Why should we build Data Centres?
Genuine question. I’m familiar with the arguments against (energy consumption, water use, noise, etc,), but the government has put out adds bragging about how we are building data centres in Alberta, which leaves me asking, why? What are the supposed benefits?
Like, there are some construction jobs, but once the thing is built they require very few people to run them, so they don’t create much employment. I get that they are used for AI processing, but does this generate any taxable income? Like, if a person uses an AI token from the US and some of the processing is performed here, is the income generated here? Can that even be proved to be the case, or could a company claim no income is generated at these data centres in Alberta? Is there any benefit at all to the tax payer, real or imagined? I honestly don’t know!