Quentin Donald

I’ve been running New Zealand businesses since 1999. Mostly small ones – the kind where you are the compliance department, the IT department, and the person chasing the invoices.

So I know exactly what it feels like to be handed one more thing you’re supposed to comply with. There is always another one. And underneath it there’s a quieter worry that most of us don’t say out loud: that we might be using something we don’t properly understand, in a way that turns out to hurt us. Nobody likes being liable for something they didn’t know.

That’s what this is for.

I spent thirteen years on the board of Westforce Credit Union, from 2010 to 2023, including a spell as Treasurer. A board seat at a financial institution means carrying compliance obligations rather than reading about them, and the rules shifted more than once while I was there. I was also a Registered Financial Adviser in 2015, specialising in KiwiSaver, under the designation that ended when the current regime came in. Between them, those years taught me what it’s like when the ground moves under an organisation you’re responsible for.

But I’m not standing outside this looking in. I want to understand AI for exactly the same reasons you do. I find the risk genuinely worrying and the opportunities genuinely exciting, often about the same tool on the same day. Nobody has this figured out yet, including me.

So AI Leakage does the tedious part. We watch the tools New Zealand businesses actually use, and we notice when they quietly change what they do with the data you put into them – because they do change it, regularly, and they almost never tell anyone. Then we explain what the warning signs mean and what to do when you see one.

The point isn’t to turn you into an expert. It’s so you can get on with the thing you’re actually good at, without the nagging sense that something you don’t understand is quietly costing you. Knowing where the pitfalls are is a competitive advantage – I think the businesses that understand this will still be here in ten years, and some that don’t won’t be.

What’s here now is reasonably comprehensive, and it will keep growing as the technology does. That’s the nature of it: this isn’t a subject you finish.

What I’m not: a lawyer. AI Leakage doesn’t give legal advice and won’t tell you what to do about your particular situation. It tells you what the rules say, where the primary source is, and what’s changed since you last looked.

And if something here is wrong, I’d genuinely rather know. Corrections go on the corrections page, dated.