Executive Summary.
The AI Opportunity.
Today, an increasing number of Australians are discovering the benefits of AI: saving time, enabling new possibilities and learning new things. However, an AI adoption divide is also emerging. To maximise the AI opportunity, more needs to be done to build an AI-enabled Australia.
Early adopters are already experiencing the rewards of AI.
32% of workers in Australia said they were already using AI tools to help them regularly in their work lives. Early users of tools like Gemini in Google Workspace are already reporting saving the equivalent of 10 working days a year.
AI will expand possibilities across work, culture and science.
AI will help speed up scientific research, make it easier to pursue a new creative hobby, and help level up skills in the workplace. For the economy as a whole, AI could help power the next stage of growth, creating an extra $240 billion in economic value.
However, more needs to be done to avoid a growing adoption gap.
Just 9% of Australians reported having a strong understanding of AI tools, and this was a barrier to further adoption. If we don’t work to reverse the gap in worker AI adoption, it could reduce the overall potential economic benefits from AI by over a quarter.
Helping with Australia’s Challenges.
AI could help Australia address three major challenges: stalled labour productivity, growing fiscal pressures in the public sector, and increasing cost of energy.
AI can help create a more efficient and proactive public sector.
In total, AI could increase productivity in the public sector in Australia by 17%. AI can help empower and advance an even more productive public sector and deliver improved citizen centric services.
AI can help improve energy efficiency and make it easier to respond to environmental emergencies quicker.
AI could optimise energy efficiency by over 9%, saving millions of dollars in energy costs. AI-powered disaster response systems could potentially reduce climate-change induced flood damage by $950 million each year.
AI could help restore productivity growth in Australia.
AI will save time for workers, boost skills, enable new business models, accelerate R&D, improve business efficiency and expand exports. AI could increase the productivity of Australia’s economy by more than 10% – or, by itself, the equivalent of the entire last decade of productivity growth.