Artificial intelligence could have stopped video of the Christchurch attack spreading so quickly, but social media platforms have chosen not to use it.

Social media platforms struggled to stop clips of the gruesome livestream being shared on their sites - and Facebook didn't detect the original video for 29 minutes.

US-based Kiwi Sean Gourley, founder of intelligence company Primer, told Francesca Rudkin technology is available to stop footage like this being shared, but social media sites like Facebook have chosen not to use it.

"You're going to get a lot more false positives, things that are getting flagged and censored that shouldn't be. I think the decision that Facebook has made, it wants to lean more on humans and it wants to make sure the precision of its algorithms is very, very high."

He says they have about 28,000 moderators that review content being posted around the world instead of doing it through artificial intelligence.  

Gourley says that if they deployed their artificial intelligence moderators, other content would undoubtedly be censored as well. 

Facebook has been widely criticised for not doing enough to limit extremism and far-right thoughts, but Gourley says that is because they are focused on selling data and don't want to limit speech in a way that would turn away potential customers. 

"The by-product of coupling this technology with an economic system that treats people like products and sold to the highest bidder is extremism. You have to think very carefully about the forces driving this technology." 

Queries like this will be on the agenda at the AI Day 2019 conference in Auckland, where Gourley will be giving the key-note speech.

He says that New Zealand is quite behind when it comes to artificial intelligence, and we have not come up with the same level of policy or investment that other countries have done. 

"New Zealand still hasn't stepped forward on that. We've seen little bits come forward from Australia."

He agrees that a lot of people are quite afraid of what artificial intelligence means for their careers and freedom of speech.

"There definitely are some good reasons to fear what artificial intelligence can do, but I would say at the same time that you should look at all the things it can do," Gourley says, noting health care as the main example. 

He says artificial intelligence will, on certain cognitive levels, be better than humans when it comes to processing and speed of thought.

Gourley says that the next question is where do humans fit in as part of this disruption. 

"I think the way to look at that is to ask how we can team up with these machines to create a better kind of intelligence."