Drivers of Change: Meeting the Energy and Data Demands of AI Adoption in Australia and New Zealand

<p dir="ltr">It is argued that the internet and mobile internet triggered the Third Industrial Revolution and that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are fuelling a Fourth Industrial Revolution.1 </p><p dir="ltr">This raises the question, what do we know about the sustainability impacts of AI deployment? </p><p dir="ltr">With funding from Pure Storage, the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures investigated answers to this question by conducting a survey of those closest to the development and deployment of AI technologies: IT managers. </p><p dir="ltr">This research followed on from our 2023 study, Data Centres and Sustainability in Australia, that sought, via survey of sustainability professionals, to understand the challenges and opportunities to address IT and Data Centre sustainability risks. The context for the study was an emerging awareness on sustainability consequences of the growth of data centres. A key finding was that sustainability professionals either had insufficient or no sustainability-related data from Data Centre service operators but believed that organisations cannot reach sustainability goals without significantly reducing Data Centre energy usage. </p><p dir="ltr">In this study, an online survey of Australian and New Zealand IT managers from 16 April to 12 May 2024 sought to understand awareness of likely increased energy use from AI applications. </p>