AI’s hunger for energy, water and land with Craig Scroggie | That’s Business with Alan Kohler

Artificial intelligence is not just a share market story anymore.
It is becoming a conversation about power, water, land, security, and who gets to build the infrastructure behind the next wave of the economy.
Craig Scroggie has spent 15 years building NextDC into one of Australia’s biggest data centre companies – and now the AI boom is sending that business into overdrive.

00:00 – Introduction
00:46 – AI boom drives data centre demand
04:08 – Global data centre build vs Australia
06:26 – How AI compute works (CPUs → GPUs)
10:00 – Land use: where data centres will be built
11:25 – Government plans for AI infrastructure
13:27 – Water use and supply challenges
16:34 – Electricity demand and power bills
20:49 – Climate impact and emissions debate
23:11 – Cybersecurity, deepfakes and AI risk
30:00 – Jobs, automation and UBI debate
37:46 – Is AI a bubble?
38:49 – Life in 10 years: robots and embodied AI
42:22 – NextDC’s expansion and future plans

What does he think about the surge in demand, and the enormous build-out now under way? And what about the harder questions that come with it: how much energy AI will need, whether data centres like him push up power bills, what it means for jobs, and whether Australia can turn this into a genuine strategic advantage?

NEXTDC chief executive Craig Scroggie joins Alan Kohler to unpack it all on That’s Business with Alan Kohler.

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