Ata Marie Koutou - Good Morning everyone. Grab a cuppa and settle in for a long newsletter, in this kōrero there are some insightful and practical takeaways anyone can use with regards to the use of AI.

Last week there was no topic proposed prior to our cuppa, which has been a theme of the last few sessions. The beauty of this means we go with the flow on the day. There were two key themes emerging from last week's cuppa: Intercultural and Cross-Cultural facilitation, and secondly, the impact of AI on people and the planet.

Intercultural and Cross-Cultural Facilitation

The topic of the difference between Cross-Cultural and Intercultural facilitation was offered as a topic. A recent reflection was posted in our Walk Together Circle Community (see link below) and so they shared this learning which occurred through the leadership program Walk Together is facilitating; “ [knowing the difference] is really worth investigating, because the difference, to me is profound, and needs to be understood”.

Our Walk Together team shared that we have been unpacking this topic with the leaders in our 2025 System Navigators Program over the past few weeks. In the program, we have been exploring Cross-Cultural and Intercultural facilitation along a continuum of novice-to-expert proficiency. The starting point has been asking questions such as: What is the definition? What are you already doing in facilitation? What does that look like? What does moving along the continuum look like for you?

One of our regular participants shared “I think the ‘aha moment’ for me came when I… understood the Walk Together meaning of Cross-Cultural and Intercultural, and understood Cross-Cultural to be a bit more transactional”. They further elaborated with a story: “So my context was we were giving workshops around cultural safety around Māori health within a mainstream organisation, and we had put a lot of time and effort into delivering these workshops…but we hadn't put as much time and planning into what happens after the workshop and how we embed this [further than just knowing about it]”.

Another of our program participants present at this cuppa, shared a story: “they had a really important meeting with their manager, and this was about connecting [a mainstream company] with a Pacific community… she said that usually in these meetings that they have, she gets quite emotionally triggered” However with the use of intercultural facilitation and Walk Together’s Mutual Ways tool, she was able to shift the meeting into the ‘Between World’ or intercultural space and it “helped her to not be so reactive, and the conversation actually turned out to be better than she thought”. This was due to recognising she could come out of fight/flight mode and facilitate instead which is an ultimate goal of the leadership program.

In our Walk Together spaces it has often been shared that understanding concepts of Systems Change and Intercultural Facilitation can help provide a language or framework for leaders who are working to create change in their sector. “I can say it's been pretty enlightening for those that are on the program”.

Exploring AI and Its Environmental Impact

We then shifted to a curious question that was top of mind from a recent conversation for one of our group members: “I'd love to ask Simon [an environmental expert] something… how is AI impacting the environmental space.. really keen to hear a little bit about that, after hearing that you gave a talk at your work-place”.

The response was insightful and led to enthusiastic discussion: “there's such an interesting dilemma, you know. So AI, we're being told it's going to speed up things, make things easier to do. But there was a flip side for the environment, “it's a massive impact on our energy use. Most of this is done in operating the data centers, using precious water to, you know, cool down the systems.. Furthermore, there is a “data center being built in a green space… the size of Manhattan" and another environmental concern is that emails or using Google search, use a very small amount of CO2, compared with Chat GPT or AI searches which use a significantly larger amount.

Balancing Technology Advancement and Safe Practices

He then went on to say “I'm also really interested in… the impact on people and how our personal information is used” and they referenced the rights that some AI tools have to the content and voices that we input into them.

This sentiment was backed up by another member of the group with a personal story “My son is an actor, and a voice over artist, and as a voiceover artist, he can see a lot of threats to that style of doing things, because he's already heard his voice twice on ads in Australia that weren't him”.

Parallels were drawn between AI and weaponry *“[the] invention of a rifle enables us to go out hunting and better feed ourselves, then you say, Oh, well, that's the positive of the rifle, but it's those negative elements that are also part of it”.*The concern was that with the advancement in technology these very powerful online tools could be used for bad as well as for good, with a new guest adding “I guess there's the part where it's like, a very powerful tool, right? It's like… the contrast with weaponry, like nuclear power, you know, great, we get all this power, but it's also a powerful tool that can be used to do incredible damage”.

Challenges of AI in a Capitalist Context

Expanding on the theme of safe practices and how we decide to let AI into our lives was likened to the Amish community “I think there's a good example with the Amish community in America that makes decisions about technology… The telephones are out on a post down by the road [they’re only used when needed and not freely available as an agreed way]….so they make a choice about the technology… have we had time to make the choices about the technology? Probably not, because it's getting rammed down our throat by late stage capitalism”.

Our discussions gravitated to whether this advancement in AI serves us as human beings or serves the capitalist system we live in. We looked at history and how tech advancements were designed to save time but questioned how we spend that spare time. An example was given with the invention of the washing machine “there's the question not of, what does it free us up to do, but what are we going to do with that time that we have freed up for ourselves?”.

Another added that during the introduction of the “Industrial Revolution and its impacts on Northern England in the 1850s… The promise was that industrialisation would free up time and the idea was people would go for walks, learn a bit, write poetry, become creative citizens… But obviously, if you're writing poetry, you're not out buying stuff”.

One guest who works in the creative sector shared “I spend far too much time with my co-workers and other people talking about how to implement AI, and we are very much in a phase of not slowing down to think about how to put it on a telephone pole at the end of the road - because capitalism.” They went on to reflect “You cannot have… profit, people and planet in alignment, it just can't happen… If we took away the scale and growth part, then I think you could balance the planet and profit and people, but because of capitalism, the profit part takes priority because of the growth”.

One of our regular cuppa visitors commented from a Te Ao Māori position - “I was thinking of a time where we did have alignment with people, planet and profit. It was a little while ago, a couple 100 years ago.”

AI, Art and Indigenous Perspectives

The recent explosion of AI generated art has not gone unnoticed by our group and we discussed the impacts this might be having on artists and creators. One participant remembers a recent example “last week, an artist here in Aotearoa, Otis Frizzell, put up a poster for a hospitality place… and it had been generated by AI. And Otis said, if you're going to use AI instead of graphic designers to create your posters to save your business money ... .you'll be happy if I stay at home and drink my beer and make my own burgers to save myself money.”

This sentiment was reiterated by another member saying “we specifically work in a space with creators and so our line is that we don't use AI in any way to create any kind of creative content or anything that would take a job away from an author or filmmaker in any way.” Instead, what they do is “get metadata from the stories that real humans are telling so that we can surface those stories more readily and more easily”.

The conversation then turned to indigenous perspectives of AI with one offering a reflection on the human like nature of AI “digital AI or intelligence, it can be delusional as well and I love that, that it could be delusional in a fun way or delusional in a negative way.”

Another member shared an insight that came to her during the kōrero “industrialisation wrecked the cultural checks and balances, and if Indigenous peoples have been exposed to new technologies over a short period of time, and it's wreaked havoc on our populations, maybe there might also be an answer there with AI... What have indigenous peoples used to resist with things like tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and can we apply those same principles?”

There you go whānau-family, we have covered two deep topics in last week's kōrero, 30 minutes flies by when there is passion and energy in the discussion. You can register here for another open topic session at 11am every Friday.

JOIN OUR CIRCLE COMMUNITY: Did you know we have an online community that you can join? Yup! Feel free to jump in, introduce yourself and chat with us. We are over there and want to connect and get to know you.