Technology leaders, sustainability experts and an indigenous futurist grappled with the opportunities of artificial intelligence and its impact on the environment during a Juncture dialogue event held at the University of Auckland Business School.
Facilitated by Dr. Guy Bate, Thematic Lead for Artificial Intelligence at the Business School, the Juncture dialogue event was structured around two thematic blocks: first, exploring the tensions between AI’s promise and its planetary cost; second, imagining pathways forward.
“Tonight’s conversation sits at the intersection of two forces shaping the future. Artificial intelligence, which promises to enhance human capability, and planetary boundaries with a call for restraint, responsibility and respect for ecological limits.”
Planetary boundaries encompass not just climate change but water cycles, biodiversity, nitrogen and phosphorus flows, and other critical Earth system processes.
Mike Merry, Chief Technology Officer at Planetary Insights, explained how these boundaries provide essential context for understanding sustainability.
“The planetary boundaries define what is the safe operating space for the planet. Basically, it’s the scientific consensus of if we breach these boundaries, the planet will change in a way that may or is very likely not able to support life as we know it right now for us as humans.”
Merry uses planetary accounting which transforms abstract environmental concerns into measurable constraints. It provides sustainability insights into products, services, or organisations within Earth’s environmental limits.
The evening’s speakers wrestled with AI’s dual nature. Bowen Pan, former creator of Facebook Marketplace and current technology leader, acknowledged the technology’s growing energy demands while arguing for an approach focused on “abundance”.
“There is no question that AI systems, as they stand today, is absolutely driving up energy use and is driving up whatever we have in the existing world today,” said Pan, before pivoting to the transformative potential.
Pan argued that focusing solely on constraints misses the bigger picture. “One of the problems on the energy side really boils down to the problem that we need to have really cheap, clean energy. We need to have cheap, clean energy abundance.”
Yet the numbers are staggering. The International Energy Agency projects that electricity demand from data centres worldwide is set to more than double by 2030 to around 945 terawatt-hours (TWh), slightly more than the entire electricity consumption of Japan today. AI will be the most significant driver of this increase, with electricity demand from AI-optimised data centres projected to more than quadruple by 2030.1
Dr Tanya Wolfgramm brought a distinctly different lens to the conversation, viewing AI through the framework of Māori values and indigenous knowledge systems. Her perspective highlighted both opportunity and concern. “AI for me is both a taonga, a cultural treasure, potentially, and also taniwha,” she explained, using terms that capture technology’s dual potential as both blessing and threat.
Wolfgramm’s work with Pachamama AI demonstrates how indigenous communities can shape AI development rather than simply respond to it. Her platform focuses on culturally grounded research and evaluation, ensuring that Māori and indigenous knowledge systems inform rather than merely feed AI development.
She emphasised the importance of values-based design: “Everything has sovereignty. We have sovereignty of our mind, our spirit, our way to our memory. The planet has sovereignty. Papatūānuku, your sovereignty, as you say, our sovereignty is a collective perpetual.” This worldview offers a framework for AI governance that considers relationships, responsibilities, and regenerative practices.
Dr Sasha Maher, lecturer in sustainability, brought critical scrutiny to the discussion around corporate self-regulation and market mechanisms. She questioned whether efficiency gains alone could address AI’s environmental impact, noting that “efficiency gains are fantastic but we’re probably more interested in absolute picture, aren’t we? Emissions can continue to go up even if you do things efficiently.”
Maher challenged the panel and audience to consider fundamental questions of governance and accountability.
“The first question we need to ask fundamentally, is AI beneficial to the planet? Is this a net benefit? That’s the question we need to ask. And then we need to ask positive for whom and why and how.”
Her intervention highlighted the tension between corporate interests and public good, questioning whether technology companies should be setting the standards for measuring their own environmental impact.
The evening’s conversations revealed no simple answers but pointed toward several promising directions. Merry’s work on planetary accounting offers a framework for making sustainability visible and actionable.
Applied to planetary boundaries, this approach treats ecological limits as non-negotiable design constraints rather than optional considerations. The challenge lies in developing tools that make these constraints as ubiquitous and actionable as financial accounting.
Pan emphasised New Zealand’s unique position. “The big opportunity for New Zealand is really leveraging a lot of these technologies, and embracing all of these technologies so that our point of view and values are part of the discourse and part of the conversations and the products that actually exist on the world stage.”
Wolfgramm’s work provides a concrete example of this approach, showing how indigenous values can be embedded in AI systems from the ground up rather than retrofitted as an afterthought.
Photo credits: Chris Loufte Media Productions
Panellists:
Mike Merry
Mike Merry is a technologist and AI specialist, focused on real solutions to big problems. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Planetary Insights, supporting sustainable business practice by putting business data into context, letting businesses make practical, science-backed business decisions for environmental sustainability. Mike has a background in startups, most recently as CTO of The Clinician, a kiwi health-tech driving value-based health care using patient-reported data and AI. He has a background in mathematics, computer science and classical music, with active research in Explainable AI (XAI) and neural networks.
Bowen Pan
Bowen Pan is a product and technology leader with deep experience building marketplaces, consumer platforms, and B2B SaaS products across global tech and media companies. He is best known for creating Facebook Marketplace and leading major product initiatives at Trade Me, Facebook Gaming, Stripe, and Common Room. Bowen currently serves as an independent non-executive director on the board of NZME – publisher of the NZ Herald, Newstalk ZB, and OneRoof – and sits on the advisory board of the University of Auckland Business School. He is also the founder of Redwood Pan Group, where he advises startups, corporates, and investors on product and go-to-market strategies as well as international scaling. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (First Class Honours) and a Bachelor of Property from the University of Auckland, and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Tania Wolfgramm
Dr Tania Haerekiterā Wolfgramm’s whakapapa includes Te Aupouri, Te Whakatōhea, the islands of Vava’u Tonga, and the highlands of Scotland. She is a psychological and social scientist, creative producer, and Indigenous futurist whose work spans consciousness, identity, culture, the politics of evaluation, systemic oppression, creativity, and technological sovereignty. She holds a PhD from Auckland University of Technology with a focus on Māori and Indigenous evaluation methodologies. Tania is the cofounder of Hakamana AI, an Indigenous-led platform pioneering culturally grounded AI tools that advance Māori and Indigenous research, evaluation, and education. In partnership with RIVER NZ, she co-designs digital infrastructures that integrate Indigenous knowledge systems with artificial intelligence, enabling values-based, ethical innovation. Her work supports whānau, hapū, and iwi to define success on their own terms and shape their own digital futures.
Sasha Maher
Dr Sasha Maher is Lecturer in Sustainability at the University of Auckland Business School and an economic anthropologist whose research focuses on the political economy and governance of green finance, global carbon markets, and climate leadership. Prior to joining academia, she advised an environmental NGO and spent over a decade working in agribusiness. She is an Affiliate at the Circular Economy Beacon, Centre for Climate, Biodiversity, and Society at the University of Auckland, and Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
Event facilitator:
Dr Guy Bate is Lead for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Director of the Master of Business Development programme, and Professional Teaching Fellow in Strategy and Innovation at the University of Auckland Business School. With more than two decades of international industry experience in health technology, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, Guy has held leadership roles in strategy, business transformation, and new product development. A passionate advocate for the transformative power of AI in teaching and learning, he focuses on using AI to enhance student engagement, facilitate personalised learning, and foster self-directed development. Guy holds PhD degrees in both Management and Biomedicine and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in the UK (FRSB), a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Certified Management & Business Educator, and a Member of the Institute of Directors in New Zealand.
- Inernational Energy Agency news release, 10 April 2025. AI is set to drive surging electricity demand from data centres while offering the potential to transform how the energy sector works ↩︎