Opinion: AI is for Act Immediately!

Aotearoa flaunts some of the world’s most unique and captivating landscapes, with its rolling greenery, dramatic fjords, golden beaches, and striking mountain ranges. The scenery brings only one idea to mind: what a perfect place to build a 78,000 square meter AI data centre.

That is presumably what Singapore based company Datagrid said when they submitted their proposal to build exactly that in Makarewa, just North of Invercargill. The 3.5-billion-dollar project has gained approval to draw 604,800 litres of groundwater a day (that’s seven litres per second!), discharge air contaminants from up to 84 diesel back-up generators, remove a 2400 square meter local wetland, and discharge up to 5000 litres of treated wastewater a day. The second largest energy consumer in New Zealand, the centre will use a whopping 6 percent of the country’s total electricity. The project will only create an estimated 50-80 permanent employment positions once the initial construction is completed in 2028. How many jobs AI is currently nullifying is a discussion for another day.

If this sounds anything like the plot of the Lorax to you, if ‘How Bad Can I Be?’ is now stuck in your head and the Once-ler comes to mind, you shouldn’t be surprised. The New Zealand government is committed to fast-tracking AI adoption because that’s where the money is—and it's currently estimated that AI could add $76 billion to GDP by 2038. As the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment so succinctly put it in their July 2025 digital policy AI Strategy, “the future is AI powered.” Or take the Public Service AI Work Programme, which lays out a 2-year plan of AI initiatives to “improve public services and modernise government for New Zealanders.” The programme itself was written with heavy use of GenAI for research and drafting, as well as “to generate ideas and enhance readability,” freely disclosed to prove a point. So, we’re asking AI to write strategies about its own domination. Is that not one step away from a complete robot uprising? 

Jokes aside, New Zealand is so infatuated with jumping into the bright AI future and taking the lead in international data infrastructure that issues of environmental degradation, community wellbeing, energy demand, foreign ownership, and noise pollution are falling to the wayside. We need to act fast to develop AI policies that protect our people and our land instead of relying on existing technology-neutral laws like the Privacy, Fair Trading, or Human Rights Acts to apply to this modern and alien concept.

Let’s take the example of social media, which first became popular in 2004. This year, the government is finally pushing for a social media ban for under 16s, having taken over 22 years to discover the negative effects that social platforms have on young people’s wellbeing. If we take 22 years to find that data centres are indeed negatively impacting the health of nearby communities, causing environmental issues, and driving energy supply to economic collapse, the damage to our country might be well beyond repair. This time, we have to be faster. We cannot take the same take-it-as-it-comes approach that we have applied to discovering smoking is bad for you or asbestos isn't a great housing material. The current government's “common sense” rules aren’t going to cut it, and the Green Party’s one-year moratorium on consents is good, but it won’t be enough. If we want to ensure a future that is sustainable, we have to put time and effort into developing AI relevant legislation now, rather than blindly investing in a tomorrow that isn’t promised. 

If AI in New Zealand is indeed inevitable, we need to figure out where to draw the line, and quick.