This week, Peter talks to stalwart of both the supermarket and telecommunications industries, Ernie Newman.

In the early 2000s, the government intervened to ensure that the monopoly that then-Telecom had on broadband internet industry didn’t last long. What can we learn from those efforts and where should we be putting out hopes for disruption? 

We also chat about the latest tech news including, the governments facial recognition failures, how much big tech is spending on cloud capacity, and OpenAI’s new GPT marketplace.

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Peter talks to Lawrence Gasman, the founder of news and research company Inside Quantum Technology, who says that quantum computing and the changes it will bring is now just around the corner.

Whether you’re a total quantum newbie or an industry stalwart this interview will give you something to think about.

We also dig into the latest tech news, including Supie’s downfall and the surprising ups and downs of Big Tech’s Q3 results.

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This week we look into Tātaki Auckland Unlimited's plan to grow the city's tech industry, create high-paying jobs and attract more talent and investment to the region. One year into the three year Tech Tāmaki Makaurau strategy, how are things tracking? 

Tātaki's head of tech and innovation Marissa Brindley joins us to explain how the Auckland Council's economic development arm is helping startups make global connections, attract and retain more international talent, and encourage Māori and Pacific Island peoples into the industry.

We also ask: what’s going on with patient portal apps, what does it mean when Microsoft invests big money in a country, and is X’s $1 bot battle too little, too late.

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On this episode we chat with Emma-Kate Greer, 2degrees' chief corporate affairs officer whose duties include overseeing the telco's emissions reduction and sustainability efforts.

She shares why 2degrees has gone with science-based targets and how it plans to get there, offering a frank look at the challenges faced by the telecommunication industry.

Emma-Kate also offers some insight into where NZ Inc might need to focus in order to maintain our clean, green look into the coming years.

Also, we discuss which tech policies will be on the chopping block under a National government with Act behind it, and recount some of the promises the party made in the lead up to the election.

This episode was sponsored by 2degrees.

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With the 2023 general election just days away we have one last episode around tech and politics, this time looking at the fear that concerted and bad-faith social media campaigns are eroding the very fabric of democracy.

We're joined by Ximena Smith from the public interest think tank Brainbox Institute who digs into whether the outcome of democratic elections are really being swung by social media and all its algorithms.

We also dig into some of the latest news, including the National Party's space policy, agritech robots, and how AI is failing to live up to its promise.

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Whoever wins the vote at the election, it is going to be a very different government than we have had for most of the past six years. Part of that, is going to be overseeing the contuing digitalisation of business, government and pretty much every other part of our society.

One big project will be enabling digital identification for the residents of Aotearoa, a move that is working its way through the grinding gears of our own parliamentary processes with the Digital Identity Trust Framework Act.

The University of the Sunshine Coast's Dr Erica Mealy talks us through what's going on with digital ID in Australia, and some of the pitfalls that we should be thinking about as head toward it ourselves.

We also look at some of NZ's industry bodies and what they are looking for from the government as the election looms.

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We talk to Worldline’s Julia Nicol, who outlines the upcoming debut of contactless Eftpos, as well as Tristan Dakin of Wise, who explains the digital money transfer platform’s new deal with Swift, and what it could mean for integration with banks worldwide.

 Also, BusinessDesk’s media writer Daniel Dunkley joins us to talk about Meta’s standoff with the Canadian government over the Online News Act, which requires the social media giant to pay news publishers for the right to carry snippets of their content on its platforms.

Meta has rejected that, instead removing links to news content from its platform.

With comparable legislation in the pipeline here, are we about to see a similar showdown with Meta and Google, or would a change of government following the election see it shelved completely?

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Dr Matt Boyd of Adapt Research deals with catastrophes on a day-to-day basis.

In episode 21 of The Business of Tech, Dr Boyd takes us through some of the big risks on his radar, both natural and man-made, and suggests how we can put in place the ”resilience infrastructure” to give us a shot at coping with a major global catastrophe that could see us isolated from our trading partners and left to fend for ourselves.

Also on The Business of Tech, Salesforce debuted Einstein Copilot, a generative AI version of its Einstein platform that allows users to instantly create sales and marketing content by entering prompts into a chatbot. Peter caught up with Hamish Miles, managing director of Salesforce NZ, to find out what the new developments mean for local customers like Xero and Fisher & Paykel.

Plus, Peter's thoughts on Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, and the insights it gives us into one of the most innovative and polarising figures of the 21st century.

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This week, we catch up with our resident political guru, Pattrick Smellie, BusinessDesk’s founder and editor, to get his insights into how tech issues are factoring into politicians' thinking. 

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Silicon Valley is a bastion of innovation, where fortunes are made and unicorns created. But it also has its dark side in the rapacious business models, and the extreme concentration of power and wealth the Valley's key players have amassed. In his new book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism and the World, best-selling author Malcolm Harris revisits the city where he grew up and takes us on a twisting journey through the history of this tech mecca and its influence on the world. Peter also looks at Google as it turns 25. Is the search giant ready to lead the disruption of the AI era? 

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