(From left): Sundar Pichai, Google and Alphabet Inc. CEO, Peter-Lucas Jones, Te Hiku Media CEO, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), all of whom were named in the TIME100 AI 2024 list. Image / Te Ao Māori News (composite)

Te Rūnanga Kaiwhakatere o Whakaata Māori |deputy chair Peter Lucas-Jones has been named alongside some of the biggest tech billionaires as a globally leading voice on artificial intelligence (AI).

Jones, who also serves as chief executive of Te Hiku Media, was recognised in the Time100 AI 2024 list for pioneering reo Māori speech-to-text technology, which boasts 92% accuracy, surpassing similar models from large international tech companies.

Te Hiku Media’s journey to preserve and revitalise te reo Māori has seen it amass 30 years’ worth of archive recordings, which form the foundation for the company’s cutting-edge automatic speech recognition (ASR) system, designed specifically for te reo Māori.

Time Magazine said Jones and his team had focused on ensuring Māori communities retained ownership and control over their digital data.

“In the digital world, data is like land,” he explained. “If we don’t have control over our data, we risk losing our identity in this new digital landscape,” Jones told Time.

The transcription software has already been circulated among other organisations, including Radio New Zealand (RNZ) and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), with other partnerships in the pipeline.

But Jones told Time his vision extended beyond the technical realm, saying language had the power to reshape societal attitudes and foster greater respect between cultures.

“If we can encourage people to respect another language, we can also influence how they perceive and interact with other cultures,” he said.

For Jones, the work at Te Hiku Media is about much more than just language preservation – it’s about reclaiming Māori sovereignty, shaping the future, and addressing the impacts of colonisation head-on, he said.