데이터센터 및 전력망 확장에 힘입어 호주에서 역대 최대 규모의 AI 붐이 예상됩니다.

The adoption of artificial intelligence is rocketing in Australia, creating massive demand for infrastructure that will deliver jobs and economic benefits. Speaking at a conference in Sydney on Monday, Harry Murphy Cruise, head of economics at Oxford Economics, stated the nation was at the "cusp of a data centre boom."

Global AI adoption is currently led by the United States, where approximately 30 per cent of firms hold paid subscriptions to market leaders OpenAI or Anthropic to use ChatGPT or Claude. In Australia, Mr Murphy Cruise expects adoption to increase, jumping to around 50 per cent over the next decade and then topping out at around 80 per cent by 2025. Other regional countries, including Japan, China, and India, are also pursuing AI, albeit at a slightly slower rate. This difference exists because their economies rely more heavily on manual or blue-collar labour, making adoption more challenging given that AI is less useful for certain types of work.

Oxford Economics has analysed Australian occupations to model the likely outcomes of AI-driven automation. The hardest-hit roles include graphic design, web design, and illustration, followed by data entry and other keyboard-type jobs, as well as telemarketing. "AI does that particularly well," Mr Murphy Cruise said. Occupations such as concreters, surgeons, and electricians remain far less exposed. "AI, at least at the moment, isn't going to be doing your heart surgery," he added.

Looking further ahead, Oxford Economics projects that by 2060, AI will be able to replace about 15 per cent of current tasks and occupations. Despite this shift, overall employment levels are not expected to fall. "That said, it doesn't mean that aggregate employment is going to be lower, because AI delivers benefits as well," Mr Murphy Cruise said. "We're forecasting AI to deliver some pretty substantial productivity benefits around the world." For Australia, this translates to increasing productivity by about 2.5 per cent by 2035 and 4.5 per cent by 2060. "And those productivity gains then translate into, hopefully, employment gains," he noted. Higher productivity typically enables companies to pay workers more or reduce prices, which lifts household spending power. While firms could theoretically retain the profits, competitive pressures would likely force them to adopt the former strategies instead.

To power this expansion, Australia's investment in data centres is expected to reach $60 billion by 2030, rising from $20 billion in 2026, according to Michael Brennan, Oxford Economics' head of impact. "Whenever you build a data centre, you're going to involve a whole supply chain of telecommunications, maintenance professional services, and engineering," he said. This development cycle will create jobs ranging from initial construction through to ongoing management and maintenance. Data centres are projected to contribute $78 billion to the economy in terms of investment by 2030 and sustain an average of 80,000 to 100,000 jobs annually. "So this infrastructure build-out is going to have a pretty sizeable impact on the economy," Mr Brennan said.

Scaling this infrastructure, however, introduces significant energy and timeline pressures. Electricity usage by data centres is projected to reach between five per cent and 12 per cent of national demand within ten years. Alex Hooper, Oxford Economics' head of energy, noted that developers are increasingly being asked to compress construction timelines from six years down to one. Building the corresponding energy infrastructure, however, often takes considerably longer. "So there's a little bit of a mismatch that governments need to respond to," Ms Hooper said.