What I saw at Alberta’s anti-AI protest

I went to a protest against an Alberta data centre the other day. It was a Sunday, in a small town, and 200 people showed up.

That’s a lot.

And unlike most protests I go to, where the protesters have no clue what they’re protesting about, everyone here had a lot to say. Even stranger, they didn’t try to block Rebel News. And the strangest thing was, one of the protesters was a die-hard Rebel News fan.

So, are these protesters right? Are data centres something we should fear?

The demand for computer processing is so huge these days — think of streaming a Netflix show or making a Zoom call — that the computing power doesn’t come from your laptop or your phone anymore. It comes from buildings stuffed with computers, called data centres. And as artificial intelligence becomes more commonplace, the need for data centres is going to grow.

There’s a bit of a race between China and America on AI, and that’s fuelling some of the fevered growth, too.

And to me, that’s an important point, and one that I put to a number of the anti-AI protesters: AI isn’t going away. The question is, do you want AI controlled by Communist China, or do you want it controlled by America? Which is more likely to respect privacy and freedom?

That was the real fear of the people I spoke with. Their objections to the big $13 billion data centre being built in northern Alberta wasn’t really about its proposed water use (it will use less than a golf course) or it’s power use (it’s actually building its own $4 billion power plant). It’s about AI itself.

AI is something to worry about, and to make sure that it’s done right. No doubt it will change many things in our lives. But protesting a computer factory in Alberta isn’t going to change the answers to that — all it might do is push some construction jobs down to Texas, or China itself.

Watch the full video I did with Sheila Gunn Reid in Morinville, Alberta. I did my best to let the protesters have their say. I wasn’t surprised that there were climate activists there, but I thought it was weird that the Revolutionary Communist Party was out in such force.

I should tell you, I just finished doing a lengthy interview with Nate Glubish, the Alberta cabinet minister in charge of data centres. I actually went up to the construction site of the big new data centre to interview him on location. I’ll have that video for you later this week.

What do you think? Is opposition to this data centre just a front for opposing AI itself? And if so, isn’t AI just like the Space Race — it’s a race between us and China, whether or not we like it?

This video first appeared on Rebel News Plus — that’s our special premium content, available only to subscribers. If you want to see our long-form journalism before we put it on YouTube, please subscribe, at www.RebelNewsPlus.com — it’s only $8/month.

In fact, subscribers to Rebel News Plus already have access to the interview with Minister Glubish — subscribe right now to watch it immediately. (Or, stay tuned — we’ll roll it out to the public in a day or two!)