Change.org petition launched against proposed AI data centres

A Change.org pe­ti­tion call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to halt ap­proval of pro­posed ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) da­ta cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go has at­tract­ed more than 3,200 ver­i­fied sig­na­tures less than a day af­ter it was launched.

The pe­ti­tion, start­ed on Sun­day by bioa­cousti­cian and con­ser­va­tion re­searcher Syam Nath, urges Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to sus­pend ap­proval of the pro­posed fa­cil­i­ties un­til com­pre­hen­sive en­vi­ron­men­tal, wa­ter re­source and in­fra­struc­ture as­sess­ments are com­plet­ed, in­de­pen­dent­ly re­viewed and made avail­able for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

In the pe­ti­tion, Nath ar­gues that while the AI da­ta cen­tre projects re­main at the pro­pos­al stage, hy­per­scale fa­cil­i­ties "can re­quire sub­stan­tial amounts of wa­ter for cool­ing, con­sume enor­mous quan­ti­ties of elec­tric­i­ty, and place ad­di­tion­al de­mands on pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture."

The pe­ti­tion states that Trinidad and To­ba­go is al­ready fac­ing a long­stand­ing wa­ter cri­sis, with many house­holds ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­ter­mit­tent sup­plies or re­ly­ing on wa­ter tanks and truck-borne de­liv­er­ies.

It al­so notes that the Gov­ern­ment has signed Mem­o­ran­da of Un­der­stand­ing (MoUs) for the po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of AI da­ta cen­tres re­quir­ing up to 150 megawatts and 300 megawatts of elec­tri­cal ca­pac­i­ty.

The pe­ti­tion says: "This pe­ti­tion does not op­pose tech­nol­o­gy or in­vest­ment. It calls for re­spon­si­ble plan­ning, trans­paren­cy, and ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Ac­cess to re­li­able drink­ing wa­ter is a fun­da­men­tal pub­lic ne­ces­si­ty and should not be placed at risk by in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment with­out rig­or­ous in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment."

It fur­ther claims that no En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment, wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty study, cool­ing strat­e­gy or drought re­silience plan has been pub­licly re­leased for the pro­posed de­vel­op­ments, ar­gu­ing that with­out that in­for­ma­tion, the pub­lic can­not mean­ing­ful­ly as­sess whether the projects are in the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

The pe­ti­tion links read­ers to a Guardian Me­dia re­port on the pro­posed de­vel­op­ment.

The pe­ti­tion fol­lows con­cerns raised af­ter Gov­ern­ment an­nounced plans to fa­cil­i­tate two AI da­ta cen­tre projects in Debe. One pro­pos­al is for a 150-megawatt fa­cil­i­ty by US tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Prometheus Hy­per­scale, while the sec­ond in­volves a 300-megawatt project by an­oth­er de­vel­op­er.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns in the Guardian last week, of­fi­cials said the pro­posed de­vel­op­ments would not com­pro­mise wa­ter sup­plies for res­i­dents. Gov­ern­ment said the projects would use de­sali­nat­ed sea­wa­ter rather than potable wa­ter and stressed that the fa­cil­i­ties re­main at the mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing stage, with no fi­nal ap­provals hav­ing been grant­ed. Of­fi­cials al­so said all re­quired en­vi­ron­men­tal ap­provals and reg­u­la­to­ry process­es would have to be com­plet­ed be­fore con­struc­tion could be­gin.

https://www.change.org/p/sus­pend-ap­proval-of-ai-da­ta-cen­tres-in-trinidad-and-to­ba­go?re­cruiter=487615126&re­cruit­ed_by_id=3a794de0-d1f1-11e5-beb4-f3f7002e526e&utm_source=share_pe­ti­tion&utm_cam­paign=psf_com­bo_share_ini­tial&utm_medi­um=copy­link&share_id=rjvsprYF9T