Most surveyed Asean firms expect AI’s benefits to outweigh its energy bill

Almost four in five Asean business leaders surveyed expect AI’s benefits to outweigh its energy needs, even as many anticipate higher energy demand and infrastructure costs. The survey captures growing investment and a live business argument: success should be measured by useful results, not how much AI a company can squeeze into a slide deck.

Watch Desk analysis

What happened

The Business Times and market research firm Kantar surveyed 514 regional business leaders. The Straits Times reports that 78 per cent believe AI’s benefits outweigh its energy requirements, while 62 per cent said their investment in AI or data-driven technology had increased over the past year. In Indonesia, 85 per cent reported moderate-to-significant investment increases.

The energy picture is less breezy. Forty-one per cent of respondents expect a moderate increase in energy demand as AI adoption scales, and another 40 per cent expect a significant increase. Respondents pointed to rising electricity or operating costs, infrastructure upgrades and competition for energy resources as practical challenges.

Why it matters

These are business leaders’ expectations, not proof that AI projects have already delivered net benefits or that energy costs are negligible. But the results show why AI adoption and infrastructure planning are becoming the same conversation. A project can look inexpensive at the token level while adding pressure elsewhere, especially when a company runs its own models or depends on local power.

The report also puts a useful test against AI enthusiasm: measure the economic and other benefits actually delivered, rather than counting usage. Experts cited by The Straits Times suggest matching compute to the value of the task, including using smaller, task-specific models where they can do the job.

Our read

This is a more useful debate than “AI is either magic or a power-hungry disaster”. The survey suggests many businesses see a worthwhile case, while also expecting the bill and infrastructure demands to grow. The sensible move is to ask what a system achieves, what compute it needs, and whether a smaller option could do the same work. Novel questions, we know: apparently the spreadsheet still has a role.

What to watch

• Whether surveyed expectations turn into measurable returns from deployed AI projects.
• How quickly rising electricity and infrastructure costs affect adoption plans.
• Whether businesses choose smaller, task-specific models and report the trade-offs.

Discussion spark: Should companies judge AI projects mainly by measurable business returns, or should energy use and carbon footprint be equal parts of the test?

Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.