Weighing it up: Potential benefits and risks of AI assessment
Article #4 of AI in Education Article Series: February 2025
Article #5 of AI in Education Article Series: March 2025
Written by
Superpower: Romance languages
Fixations: Sunday drives
Phoebe works predominantly in social and market research, as well as monitoring and evaluation. Her projects often involve large-scale surveying and interviewing, and more recently, Artificial Intelligence in education.
She began her journey to research and evaluation in Brazil in 2020, supporting projects on social services, gender violence and education, for NGOS, governments and intergovernmental agencies. Prior to this, she worked as an English language teacher for adults.
Outside of work, Phoebe loves history, languages, animals and the outdoors. Together with her partner, she offers support services for Latin American migrants in New Zealand.
Phoebe has a Conjoint Bachelor of Arts and Commerce in Marketing (Market Research), International Business and Spanish.
Several foreign governments have begun to regulate the use of AI, with some enforcing strict controls and others pushing for open innovation (Pattison, 2025). Here in New Zealand, no specific laws on AI have been introduced, although some existing laws apply (see the Fair Trading Act 1986, the Human Rights Act 1993 and the Privacy Act 2020) (Pattison, 2025). As of March 2025, the government has released other sources of guidance in the place of specific laws.
This article is the fifth in a series titled “AI in Education”, aimed at education providers interested in AI. The intention is for this series to act as a beginner’s guide to the use of AI in education, with a particular focus on AI agents. This series is being developed as part of a project to develop an AI agent for learner oral assessment, funded by the Food and Fibre Centre of Vocational Excellence. We invite you to follow along as we (Scarlatti) document our learnings about this exciting space.
Within this article, we summarise three pieces of government guidance on AI use: from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner; from the joint work by the Department of Internal Affairs, the National Cyber Security Centre and Statistics New Zealand (2023a); and from the Ministry of Education (2023). At the end, we demonstrate how this guidance may apply to an AI agent for learner oral assessment.
In 2023, the Privacy Commissioner issued comprehensive guidance on the use of AI for people throughout New Zealand. This guidance sets out several expectations for agencies wanting to use AI. For example, it suggests that you:
Note: Further information on what each of these expectations involves can be found in the Privacy Commissioner’s guidance and their website (including a valuable step-by-step guide on how to create a PIA).
In comparison to the Privacy Commissioner’s Guidance above, this joint guidance was created specifically for people working in the public service (2023a). It places these within two groups, which we describe below.
They strongly recommend that you:
They also recommend that you:
Note: A later summary of the above guidance put forward ‘10 dos for the trustworthy use of generative AI’ in the public service (2023b). This appears to be intended to be more accessible:
The Ministry of Education has guidance aimed at teachers and students wanting to use AI (2023). They outline four important considerations:
Note: In addition, the Ministry recommends that each provider has internal discussions about AI in their organisation and come up with their own policies on using this technology. Examples of education providers' AI policies can be found on Netsafe’s website.
Below, we synthesise some example shared themes and explore their relevance to our work.
The above government recommendations are primarily focused on the legal, reputational, and ethical risks of AI usage. What appears to be missing is a more optimistic view on the potential for AI to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and inclusiveness of education (as well as other public services). AI could present substantial opportunities to improve learning outcomes, especially for learners who are not currently well-served by the system.
Questions that we are asking for our own AI agent:
Interested in following our journey into AI?
Department of Internal Affairs, National Cyber Security Centre & Stats NZ. (2023a). Initial Advice on Generative Artificial Intelligence in the public service. Retrieved January 8, 2025, from https://www.digital.govt.nz/assets/Standards-guidance/Technology-and-architecture/Generative-AI/Joint-System-Leads-tactical-guidance-on-public-service-use-of-GenAI-September-2023.pdf
Department of Internal Affairs, National Cyber Security Centre & Stats NZ. (2023b). Summary of system leaders’ guidance for use of gen-AI across the New Zealand public service. Retrieved January 8, 2025, from https://www.digital.govt.nz/assets/Standards-guidance/Technology-and-architecture/Generative-AI/Joint-System-Leads-tactical-guidance-on-public-service-use-of-GenAI-summary-September-2023.pdf
Ministry of Education. (2024, November 25). Generative AI: Guidance and resources for education professionals on the use of artificial intelligence in schools. Retrieved January 8, 2025, from https://www.education.govt.nz/school/digital-technology/generative-ai
Office of the Privacy Commissioner. (2023). Artificial intelligence and the information privacy principles. Retrieved January 8, 2025, from https://privacy.org.nz/assets/New-order/Resources-/Publications/Guidance-resources/AI-Guidance-Resources-/AI-and-the-Information-Privacy-Principles.pdf
OpenAI. (2023). Data Controls in the OpenAI platform. Retrieved March 31, 2025, from https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/your-data
Pattison, C. (2025). AI playbook for New Zealand. Capability Collective. Retrieved March 18, 2025, from https://www.linkedin.com/posts/craig-pattison-4353b337_ai-playbook-for-new-zealand-activity-7305427400241160192-ZCRG/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAB0RivcBwjdGQ-wOH39QjJNgo8BQiVc8Ar0