The debate is not just about chatbots and AI slop. It is about whether Alberta builds, governs, and benefits from the next layer of infrastructure.
“We do not need these AI data centres because my current data needs are already being met.”The common objection
Nobody needed today’s internet in 1994, when I built my first data centre. Until they did.Steve Keyser
Your current needs are being met because someone built fibre, towers, exchanges, cloud platforms, storage systems, and data centres before everyone personally understood how much they would rely on them.
AI infrastructure is at the same kind of inflection point. Some uses are shallow and annoying. Some uses will be serious enough that not having compute capacity will matter.
Each tile links to a real-world example or authoritative source.
More data centre capacity does not automatically create public good. But if the capacity exists, these are the kinds of serious uses it can support — provided Alberta demands access, governance, training, and public benefit instead of just hosting someone else's infrastructure.
AI data centres can become infrastructure for science, medicine, energy, agriculture, logistics, emergency response, and industrial productivity. They can also become infrastructure for surveillance, manipulation, monopoly control, and low-quality slop.
The difference is not the building. The difference is ownership, access, regulation, privacy law, procurement, training, and public-interest use.
If Alberta hosts the land, power demand, infrastructure pressure, and community impact, then Alberta should not settle for being a landlord.
We should be asking whether Canadian researchers, universities, startups, public agencies, Indigenous partners, and Alberta businesses get meaningful access to the compute future being built here.
Loud. Annoying. Easy to notice.
Serious. Complex. Needs governance.
AI will take some jobs. It will change many jobs. It will also create jobs, but not always the same jobs, for the same people, in the same places, with the same skills.
That is why public benefit should include training, apprenticeships, procurement, education partnerships, and access to compute for Canadian research and businesses.
Surveillance risk is a real objection. But the answer is privacy law, transparency, Canadian ownership, public-interest access, and accountability — not pretending AI disappears if Alberta refuses to host a building.
The tiles above link to real examples or authoritative sources. They are not endorsements of every product or company; they show that AI use is broader than chatbots, slop, and surveillance.
The real danger is hosting the infrastructure, carrying the impacts, and still watching someone else own the future.