feel things are headed, right?

Mark Smith 33:08

My conversation with Amber, I wrote a lengthy blog post on the creation of microdata centers across New Zealand the size of a 20-foot or forty-foot container with uh full solar arrays that uh could I I propose that they could go on any uh Hapu land that wanted it, and but it can't be a lease arrangement, it needs to be an ownership relationship. In other words, they own the they have equity in whatever it gets built. It would allow you to create a a brilliant DR model, disaster recovery across the country. You'd be geographically separated. You could choose, as long as the software joined them all together correctly, you could choose where your data was uh duplicated, because you know, good DR rules are there should be a minimum of three copies at any time. Um but then allowing it to um closed loop systems, water supply, but whatever was built needed to build enough solar to run the entire Marae. So they were totally energy independent now off the national grid. Same with water, water collection, rainwater, closed loop systems, and but this concept of micro, like going back like not fully back on premise, but kind of like clusters or communities going, hey, we're gonna own our little micro data center. And you could listen, have thousands of them across New Zealand. A thousand, I think what, there's about a thousand hapus across or or murae across New Zealand, I think. Yeah. You know, resilient, it would be absolutely resilient. If you had the, you know, the sample in the Hawke's Bay where whichever cyclone that went through and wiped everything out, it's the Murai that people are attracted to for protection for what happens on the ground at that point. You could have your data doing the same thing. I think there's a massive opportunity for that to come back and really own the tech at a scale on the ground that's not going to be, you know, a billion dollar data center and in one geographic

Marae as digital hubs

Mark Smith 35:08

location.

Lee Timutimu 35:08

Yeah, and I heard that from your Quaretal with Amber. Um she rightfully um noted that we do have Marae that are thinking about these things already. We have 615, almost 700 technology-enabled Murai in Alterwood, New Zealand today. Uh, I know this because I was um contracted to deliver the digital literacy workshop program to Murae and Murai trustees around the North Island about three or four years ago, and we learned so much through that process. Um, so I feel like and and back, this is four years ago now, we were having these same thoughts, right? And it's uh I'm I'm I'm uh I'm bummed that we haven't actually done anything, but that's always been in the back of my mind since that time. Is we have an opportunity here to create these cluster, local cluster data centers, as you say. Now, um, in terms of uh tribal framework, hapu are subtribes uh in New Zealand. Um, so you've already got those established clusters anyway, right? And then Morai are the representative uh houses or uh community hubs, if you will, um that bring those hapu together. So the architecture is already there, uh and some Morai, the technology is already there. Um, it's really just about putting some time, energy, and effort into um from some of our experts like Amber, like Dan, and others that can that can put their kind of support behind these, what I would say a community digital hub um kind of network. Yeah. To be able to do um, firstly create community digital hubs. So a place for our people, communities, far no kids to go to, where they can engage, connect, and do all of the things that they need to do uh through the internet and those digital systems, right? It also becomes a place of enterprise where we can have startup co-working spaces for our families, for our you know, for our children and our Bangatahi. Um so even that in itself is an amazing proposition, I feel. Now, if you if if you then create, if you drop a um a server, uh service back um um computer into into those same locations, you've already got internet and a few other bits and bobs. Um amazing in terms of backup and cluster, everyone's part of that DR um um architecture, backing up to each of those moderate, it's already pretty much there, right, Mark? So hey, this is an exciting thing that I feel um is also coming. Um and it could lend itself to to us creating these local kind of um digital infrastructure uh hubs or clusters. Um so I'm really, I'm really I was really um it was really cool to hear that you you you had a you guys had a bit of a chat about it. And I have to find that link, that post, that LinkedIn post that you that you chucked up because I'm interested in that too.

Mark Smith 38:14

The um it's interesting, just as you're talking, I think about how Microsoft, the founder, you know, one of them being Bill Gates, and the reason he was able to do that is that he would get access to back then a mainframe computer on the weekends that he would develop his skills. And what you're creating there is that potentially at a Mariah level, the ability for the skills to be get have the access, have the tech infrastructure, as you say, workspaces that ideas can flip flourish, tools that allow it to flourish. Um yeah, you know, what what new ideas, business initiatives, etc. could come out of that could be phenomenal.

Lee Timutimu 38:56

100%.

Lee’s priorities and plans for 2027

Mark Smith 38:57

Yeah. What's what's your focus in the next um between now and the end of the year and uh perhaps going into 2027, which uh you know, I mean this year's been a phenomenal year from an AI perspective. I think it's only going to be compounded in 2027. What are you thinking about in the in the path forward and the opportunities that you see um for us, the risks? What are you thinking about?

Lee Timutimu 39:25

Um I guess uh right right at front of my mind is um we have to publish this um draft vision statement that we've been working on for the last six or seven months, right? Um I feel like the longer we let it sit in draft form, um the the the the higher the risk increases in our communities. And so that's really just where I'm at uh in terms of in my mind anyway, with regards to that particular movement. I think the sooner we get that finalized and and published, um, the better, because then it becomes a tool or kind of a a framework that our people can can reference. Um so we as practitioners can reference um but also our people on the ground can reference as well. And so I think I really um I'm I'm I'm gonna do what I can to support um the publishing of publication of that. I guess we'll be able to do that. How soon do you think that will be how how soon do how soon do you think that that will come out? Um it's gonna be um definitely before the end of this year. Um if we can I reckon we could get it out and publish before the end of this month. Um I've actually been sitting on it for about five weeks, you know, because life has got them busy and uh move on to the next thing. But it's very soon. So um I'll share that out. We'll share that out through all the channels and and I'll share it through my LinkedIn and whatnot. So and I think um it's really gonna I feel it will lend itself not just to to people's here in domestically in in New Zealand, but also globally w with other indigenous communities as well, if we're thinking about it from an Indigenous perspective. And so um yeah, I'm really excited about that. Um there's been a lot of amazing um brains that have gotten around this movement um and to formulate and design this

PhD research and upcoming work

Lee Timutimu 41:18

uh the draft vision statement in its current form. So yeah, it's we do the sooner we get that out, the better. I'm actually doing my PhD as well, um uh with with Brother Dan Walker. Nice um with the same Māori University, the same institution, Tefariwano Awannyarangi, and my um research area will absolutely be in the realm of AI. Uh was something that I decided midway through doing my masters of technological futures with um Academy X a couple of years ago.

Mark Smith 41:47

Mate, uh more broadly isn't that institution doing well? I hear I hear their name all the time, Academy X.

Lee Timutimu 41:53

It's doing well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so it's led by um an amazing uh technology leader and one of our foremost, I guess, or my in my opinion, in my humble opinion, one of our foremost visionaries of futurists uh in terms of AI and emerging disruptive technologies, and that's Francis Valentine. Um so founded by Francis. Um she's still there um and they do amazing work, not just in terms of their, I guess, postgrad or their master's level um programs, but just um they are involved in a number of different initiatives, educational initiatives as well. They have an AI for business uh LMS, um, which I'm not sure if you're familiar with or not, but that's pretty cool. Um and they just and and recently there's a new initiative that they've um stood up, and that's for um aged um learners, um digital literacy for aged learners. Again, pretty pretty amazing stuff if um if I'm on it. So they're doing around well, I guess just to get my final research proposal done by the start of next year, and then kick into the actual research uh part um next year. So that's gonna be keeping me busy, I guess, on weekends. Uh, I've got a bunch of conferences that I need to get along to to speak wearing my Modi Data Sovereignty and also a kind of AI um hat, or hats, should I say, um, to the end of the year. Um, business-wise, um, yeah, we'll be um building the new delivery platform in Agentic AI Harness, helping our customer move, transform from legacy to agentic, which is pretty exciting, uh, to the end of this financial year. We'll be up in Singapore in the office next month, which is cool because man, I haven't been to Singapore, so why not? True, it's a good place. Yeah, yeah, I hear, I hear. Man. Uh so I'm looking forward to that. So, and then and then family always keeps you busy, doesn't it? Yeah, of course. Um, and I love my uh day-to-day role and responsibility as as a dad and a husband.

Closing thoughts

Mark Smith 44:01

Awesome. Lee, thank you so much for coming on and uh and sharing your story. Um, I've really enjoyed it. Thank you.