By Luke Munn
Publication Date: 2026-06-11 20:11:00
In recent years, the hype surrounding artificial intelligence has reached stratospheric proportions. Riding a wave of venture capital, technology leaders promised us that AI would revolutionize work, increase productivity and lead to incredible new breakthroughs. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, set a new record a few months ago when the company attracted $110 billion in investment – and its CEO Sam Altman recently claimed Australia could become the “data capital of the world”.
With the sky-high promises came huge investments in data centers, the sprawling server farms that enable the training, execution and maintenance of these models. A monstrous new hyperscale facility planned for Sydney’s west – 1 gigawatt on 52 hectares – would be among the largest in the world. It will join 162 existing and 90 in-progress centers across Australia, which is expected to be the third largest data center market in the world by the early 2030s.
But if AI supporters are all in, public opinion will…
