Data Centre – From Fairy Tale to Nightmare?

The discussion is sometimes heated about the establishment of new data centers in Norway. Supporters speak of the importance of taking part in technological development, of jobs and innovation. Of regional policy.

Opposition

Opponents point out that this is the wrong use of a scarce resource, clean energy. Other nationally owned industrial developments are being halted by a lack of power and absent grid capacity. Consumers, too, will notice it through higher electricity prices in the years ahead.

For its part, the government has, in grandiose terms, spoken about the necessity of having national control over the data centres. Or as it said in a press release one year ago:

"The government is now presenting a new data centre strategy, which is to ensure that we have a sustainable, secure and socially beneficial data centre industry."

When Minister of Digitalisation Karianne Tung (Labor) personally laid the foundation stone for the facility outside Narvik in the Norwegian Arctic in November last year, the panegyric reached a new peak.

We were told it was a landmark day for Northern Norway. Data centres are the new smelters of our time, she added. In the same breath, she topped it off with new jobs, new tax revenues and more money for welfare.

Above all, the facility in Narvik was to safeguard «our national security».

The speechwriters

The ministers’ speechwriters must have had a good day at work on that Wednesday in November last year.

Perhaps they should return to the keyboard. A great deal has happened since 19 November.

Not least, the rest of the business community in the north has been told that no new power will be allocated in Northern Norway. The door is simply closed. The ambitions for the data centre in Narvik correspond to almost a third of total energy consumption in the Arctic.

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In the digitalisation minister’s speech, this gigantic power drain was reduced to «converting the potential of raw materials into a high-value, globally sought-after product through energy consumption».

That, too, is how a power drain can be dressed up.

But more has happened since the laying of the foundation stone, not least on the ownership and user side.

The largest owner in Nscale is Switzerland-based Kjell Inge Røkke. The rest of the owners are global investors, often with roots in Silicon Valley. Already here, there is reason to question national control.

Dramatic

But what may prove truly dramatic are the changes among those who are to move into the centre.

In April, the original tenants, OpenAI, withdrew from the project. In came Microsoft, which through this giant venture in a medium-sized town in Northern Norway is to produce artificial intelligence (AI).

And this is where we begin to sense a gradual transition between industrial adventure and industrial nightmare.

Yesterday, another producer of AI fired a rocket into this industry. Anthropic founder Jack Clark asked the industry, known internationally as AI, to pull the emergency brake.

In an interview with the BBC, he spoke of his own fear that AI technology was approaching a stage where the technology was developing itself without human control.

"We must," he said, "create a system in which we take our foot off the accelerator and instead hit the brake."

And added:

"Right now, the AI industry only has an accelerator, not brakes."

Control

He urged the authorities to intervene against an industry that is gradually taking more and more control over social development. A technology that is developing itself.

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We are already seeing how AI is replacing humanism and compassion in the US war against Iran and Israel’s massive warfare in the Middle East.

The statement from Anthropic naturally meets strong opposition from the other tech giants, but also receives massive support among experts. It is a development feared by many, and the moment when machines are capable of developing themselves is drawing ever closer.

And that brings me back to where I began, in Narvik. Because right here, one of the world’s foremost accelerators within artificial intelligence is currently being built. A development that parts of the industry itself are warning against.

Either the government does not know what is being built in Narvik, or they have completely redefined the meaning of national control.