No AI was used in the writing of this column.

I wouldn't have used that statement one year ago and didn't think I would need to now. In the 335 columns I've written for A&D over 7 years, I only called on AI to write one. I was a disaster, never published. I can assure you that no AI is ever used to write my columns. Research involves web browsing, but that's all. The writing, in all of its clunky glory, is entirely down to me.

I'm musing about this, as the Sydney Morning Herald recently asked all its writers (I am an occasional columnist) to confirm they don’t use AI. Turns out that an article written by a professor at a major university, encouraging students not to use AI, was in fact written by AI. Oops. The SMH took it down, and hence the request. But presumably they used AI to spot the AI.

But this is not a column about AI but rather its home – the dreaded data centre.

AI may well be the future, but the buildings housing AI are utterly retrograde. These vast factories of chip chompers require an abundance of three things: land, lots of it; energy to power the processors; and water to cool the systems.

There's been a recent flurry of seemingly valid concern about sustainability and environmental performance. Australia’s 278 existing data centres are almost entirely powered from the grid, increasing the demand for coal and gas electricity generation. And all are plugged into the high-value domestic potable water supply. This surge in demand for resources is causing alarm.

The green response is to force them to be autonomous: make their own energy and collect and recycle their own water. But autonomy is a fraught concept after the hippie studies of the 70s showed it was technologically possible but socially undesirable. Technologies have a different critical mass for energy, water, sewer, stormwater, food and so on. Communal facilities were a better model.

But a standalone Darth Vader data centre is not communal. Maybe the size of a whole village, but few occupants, and no social interaction. Autonomy is perfect. We must demand data centres be self-sufficient. Nobody anticipated or planned for this immediate demand on our current infrastructure, and their sudden arrival should not disrupt communities where brownouts appear and water disappears.

Is it possible to run a data centre autonomously? Hell, yeah.

There’s an oversupply of wind generators and, particularly, solar panels in China. Production far exceeds sales or local use, so their command economy is forcing panel manufacturers to idle or close. There are plenty of cheap, immediately available solar panels to go on the vast roofs to power data farms.

Batteries are needed for 24/7 operation, but the same deal applies – battery production outstrips demand, even with EVs on PVs. Why not data centres with alternating factories and energy banks in a revival of Louis Kahn's plans for the separation of serviced and servant systems?

Water’s even easier. Estimates for cooling demand vary greatly, but it doesn’t need high-grade potable water from the tap. Two possibilities: with enormous roof areas to collect water and land for above-ground tanks or in-ground cisterns, their own water system is possible and/or reduce water demand by using closed loop systems or ‘direct to chip cooling’.

These images are from the Kingspan factory / warehouse / offices in Somerton, the first 6 Green Star of that type, designed by Environa Studio almost 10 years ago. The technology has leapt and bounded since then, so we can do a lot better with these behemoths coming down the road.

We once built huge buildings for telephone exchanges. Then the phone technology shrunk to a cupboard, leaving abandoned giant telephone exchanges. Irony upon irony, they are now used as data centres. What a tragedy it would be if AI technology shrunk to one tenth of the current size in twenty years, leaving us a country full of useless, uber-technocratic sheds.

Maybe I should ask AI if it is possible for data centres to run autonomously. My most recent experience will refer back to this article. A self-referential system that will eventually be the downfall of AI.

Cross-Sections are Friday musings from Tone Wheeler, formerly of Tone on Tuesday. Amateurs draw plans, professionals draw sections – never at cross purposes

Tone Wheeler

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