Why Prairie communities are pushing back against AI data centres

By Global News

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The rapid rise of artificial intelligence is fuelling the need for more AI data centres, which require a lot of power to process intense workloads. The AI industry wants to build new data centres in the Prairies, but it's a divisive topic in the region. With cool temperatures eight months of the year and underground water sources to tap into, the Prairies are ideal for data centres that need constant cooling. However many say they're not ideal for people, or the planet. "These centres use an enormous amount of power and there's a number of other issues with AI data centres I think people will be well aware of. Whether it's to do with water consumption or sort of local impacts such as noise and air pollution," James Wilt from Climate Action on AI said. Melissa Ridgen explains why Prairie provinces are being considered for AI facilities and why some communities are pushing back. For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca/news/11864995/big-tech-targets-prairies-for-ai-data-

Tags: global news, Prairies, AI data centres, Artificial intelligence, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Broadcom, Google, Apple, Amazon, xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, environment, noise pollution, water contamination, tech giants