AI data centres - Your questions answered

Hello everyone and welcome back to a special edition of the national podcast.

My name is Laura Webster.

I'm the editor of the newspaper.

I'm joined today by one of our reporters, Jamie Calder.

It's great to be

here.

Thank you for making time to come in.

So as many of you will be aware, we are currently running a series investigating AI data centers in Scotland.

And Jamie, for the past year, has been really leading on The National's coverage of this subject.

When you first came in, I remember you were pitching some stories here and there about it, but it really has got to the point where you have clearly been the sort of AI data center correspondent.

breaking some really important exclusives on this story.

You broke the S&P's moratorium plans earlier in the year.

You broke the story of Sam Heughan coming out.

A

personal favorite.

AI data centers.

You've been doing nonstop work on this subject.

And as part of the series, we wanted to give our subscribers an opportunity to put questions to Jamie about what he has learned in the process of doing this and what maybe he thinks people should know about AI data centers.

You have a better understanding than most about what people's concerns are, about what might be misinformation, what might be being misunderstood.

And so I think it makes a lot of sense to give you the opportunity to speak directly to the readers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hopefully some people tune in and give us some good

questions.

I think I'll kick things off, get the ball rolling before other questions start coming in.

What made you want to start looking into these AI data centers?