Indonesians are the most excited about AI of 30 countries surveyed

In an Ipsos survey of 30 countries, 80 per cent of Indonesians said they were excited about AI. That was the highest share on the list, well above the 30-country average of 52 per cent, with Thailand at 79 per cent and Malaysia at 77 per cent close behind. Sarah Chan and Samuel Chng, researchers at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities in Singapore, use that enthusiasm as the opening of a commentary for Fulcrum about how little the region actually knows about what the technology costs to run.

The global figures that exist are rough. The International Energy Agency counted 415 terawatt-hours of data centre electricity use in 2024, about 1.5 per cent of all the power used in the world, and expects 945 terawatt-hours by 2030. Below that level the detail thins out fast. Google says a typical text question to its Gemini model uses 0.24 watt-hours of electricity and roughly five drops of water, but the company produced that figure itself and no outside scientists have checked it. Chan and Chng argue the uncertainty is not a mystery of science. It is a reporting gap, because firms and governments are not obliged to publish anything.

Opinion in the region is split on the environment side. A separate 2026 poll across 11 ASEAN member states found 47.9 per cent thought AI helps the environment, 30.2 per cent thought it harms it, and 21.9 per cent said they did not know enough to judge. About 17.5 per cent said they had cut back on AI tools for climate reasons, more than had cut down on meat. The two researchers think that kind of personal effort is beside the point next to what gets built. Data centre capacity in Johor, just across the strait from Singapore, grew from 10 megawatts in 2021 to more than 900 by the end of 2025. Their fix is dull and specific: make every site report its yearly power and water use, as the European Union now requires. ASEAN's own guide for building data centres sustainably is voluntary.

Why it matters

Being keen on AI and being informed about it are not the same thing, and the gap is where approvals get granted. If you want to judge a project near you, the rules are the lever, not your own screen time. Worth watching: whether any reporting duty turns up in Indonesia's rules for data centres, and whether the next regional survey shows Indonesian enthusiasm holding once the power bills land.