Ignoring doubts and protests, the South Australian Labor government of Premier Peter Malinauskas is preparing for a huge expansion of the state’s data centre industry.

“Artificial Intelligence represents the single biggest source of growth in the global economy,” Malinauskas observed on June 23, going on to maintain: “We need data centres in Australia.”

Together with SA’s leading position in renewable energy, Malinauskas argued, his government’s “unashamed pro-jobs and pro-business outlook” meant that the state was “uniquely placed to seize the opportunities of AI.” The government now reportedly plans to engage with AI companies to “establish partnerships and increase support.”

Accordingly, the premier has foreshadowed a new Data Centre and AI Infrastructure Act to streamline development. Data centres are to be designated as “essential infrastructure”, with government agencies empowered to override normal decision-making provisions to ensure that planning and construction proceed swiftly.

Developers will still have to furnish advice from authorities that adequate power and water supplies are available. But the normal process of consultation with municipal councils and local residents will be bypassed.

As a technology, artificial intelligence has enormous potential for freeing human beings from the drudgery of low-level intellectual labour, and for multiplying the achievements of scientific research. It is also true that SA, with its exceptional wind and solar energy resources, cheap land, established technical base and high-capacity fibre-optic connection to Singapore and beyond, is one of the better places in the world where this emerging industry might be concentrated.

Meanwhile, SA has an acute need for new enterprises in advanced, high-earning fields. Its traditional industrial base, centred on making consumer items from cars to washing machines, has essentially vanished.

But Malinauskas will need to tread carefully and perform stringent checks on the people and corporations that will be thronging to his door. He is by no means the only political leader around the world looking to AI as a basis for........

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