So would it be fair to say that people who aren't really following this as carefully as somebody like yourself misunderstands the nature of this revolution? It isn't being driven by the open AIs and anthropics of the world.

Yeah, I would largely agree with that.

You know, I always remember that in the months after ChatGPT was released, you know, end of November 2022, there was a real discussion that, you know, now Google was in jeopardy and its search dominance was in jeopardy.

And, you know, basically this new company was going to come and kind of like eat its lunch, right? And what we really saw was, I would say, basically permission for Google to release its AI models.

It had been working on this stuff.

It just didn't feel that it could release it in the way that OpenAI released ChatGPT because it had regulators watching what it was doing.

But once another company had released this, had put it out into the world, it could kind of jump on the bandwagon, do the same thing.

But are they the eye of the storm, Paris?

Well, we've seen what happens when they get built other places,

right? Can you talk about that? Totally, totally.

And you see it in the States too, right? I feel like the reason that it can really stand out in some of these other parts of the world can just be because maybe the infrastructure isn't as advanced or as robust or there just isn't enough resources to hand over to one of these data centers.

So you look in Chile, for example, and Google was planning to build this data center in this community called Cerrios, which is a working class part of Santiago, the capital of of Chile.

And for context, Santiago has been basically experiencing drought for a couple decades now, for the most part.

It just does not have the water to spare.

But the tech industry is going in there and looking to set up a bunch of data centers, including this one Google is going to set up.

That's another interesting thread in the book, I think, that I kind of didn't know and you did really well charting out is like, why do we live in a world where data centers and the cloud are kind of the infrastructure for all of this technology?

In your research, do you see any indication that these tech companies are looking for more sustainable sources of energy?

energy?Not, not in any significant way, right? Like, if you listen to what the tech companies say, they will certainly tell you that they're investing a lot of money in renewable energy.

Uh, you know, in the past, you know, last year in particular, they, they made a big push into nuclear energy, which, you know, obviously is very debatable whether it can be considered clean, but in their ledger, they would, they would claim it is, right? Um, which is part of their way to say, like, you know, "Look, we're trying to do this, um, you know, efficiently.

We're trying to do this sustainably." Um, and, you know, they will certainly talk about how, you know, they have-- they will reduce kind of the intensity of water use at a data center, right? So, you know, kind of the, the total quantity that a data center itself will use.

But then when you look across the total number of data centers that they're building out, their water use and, and their electricity use as well is just absolutely soaring.

Um, but the real story here, if you think about the climate impact, is really their dependence on fossil fuels and their dependence on natural gas in particular.

Um, and so, you know, in the kinda '23, '24, we saw this real push for them to try to get connections to the grid in the various places where they were building out these data centers, right? But in many of those places, they have now exhausted those connections, right? The demand on the grid was so great, um, that it became much more difficult to connect a data center in the kind of amount of time that they would need to connect it for it to come online to, you know, benefit their generative AI ambitions.

Y- you are critical of this approach.

In your research, do you see any indication that these tech companies are looking for more sustainable sources of energy?

energy?Not, not in any significant way, right? Like, if you listen to what the tech companies say, they will certainly tell you that they're investing a lot of money in renewable energy.

Uh, you know, in the past, you know, last year in particular, they, they made a big push into nuclear energy, which, you know, obviously is very debatable whether it can be considered clean, but in their ledger, they would, they would claim it is, right? Um, which is part of their way to say, like, you know, "Look, we're trying to do this, um, you know, efficiently.

We're trying to do this sustainably." Um, and you know, they will certainly talk about how, you know, they have-- they will reduce kind of the intensity of water use at a data center, right? So, you know, kind of the, the total quantity that a data center itself will use.

But then when you look across the total number of data centers that they're building out, their water use and, and their electricity use as well is just absolutely soaring.

Um, but the real story here, if you think about the climate impact, is really their dependence on fossil fuels and their dependence on natural gas in particular.

Um, and so, you know, in the kinda '23, '24, we saw this real push for them to try to get connections to the grid in the various places where they were building out these data centers, right? But in many of those places, they have now exhausted those connections, right? The demand on the grid was so great, um, that it became much more difficult to connect a data center in the kind of amount of time that they would need to connect it for it to come online to, you know, benefit their generative AI ambitions.

Y- you are critical of this approach.

In your research, do you see any indication that these tech companies are looking for more sustainable sources of energy?

energy?Not, not in any significant way, right? Like, if you listen to what the tech companies say, they will certainly tell you that they're investing a lot of money in renewable energy.

Uh, you know, in the past, you know, last year in particular, they, they made a big push into nuclear energy, which, you know, obviously is very debatable whether it can be considered clean, but in their ledger, they would, they would claim it is, right? Um, which is part of their way to say, like, you know, "Look, we're trying to do this, um, you know, efficiently.

We're trying to do this sustainably." Um, and, you know, they will certainly talk about how, you know, they have-- they will reduce kind of the intensity of water use at a data center, right? So, you know, kind of the, the total quantity that a data center itself will use.

But then when you look across the total number of data centers that they're building out, their water use and, and their electricity use as well is just absolutely soaring.

Um, but the real story here, if you think about the climate impact, is really their dependence on fossil fuels and their dependence on natural gas in particular.

Um, and so, you know, in the kinda '23, '24, we saw this real push for them to try to get connections to the grid in the various places where they were building out these data centers, right? But in many of those places, they have now exhausted those connections, right? The demand on the grid was so great, um, that it became much more difficult to connect a data center in the kind of amount of time that they would need to connect it for it to come online to, you know, benefit their generative AI ambitions.

Y- you are critical of this approach.

In your research, do you see any indication that these tech companies are looking for more sustainable sources of energy?

Not in any significant way.

If you listen to what the tech companies say, they will certainly tell you that they're investing a lot of money in renewable energy.

In the past, last year in particular, they made a big push into nuclear energy, which obviously is very debatable whether it can be considered clean, but in their ledger, they would claim it is, which is part of their way to say like, You know, look, we're trying to do this, you know, efficiently.

We're trying to do this sustainably.

And, you know, they will certainly talk about how, you know, they will reduce kind of the intensity of water use at a data center, right? So, you know, kind of the total quantity that a data center itself will use.

But then when you look across the total number of data centers that they're building out, their water use and their electricity use as well is just absolutely insane.

You are critical of this approach.

In your research do you see any indication that these tech companies are looking for more sustainable sources of energy?

Not in any significant way.

If you listen to what the tech companies say, they will certainly tell you that they're investing a lot of money in renewable energy.

In the past, last year in particular, they made a big push into nuclear energy, which obviously is very debatable whether it can be considered clean.

in their ledger, they would they would claim it is right, which is part of their way to say, like, you know, look, we're trying to do this, you know, efficiently.

We're trying to do this sustainably.

And, you know, they will certainly talk about how, you know, they have they will reduce kind of the intensity of water use at a data center.

You are critical of this approach.

And I guess even just noise in the climate.

Yeah.

You know, I think it has been really startling to see how quickly data centers have really become a major issue, right? You know, if you thought a few years ago, people would look at the services that they use, you know, and they might have a hard idea.

like understanding what the physical manifestation of that is but now you have so many communities across the united states that are facing down these major data center projects um and you know around the world people are people are doing that too and so when you have one of these massive hyperscale data centers come to town um you know these things can demand on the lower end 100 150 megawatts of electricity on the higher end we're seeing projects around a gigawatt There's one that Meta is planning down in Louisiana.

That's like a series of data centers, so a cluster of data centers that would be up to five gigawatts if it actually achieves what it's doing, right? And for that reason, these companies are increasingly building gas power plants next to the data centers themselves.

There was a recent report suggesting that there's 189 gigawatts of gas capacity kind of in the pipeline right now just to power data centers, which is just like... mind-boggling to imagine, right? Because it's so much electricity.

It's also why they're trying to make deals with nuclear energy companies, because they just need so much electricity right now.

And to some extent, that seems like we do.

And so can you talk about the scale of that and what we can expect?

Yeah, absolutely.

And like those price increases are hitting people building computers.

They're hitting people just trying to buy a computer.

They're hitting people trying to buy a video game console.

I often joke that my PlayStation 5 is like an appreciating asset because it feels like they raise the price every six months on these game consoles these days.

It's wild, right? And that's because the data centers...

And AI is only exacerbating that, I feel.

And that's more what I'm talking about.

Yeah, I think it's an important question.

And like, let's be clear, they started building an apartment building near me.

I had that reflexive like, no, I don't want to have to deal with this construction noise and whatnot, right? Like, I think it's a very natural thing.

Like, you know, I obviously didn't stop the development.

It's still going ahead, but...

I was like, oh, I don't want to have to put up with this.

How much of that argument do you think makes sense that these guys might be building future ghost data centers, future ghost towns?

Isn't that right? Yeah.

I love when electronics get more expensive.

You know what, though? I think I was really happy this week because Hamilton has brought in a moratorium on AI data centers, which is a really significant development in Canada.

And we're seeing growing opposition in Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick, in Ontario, in in Quebec, in British Columbia, in Alberta.

It's kind of spreading across the country at this point.

And to see Hamilton make this move, it was a really significant development because people there were really worried that the data center was going to get pushed through because there's not local planning restrictions on data centers.

And so it was just going to get by without much review and things like that until people in the community got involved and Now there's a moratorium.

So what's the book called, and what's it about? It's called

But given the fact that they're now being challenged by Iran, what do you think was going to happen in terms of the reaction from the tech world? Because I think we are going to have to think differently if this is going to be the potential near-term future.

Yeah, so I could say a ton on this, right? Obviously, the fact that the war happens, I think, just creates a further justification and narrative that we really need to get off of these U.S.

companies, these U.S. services, you know, to kind of stop aiding them, giving them market share, all that kind of stuff because of war.

Yeah, certainly the collaboration with the military, but also the fact that the United States is this kind of unstable power that is, you know, throwing the world into disarray and we shouldn't be supporting its companies for that reason.

But like to get to the core of your point, I feel like the United States didn't actually do much planning before going into this war is, you know, kind of everything that I have gleaned.

And I feel like they kind of expected that they would have kind of a cakewalk through Iran, as they did in Venezuela, and really didn't consider the extent to which Iran is a very different country than Venezuela has clearly been preparing for this, especially since they were bombed last summer.

But even longer than that, you know, kind of thinking back to even in the first Trump administration, when he killed General Qasem Soleimani, And even that was like a huge thing at the time.

You did talk about some of this stuff that it would have to have, but can you kind of concisely tie that all together into one picture? Like Paris Marx, first deputy of the world, what would you build?

Indeed

... uh, you know, Canadian law, and this is a whole other conversation, right? So I would say we need to get serious about identifying what the problems here are with the dependence on these platforms, whether it's the social media platforms or, you know, whether it's these other digital platforms that, that we use as well, and really start to bring in more concrete and, and tough regulation to address these things.

And I would say ideally, we would try to do that in partnership with, you know, kind of countries that we share values with because it's much harder for, say, the United States to go after a bloc of countries than it is to go after Canada alone if we're doing this w- with others.

And I would say we can even look at our past, right? You know, part of the reason the CBC exists is because we were concerned about, uh, US cultural imperialism, right? And we created the public broadcaster to make sure that there was a source of Canadian news and Canadian television and, and film and things like that that was created.

So we do have kind of historical precedence.

What does that inform us for, for today? Um, but we see that the European Union, of course, has moved more quickly with regulation on aspects of the tech industry, whether that's on privacy, data collection, and more recently with kind of like the Digital Services and Digital Markets Act that look more comprehensively at the platforms.

I'd say we could look at Australia, where they have an e-safety commissioner that is kind of, like, dedicated to looking at these platforms, how they work, you know, the, the kind of harms that they cause in Australian society and trying to rein that in.

What do you think of the, uh, AI for All strategy? A- and more broadly, Canada's attempts to build its own AI infrastructure.

[laughs] But the, like, there is some sort of need for a, a sovereign data storage center of some kind, but like where is, where do you think that line is? Should we be trying to recreate Amazon Web Services? Should we just, should we be doing emails? Like, what do you think the appropriate level of, of dependence for, let's say, a federal government would be?

Yeah, it's, it's a really good question, right? And I think it's one that we really need to grapple with in that while the government is talking about these things, I feel like it's not, you know, moving in the way that we're seeing in Europe.

Um, and so of course, the federal government already has a number of data centers of its own that, like, it controls and it runs.

You know, some older ones and some more modern ones.

Um, but now of course, the talk is like, you know, what do we need for this next, uh, you know, uh, wave of technology, I guess.

You know, what do we need here in Canada? Um, and so we are seeing, like, efforts from Bell and Telus to build out more data centers in Canada, as well as, you know, other Canadian companies to, to do things like that.

There are, there's interest from European companies to build out here, too.

Yeah.

Uh, it seems to me those things are somewhat in contradiction.

Yeah, it definitely does to me as well.

You know, there were, there was an interview that Elon Musk did last week with The Economist where he was kinda talking about, you know, how, what he was predicting in the next five to 10 years.

And, and as far as he was concerned, he, you know, he said, um, you know, we were also gonna get to this like AI singularity sort of a moment, um, but we were just gonna be like the Labrador retrievers, like, you know, pets to this kind of like intelligent AI that would kind of govern our lives, and we would basically lose like control over things, right? So he's presenting this in, in a very different way, um, than what you see Altman saying.

But I would say, you know, as far as I see it, I'm skeptical of any of these claims of, you know, AI singularity, right? I think that they're really designed to, um, you know, to, um, basically exaggerate what these technologies do, right? And you know, we know that they're designed to, say, present text in ways that makes it seem as though you are communicating with something that can think, right? Um, when we know that that is not actually what's happening behind the scenes.

Um, and so for me, it's kind of like, you know, these companies doing a big PR campaign to try to convince people that their tools, that their technologies can do more than they actually do, um, to thus justify, you know, seeing them in a way that would, you know, justify major valuations and, you know, kind of mass adoption and, and these sorts of things in ways that I think we should still be a bit skeptical that the chatbots, you know, the generative AI is actually going to be as useful as they're claiming, which we see in all these companies kind of pulling back on their spending recently.

Is that possible, at least as the next intermediate step?

Yeah, I think that's definitely possible, right? Like I don't think it's the, the kind of singularity moment where this like intelligent AI takes over, but I think what it definitely is is, you know, tech companies, uh, you know, trying to create a product that we are going to become more dependent on, and that allows them to further shape our lives in a way that benefits them, uh, you know, benefits their bottom lines.

I mean, Danielle Smith is trying to assure people in Alberta that that won't be the case, but, you know, what do you think about that?

I, I think that's really hard to believe, to be quite honest, um, because we know that the Meta data center in particular is planning to build this natural gas power plant, you know, to, to help power the, the data center.

But for the few years leading up to that, it is still going to be dependent on the grid in Alberta, and of course, they are planning all these additional data centers there as well.

What we've seen in the United States is that the power prices have gone up because the demand has just really outstripped supply, right? And so you have all of these utilities trying to get power, but also having to build out the infrastructure, um, in order to supply that power, and that costs something.

And, you know, the ratepayers have been made to pick up that cost essentially.

We are seeing efforts in the United States now to make sure more of that cost is being shouldered by the data center companies because bills have gone up so much and because people are so angry.

Um, but, you know, we've already seen suggestions.

The US Department of Justice is backing Elon Musk and his company, and they're looking to have this lawsuit dismissed, and, you know, this might be a more extreme ex- example, but considering the amount of support that tech giants are getting from the federal government and, and provinces like Alberta to build data centers, coupled with the kind of power and resources that we see this industry already has, like, do you worry that the kind of local grassroots people power movements that we've seen so far won't be a match for these forces pushing for this boom?

Yeah

... worthwhile.

[laughs] Um, but, you know, I, I definitely think there's something to that, right? Um, you know, the companies at the moment definitely feel that they need to keep increasing capacity, increasing scale, building more and more.

You know, we know the, how capitalism works, right? You know, growth is the name of the game at the end of the day, and so if the line doesn't go up, if the spending doesn't keep going up, then it could look like, you know, there, there is, uh, you know, kind of a limit on how large this market is, you know, how many people wanna buy into it.

Um, and, and so, you know, that definitely threatens the narrative that this is, that generative AI in particular, is this kind of technology that is transformative, that everyone is going to have to adopt, that has all these positive social benefits that come with it, um, you know, and that justifies this massive cost right now because they're going to make it back in the future when everybody is using it, and it's delivering all these productivity and efficiency gains, and all these sorts of things, right? So, I definitely think it's linked to that, but I also wouldn't, um, [lip smack] you know, I, I wouldn't dismiss how the companies are just very much, uh, you know, kind of, you know, part of their motivation is just to, like, build out as much of this infrastructure as possible.

Because on the one hand, controlling all this computation gives them a lot of power, especially when we're thinking about the Amazons, Microsofts, and Googles of the world.

If they control the computation, if we are all using their computation, that gives them a lot of leverage over, you know, you know, the public in general, but I would say also the other companies that are relying on, you know, their computation, their clouds, right? And then the other piece of this is, I, I think, ideological to a certain degree as well, right? Like, if you think about a company like OpenAI, they're not on the public markets yet.

And I just wanna ask what your insight is to where you see that contradiction taking things in the future.

H- How, how damaging could it be if this precedent becomes widespread?

Well, it could be huge, right? Which is why they're trying to avoid it, um, because it would mean that then they face financial, you know, penalties for all of this inaccurate information that they are creating.

And again, as you were saying, the inaccurate information cannot be removed from the chatbot.

Like, it is part of how large language models work.

The, uh, even though these companies talk about the, you know, the large language models getting to a point where they're understanding the world or they're, they're thinking about themselves, right? You see these stories pretty regularly.

That's not what is happening, right? The, these, these computers do not understand what they are outputting.

They have taken in a load of data.

And to your point, and to what I just kind of said as well, while 2, Section 230 is unlikely to be repealed, what do you, what do you think happens next in, in that kind of space?

I was coming to you anyways to ask you about what you think of what you just heard, so you go ahead.

Yeah.

So I think, you know, policy cohesion, uh, uh, cohesion is extremely obviously important, uh, for Canada.

And I think, uh, both points, uh, brought on by, uh, Michael and, and Paris are, are, are valid.

I think one of the challenges though that we have in this country, and that I think we're actually running into right now, is that it turns out domestic policy is now actually trade policy.

And obviously with CUSMA being renegotiated or reviewed, however you wanna frame it, we're actually running into now the consequences of the fact that we as Canadians have not been owners of the technology that we're using.

Now, to be clear, I'm not for autarky and thinking that, you know, Canadians can only use Canadian technology.

So Paris, where do you fit on this digital sovereignty, um, notion of us not only having to have it, but it ac- actually having to be effective? Like, what guardrails do we need?

Now you've posted on social media that, uh, m- uh, most of Canada's top tech executives, uh, turned against the liberals and were betting that the conservatives would win, but that, uh, they don't have much to fear now under a, uh, under, uh, Carney as, uh, the nation's new leader.

leader.Yeah, exactly.

And so, around this time last year, the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau put out its annual budget, and in that budget was a proposal to increase the amount of taxes that people have to pay on capital gains.

Now, that would only affect 0.13% of Canadians, these increases that were proposed, um, but as you can imagine, people in the tech industry are disproportionately likely to, uh, earn income through capital gains, and they got very angry as a result of that.

So, you know, kind of a, a worsening relationship between, you know, large tech executives in Canada and the Liberal Party came out into the open at that moment, and there was a real embrace of the Conservative Party.

Over the past year, we have seen, uh, you know, a number of Canadian tech executives embrace more right-wing policy positions.

Uh, the, the industry has come together to create an organization called Build Canada to advocate for some of those positions.

Senate Democrats now say Musk has largely averted those actions thanks to DOGE helping him, quote, "Evade oversight, derail investigations, and make litigation disappear whenever he so chooses on his terms and at his command." Paris Marx, tell us more.

Is that true? Um, and then if you could just ex- talk about your experiencing, experience driving a BYD and compare it to Tesla even without that new technological advancement, uh, applied yet.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, I, I would just say on the reports, like, it's entirely feasible that they have achieved that.

I think we're waiting to, like, see the actual confirmation, you know, uh, as w- we're gonna want to do.

Um, but yeah.

Like, I, I, I think it's believable that they've potentially done that and that's not to say that other automakers won't follow suit.

Uh, you know, kind of if they have done it first, then we'll probably see, you know, other western w- well, w- we'll see western automakers kind of catch up on that in probably the next, like, year and a half, two years.

C- can you talk about the threats to his business, not just in the United States, but in Canada, and how maybe some of this, you know, very, uh, dubiously legal, like, activity frankly, is a response to that?