An in­ter­na­tion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and da­ta in­fra­struc­ture ex­ec­u­tive is ques­tion­ing whether Trinidad and To­ba­go is pre­pared for the scale of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) da­ta cen­tres out­lined in the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent­ly an­nounced mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU), warn­ing that the coun­try could face sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal, en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges if the projects pro­ceed with­out com­pre­hen­sive plan­ning.

Prof Mike Singh, founder, chair­man and CEO of TC En­er­gy & ICT In­fra Group, who al­so serves on the ad­vi­so­ry board of the Smart Cities Coun­cil and is a fac­ul­ty mem­ber at the Jin­dal School of In­ter­na­tion­al Af­fairs in In­dia, said while he sup­ports dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, ma­jor ques­tions re­main unan­swered about the vi­a­bil­i­ty of es­tab­lish­ing hy­per­scale AI da­ta cen­tres in T&T.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Singh said hy­per­scale AI fa­cil­i­ties re­quire enor­mous amounts of elec­tric­i­ty, not­ing that a sin­gle large da­ta cen­tre can con­sume hun­dreds of megawatts of pow­er.