The Sydney Table - Crossing the Aisle on Data Centres

Chris’s model is to get a bunch of people with different perspectives around a table for a well-lubricated meal and an off-the-record discussion and then follow it up with a podcast the next morning.

I was one of those invited to discuss the growing push for data centre investment with a mix of people from government, finance, academia and industry a few weeks ago.

I was obviously invited as the provocateur but it was pretty clear to me that most people who engage in tyis issue have mixed and sometimes contradictory feelings about the rollout of this new and intrusive technology.

Those proposing investment see it as a totally rational move - an evolution from disaggregated server rooms in the basement of building to more efficient clouds, with the potential to help Australia harness the next wave of tech innovation.

My position is that there are so many unresolved issues - from environmental and community impacts to the broader unresolved issues about how Australia chooses to adapt and adopt AI.

Data Centres are the ultimate black box, an avatar for all the risks of AI, an embodiment of our justified concerns about child abuse, online scams, worker displacement and cultural theft. They also carry the burden of the growing backlash in the US where development and energy regulation is nowhere near as strong as it is here.

As I say to Data Centre Australia CEO Belinda Dennett in the podcast ‘these things are not your fault, but they are your problem’.

I would also note that I think Belinda and many of those funding the data centres have a genuine belief that the infrastructure they are building is essential for our future proposerity.

I walked away from this discussion feeling I had a deeper understanding of the industry perspective, but also that they had heard mine and agreed that the challenges in navigating this change are about more than cables and circuitry, or regulation and capacity, or energy and water, it is about our own ability to share a common story about the future we want to be building.

You can hear the discussion between me and Belinda here: