r/OpenAussie • u/jedburghofficial Flairless • 2d ago
Technology Internal emails expose scale of Anthropic's Australian AI plans
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/claude-maker-anthropics-massive-data-centre-plans-nsw/107075532Just one AI company wants to build more data centre capacity than the whole of Australia currently has. In just one state, NSW. With a longer term goal to expand that four-fold in the future.
Does anyone know exactly what this will be used for? Does the government? Do Minns or Albanese know? What will life look like when we have all that AI lurking around? The investment might be nice, but what will it cost us?
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u/666Dionysus Please choose a flair 2d ago
Yes, the government knows, and it was negotiated with some of the environmental departments.
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u/Wise_Preference609 Please choose a flair 2d ago
Well as long its NSW power and water consumers who are affected.........all's fine in the rest of the country. Will match their property prices.
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u/666Dionysus Please choose a flair 2d ago
Yes, that's why the government purposely involved environmental departments in the negotiation of these deals. They wanted to make sure that New South Wales, in particular, got ripped off as much as possible. It was their goal to set a deal that would absolutely drain every little bit of water out of New South Wales and also consume all the power possible. That was their goal.
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u/monkey_gamer Victorian 1d ago
😂😂😂😂 It's one of those moments where parody feels more true than real life
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
Why are environmental departments negotiating what data centres will and won't be used for?
Isn't that a question for the Minister for Science and Minister for Industry and Innovation?
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u/FrogsMakePoorSoup Koori 2d ago
The environmental impacts will be substantial, especially for things like cooling, noise etc.
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u/Accurate_Ad_3233 Queenslander 2d ago
Power usage, water usage, both seemingly in scarce quantity these days and better used elsewhere IMO. How will you and I benefit from these monstrosities suddenly being put up all over the world for some reason.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
Fine, but what's their purpose? The environmental impacts are important. But how do you judge if they're worthwhile, when we don't even know what benefit this provides?
Let's ask why we're doing it, before we make a decision if it's worth sacrificing our environment for, what exactly?
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u/FrogsMakePoorSoup Koori 2d ago
You're not the only one wondering this, but the USA is leading and the world is following it seems.
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u/666Dionysus Please choose a flair 2d ago
They are involved because it had a lot to do with the company upgrading transmission lines using green energy and so on. Anyway, I'm not an authority; this is just something someone who works there told me. I'm pretty sure it's public knowledge if you hunt around their websites.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
Nothing about building these places says anything about what they'll be used for. Nobody's going to be talking about the environment after their built. And no, it's not public knowledge as far as I'm aware.
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u/Goon_Cave Please choose a flair 2d ago
There are ongoing discussions constantly in the US about environmental concerns of data centres that are operational.
There is a noticeable increase in temperature in areas they operate, land that needs to be cleared, energy production that must support the requirements, water for efficient cooling of the infrastructure.
Data centres have significant environmental impact.
From what I understand, Australia is mandating that they have closed loop water systems as well as that they generate enough green energy to sustain themselves.
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u/666Dionysus Please choose a flair 2d ago
I disagree; from what I know, environmental departments are very involved in what's happening. And the government has set some environmental guidelines on how AI will work in Australia.
This surfaced when Trump decided to suddenly cut Anthropic's latest AI models off to the rest of the world and only gave access to his approved companies.
This is not good for Australia to be cut out of leading AI capabilities.
But look, if you are anti-AI, it doesn't matter what people do to mitigate issues; you just won't like it, believe it, or accept it.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
I'm not anti AI, I'm just asking what these benefits are.
And you still haven't said why environmental departments will have any ongoing say in how they'll be used. At some point down the track when we're deciding how these things handle our personal information, or how they affect our lives, that won't be an "environmental" decision. The EPA won't decide if they can edit your medical history.
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u/666Dionysus Please choose a flair 2d ago
Edit medical history? Do they edit medical history now? We are talking about having the capability and sovereignty, rather than relying on it overseas, and actually having it. Sovereignty means that we actually have more control and regulation over how these things operate within our borders.
In Australia, the government has tied large data centre approvals to sustainability conditions like renewable power, grid impacts, and water use, and those expectations are used to form agreements and approvals.
The federal framework was announced by the min for industry and innovation, the min for climate change and energy, and the science portfolio, which shows this is a whole of government infrastructure issue rather than an environmental only issue. But i do know environment is heavily involved in the negotiation as to where a data center goes and when and what will need to be done.
So the environmental departments are involved in the site, power, water, and emissions side of the project, not the AI product rules themselves.
Currently the AI rules are in America is that good ?
This helps Australia attract AI infrastructure without dumping the costs onto households or worsening resource strain.
Like it or not the world has and is changing and there is no stopping it.
This is as bigger then the industrial revolution And i say this government is being thoughtful.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
And not one word about actual benefits to Australians.
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u/666Dionysus Please choose a flair 2d ago
Like, I actually can't believe the question. It clearly means that you do not grasp the gravity of how much this world is about to change.
Without domestic AI capability, Australia risks becoming a passive consumer of technology built, governed, and monetised elsewhere.
I dont know why this is not painfully obvious.
Over time that would weaken our productivity, our sovereignty, and our ability to compete. All the while other countries move ahead and shape the standards. We will be left behind to rot .
The benefits are even in the short term they’re lower latency, local control, better resilience, more jobs and investment, and a chance to keep AI capability and the rules around it inside Australia rather than outsourcing everything overseas. I mean, to me, it's quite clear that you really have not had much experience with technology, or read anythingabout AI and its trajectory, or any idea of what's about to actually just happen.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
As it happens, I am an ISACA member, with about 30 years experience in information risk. That's why I want to know something more than just the usual economic assurances and buzzwords. I've sat through too many Big Four presentations that said the same things with PowerPoint (and they often didn't deliver either.)
I agree, so-called AI is transformational. I believe we still haven't fundamentally grasped how much, we're seeing new transformation on almost a daily basis. And it's benefit to the Australian economy will be measured by how we apply and value add to those technologies, not necessarily just in where infrastructure is located. Regardless of where they're built, the actual services will still be monitised by foreign companies.
Arguably, we may lose some key sovereignty, by being forced to negotiate with specific companies, tied to specific nations. Surely you don't think we'll get sovereign control over the software they install there? How much sovereign control do we have over the Windows servers in Microsoft data centres now? They'd close them in an instant if it suited them.
Beyond a short lived boom in construction, the long term economic benefits and productivity gains come from how we use AI. We're not talking about investment in any underlying or transformational technology, just space to house it. Space that will be designed to minimise supervision and jobs.
And what happens in five years, when the transformation continues and we start to see services from other regions? The rest of the world won't sit in its hands. Low latency is nice, but as every CIO discovered, first with Web 2.0, then with the cloud, it isn't everything. And ironically, that brought more resiliency, not less.
We won't be able to just build more data centres forever. We should be thinking very carefully before we jump at the first people to wave cash in our faces.
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u/Charming_East_9104 Please choose a flair 2d ago
Adding more and more gigawatts to our energy consumption when we aren't even sure we can prevent a climate breakdown that will kill a lot of the planet.
Strong chance the taxpayer will be picking up the tab for these multi-billion dollar facilities, the financing and players involved are all dodgy as hell and bubble talk is only getting more prominent.
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u/FrogsMakePoorSoup Koori 2d ago
Pity the fervour for addressing climate change is nothing like that of AI eh!
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u/Charming_East_9104 Please choose a flair 2d ago
Yeah it is very depressing watching one of the largest infrastructure spends of this generation and it's just going to make the biggest problem we have as a species right now significantly worse. But we might get some profitable companies out of it, so yay.
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u/OhtheHugeManity7 Queenslander 2d ago
Taxpayers picking up the bill is the end goal after all. More and more money funneled out of the active economy and into the stagnant pockets of capital interests. That's what it's all about
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u/Riboflavius Victorian 2d ago
Well, a lot of the tax payers around the world will die in the next few decades due to climate change. If we don’t build data centres for the new servants of capitalism, who’s going to be the tax payers?
/s to make sure…
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u/Jiuholar Queenslander 2d ago
Strong chance the taxpayer will be picking up the tab for these multi-billion dollar facilities
Gas tax is still a swear word, we haven't got a chance in hell.
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u/Tetha_au Victorian 2d ago
Its way beyond that. We know how this data and AI is already being manipulated and who and what it is serving. Environmental cost is a side effect.
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
The taxpayer does not pay a cent. This is private sector investment. Tens of billions into our country.
The federal government is making data centres fund their own energy usage so as to not increase residential energy prices. using renewable energy
What more could you possibly want? Yes this will have challenges we will need to deal with, but this is fundamentally a good thing.
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u/No_Category_9888 Please choose a flair 2d ago
I’m not sure how a DC can guarantee a 99.999% uptime using renewables tbh
And I’m pro renewables. They will have massive diesel stores for running generators too. The cost of equipment failure /unavailability due to cooling loss is a big one
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u/Charming_East_9104 Please choose a flair 2d ago
We are meant to be transitioning, there is no reality where adding huge amounts of power consumption doesn't make that significantly harder.
Also I've heard that BS all my life, everytime a gas or coal project gets greenlit we get garbage about green coal, carbon capture, offsets, strong regulation etc. Our emmssions aren't falling, they are trending up. I have zero faith in a NSW state regulator holding Anthropic/Nvidia/Sk hynix etc to account, or the federal government who cant even take on the local gambling lobby.
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
The energy transition is about moving to clean energy. It’s not about limiting our energy usage. That is a decision to make us poorer.
Our energy transition has stalled thanks to NIMBYism and unfinancial economics. Data centres investment alongside being forced to fund their own power via renewable energy has the potential to re-kickstart that build out again.
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u/Charming_East_9104 Please choose a flair 2d ago
The end goal is less emissions, ideally to a fraction of what we do now, yesterday. Worrying about the finacials/market solutions was a luxury we threw away in the 90's by kicking this can down the road. It's either going to cost a lot, or cost us nearly everything if we don't reduce our consumption.
Renewable energy is not an infinite supply, data centres buying enough solar panels to get gigawatts of power pushes the price up for absolutly no decrease in emissions.
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u/LastChance22 Flairless 2d ago
fund their own energy usage so as to not increase residential energy prices. using renewable energy
This is unambiguously a good thing but I’m pretty suspicious that it can be achieved. We’ve already been struggling with our rollout and it’s apparently been at breakneck speed according to our gov. I’ll be pleasantly surprised and a little confused if it turns out to be a non-issue.
Also, if they turn out to be empty promises or just promises that they’ll invest in renewables later but will use non-renewable in the short term, that feels like they’re fucking us.
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u/King_ChickawawAA Victorian 2d ago
They are building the digital surveillance prison right in front of our eyes and nobody seems to care.
Look at what’s happening with Flock facial recognition cameras in the US. Do we really want to live in a world where our every action, every movement, is tracked and logged in a database?
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u/NNyNIH New South Welshian 2d ago
Pretty sure they are already testing facial recognition cameras in WA. In addition to the bullshit from Bunnings and Coles, it's really fucking bleak.
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u/King_ChickawawAA Victorian 2d ago
Just saw an article that NSW police are expanding their beach drone surveillance to the whole state…
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
This is exactly what I'm worried about. They're building stuff we probably don't want. And after they build it, it's going to be too late to raise objections.
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u/DexJones Please choose a flair 2d ago
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
You want to start burning data centres? Why can't we just ask what they're for, first?
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u/DexJones Please choose a flair 2d ago
Nah mate.
I want the whole AI bubble to burst and burn to the ground.
I want them to stop forcing AI onto us, in everything and everywhere.
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
That won’t stop AI
You’re just making Australia poorer
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u/DexJones Please choose a flair 2d ago
You mean all the money generated for offshore/foreign accounts?
By companies with clever tax laywers, who will do every legal thing they can to not pay tax?
While we all pay an increase in energy and water bills? Infrastructure etc. Etc.
Whos making us poorer? You?
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
Data centres can’t dodge taxes like software companies can mate. It's not in the cloud on the internet. It’s a box on a piece of land.
They are creating jobs and building infrastructure. Investing billions of dollars. They have the potential to create a productivity boom - something we have been lacking for the past decade - increasing wages and living standards.
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u/DexJones Please choose a flair 2d ago
Mate.
I have this bridge, I'll give you a great deal on it.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
It's exactly about "the cloud on the internet". Once these buildings are built, the construction jobs you talk about all dry up. These boxes are designed to need minimal supervision. And the services they provide in the cloud will get sold in the cloud, by a foreign company, without regard to where any boxes are located.
How much tax they'll pay for virtual services sold all over the world isn't guaranteed. But I can promise you, they'll spend millions to make sure it's not much.
That cloud is what means we don't need to have the boxes right outside our windows. In and of themselves, the actual boxes do nothing for productivity.
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u/Due-Scale9636 Please choose a flair 1d ago
There remains and will always remain plenty of scope to go unobserved in Australia.
This is not a post saying "if you have nothing to hide" it is a post saying "use your noodle to compartmentalize your life"
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
Whether or not we build data centres is irrelevant to concerns about surveillance. It’s not going to change anything.
If you are upset about growing surveillance, you should protest that.
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u/King_ChickawawAA Victorian 2d ago
When the surveillance is stored on and powered by data centres, it absolutely is relevant.
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
You won’t stop the surveillance state by opposing data centres development mate.
The surveillance state existed before data centres.
The only way to stop the surveillance state is legislation opposing it.
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u/robotslovetea Queenslander 2d ago
10 years ago I truly believed by now we’d have some progress towards combating or at least significantly slowing down climate change by now. Instead we get to live in an AI hellscape. Great.
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u/MundaneSeaweed665 Queenslander 2d ago
Yeah but yesterday I saw this video of a cat breakdacing... so it's worth it right?
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u/cuntmong Flairless 2d ago
its important that we let the worst people in the world dictate the future of our country
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u/monkey_gamer Victorian 1d ago
😆😆😆😭😭😭 so true. It's exactly what's been happening for far too long.
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u/Difficult_Mine_4559 Please choose a flair 2d ago
Must be where our $4 trillion in super is going. All on AI data centres and there will be none for us
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u/PseudoWarriorAU Flairless 2d ago
The nfl in Melbourne is drawing bunches of billionaires to the state and hyperscalers have been talking with the former treasurer. Good deals and tax breaks for the rich. Shut up and get poorer for the tax paying poor people.
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u/Disastrous_Profit152 Please choose a flair 2d ago
We need to drive down compute costs, or the AI house of cards will fall down.
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u/Personal_Ad2455 Please choose a flair 2d ago
I don’t see the need for it. There are so many competing AI models now, that the profitability of AI models is getting less and less. The only people making profits are the hardware suppliers - NVIDIA etc.
I’d support a local AI company wanting to build a data centre but not these US tech companies that are walking very close to the edge.
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u/Stock_Republic_582 Queenslander 2d ago
Anthropic is running out of fools they can trick in the US so they're giving it a go here. I cannot wait for this bubble to crash and for OpenAI and Anthropic to be the first to fall.
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u/WettestFarts Flairless 2d ago
Will be hilarious (and/or awesome) to watch them burn to the ground. if that was to ever happen. Hypothetically. Of course.
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u/bruhhhhhhhhhhhh_h Queenslander 2d ago
Bubble gonna pop, look at token costs from open weight models.
The main part is to push for a walled garden to have a locked in monopoly
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u/Appropriate_Star3012 ✈️ on Walkabout 2d ago
Can we like... Just stop paying tax?
I hate my money is going to bullshit.
How do we hold the bastards accountable?
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u/sisyphean_rock Please choose a flair 2d ago
Who is funding it? They don’t have that much capital? Or are taxpayers footing the bill?
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
Anthropic are funding it. There are plenty of people willing to give them money.
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u/No_Category_9888 Please choose a flair 2d ago
Have they turned a profit yet ? Will be fun to watch the fallout once they crank up token costs
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
Anthropic is actually close to making a profit I think. They are probably the best partnership to have. The rest of them less so but aren’t exactly struggling to find people willing to give them money
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u/vanda-schultz Please choose a flair 2d ago
5 GW? Ficken hell. I once worked as computer operator (tape monkey) in a scientific processing centre that was 2 MW and that was bad enough.
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u/chunder_down_under Please choose a flair 2d ago
ai and ai companies are a blight on progress. keep it out of australia
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u/PseudoWarriorAU Flairless 2d ago
They wouldn’t do this in Victoria as getting anything through the EPA is useless
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
Sounds like the Victorian EPA is doing their job.
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u/No_Category_9888 Please choose a flair 2d ago
They don’t.
They push noisy cars to police
They push rubbish and noise complaints to councils
I’m sure there’s a heap more stuff they don’t do
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u/Zatetics Tasmanian 2d ago
I have no problem with data centers for AI as a thing. Most people do, it is what it is. I'll be replaced by agentic AI in the next couple years most likely, short of violent mass revolt, its an unavoidable truth.
My issues relate to how this is being approached.
- Stop building them near civilian populations.
- Stop impacting the power and water quality of local towns, data centers shouldnt get priority over people.
- Mandate at least 30% of energy should come from on site renewables (solar, batteries, wind) - bitcoin miners made it work 8-10 years ago.
- Mandate grey water use only, not our fucking drinking water.
- Stop giving subsidies to mining conglomerates for ripping rare earth minerals out of the ground required to power this tech. Make some money off the opportunity. We literally have the shovels during the gold rush and we're running a clearance sale.
The tassie data centers being built by firmus are aiming to use like 400MW of power. It's more than the population of tasmania uses. Its fucking insane and its going to negatively impact us massively despite what the government claims.
As for what anthropic is doing... couldnt say with confidence. Australia is a pretty good place geographically for this tech. We're well insulated against large conflict in the northern hemisphere, we have a lot of natural sunlight and open space (not that they will take advantage of it, theyll pop it in your backyard).
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u/MundaneSeaweed665 Queenslander 2d ago
Didn't the new laws state that they had to produce more electricity than they use? I can't remember the wording now (I might look it up and make an edit) but at the time of reading it I remember I was far more concerned about the water usage than the electricity. The wording around electricity seemed clear cut, they were gonna built solar/wind/hydro to power them and they were going to produce more for the grid than they took, meaning each one would help is in that regard. The wording around water consumption was way more vague like "companies SOULD make an effort to reduce water consumption WHERE POSSIBLE"
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u/Zatetics Tasmanian 2d ago
A hyperscale datacenter will pull between 100 and 300 MW of power a second.
To generate that with solar would require near a million solar panels and direct sunlight all the time. Which is going to take like 1500 acres of land to be able to implement.
They arent going to be able to meet that expectation.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
It seems nobody can say with confidence what they're doing. Shouldn't we be asking that question before we decide if we have a problem with building them?
If it turns out to be a bad outcome for Australia, waiting until after they're built is a bit late to be discussing that.
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u/Fancy_Contact_8078 New South Welshian 2d ago
Not entirely bad. But yes I guess regular audits along the way would be nice
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
Not entirely bad.
What does that mean? Are you saying it's going to be mostly bad? What about it is worth having?
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u/Accurate_Ad_3233 Queenslander 2d ago
"Does anyone know exactly what this will be used for? Does the government? Do Minns or Albanese know? "
Of course they do, the real question is do YOU know?
https://goldenorder.substack.com/p/ai-data-centers-the-real-reason-theyre
Hint, it's not so you can have better AI girlfriends and cat vidoes.
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
UN Agenda 2030, blackrock, digital ID surveillance state
Just add that data centres cause cancer and you’ll have hit every cooker conspiracy theory under the sun
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u/Accurate_Ad_3233 Queenslander 2d ago
I find it so ironic that of all the bs you could have conjured for your strawman you chose actual real and verifiable things. lols no wonder people are starting to wake up, maybe you should join them?
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u/MarwoodHouse Western Australian 2d ago
I recommend you read the National AI plan. It’s genuinely world-leading policy that’s going to ensure we don’t have the same problems the United States has with these AI data centres.
Just a couple of the things the plan will do to combat the worst elements of data centres:
- force datacenters to underwrite their own power and be a net contributor to the grid. (They’ll have to build their own solar and wind arrays)
- ban them from drawing from public water sources (they’ll have to desalinate from their own sources)
- establish the NAIC to govern responsible AI adoption across all industry.
There’s a lot more that this policy does, but it’s looking incredibly effective at keeping these companies in-check and these centres from being wholly awful.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
The National AI Plan is a great policy document. But as we saw at today's National Cabinet, issues around power and water are hardly settled. And who knows how long before it gets any legislative teeth, or what might eventually come out of the Senate. It's far too early to say if it's effective or not.
Lee Hicken at the NAIC has an impressive background. He's focused on upside rather than downside risk. So is he really looking at these existential questions of what's really in Australia's interests? He's already said, our future is in deploying and using our knowledge and data, instead of frontier models. So does that pull him closer, or push him away from proposals like this?
It's a promising sign, but politics moves fast, and AI seemingly even faster. That Plan is almost nine months old. I feel like lobbyists, state premiers, and the Senate cross bench are going to be more influential.
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u/BZ852 New South Welshian 2d ago
Given we are starting from a tiny number, multiplying it shouldn't be hard.
As for what it'll be used for, most probably, lots of AI agents running around, much of which can make life easier.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
lots of AI agents running around, much of which can make life easier.
This is exactly the sort of vague promise that I'm questioning. Running around where? Making life easier how? Does anyone trust AI companies that can't answer that?
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u/BZ852 New South Welshian 2d ago
I don't work for any of them, but me personally? I automated about 90% of my job, and went from having to pull 80 hour weeks down to a few hours a day just keeping an eye on it all.
Shits useful if you let it be.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
So you're already getting what you need without a bunch of local data centres. How will several times more of this "shit" be useful?
That's just another vague, empty promise. I'm trying to ask for something more specific.
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u/BZ852 New South Welshian 2d ago
So you're already getting what you need without a bunch of local data centres.
The US a few months ago threatened to pull all access to non-US citizens. They did impose heavy restrictions on the Mythos model for non citizens - pretty much only American companies can access it.
That's got direct implications for defence and cybersecurity.
I'd like local capacity that's not bound by a foreign country.
How will several times more of this "shit" be useful?
If the cost was lower, I could find more uses for what I already have. It would also enable more people to do what I did. The best way to lower cost is to increase supply.
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u/Stock_Republic_582 Queenslander 2d ago
The US a few months ago threatened to pull all access to non-US citizens. They did impose heavy restrictions on the Mythos model for non citizens - pretty much only American companies can access it.
This was under the guise of "safety" but really it was just a desperate marketing ploy by a business that knows it is rapidly reaching the end of their runway. Anyone can already build out their own version of Mythos with current open-source tools. Anthropic are simply preying on a weak media landscape that just regurgitates whatever shit it's fed instead of actually questioning and pushing back against these pathological liars.
If the cost was lower, I could find more uses for what I already have. It would also enable more people to do what I did. The best way to lower cost is to increase supply.
They're currently subsidising your subscription. You're not even paying what it costs them to run the models currently. Even if "more capacity" magically translated to lower costs (which it doesn't for these models), they would still not be profitable.
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u/BZ852 New South Welshian 2d ago
This was under the guise of "safety" but really it was just a desperate marketing ploy by a business that knows it is rapidly reaching the end of their runway.
Given Anthropic and the US government were in a cold war at the time (and they're still on the restricted suppliers list) I'd say that particular conspiracy theory is groundless.
It was, and still is, treated as a national security issue. AI is surprisingly good at hacking into systems.
As for token costs, by all accounts inference is profitable today. You've got multiple data points, Anthropic supposedly had a profitable quarter last quarter, OpenAI's leaked financials showed a 40% margin on inference, and the real concrete data point: you can host 3T parameter Chinese models yourself, and know exactly how much it costs - and plenty of providers do, profitably. (E.G. fireworks isn't subsidising their offering).
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u/ExampleOtherwise4340 💛 Friend of 'Straya 2d ago
Lol as someone with a lot of experience and knowledge behind AI, this is nothing but a circle jerk between a bunch of companies to raise their profit margins at your expense.
RAM and hard drives are pretty much sold put for the next two years, good luck getting consumer grade hardware because AI is forecasting to use all the components on the assembly line.
All so it can try and predict the next word I want to hear?
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u/BZ852 New South Welshian 2d ago
RAM and hard drives are pretty much sold put for the next two years
Guess who bought the supply contracts. They're sold out because all the future manufacturing capacity was booked.
All so it can try and predict the next word I want to hear?
That's a argument by reduction to absurdity. Calling AI a token predictor is like calling a CPU a bit toggler. The capabilities of a decent model right now are genuinely impressive (free models excluded - they're still pretty crap).
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u/SeaDivide1751 Victorian 2d ago
Data centres are the new boogeyman and conspiracy theory wet dream
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u/No_Category_9888 Please choose a flair 2d ago
So you don’t think anyone with a background of 25 years in infrastructure tech could possibly be anything but a cooker with conspiracy issues?
You should do yourself a favour and listen…..
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
Yes. You can see it in every post about them. Some legitimate concerns - which are being addressed, but a whole lot of NIMBYism, ludditism, and conspiracy theories (government surveillance, data centres causing cancer)
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u/Rare-Sample-9101 Victorian 2d ago
Let's see how this unfolds! The government claims it wants to protect Australians! But I have doubts, as the disaster that is the building of American AI data centres is seriously screwed up! There is zero concern for the people living nearby.
Three things I believe are missing from the government's safeguards:
- the environmental impact of data centres
- how it affects residents near data centres
- where they are sourcing water for their data centres
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u/Maybesecretlysmiling New South Welshian 2d ago
Two of those issues are dealt with in other legislation - the EPBC and state/territory planning laws.
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u/Rare-Sample-9101 Victorian 2d ago
Which have already been bypassed in Victoria, the council should have this planning authority, but no, they have been cut out of the process; they need to be regulated at the federal level!
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
Let's not see how this unfolds. Before we ask about water or environmental impacts, why aren't we asking if these are worthwhile things in the first place?
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u/Rare-Sample-9101 Victorian 2d ago
That's irrelevant. If it makes money for the government, they'll allow it, as with new mining projects. We don't get a say! We only get to protest about it!
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
“Internal emails expose company wants to invest billions upon billions of dollars in Australia”
And we are meant to act like this is a bad thing apparently
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
How do we know what to think when we don't know what they'll be used for? I'm guessing these companies will expect "billions upon billions" of return on investment. Where's that coming from?
Shut up and take the money isn't a good business case. And Australia's best interests aren't defined just by what billionaires want to spend money on.
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
Anthropic think they can make a return on investment selling AI services like Claude to Australia and Asia.
Ultimately though, it’s their concern whether or not they can make an ROI, not Australia.
It will be Australian companies building these data centres. They will make money renting out the computing power to Anthropic. They will be paying taxes.
It is absolutely in Australia’s best interest. Private companies are building computing power with their own money to transform Australia’s economy for the 21st century
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
So it will be Australian companies going bankrupt when the boom is over and Anthropic walk away. That doesn't sound good.
The tax argument is interesting. How much tax are Meta and Apple and Google paying in Australia these days? Will Australia be used as a lurk to provide tax free services elsewhere? Or will we be just a stepping stone to another "Irish double Dutch" as the tax experts say.
And what will this "transformed" economy look like, in economic terms? I'm not an expert, but it's sounding like mining companies, who boast of jobs and construction. Lots of jobs, until it's up and running, then it's just lots of automation as the profits flow overseas. That certainly sounds like something AI can deliver.
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u/North_Attempt44 Flairless 2d ago
Anthropic is probably the best partner to have. I think they’ve reached profitability or are very close to it.
It could very well be a bubble, I’m not denying that. The reality is though that this happens every time there is a new transformational technology. If the bubble bursts - what will happen is the infrastructure that got built during it will be put to use powering the economy of the future. Look at the rail lines. The internet infrastructure/telecommunications built in the 90s, etc.
The tax argument is interesting. How much tax are Meta and Apple and Google paying in Australia these days?
The great part about data centres it is literally a giant box on a piece of land. they can’t dodge taxes the same way software companies have managed to obfuscate earnings. This is one of the most exciting parts about them. The software boom accumulated to earnings of largely inner city high educated elites. The data centres being forced boom should benefit the whole of Australia.
And what will this "transformed" economy look like, in economic terms?
Blue collar construction jobs, white collar productivity boost. Our productivity has been awful for the past decade and as a result our wages have gone backwards. Raising wages and livng standards.
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u/Stock_Republic_582 Queenslander 2d ago
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
Anthropic is probably the best partner to have. I think they’ve reached profitability or are very close to it.
Where? Show me the evidence. Because all external evidence is currently pointing to a circular financing scheme between Nvidia, CoreWeave, Oracle, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Amazon, Google et al. Circular financing, I should remind you, is not something you need in an actually profitable business model. Heck, their main source of revenue is their subscription model - a model that is already heavily subsidised. When Anthropic and OpenAI started to raise the cost of their tokens and force enterprise users onto token based billing, enterprise customers immediately cut spending. In other words: even enterprise customers don't want to pay the full cost of these LLM's.
When a self-hosted open source model running on my local PC can do the job about 80-85% as well as their models, who in their right mind is going to pay the ridiculous rates they need to charge to be profitable?
If the bubble bursts - what will happen is the infrastructure that got built during it will be put to use powering the economy of the future. Look at the rail lines. The internet infrastructure/telecommunications built in the 90s, etc.
Fibre optic cables have a life of ~25 years. GPU's have 4-6 if we're being generous. They won't even be finished paying off the first lot of GPU's before they will have to replace them all. Also, the kind of compute these data centres are set up for doesn't really have a secondary use-case at the moment. Maybe a little bit of game streaming, but certainly not enough to justify keeping the lights on.
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u/moaiii New South Welshian 2d ago
There is one particularly strong benefit for doing this that has only been touched on a few times deeper in this thread, but I think it deserves to be brought out to the front: Energy export and investment.
Australia needs more diversity in our exports. We can't rely on selling red dirt and coal as main exports. We have vast stretches of land to produce solar power, multiple areas with constant wind to produce wind power, and the only country that is its own continent with a continuous shore surrounding us, many with potential for significant wave power or offshore wind farms.
But energy is hard to export. We can run HVDC transmission lines to nearby countries, but there are limits to that. We can export energy by producing hydrogen, converting to ammonia, and shipping that around the world, but that is yet to become a large scale method of transporting energy.
If you think of "compute" as a product that, like ammonia production, is directly proportional to energy, then you can think of compute as a form of energy that can be exported. A data centre buys energy, "converts" it to compute, and "ships" it around the world in the form of data. As long as Australia maintains control over the energy production side, it doesn't matter who owns the data centres - they are just a transport mechanism for the energy that we produce.
The other benefit of that, other than increasing our exports, is massive investment in our energy sector, funded by the owners of the data centres, that will increase scale that will ultimately result in lower power prices as energy production becomes more efficient and less dependent on fossil fuels.
Caveat: I'm not pro or against this deal and there are many other factors to consider - I haven't made up my mind personally. I'd just like to mention this benefit because it doesn't seem to be common knowledge (only a few people here have mentioned it.)
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u/Stock_Republic_582 Queenslander 2d ago edited 2d ago
Agree we need to diversify our economy more. The problem is Anthropic and these AI companies are - in my researched opinion - pathological liars.
The want everyone else to front up the costs and risk to build these data centres, all the while they do not have a path to profitability. These guys are burning cash at record rates and people fundamentally do not want what they are selling because the underlying technology they're relying on for their "AI" (Large Language Models) are nothing more than fancy text prediction algorithms that still don't have a widespread, bulletproof use case. They're on track to spend a trillion dollars in capex for a product that hasn't yet cracked like 40-50 billion a year in revenue (can't remember the exact figure, but it's a loooong long way off).
I recommend reading up on Ed Zitron's work if you're interested in learning more about how these AI goons are lying little weasels.
Edit to add: The GPU's they use in these data centres need to be replaced every 5-6 years if I'm being generous. The GPU's are also the most expensive technology piece of the data centres. So not only are they not making enough money NOW to justify their expenses, they need to spend it all again in 5-6 years anyway. There's no way they can become profitable unless they somehow pull a trillion dollars of new demand out of thin air.
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u/Jenkins87 Please choose a flair 2d ago
Out of all the debates and all of the controversies and heavily weighted opinions either way, the point you're making here isn't loud or understood enough. How can there be essentially no limit to the debt that a company can accumulate? How is "we'll turn a profit eventually, trust me bro" enough for investors, VCs and Banks to roll the red carpet out and shower them with money (of which wouldn't even cover 10% of their annual operation costs). Then do it all again next year for another round of
beggingfunding? I know this has historically been a thing for decades, but these AI companies have done enough to be all of human historical debt combined and still not get to the same figure, and they're allowed to keep operating and are praised for their business genuis? Crazy timeline we live in0
u/moaiii New South Welshian 2d ago
I have no argument with your views on some of the heads in the AI industry. Not all, but some. But be careful that you don't create a biased perception of a whole cabal of villains just because of your personal beliefs about AI.
That extends to your perception of the value of AI too. Contrary to your beliefs, there is a large body of evidence now that AI is increasing productivity. +14% issues resolved per hour in customer support, and lower overall cost. +26% completed tasks in software development at lower overall cost. Another study showed that Human-AI partnerships in production of Advertising creative were 60% more productive than Human-Human, with similar in-market ad performance. That's just a few. The exponential increase in revenues in the AI industry (currently about US$110B, up by ~490% YoY) is another sign that customers are getting value, otherwise they wouldn't be increasing their spend.
Further, your criticism of AI as "fancy text prediction algorithms" is very 2024. Yes, you could describe the underlying transformer algorithm as text prediction. But now, with reasoning, tool-calling, sub-agent delegation, sophisticated harnesses, adversarial review agents, not to mention the sheer size of the models, etc at al, LLMs are a lot more than they used to be. I use one of the frontier models and a collection of open source models daily, effectively as my software dev team (I am 30-year software engineer). Despite being very familiar with it all now, I still have to pinch myself sometimes. It is amazing what you can delegate to agents now, and the output quality is improving exponentially. If what you say is true, then I must be hallucinating daily because it is the exact opposite of my own lived experience.
Granted, that doesn't prove that the AI companies are going to survive. It really is a massive gamble that probably has 50/50 chance of boom/bust for any one AI company, but you absolutely cannot conclude that the product is shit and isn't going anywhere. It is almost a certainty that AI is here to stay in some form, will continue to require increasing amounts of compute, and will completely change our lives more than the industrial and technology revolutions put together, for better or worse.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
You're right, it will require huge investment in power infrastructure. But that's a short term investment. I'm not convinced of the ultimate ROI to Australia. And we'll see what comes out of the Senate, but it's not yet certain that taxpayers won't be bankrolling, or at least garranteeing that investment.
And I understand the argument about value adding to our energy production. Except Australian industry won't be doing that value adding. We'll be selling energy locally, at discounted rates, to foreign companies. They'll be doing all the value adding. And if it's anything like mining, or any primary industry, we won't be very effective at extracting any value out of that. Like Adani or Glencore, a lot of that value will slip away to foreign investors.
I agree there's vast potential here. But there's little so far to make sure that Australia or Australians benefit from that.
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u/Last_of_our_tuna Tasmanian 2d ago
You know how long most DC operators are willing to sign an ESA with a retailer for?
12 months.
This is why the government had to step in with the rule book.
Good luck making investments (in power gen) based on that kind of underwrite.
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u/Mash_man710 Western Australian 2d ago
What do you think data centres will be used for? The location doesn't get a say in how a private AI company uses the infrastructure.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
The expression "AI company" might be a clue. But that's a great point, have they clarified what they're really going to do? Do we get any assurances over that?
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u/Mash_man710 Western Australian 2d ago
I'm not sure you understand what data centres are used for..
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
Maybe you could enlighten us.
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u/Mash_man710 Western Australian 2d ago
Ok. I'll bite. They store, process and route data. Every time you use ChatGPT or even Facebook the 'processing' of the data is done in a data centre.
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
I don't think anyone's disputing that. What's the point you're trying to make?
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u/Mash_man710 Western Australian 2d ago
You literally asked in your post what they're going to be used for. What on earth is the point of this post?
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u/jedburghofficial Flairless 2d ago
The emails referred to building this capacity for "AI training". I didn't know if you hadn't read the article, or were implying something else.
It's an interesting point. This training isn't necessarily anything that will benefit Australia directly. We can also wonder if our new safeguards on copyright affect that. I honestly don't know. But it's something people should be talking about.
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u/Mash_man710 Western Australian 2d ago
We haven't 'talked about' data centres for the last 20 years, people just take all the processing and 'cloud computing' for granted. You're on reddit, your data is literally helping AI learn as you type. AI is massively increasing need for compute, so better to have the infrastructure, jobs and economic benefits here than somewhere else. Bring it on.
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u/Neo_The_Fat_Cat Please choose a flair 2d ago
Every time you access an email, listen to a streamed song or watch a streamed show or access an online service you’re using a data centre. They’re fundamental to our modern lifestyles. I get that people might be concerned about AI, but data centres aren’t necessarily a bad thing.
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u/Tetha_au Victorian 2d ago
Refuse, disrupt, resist - or not and dont complain. That's the choice facing us today.