Anthropic taps a deep well of distrust as it eyes its Australian AI debut

The first rainfall in months splashes off the windshield as the mayor of Western Downs Andrew Smith drives to the site of a proposed AI data center behind a cattle feedlot in rural Queensland.

It’s feeding time and 16,000 cattle are standing under shade sails waiting for a passing truck to shoot grain into their troughs.

Agriculture is the biggest employer in this area, 260 kilometers (131 miles) west of Brisbane. But beneath the rich vertosol soils that sustain year-round crops lies a massive gas field that’s also turned the region into an energy hub.

Now the AI data center industry has come knocking with a $22 billion proposal from Singaporean developer Zerra DC to build the Western Downs Digital Park, one of Australia’s largest AI data centers, with four buildings each the size of five football fields, and temporary accommodation for 1,500 workers during the construction phase.

The project hasn’t been formally approved. But its first major tenant, US giant Anthropic, has already signed a lease, setting the stage for the company’s Australian debut. Smith says the enthusiastic state government has assured him that the decision will fall to the local council.

It’s a hefty responsibility in a febrile environment where a growing number of Australians are expressing their opposition to AI, amid an unresolved national debate about the country’s place in the AI boom. American AI giants have turned on the charm, praising the nation’s open spaces, commitment to renewable energy, and trusted position as a partner in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance.

“We are working towards having significant capacity hosted in Australia,” David Masters, Anthropic’s head of policy for Australia and New Zealand told CNN.

But the Australian government is treading carefully, leading calls for responsible growth “with guardrails” – for many reasons, including a recent breach of its healthcare data and warnings from within tech companies, including Anthropic, that AI advances are outpacing controls.

Standing beside the proposed data center site in the Western Downs, Smith says he sees an opportunity to diversify the local economy, create jobs for future generations and give the region’s youth a reason to come home.

Though he insists a decision hasn’t been made on the data center, the mayor added: “Our role is to look ahead, and if we want to maintain our communities 20 or 30 years ahead, we need to be progressive. And sometimes you do need to be brave.”

Back in July, the Australian prime minister vowed to require tech companies to power AI data centers with renewable energy, among a raft of requirements. Within a month, he’d backed down.

Queensland negotiated an exemption, so that if approved, the Western Downs Digital Park will be directly connected to the grid, running on a mix of energy sources that includes fossil fuels – coal and natural gas from one of Australia’s largest gas basins, which sits directly below the site.

More than 6,000 unconventional gas wells pierce the land around this region, extracting gas that’s mostly sold to foreign markets. Accessing coal seam gas requires a process called “de-watering” – pumping out groundwater to relieve pressure and free the gas.

And that lies at the heart of AI opposition in this community – this place is dry.

Months without significant rain have browned the grass and trees. Rainwater tanks were running low until a downpour last week. Many farmers rely on bore water, but some say their wells have been pumped dry by the gas industry, and their water is now being offered to the developers to help build the AI data center.

“That’s stolen water,” thundered grain farmer Bev Newton, who’s engaged in a long-running dispute with a gas company that she believes will end in court as she seeks payment to replace her bore water.

Bev and Wayne Newton rely on heavy downpours – when they come – to fill the family’s water catchment. But they say some of their farmland is sinking, due to subsidence caused by the coal seam gas industry, making future flows difficult to predict.

Rainwater will be harvested and recycled to sustain workers during operations, Zerra DC says, but Bev Newton points to a shared problem: “No amount of surface water catchment, be it shed roofs into tanks, works if you don’t have rain that falls from the sky.”

Zerra DC says it’ll cool the data center using air-cooling technology, which requires far less water than the evaporative methods that have sparked protests from the US to India to Indonesia.

But air-cooling technology is more energy-intensive, and residents already fear that the center’s energy demands could strain the network, raise electricity prices, encourage more gas extraction, more de-watering, and potentially more subsidence – adding more stress to their daily worries about water.

Zerra DC says the project’s phased development will give it time to work with its customers – like Anthropic – to create new power sources, and while demand for power will increase, it says its battery conditioning system will buffer the grid from load spikes to help “stabilise power prices.”

Anthropic says it intends to enter into virtual power purchase agreements – or deals struck with energy providers – to procure more power for the grid, with a preference for renewables. “The source for this generation will be new build projects – but precisely which projects is an ongoing discussion,” said Masters, from Anthropic.

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese prepared to deliver a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in late September, a surprise gift arrived to back his case for tougher guardrails on AI.

An agent from Anthropic’s main rival OpenAI had hacked the nation’s healthcare data. It accessed statistics but not personal information, making it a largely benign attack, but one that sent an ominous warning. After receiving a call from Albanese, OpenAI’s Sam Altman apologized and vowed to win back Australians’ trust.

Less than two weeks later, at an Australian parliamentary committee hearing on AI, Anthropic’s international special envoy Jeff Bleich invited the country’s leaders to “step up to” the choice of AI. “If Australia takes this opportunity and gets the balance right, it will not simply participate in the AI era; it will shape it,” he said.

Anthropic said the proposed center at Western Downs won’t be used to train large language models – because Australia’s tough copyright laws currently ban it – but it will answer questions to its Claude AI model.

So, CNN asked Claude whether the data center application should be approved based on the publicly available information, a petition to the Queensland parliament against the proposal signed by more than 23,000 people, and local media reports – removing any bias that may have crept in due to Anthropic’s involvement in the project.

Claude’s response: “Don’t decide before public notification and independent technical assessment of water, power, noise, and workforce. Hold the public meeting residents asked for. Be clear about who actually holds the decision if the state steps in.”

In a well-lit pub in Dalby, the closest major town to the proposed data center, cutlery clinks as elderly diners relax over a Friday-night meal. A few residents have agreed to meet in a private room to share their concerns, which range from water to power to the “dumbification of humanity.”

“Just because big companies over in the US are advocating for AI usage doesn’t mean that we should follow,” said Corey Cora, who works in retail. “Most people in the community won’t even know about this until it’s too late,” added telecoms worker Joel Holtham.

In the last few weeks, Zerra DC has held pop-up information sessions in the town, population 12,000, to answer residents’ questions. Before retiree Beris Furner dropped in for a chat, he supported the AI expansion.

“I thought this is fantastic for Dalby. A great opportunity for future generations coming along for the kids, if they’re that way inclined, to train and work in a place like that,” said Furner.

But after asking questions of Zerra staff, he now believes the council’s pushing ahead with a speculative proposition without enough community buy-in.

“We need a public meeting. It’s such a massive deal for the town,” he said.

Mayor Smith said the council wouldn’t be holding public meetings on the matter: “We always stay away from town hall meetings. It generally doesn’t end up well.”

Asked if it was also up to the council to provide residents with an alternative source of information, Smith said: “We need to stay in our lane. We aren’t the experts on data centers. So, for us to be in the public talking about data centers would, I think, be wrong.”

“We will stay out of the larger data center AI discussion.”

The lack of discussion is frustrating some residents who feel their home is being pulled into the competitive AI race between the US and China, exposing them to a future they don’t necessarily want.

“It feels like we’re in a weird sci-fi movie and everything’s just spiraling out of control really quickly,” said Ahri Tallon, from the Darling Downs Environment Council.

“We’re really calling on the government, as many people are around the world, to put a moratorium on AI and data centers and really take the time to work with the community to go through the deep ethical conversations that we need to think about in terms of how much can this technology be potentially for good, but how much could it be for bad?”

Others look at the practicalities of sharing their home with a water- and power-hungry industry, and a future where there may be more jobs for their children to come home to, but perhaps another set of challenges that will ultimately drive them away.

Shay Dougall took a job in workplace health and safety during the construction of a coal seam gas processing facility 20 years ago, married a farmer, and now works as a postdoctoral research associate with the University of Sydney examining the impact of industrialization in rural areas.

She’s seen firsthand the distress of farmers who’ve strained under the expansion of the gas industry, then renewables, and she now fears the same is happening with data centers.

“Those people not only are hosting this industrialization, but they’ve been impacted by the changes to the climate as a result of it. So, it’s just a double whammy,” she said.

In Queensland, the government hasn’t ruled out the approval of new coal-fired power stations to support the expansion of AI in the state – if tech companies pay for them. The federal member of parliament for the area has praised the possibility of more coal production.

“The proposed Western Downs data centre alone has a peak capacity of 2.16 gigawatts, more than a quarter of Queensland’s daily electricity consumption. You cannot run that on renewables alone. The coal is here…” he said in a Facebook post.

As Anthropic prepares to launch an IPO – potentially valuing the company at $1.5 trillion – it’s promising to spend tens of millions of dollars in the areas it operates. To that end, it’s hiring a “community engagement manager” in Australia whose role will be to “make Anthropic a trusted, visible, and valued neighbour.”

But the problem in Dalby is that trust dried up with the bore water, and some residents don’t see the same opportunity touted by AI companies, the council and the government – just more potential problems.

Rather than being a drain on resources, Smith, the mayor, sees interest from the AI industry as one way to get the water flowing. He wants billions of dollars of investment for new water infrastructure in the region – and is looking at the state and federal governments, as well as developers – to get it.

Smith said he’s having “almost daily” conversations with other data center developers about moving to the area, part of a national shift that’s seeing more development applications lodged for larger facilities, further away from metro regions, according to energy intelligence platform RenewMap.

“We know that the one guarantee we have is that data centers are a part of our nation’s future,” said Smith. “The question here on the Western Downs is do we want them here?”

“Do we want to take the opportunity that is there, or do we want to give that opportunity to somebody else?”

几个月来的第一场雨水溅落在挡风玻璃上，西唐斯市市长安德鲁·史密斯驱车前往昆士兰州乡村一处牛饲养场后面拟建的人工智能数据中心。

到了喂食时间，16000头牛站在遮阳篷下，等待路过的卡车将谷物喷洒到它们的食槽里。

农业是该地区最大的就业来源，该地区位于布里斯班以西 260 公里（131 英里）处。但在滋养全年作物的肥沃土壤之下，隐藏着一个巨大的天然气田，这也使该地区成为了能源中心。

现在，人工智能数据中心行业带着新加坡开发商 Zerra DC 提出的 220 亿美元提案前来洽谈，计划在澳大利亚西部唐斯建造澳大利亚最大的人工智能数据中心之一——西唐斯数字园区。该园区将包括四栋建筑，每栋建筑的面积相当于五个足球场，并在施工阶段为 1500 名工人提供临时住所。

该项目尚未获得正式批准。但其首个主要租户，美国巨头Anthropic公司已签署租赁协议，为该公司进军澳大利亚市场奠定了基础。史密斯表示，热情支持的州政府已向他保证，最终决定权将归地方议会所有。

在澳大利亚社会对人工智能日益增长的反对声浪中，以及该国在人工智能热潮中应扮演何种角色这一悬而未决的全国性辩论中，这无疑是一项艰巨的责任。与此同时，美国的人工智能巨头们则使出浑身解数，盛赞澳大利亚的开阔空间、对可再生能源的投入以及作为“五眼联盟”情报共享伙伴的可靠地位。

“我们正在努力争取在澳大利亚拥有相当可观的资源，”人类组织澳大利亚和新西兰政策负责人大卫·马斯特斯告诉 CNN。

但澳大利亚政府行事谨慎，带头呼吁“有护栏”的负责任增长——原因有很多，包括最近其医疗保健数据遭到泄露，以及包括 Anthropic 在内的科技公司发出警告，称人工智能的进步速度超过了控制速度。

史密斯站在西部唐斯拟建的数据中心所在地旁表示，他看到了一个让当地经济多元化、为子孙后代创造就业机会、并让该地区的年轻人有理由回家的机会。

尽管市长坚称尚未就数据中心做出决定，但他补充道：“我们的职责是展望未来，如果我们想让我们的社区在未来二三十年内保持领先地位，我们就需要与时俱进。而且有时候，你确实需要一些勇气。”

今年7月，澳大利亚总理曾承诺，除其他一系列要求外，将要求科技公司使用可再生能源为人工智能数据中心供电。然而不到一个月，他就放弃了这一承诺。

昆士兰州协商获得了豁免，因此，如果获得批准，西部唐斯数字园区将直接连接到电网，使用包括化石燃料在内的多种能源——煤炭和来自澳大利亚最大的天然气盆地之一的天然气，该盆地就位于园区正下方。

该地区周围遍布6000多口非常规天然气井，开采的天然气大部分销往国外市场。开采煤层气需要一个叫做“脱水”的过程——抽出地下水以释放压力，从而释放天然气。

而这正是该社区反对人工智能的核心所在——这里太干燥了。

数月少雨，草地和树木都已枯黄。雨水收集罐里的水也快用完了，直到上周的一场暴雨才有所缓解。许多农民依赖井水，但有些人说他们的井水已被天然气行业抽干，现在这些水却被提供给开发商，用于建设人工智能数据中心。

“那是偷来的水！”谷物种植户贝芙·牛顿怒吼道。她与一家天然气公司长期存在纠纷，她认为这场纠纷最终会闹上法庭，因为她要寻求赔偿来更换她的井水。

贝芙和韦恩·牛顿夫妇依靠暴雨——如果雨水来了的话——来填满家里的蓄水池。但他们说，由于煤层气开采造成的地面沉降，他们的一些农田正在下沉，这使得未来的雨量难以预测。

Zerra DC 表示，雨水​​将被收集和循环利用，以维持工人在运营期间的用水，但 Bev Newton 指出了一个共同的问题：“如果没有雨水从天而降，那么再多的地表水收集，无论是将屋顶雨水收集到水箱中，都无济于事。”

Zerra DC 表示，它将使用空气冷却技术为数据中心降温，这种技术所需的水量远少于蒸发冷却方法，而蒸发冷却方法已经引发了从美国到印度再到印度尼西亚的抗议活动。

但空气冷却技术能耗更高，居民们已经担心该中心的能源需求可能会给电网带来压力，推高电价，促使人们开采更多天然气，进行更多排水，并可能导致更多地面沉降——这无疑会加剧他们日常生活中对水资源的担忧。

Zerra DC 表示，该项目的分阶段开发将使其有时间与 Anthropic 等客户合作，创造新的能源。该公司表示，虽然电力需求将会增加，但其电池调节系统将缓冲电网负荷峰值，以帮助“稳定电价”。

Anthropic公司表示，计划签订虚拟购电协议（即与能源供应商达成的交易），以采购更多电力输送至电网，并优先选择可再生能源。“这批电力将来自新建项目，但具体是哪些项目，目前仍在讨论中，”Anthropic公司的Masters说道。

9 月下旬，总理安东尼·阿尔巴尼斯准备在联合国大会上发表讲话时，一份意想不到的礼物送达，以支持他关于对人工智能实施更严格监管的主张。

Anthropic 的主要竞争对手 OpenAI 的一名代理人入侵了澳大利亚的医疗保健数据。虽然他获取了统计数据，但并未获取个人信息，因此这次攻击总体上是良性的，但也发出了一个不祥的警告。在接到阿尔巴尼斯的电话后，OpenAI 的萨姆·奥特曼道歉并誓言要重新赢得澳大利亚人的信任。

不到两周后，在澳大利亚议会人工智能委员会的听证会上，人道研究所的国际特使杰夫·布莱希呼吁澳大利亚领导人“勇敢地选择”人工智能。他说：“如果澳大利亚抓住这个机会，并找到合适的平衡点，它不仅会参与人工智能时代，还会塑造这个时代。”

人类学研究所表示，拟建于西唐斯（Western Downs）的中心不会用于训练大型语言模型——因为澳大利亚严格的版权法目前禁止这样做——但它将回答其 Claude AI 模型提出的问题。

因此，CNN询问克劳德，根据公开信息、超过23000人签署的反对该提案的昆士兰州议会请愿书以及当地媒体报道，是否应该批准数据中心申请——以消除由于Anthropic参与该项目而可能产生的任何偏见。

克劳德的回应​​是：“在进行公众通知和对水、电、噪音和劳动力进行独立技术评估之前，不要妄下决定。召开居民要求的公众会议。如果州政府介入，要明确最终由谁来做决定。”

在距离拟建数据中心最近的主要城镇达尔比一家灯火通明的酒吧里，餐具碰撞作响，几位老年食客正悠闲地享用着周五晚宴。几位居民同意在包间里见面，倾诉他们的担忧，这些担忧涵盖了从水、电到“人类愚化”等方方面面。

“仅仅因为美国的大公司都在倡导使用人工智能，并不意味着我们也应该效仿，”零售业从业者科里·科拉说道。“社区里的大多数人甚至在为时已晚之前都不会知道这件事，”电信从业者乔尔·霍尔瑟姆补充道。

过去几周，Zerra DC 在这座人口 12,000 的小镇举办了多场快闪信息交流会，解答居民的疑问。退休人士 Beris Furner 在前来交流之前，就对人工智能的扩展表示支持。

“我认为这对达尔比来说太棒了。对于未来的孩子们来说，如果他们有兴趣，这是一个绝佳的机会，让他们在这样的地方接受训练和工作，”弗纳说道。

但在询问了 Zerra 的工作人员后，他现在认为，市议会正在推进一项投机性的提案，而没有得到足够的社区支持。

“我们需要召开一次公开会议。这对小镇来说是一件大事，”他说。

史密斯市长表示，市议会不会就此事举行公开会议：“我们一向避免召开市政厅会议。通常情况下，会议结果都不会好。”

当被问及市政委员会是否也有责任为居民提供其他信息来源时，史密斯说：“我们应该恪守本分。我们不是数据中心方面的专家。所以，我认为，让我们公开谈论数据中心是不合适的。”

“我们将不参与更广泛的数据中心人工智能讨论。”

缺乏讨论令一些居民感到沮丧，他们觉得自己的家园正被卷入中美两国之间激烈的AI竞赛中，使他们面临自己未必想要的未来。

“感觉就像我们身处一部怪异的科幻电影中，一切都在迅速失控，”达令唐斯环境委员会的阿赫里·塔隆说道。

“我们和世界各地的许多人一样，真心呼吁政府暂停人工智能和数据中心的建设，并真正花时间与社区合作，深入探讨我们需要思考的伦理问题，即这项技术在多大程度上可能造福人类，又在多大程度上可能造成危害。”

另一些人则考虑与一个耗水耗电的行业共享家园的实际问题，以及未来他们的孩子可能会有更多的工作机会，但也可能面临另一系列挑战，最终迫使他们离开。

20 年前，谢伊·道格尔在煤层气加工厂建设期间从事工作场所健康与安全方面的工作，后来嫁给了一位农民，现在在悉尼大学担任博士后研究员，研究工业化对农村地区的影响。

她亲眼目睹了天然气行业和可再生能源扩张给农民带来的困境，现在她担心数据中心也会造成同样的后果。

“这些人不仅承受着工业化的冲击，还受到了工业化带来的气候变化的影响。所以，他们真是雪上加霜，”她说。

昆士兰州政府并未排除批准新建燃煤电厂以支持该州人工智能发展的可能性——前提是科技公司愿意为此付费。该地区的联邦议员对增加煤炭产量的可能性表示赞赏。

“拟建的西唐斯数据中心峰值容量就高达2.16吉瓦，超过昆士兰州每日用电量的四分之一。单靠可再生能源是无法满足如此高的需求的。煤炭资源就在这里……”他在Facebook上发帖说道。

随着 Anthropic 准备进行首次公开​​募股（IPO），公司估值可能达到 1.5 万亿美元，该公司承诺将在其运营地区投入数千万美元。为此，该公司正在澳大利亚招聘一位“社区参与经理”，其职责是“使 Anthropic 成为值得信赖、引人注目且受人尊敬的邻居”。

但达尔比的问题是，随着井水的枯竭，信任也随之消失，一些居民并没有看到人工智能公司、议会和政府所宣扬的那种机遇，而只看到了更多潜在的问题。

市长史密斯认为，人工智能产业的兴趣并非资源消耗的负担，反而是改善水资源状况的途径之一。他希望该地区能获得数十亿美元的投资，用于建设新的水利基础设施，并正在与州政府、联邦政府以及开发商洽谈，以期获得这笔资金。

史密斯表示，他“几乎每天”都在与其他数据中心开发商讨论搬迁到该地区的事宜。能源情报平台 RenewMap 的数据显示，这是全国范围内的一种趋势，越来越多的开发申请都集中在远离都市区、规模更大的设施上。

史密斯说：“我们唯一可以确定的是，数据中心是我们国家未来发展的一部分。现在西唐斯地区的问题是，我们是否希望它们留在这里？”

“我们是想抓住眼前的机会，还是想把这个机会让给别人？”