Regional NSW AI preparation lacking

Regional areas need to step up their game if they’re to prepare for the artificial intelligence (AI) wave, with some experts claiming these areas are underprepared compared to their metropolitan comrades, and things need to change if rural locations are going to present themselves as AI powerhouses in their own right.

Speaking with ARN, Daniel Sargent, managing director and founder of data centre infrastructure product vendor Treske, strongly believes that regional infrastructure simply isn’t up to par compared to metropolitan locations.

Sargent previously worked at critical infrastructure provider Vertiv and said to ARN that he has previously worked in a variety of regional locations around the state, such as Newcastle, NSW, and says he hears the “same story, which is around, ‘We’re up here we don’t generally get to know what’s going on in in the big cities. We’re always second in terms of information being passed through to us. We have to go to Sydney to get to the big guys and talk’”.

He also said local integrators’ skill sets don’t have “real world experience” when it comes to establishing regional locations in order to “bring the full real world experience back to them”.

Sargent continued, claiming that more discussion needs to be held about on premise data centres, which needs to be carefully considered – particularly with the global technology shift to artificial intelligence (AI).

“They’re going to have to completely upgrade the electrical infrastructure, the wiring infrastructure, all the way upstream, to be able to accommodate [AI],” he said.

He also said that regardless of industry, more technical equipment is going to be needed to prepare for the technology, especially in regional areas.

“Whether you work in council, healthcare, pharmacy, you’re going to get more equipment in that’s going to be more power hungry; it’s going to generate more heat and it’s all going to go in the same small form factor where real estate space is very expensive,” he said.

The other major element to consider is the education piece, according to software developer EkkoSense general manager for Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) and Asia Pacific (APAC) Robert Linsdell, who claims that IT is not portrayed fairly in the state’s current education system.

“Why are we having difficulties convincing kids in secondary education to pick up a career in IT? It’s actually quite exciting.’ … The reasoning from one teacher was that the initial qualifications in computer sciences are considered to be ‘too hard’,” he said to ARN.

“So, if I’m going to spend a year or two or three years on [the High School Certificate], then I’d better pick a subject where I’m going to get a high grade, because this is tough. So what tends to happen is, it’s only the people who are specifically interested in gaming or IT that actually go through the education and not very many females go through that, so you end up with a disparity before you’ve even started.

“Then when you get to tertiary education, it tends to be a lot of the traditional people that go into our business. So mechanical engineers, electrical engineers — yes, you get IT engineers as well, but they don’t necessarily end up in where we are. Whereas in the regions, TAFE, they’re looking at doing more work in this area, but we don’t get the quantities of people coming out that will make it easy. So therefore, when an IT decision is needed to be made, you’re going back to the city to get that competence and expertise.”

As a means of tackling this education deficiency, Treske has launched an event series on regional preparedness for AI, which, in part, features knowledge provided from other businesses, one of which being EkkoSense. The first of these events took place in Newcastle in March, but Sargent has plans to take this further.

“We are committed to doing that across all the regions. So, we’re looking at the Canberra, Wollongong, Dubbo and Orange. This is just the first stage of a 12- to 18-month plan,” he added.