{"id":252171,"date":"2026-05-22T02:39:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T06:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/if-australia-is-home-to-an-ai-gold-rush-lets-not-squander-it-lets-fjord-a-different-path-peter-lewis\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T04:30:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:30:22","slug":"if-australia-is-home-to-an-ai-gold-rush-lets-not-squander-it-lets-fjord-a-different-path-peter-lewis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/if-australia-is-home-to-an-ai-gold-rush-lets-not-squander-it-lets-fjord-a-different-path-peter-lewis\/","title":{"rendered":"If Australia is home to an AI gold rush, let\u2019s not squander it. Let\u2019s fjord a different path | Peter Lewis"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Australia is home to an AI gold rush, let\u2019s not squander it. Let\u2019s fjord a different path | Peter Lewis<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2026\/may\/22\/australia-artificial-intelligence-ai-investment-wealth-fund<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-22 02:39:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

T<\/span>he CEOs of AI titans Microsoft and Anthropic have been duchessing Canberra. The reason? They have bet the house that we are at the beginning of an AI gold rush and they have a big problem: they need to find secure places to train their massive models.<\/p>\n

Having exhausted the US\u2019s public tolerance for data centres and the eye-popping amount of energy and water they consume, these companies need stable bases to power these mega-data projects to drive their technology. This requires access to space, renewable energy and a stable political environment, resources that are in short supply globally.<\/p>\n

Assuming you are prepared to wager that AI is neither an unsustainable bubble nor a fast track to social breakdown and global annihilation (and to be clear, I have a foot in both these camps), then there appears to be a live pitch for Australia to produce artificial intelligence the way the Middle East produces oil.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the datacentres that are popping up around the suburbs to power the tokens used by local businesses. This is an industrial scale rollout to drive the inner workings of the technology, requiring significant energy and social licence from an increasingly sceptical public.<\/p>\n

With my reservations about AI noted, if there is a deal on the table then let\u2019s make sure it\u2019s a good one. We could start by taking a leaf out of the Norwegian play book and be much more ambitious in the stake we seek in this nascent industry.<\/p>\n

Norway\u2019s sovereign wealth fund, built on the discovery of North Sea oil deposits in the 1970s, is the global exemplar in valuing their resources in a way that vests the benefits with the people. It was designed as a co-investment with industry to capture and retain the benefits from taxes, licences and dividends. Today it is worth more than A$3tn.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Australians currently faced with rising energy prices have been asking why our thriving gas industry operates on a different set of rules, with little control over our asset. From David…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Australia is home to an AI gold rush, let\u2019s not squander it. Let\u2019s fjord…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/fcbe6a8fd002f5ac7731f573e7f3f10b36aabfa3\/1116_412_6021_4819\/master\/6021.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=addd5bdaf4972a11f2d4c096af02a6a8","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252175,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252171\/revisions\/252175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}