Gravelbourg & District Tribune

We have another industry competing for our tax dollars.

 

As everyone is aware we give out billions and billions to rich Texas oil companies (remember the $40 billion pipeline?) and billions more for failed car companies and more again for military spending to fuel the US military industrial complex. The new darlings are AI Centres.

 

Near Regina we now have the Bell AI Fabric Headquarters -- a $50 billion project. The government is closed lip about how much the province will be investing. We’ll get some construction jobs. The issue is cost over the longterm.

 

Communities across the US, Canada and Europe are protesting against these centres. People are worried that the construction spree will have dire consequences for the environment, power prices and surrounding communities. That is happening at existing AI centres.

 

Data centres are big buildings that house computer hardware to store and process digital information. In the US some of these cover an area the size of 17 football fields. A typical AI data centre uses as much electricity as 100,000 households and some larger sizes being planned would consume 20 times more. They also suck up billions of gallons of treated water to keep the hardware cool.

 

OpenAI boss, Sam Altman and Elon Musk have both backed a call from the head of Anthropic, Dario Amodie, to ‘slow the pace’ of AI development. I would consider that warning something our governments should not ignore.

 

Do elected officials really believe data centres are the goose that lays the golden egg?