Fleeing New Zealand to live in Australia? I’m right there with you, Jacinda Ardern | Johanna Cosgrove

Fleeing New Zealand to live in Australia? I’m right there with you, Jacinda Ardern | Johanna Cosgrove

I overheard the news from Clarke Gayford on a dancefloor at 2am. I’m thrilled for our former first couple I got the news that Aotearoa’s most (internationally) famous prime minister is moving to Sydney in a way that is only possible in New Zealand. I was at the final Splore festival in Tāpapakanga at the weekend (one of our longest-running and arguably most beautiful festivals) when Clarke Gayford, Jacinda Ardern’s husband, popped up next to me on the dancefloor dressed as a giant toadstool. “Yeah, we’re moving to Sydney,” he said to a man in funereal pirate garb. “Can’t wait!” Maybe it was the joy of a perfect tracklist at 2am, maybe it was getting this breaking news from the horse’s mouth, but I felt thrilled for our former first couple. Like Splore, NZ has the hungover malaise of a party being cancelled and the lights going out. Johanna Cosgrove is an award-winning actor/writer/comedian. She will perform her show Sweetie at the Melbourne international comedy festival and is now in NZ filming an exciting top-secret feature film Continue reading...

Burger King cooks up AI chatbot to spot if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’

Burger King cooks up AI chatbot to spot if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’

OpenAI-powered assistant will help to ‘understand overall service patterns’, company says, as move sparks backlash From hospitality workers to retail employees, the exaggerated “customer service voice”, often mocked in internet memes as wildly different from someone’s real voice, has long been a cultural trope. Fast-food giant Burger King is now taking that voice one step further, saying it will detect whether employees are using words like “please” and “thank you” through the assistance of artificial intelligence. On Thursday, Burger King announced it is rolling out a new AI chatbot connected to employee headsets at hundreds of locations in the US as part of a platform called BK Assistant, powered by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Continue reading...